| When 12 volts is not 9.6 volts
I like to use rechargable batteries in my lights, and for the most
part using a rechargable AA in place of a regular battery works fine.
But with cold cathode bulbs on my bike, the little transformer thing
needs 12 volts. So I replaced the normal 8 AAs with 8 rechargables.
And it sort of works. But one bulb starts dimming after a half hour or
so. Checking with normal batteries, this doesn't happen.
I looked a bit closer at my rechargables, which are, it turns out, 1.2
volts, not 1.5 like regular batteries. All rechargables that I looked
at are 1.2. So, 8 * 1.2 = 9.6, not 12. Other stuff, like CD players,
work fine on the rechargeables, but the cold cathodes have a bit of a
problem. Obviously, 10 batteries instead of 8 should do the trick, but
I don't have, and can't find, a case that holds 10 batteries.
So, why do some things work fine with 1.2, and others not? And why
aren't rechargeables 1.5?
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