3 ms·

The terms are due to Ben Franklin: We say B is electrised positively; A negatively: or rather B is electrised plus and A minus ... These terms we may use until

The terms are due to Ben Franklin: We say B is electrised positively; A negatively: or rather B is electrised plus and A minus ... These terms we may use until your philosophers give us better. Here A and B are Franklin's buddies, standing on insulating plates while one of them rubs a glass tube with a piece of, if I remember rightly (can't find the proper source), "buckskin". Then they reach out to join hands and a spark crosses the gap. Problem is, it isn't even clear from the experiment which of A and B really was negatively charged, because it turns out the charge depends on the nature of the "buckskin" (or whatever term he used), and how hairy, furry, or possibly even leathery it was. The resulting charge could be positive or negative, depending. So he defined the terms, but didn't even clearly assign them to direction of electron flow. Edit: the ambiguity is shown in this picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#/media/File:Triboelectric-series_EN.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#/media/Fi... Here leather is above glass, and fur is below it. He was definitely rubbing glass with something like leather or fur, but the resulting charge depends on where in the series that thing was relative to glass.

saghm 2y ago
As usual, xkcd has a relevant comic about this: https://xkcd.com/567/ https://xkcd.com/567/
- 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
  This makes the robot apocalypse happen at an increased rate. All the advancements made without this stupid error infecting everything.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Found it from the horse's mouth, finally: "We rub our tubes with buckſkin". https://archive.org/details/experimentsobser00fran_0/page/17/mode/1up?q=%22We+rub+our+tubes+with%22 https://archive.org/details/experimentsobser00fran_0/page/17... Don't know where Randall get "silk" from.
  - ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
    Silk is usually used in school demonstrations in place of buckskin.
do_not_redeem 2y ago
> We say B is electrised positively; A negatively: or rather B is electrised plus and A minus ... These terms we may use until your philosophers give us better. I can relate. This is just a quick hack to get to production, we can always rewrite it later!
fellerts 2y ago
Funnily enough, we still don’t fully understand the mechanism by which static electricity is built up when rubbing things together. Professor Merrifield covers this in a very approachable way here: https://youtu.be/0UZb07imNLU https://youtu.be/0UZb07imNLU. Skip to around 6:00 (or watch the whole thing, it’s well worth it)
robocat 2y ago
> but the resulting charge depends on where in the series that thing was relative to glass You'd think we would understand the science of contact/static/tribo electricity by now... And yet this posted 1 day ago: "Static electricity depends on materials' contact history" https://phys.org/news/2025-02-static-electricity-materials-contact-history.html https://phys.org/news/2025-02-static-electricity-materials-c... Historically, several studies have suggested that insulators could be ordered based on the sign of charge they exchange, from the most positive to the most negative. For instance, if glass charges positively to ceramic and ceramic does the same to wood, then glass (usually) charges positively to wood. Thus, glass, ceramic, and wood would form a so-called "triboelectric series." The problem with these triboelectric series, according to Waitukaitis, is that different researchers get different orderings, and sometimes even the same researcher does not get the same order twice when they redo their own experiment. Discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134657 And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Explanations_and_mechanisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Explanati... There are many cases where there are triangles: material A is positive when rubbed against B, B is positive when rubbed against C, and C is positive when rubbed against A, an issue mentioned by Shaw in 1914.[29] This cannot be explained by a linear series; cyclic series are inconsistent with the empirical triboelectric series.[75] Furthermore, there are many cases where charging occurs with contacts between two pieces of the same material.[76][77][47]
- card_zero 2y ago
  Woah. Well that just adds to my confusion!
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    I just came in here thinking hole flow was weird but wow, I need to learn some things!
- Sharlin 2y ago
  We don't even really understand the "tribo-" part alone. Never mind with electricity added.
praptak 2y ago
I remember reading an early book on the topic where the author describes two kinds of electricity: "glass-electricity" and "resin-electricity". The experiments seemed to involve rubbing either glass or hardened resin (amber?) with something. The author (it wasn't Franklin) concluded, after a series of experiments, that this produces two different "kinds" of electricity which seem to cancel each other out. Edit: I think I found the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Cisternay_du_Fay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Ciste... His wikipedia page seems to confirm he discovered there are two kinds of electricity and named them "vitreous" and "resinous".
- db48x 2y ago
  And then once you realize that the ancient Greek name for amber was “ἤλεκτρον” or “electron”…

