Battery Question

[User]

 

[Andy_R]

I'm not an expert, but I imagine it would be a sympathetic discharge - the way I envisage it, is as if the D cell was effectively 3 AAAs in parallel. they all drain at the same speed, so adding a 4th AAA into the equation would have no change on the rate at which the cells drain relative to each other. But I'm probably wrong.

 

[cosmicbike]

An interesting one, and this goes some way to explain it. I think your AAA cell will effectively behave as a defective D cell...

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/serial_and_parallel_battery_configurations

 

[JhnBssll]

Depends on internal impedance characteristics of the cells and their storage capacity. You could be lucky and get a pair that behave nicely together but it's not likely.