Science Time! Start Static

Science seems to be in the midst of a resurgence in popularity. Lots of exciting science headlines have been making the news recently; a potential cure for deafness has been discovered, we've had the Curiosity rover exploring the surface of Mars, and crazy skydiver Felix Baumgarter jumping from the edge of space, to name but a few. An interest in Science, Maths, or even film and video games has gone from being something to be derided to something to aspire to, even for teenage girls. It's becoming cool to be a geek. 

Although geeky in some ways, I myself am not in any way a scientist.  I've read the odd issue of New Scientist and Bill Bryson's excellent A Short History of Nearly Everything, but that's pretty much the extent of it, and most of the information I gleaned has leaked out again by now. The only information that my brain seems to have retained is that Yellowstone National Park is a mahoosive sunken volcano and if it erupts...

Not the most useful information to store away in the old cranium. Today just happens to be National Static Electricity Day. The choice of date seems to have no significance whatsoever, and the holiday seems to be designed just to make more people (mostly schoolchildren, I would imagine) learn about static electricity. My entire knowledge bank of information related to this subject is essentially just that if you rub a balloon on your hair then your hair will stick to it. Oh, and sometimes if you get charged you can give your friends (or enemies) tiny static shocks. The end.

So, instead of trawling the internet looking for a slightly better explanation of how static electricity works, I decided to ask my boyfriend to explain it to me, in layman's terms;

'When non-conducting materials rub together, electrons pass between the two materials, resulting in one becoming negatively charged and the other relatively positive. These electrons can later pass on to other conducting materials, discharging the material and occasionally resulting in a shock and/or spark.

So why does this cause your hair to levitate when it is holding a static charge?

'This happens because when hair becomes highly negatively charged it repels itself, and because hair weighs so little the charge is enough that the hair can defy gravity and actually stand up on end.'

Dropping the science like a bad man! So there you have it. If the wise words of my other half are not enough to satisfy your curiosity about static, more information can be found here, and I've also found a clip online of everybody's favourite Bill Nye the Science Guy explaining the science of static.

So yeah, get involved with a Van der Graaf generator, or alternatively go rub a balloon on your head or something. Celebrate the science!