Before you go buying a 6 volt battery, check this out.
From
Hoax-slayer.com
Commentary:
From time to time, a particularly intriguing item will seemingly fire the imagination of the online community and create a great deal of debate and speculation. One such item is the above video, which supposedly shows how to "hack" a typical 6-volt lantern battery and extract 32 AA batteries from the larger battery's innards. According to the video, consumers can save a lot of money over time by using these hidden AA batteries in other devices such as digital cameras. After all, one 6-volt battery is considerably less expensive than 32 AA batteries.
Sadly however, it appears that the great majority of 6-volt batteries do not contain 32 AA batteries at all, but rather an array of four cells. It is unclear if the video is genuine or just a prank designed to fool curious viewers into dismantling their lantern batteries for no good reason. Given that the group that produced the video is called "Gag Films", an organization that specializes in hosting short comedy movies, it seems quite likely that the video is indeed a prank.
If it is a prank, it has certainly been a very successful one. Some googling on the issue indicates that many people around the world have (sometimes literally) hacked their 6-volt batteries to discover what might be hidden inside. Not wanting to be left out, I decided I should go battery mining as well. I found an old and degraded 6-volt battery to use. The following photographs show the disappointing results of my expedition:
It may just be possible to cram 32 AA batteries into a 6-volt battery case, 8 per quadrant, although it would be a very tight fit:
I then procured a new 6-volt battery of another brand to use in a second hack attempt. Alas, this battery also contained only 4 larger cells, not 32 AA's:
One shot in the film shows the "hacker" just beginning to open the top of the battery case with a screwdriver. However, in the next shot, the entire top appears to be loose. Thus, the filmmaker could have removed the four large cells, and replaced them with 32 AA sized batteries before filming the final top-opening sequence.
In any case, a "Heavy Duty" label typically means that the battery is of the carbon zinc type. Thus, even if the 6-volt battery did contain 32 AA batteries, they would probably be low-powered carbon zinc and would not last very long in high-powered devices such as digital cameras. You can often buy these cheap AA batteries in bulk at discount stores, although, in my experience, they go flat so quickly that any perceived saving is actually quite small.
Some commentators have suggested that it might be only the particular brand of 6-volt battery shown in the video that contains the AA's. This brand of battery is not available in my area, so I could not test this theory personally. However, a photograph and caption on flickr indicate that at least some batteries of this brand contain the four larger cells like other 6-volts.
In spite of the widespread and lively debate that the video has generated, I have not yet found a single credible report that claims to have successfully duplicated this "hack". So, even if the video is not fake and some 6-volt batteries do contain the treasure-trove of smaller batteries, then they are seemingly as rare as the proverbial hens teeth.