Summary of the article by ScienceAlert reporter Michelle Starr:
In 600 BCE, Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus noticed that when he rubbed fur on amber, the fur attracted dust.
That tiny charge generated came to be known as static electricity.
You might know it as the crackle and puff of your hair when you brush it, or the force that sticks a balloon to the ceiling after you rub it on your head, but scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of what creates the phenomenon for centuries.
Now, we finally have an answer: The beginning and the end of the sliding motion that produces static electricity experience different forces – resulting in a charge differential between the front and the back that results in the crackle of static electricity.
“People have tried, but they could not explain experimental results without making assumptions that were not justified or justifiable. We now can, and the answer is surprisingly simple. Just having different deformations – and therefore different charges – at the front and back of something sliding leads to current.”
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Summary of the article by ScienceAlert reporter Michelle Starr:
In 600 BCE, Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus noticed that when he rubbed fur on amber, the fur attracted dust.
That tiny charge generated came to be known as static electricity.
You might know it as the crackle and puff of your hair when you brush it, or the force that sticks a balloon to the ceiling after you rub it on your head, but scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of what creates the phenomenon for centuries.
Now, we finally have an answer: The beginning and the end of the sliding motion that produces static electricity experience different forces – resulting in a charge differential between the front and the back that results in the crackle of static electricity.
“For the first time, we are able to explain a mystery that nobody could before: why rubbing matters,” [says materials scientist Laurence Marks](https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024/september/why-petting-your-cat-leads-to-static-electricity/?fj=1) of Northwestern University in the US.
“People have tried, but they could not explain experimental results without making assumptions that were not justified or justifiable. We now can, and the answer is surprisingly simple. Just having different deformations – and therefore different charges – at the front and back of something sliding leads to current.”
Read the peer-reviewed paper: [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c03656](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c03656)