January 9 is National Static Electricity Day!
Shocking? Yep, it’s National Static Electricity Day! I’ve found through extensive research and experimentation that the best place to touch someone to give them a static shock is to sneak up behind them and touch them on the ear lobe. Shocking indeed! If you’re not going to be the shocker, you could be the shockee, so keep your eyes open.
Quotes of the Week:
“I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick.” ~ Steven Wright
“Why is electricity so expensive these days? Why does it cost so much for something I can make with a balloon and my hair?.” ~ Dennis Miller
Enjoy our range of fun science experiments for kids that feature awesome hands-on projects and activities that help bring the exciting world of science to life. Static Electricity Experiment
 They say opposites attract and that couldn’t be truer with these fun static electricity experiments. Find out about positively and negatively charged particles using a few basic items, can you control if they will be attracted or unattracted to each other?
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What you’ll need:
- 2 inflated balloons with string attached
- Your hair
- Aluminium can
- Woolen fabric
Instructions:
- Rub the 2 balloons one by one against the woolen fabric, then try moving the balloons together, do they want to or are they unattracted to each other?
- Rub 1 of the balloons back and forth on your hair then slowly it pull it away, ask someone nearby what they can see or if there’s nobody else around try looking in a mirror.
- Put the aluminium can on its side on a table, after rubbing the balloon on your hair again hold the balloon close to the can and watch as it rolls towards it, slowly move the balloon away from the can and it will follow.
What’s happening?
Rubbing the balloons against the woolen fabric or your hair creates static electricity. This involves negatively charged particles (electrons) jumping to positively charged objects. When you rub the balloons against your hair or the fabric they become negatively charged, they have taken some of the electrons from the hair/fabric and left them positively charged.
They say opposites attract and that is certainly the case in these experiments, your positively charged hair is attracted to the negatively charged balloon and starts to rise up to meet it. This is similar to the aluminium can which is drawn to the negatively charged balloon as the area near it becomes positively charged, once again opposites attract.
In the first experiment both the balloons were negatively charged after rubbing them against the woolen fabric, because of this they were unattracted to each other.
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They say opposites attract and that couldn’t be truer with these fun static electricity experiments. Find out about positively and negatively charged particles using a few basic items, can you control if they will be attracted or unattracted to each other?