Start a fire with key fob battery?
We know that you can start a fire with a battery. the better prepared you are the easier it is going to be.
I am not prepared and all I have in my pockets is my car keys, which includes a keyless entry fob that has a '3v Lithium Coin Cell Battery' is it possible to start a fire with this battery? All I have is the metal key ring, finger nail clippers, and a couple of other keys on the ring.
I don't have a tiny screwdriver to get the battery out, so I am going to have to use a rock to break the key fob. I suspect that banging two rocks together would be a more effective fire starter, but I might be wrong.
Can I start a fire with my key fob battery?
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With just the right equipment in a laboratory setting, you can use the energy in a key fob battery to cause a spark. You can then use that to start a fire under the right conditions.
However, that's not going to happen in any realistic back country conditions. The voltage and current capability of a key fob battery are just too low.
The reason you can sometimes use a car battery for starting a fire is because a car battery can deliver a massive amount of current. When shorting the battery with a small wire, the contact point gets so hot that some of the metal is vaporized, causing a spark. Sometimes small amounts of molten metal are also shed off. A key fob battery just doesn't have the oomph to do that.
In addition, it's not easy to start a fire with just a electric spark unless you have ignitable vapor. A few drops of stove fuel on tinder, then letting that vaporize for a few seconds can work, but trying to light solid tinder directly is very difficult. The reason this is sometimes successful with a car battery is due to the molten metal resulting from the high current, not the spark itself. With a car battery, you can even get small wire to glow, and then melt. A key fob battery isn't capable of that.
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A bit more than a comment on Olin's answer:
I've done an experiment, and no, you can't.
I took:
- a brand new CR2025
- some steel wool to make it easier; this is a nice firelighting filament with bigger batteries
- a tissue
I shorted the cell using the steel wool, held in a pad of tissue to provide tinder and keep the heat in. It got fairly warm for a couple of minutes, even through the tissue, but when it cooled and I opened the tissue it wasn't even blackened. If I couldn't get close with the contents of a house and garage at my disposal, you're not going to be able to do it in the field.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/20528. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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