saghm 2y ago

As usual, xkcd has a relevant comic about this: https://xkcd.com/567/ https://xkcd.com/567/

3eb7988a1663 2y ago
This makes the robot apocalypse happen at an increased rate. All the advancements made without this stupid error infecting everything.
card_zero 2y ago
Found it from the horse's mouth, finally: "We rub our tubes with buckſkin". https://archive.org/details/experimentsobser00fran_0/page/17/mode/1up?q=%22We+rub+our+tubes+with%22 https://archive.org/details/experimentsobser00fran_0/page/17... Don't know where Randall get "silk" from.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  Silk is usually used in school demonstrations in place of buckskin.

do_not_redeem 2y ago

> We say B is electrised positively; A negatively: or rather B is electrised plus and A minus ... These terms we may use until your philosophers give us better. I can relate. This is just a quick hack to get to production, we can always rewrite it later!

fellerts 2y ago

Funnily enough, we still don’t fully understand the mechanism by which static electricity is built up when rubbing things together. Professor Merrifield covers this in a very approachable way here: https://youtu.be/0UZb07imNLU https://youtu.be/0UZb07imNLU. Skip to around 6:00 (or watch the whole thing, it’s well worth it)

robocat 2y ago

> but the resulting charge depends on where in the series that thing was relative to glass You'd think we would understand the science of contact/static/tribo electricity by now... And yet this posted 1 day ago: "Static electricity depends on materials' contact history" https://phys.org/news/2025-02-static-electricity-materials-contact-history.html https://phys.org/news/2025-02-static-electricity-materials-c... Historically, several studies have suggested that insulators could be ordered based on the sign of charge they exchange, from the most positive to the most negative. For instance, if glass charges positively to ceramic and ceramic does the same to wood, then glass (usually) charges positively to wood. Thus, glass, ceramic, and wood would form a so-called "triboelectric series." The problem with these triboelectric series, according to Waitukaitis, is that different researchers get different orderings, and sometimes even the same researcher does not get the same order twice when they redo their own experiment. Discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43134657 And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Explanations_and_mechanisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Explanati... There are many cases where there are triangles: material A is positive when rubbed against B, B is positive when rubbed against C, and C is positive when rubbed against A, an issue mentioned by Shaw in 1914.[29] This cannot be explained by a linear series; cyclic series are inconsistent with the empirical triboelectric series.[75] Furthermore, there are many cases where charging occurs with contacts between two pieces of the same material.[76][77][47]

card_zero 2y ago
Woah. Well that just adds to my confusion!
- ok_dad 2y ago
  I just came in here thinking hole flow was weird but wow, I need to learn some things!
Sharlin 2y ago
We don't even really understand the "tribo-" part alone. Never mind with electricity added.

praptak 2y ago

I remember reading an early book on the topic where the author describes two kinds of electricity: "glass-electricity" and "resin-electricity". The experiments seemed to involve rubbing either glass or hardened resin (amber?) with something. The author (it wasn't Franklin) concluded, after a series of experiments, that this produces two different "kinds" of electricity which seem to cancel each other out. Edit: I think I found the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Cisternay_du_Fay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fran%C3%A7ois_de_Ciste... His wikipedia page seems to confirm he discovered there are two kinds of electricity and named them "vitreous" and "resinous".

db48x 2y ago
And then once you realize that the ancient Greek name for amber was “ἤλεκτρον” or “electron”…