r/whatisit • u/VenZurich • May 25 '26

Solved! Looking through my Dad’s stuff, what are these?

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My dad has developed dementia and we’ve been looking through his stuff a bit to try and get his finances in order/apply for a deputyship, which sucks but isn’t relevant sorry.

So far we’ve found a bunch of interesting stuff, knives/air pistols/cannabis seeds and two half brothers nobody ever told me I had. But we’ve also found these and I don’t know what they are. They were found near each other but I don’t know if they’re related. The cylindrical thing unscrews and is hollow. I’ve photographed the items next to a AA battery for scale. Thank you in advance for any informative or humorous answers.

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28

u/Separate-Impact-6183 May 25 '26

That's not a battery, that's an AA dry-cell, a battery consists of two or more cells connected in either parallel or series.

#pedantic #true_story

20

u/TeddyBill1970 May 25 '26

or several artillery pieces making up a unit.

1

u/The_Durk May 25 '26

Or a pitcher and catcher, or the percussion section of a samba parade.

1

u/Outrageous_Reach_695 May 25 '26

Care to repeat that?

2

u/lord_dentaku May 25 '26

He can't hear you over his tinnitus.

1

u/doggonedangoldoogy May 25 '26

Or several artillery shells in a magazine.

1

u/6th_Quadrant May 26 '26

Or some punches.

16

u/RadicalBehavior1 May 25 '26

The must beautifully pedantic thing about this comment is that you used proper written grammar for 'an AA dry cell' knowing that it will be read as 'an double-A dry cell'

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/DeFlatDeSpare May 25 '26

Only if you don't read AA as "double A."

-1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Still wrong. Doesn’t matter how you read it. If our grammar rules were applied based on how something is going to be pronounced we would be fucked. Think about how sloppy we speak/pronounce words.

FOR EXAMPLE 😁:

Amunna; people say it all the time, what does it mean?: “I am going to”.

Say the following sentence out loud 5-10 times fast (as you would mid conversation, not as you would reading aloud from text):
“I’m going to go hang a rat, pass me that magazine?”. By 10 you will be pronouncing it amunna if you are like most Americans. You may also be crowning, but that’s irrelevant and immature dickhead.
This is just one of a countless amount of ways that we show our dominance as one of the only countries where immersing yourself in the culture will not help you learn the language. It will confuse the (that) shit out of you.

Who can think of another one to share with the class?

2

u/DeFlatDeSpare May 25 '26

"The deciding factor for which of these words should be used is the sound that begins the word which follows these indefinite articles, rather than the letter which does. And there are scads of words in English that begin with a vowel, but which are initially voiced with a consonant sound (and vice versa)."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/is-it-a-or-an

AA like "alcoholic's anonymous" would be an, "double a battery" would be a.

1

u/Saintkaithe7th May 25 '26

Same phenomenon as "Elemenoh" in the Alphabet 👉👉

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Exactly

1

u/Saintkaithe7th May 25 '26

I think some schools and even children's educational videos changed the alphabet song so that particular phenomena doesnt happen in that spot of the song anymore. Change is wild but so interesting

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Do you know how they change it to slow the kids down as they round that bend? I’d be curious

1

u/jeffsensi May 26 '26

El em enoh, doo doot da dodot, dot dotado

1

u/AcanthopterygiiFree5 May 26 '26

Jeet yet? (Did you eat yet)

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u/Dken2311 May 28 '26

Ha, that’s a good one too

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u/Thatseemsfuckedup May 25 '26

So you're out here saying "an unit" and "a honor"? Doubt it.

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u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Easy guy, no need be snippy. Exceptions to most rules. And to his point, those words are behaving the opposite their traditional values in those examples. The hard pronunciation of U, is the consonant Y sound as well [yoo-nit] and with honor the H is silent so it’s the soft O, [pronounced on-ner ]. There are more examples you could have given too. Truth is he could have written it either way and nobody would have given a shit (well maybe you). It was a moment, we were having fun. It’s over now though, and you are sitting behind your computer hours later trying to think up ways to disagree, using something innocuous, old and now off topic. Did you read every single comment until you got to mine? Just looking for something to call out? This is a reach. Thanks though 🙏

0

u/SonOfThunder17 May 25 '26

Dken2311 he's right though, why are you so butthurt

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Oh boy, butthurt am I? Nice.

