Lead acid batteries get 80% of their voltage from special relativistic effects.
The transfer of electrons between two forms of lead in car batteries yields a potential of more than 2 volts, higher than most other batteries.
Pekka Pyykkö at the University of Helsinki in Finland and colleagues have calculated that the strong charges on lead nuclei attract electrons so powerfully that they reach 60 per cent the speed of light.
According to relativity, this gives the electrons higher effective masses, increasing their binding energy to the electrode that attracts them and thus their voltage.
Without these relativistic effects, Pyykkö and colleagues calculate that lead-acid batteries would generate only 0.39 volts.
With them, they predict 2.13 volts, in good agreement with the measured 2.11 volts.
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