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This is sort of a bizarre question, so I'll explain myself. Thursday I will be going on a 7 hour road trip in a school bus. A few friends of mine and I want to watch DVDs on my laptop, but the battery will only last like 45 minutes, and there's no place to plug it in. So, I was thinking, and I have a converter that's designed to plug into your cigarette lighter and convert the 14.4v (or 12v, whatever) electrical signal into a 120v wall-socket style. I was thinking; wouldn't it be possible to acquire a car battery, cut the cigarette adapter off this converter thing, run the wires to the terminals, and I would have like 10 hours of runtime? And when we get down there, AutoZone or someplace like that recharges batteries for free, so we have another 10 hours for the return trip. I'm almost positive it would work, but my real question is about safety. What precautions should I take when wiring it up, and then what would be the best way to protect it? I realize that this is a really odd question, but I would REALLY like some advice in the next hour, as I am going to a party for all the swimmers, and I need to let them know there if we are definitely doing this or not so they can get me a battery. Thanks

 
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That would work, just find a way to attach the wires to the battery terminals. I'm not entirely sure you'll actually get 10 hours of runtime, that all depends on the reserve charge in the battery and how much draw the DC-AC converter has. As far as protecting the connections, I would just use electrical tape, unless you feel like buying terminals from a car audio shop or something.

 
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thats what I was thinking; i would also probably put the battery in a duffle bag or something for some extra protection; when I say protection, i mean protection of someone getting electricuted. What would you say is the best way to attach the wires to the terminals? I was just thinking, I have some worm-clamps, and I could clamp down the wire around the terminal...they're not copper or anything, would that still work ok?

 
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yeah, that would work. Just make sure you dont arc something across both terminals

 
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I would suggest the purchase of a batterybox. they are made of ABS and cost $15, they will protect you from acid spills and should limit hydrogen exposure. remmeber the battery cant be laid on its side if its lead acid!

you can get terminals form any autoshop or sears for like three bucks, id do that

you can bolt the inverter to the side of the batterybox, and the straps used to strap the top on the box should make carrying it pain free!

 
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hmm...i'll stop by Advance Auto tomorrow and check that out; for $15, thats not too bad, and I'm sure I will be using this setup more than once again in the future.

 
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if you truly wanted to be nerdcore, youd strap that to shoulderstraps so you could make it a backpack and walk around with it anywhere

 
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haha, yeah. Actually, that would be really funny. I could just walk up to people on the street holding an extension cord and be like "would you like some electricity?"

 
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wow. that is geek...

j/k, the whole setup is still probably cheaper than an extra laptop battery. and many more uses.

 
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i stopped by Advance Auto today and picked up the battery box; its a black plastic mother with a webbing strap around the outside. Also, it has some room inside above the battery, so hopefully the inverter will fit inside, and then the box has a few channels for routing wires outside. It was $12, and then the battery terminal attachments were $1.38 each, so I went ahead and got 2. Now all I need is a battery . My parents won't let me take one out of the spare car, and I'm hoping one of my friends brings one tomorrow to school (we're leaving tomorrow from school, so I'll have to do some ghetto rigging up during study hall!) I'll let you know how it works, if I get it working.