Sinister: I'm puzzled

[Keith Watson]

Can anyone technical help with this strange puzzle. I bought a CD walkman
thingy a month ago or so, and I bought a pile of batteries with it. I
stuffed them in, expecting the batteries to run out fairly swiftly, however,
the walkman has an option to plug itself in, which I do each day at work -
plugging it in, is supposed to recharge the batteries (it claims that it has
a safety mechanism built in for not charging non-rechargable batteries,
which I seem to remember makes them explode). However, after a while I
realized that my alkaline normal batteries in the walkman were not actually
running out. So I checked how much power there was in them using the cunning
little Duracell thingy on the side of them - and they were full, after
countless hours of use, so the only explanation I can come up with is that
the unit is recharging them somehow by day - which would seem unlikely given
that they're not liquid batteries.

    I changed the batteries in it before going to London last week and used
the walkman a lot on the train down and back up and stuff, I checked these
batteries this morning before coming into work and they were half full, and
after half a day of having it plugged in at work, they now claim to be full
again. What's going on?

Cheers,
    Keith.


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