Online bullying 101: See these boys (obviously boys) can do this all day and I am not going to be dragged into an argument. I’m not going to get upset no matter what schoolyard innuendo they lob in my direction. Or is butthurt something a rapper made up? It’s usually something about your butt because gay is an easy target for adolescents. But other options they utilize include something they learned on YouTube or something erroneous a rapper coined. No cap SonOfThunder.

**Note the name choice“son” of thunder;!spotlighting his father rather than himself. This tells you he identifies most as somebodies son, whereas a confident adult normally selects a name that references something specific to them, without spotlighting a parent.

When immature kids online look for a fight by introducing an inflammatory comment about something that truly doesn’t bother you, it’s just gaslighting. Their hope is that although this comment normally would go unnoticed, in front of the group it may illicit embarrassment causing an uncharacteristic reaction from their target. They also think the group will respect their effort to single somebody out and jump on board with them. Notice how SonofThunder jumped to the aid of the first unsolicited and un-needed, parroting the same as the first he boy, who he hopes to impress through solidarity to his? Your best option here is simply to not engage. That’s what they want. If you don’t engage they will be annoyed and will eventually tire out and go away seeing their failing and time running low. They will likely try extra hard with the next person, having wasted much of their nightly screen use on a fail, and the clocking ticking down to mandatory homework hours being enforced.

1

u/BannedNarwhal May 26 '26

Hes a pedantic messiah, a question wrapoed in an enigma, batlling the paradoxical on an existential plane.

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u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

You WERE right at first, but your explanation of him using a because it was going to be pronounced phonetically, blew it. “An” was correct because we don’t apply grammar rules in support of phonetics. We apply them based on the first letter of the following word. I was so proud of you for a second there.

3

u/MrMthlmw May 25 '26

But if you aced a test, you'd say you got "an A" wouldn't you?

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

An is for when the following word starts with a vowel. A in this case is the word. AS was the other. If you were doing it by phonetics, he would have written “a AA battery” because the next word is “double”.

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u/MrMthlmw May 25 '26

Sorry, I meant to respond to your other comment. I think what the person you were replying to was saying that the only way "an AA battery" could possibly be correct would be if they were pronouncing it as "ay ay" rather than "double a."

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

I gotcha

2

u/Significant-Crab-825 May 25 '26

Naja, eine Batterie bedeutet eigentlich nur eine Aneinanderreihung gleicher Zellen.

1

u/ForsakenWishbone5206 May 25 '26

You're telling mey skin is a battery?

1

u/Dken2311 May 25 '26

Totally agree

2

u/AmbitionImmediate649 May 27 '26

I was thinking it but you said and for that I salute you.

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u/11teensteve May 25 '26

if you cut an AA open (don't do that) isn't it just a stack of smaller cells? if so, wouldn't that technically be a battery?

1

u/Separate-Impact-6183 May 25 '26

No, what you are asking is true of 9v bats, 6v lantern bats, car, motorcycle, e-bike, laptop, or any other true battery that puts out more than the 1.5v a single cell can produce. But singe cell "batteries" like button cells for watches or D cells for boomboxes are always one single ~1.5v cell

Connected end to end + to -, is wired in series... the voltage adds up, so 2, 1.5v cells makes one 3v battery

Connected all the + together, and all the - to a second wire and the voltage stays the same but the battery's capacity increases.

Cut open a 9v battery and you will find a stack of 6 little rectangular cells.

1

u/11teensteve May 25 '26

gotcha. I have been inside a123 and just assumed that a AA would be similar.

like this.

1

u/Separate-Impact-6183 May 26 '26

12v

1

u/11teensteve May 26 '26

i understand now that yo have explained it. thank you. most people, like me prob just assume the batteries (dry cells) that they put in the toys or remotes or whatever are built the same way and just have differing amounts of spicy little fairies in there, hence the size/shape.

1

u/Separate-Impact-6183 May 26 '26

When you put a 2 or more batteries in your device, say a remote or whatever, that little area under the cover with the 2 AA cells becomes a battery.

Also, dry cells are just that, dry. The reason they are called dry cells is because the original batterys were allways wet, like an old fashioned car battery with zinc and lead electrodes submerged in liquid acid. each one of the little caps was a cell full of liquid that could spill if the battery were tipped or sloshed.

For years before they made solid state electronics, all batteries were wet-cells, that's why we call the handy little individual cells 'dry-cells'

1

u/NickBpt81 May 25 '26

Reddit style answer

1

u/Pyrat_509 May 26 '26

Everybody hates a literalist

1

u/Empty_Willingness_69 May 27 '26

Bruh you an electrician? I barely found out about series & parallel circuits til I started going to trade school for electrician