Hi there,
Technically, the most basic part of a battery is the cell, so a battery
is made up of cells, where the cell is the device that has the smallest
voltage available in the system (either directly or indirectly) and its
voltage comes into existance via its nominal voltage for its chemistry.
A good example of this is a lead acid car *battery*, where the nominal
voltage is 12v but the nominal voltage of a single lead acid *cell* is 2v.
It would be a mistake to call the whole car battery a *cell*. Note that you
can not get any voltage lower than the cell voltage for any given chemistry.
There are, however, batteries that exist that are made of only one cell.
A good example of this is the 1.5v alkaline battery. This means it can
be called a *cell* or a *battery*.
A simple chart might look like this:
CELL: Basic electro-chemical device that produces dc current
BATTERY: Made up of one or more cells
BATTERY BANK: Made up of one or more batteries
BATTERY PACK: same as battery bank
Interestingly, even though a 9v 'battery' is one complete device i have
never heard anyone call it a "9v cell", although i guess it is possible because
externally it appears to be one unit. Technically this would be incorrect,
because a 9v battery is made up of several smaller cells inside.
In light of all this, i would have to say that you call something a
cell or a battery depending on its construction, and some constructions
can be called either cell or battery.
Because of this you may wish to add a third choice to the poll:
*BOTH*.
BTW, in a poll like this with the three options:
*CELL
*BATTERY
*BOTH
I would have to check all three.