4 ms·

Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

41 points by zw123456 12y ago

dang 12y ago
Url changed from http://gizmodo.com/we-still-dont-know-how-static-electricity-works-1579257797 http://gizmodo.com/we-still-dont-know-how-static-electricity..., which points to this.
thret 12y ago
Even after reading the article I find the simple explanation quite convincing. Is the explanation for static electricity from rubbing dissimilar materials together also not entirely correct?
- mpyne 12y ago
  Well the explanation of an imbalance of charge accumulation causing static electricity is still simple and correct. The hard part I think is giving a simple explanation for why rubbing some materials together causes the charge carriers to preferentially end up on one of the materials being rubbed.
beloch 12y ago
Static Electricity is simple in theory, but hard to observe directly. Why? How do you directly observe electrons moving from surface to surface? To observe something directly you basically need to bounce stuff off of it and observe where that stuff goes. e.g. Bouncing hundreds of ping-pong balls off of a basketball and tracing their trajectories will give you a pretty good idea of the basketball's outline. We do this all the time just by opening our eyes and observing light that is scattered/reflected/radiated by the objects around us. Unfortunately, we start to run into quantum limits when we try to observe electrons. Observing electrons with photons is like observing that same basketball by bouncing cannonballs off of it. We can reasonably expect to hit the basketball and maybe even observe a tiny deflection in the first cannonball, but the basketball will be long gone before we can fire a second cannonball and we need several deflections to get even a rudimentary image! Things only get harder if we want to know things like the basketball's position and speed! Electrons themselves are one of the preferred tiny things to bounce off of other tiny things to observe them (e.g. electron microscopy), but bouncing basketballs off of basketballs doesn't work very well either. What about quarks you say? Great idea! Or, it would be if quarks were stable enough to travel even the microscopic distances required. Also, quarks are charged... So there you have it. Static electricity is hard to observe directly because of quantum limits on observation. We can only make indirect observations and see how well they agree with the theory. On the bright side, there is at least some hope of detecting the transfer of molecules.
- pdonis 12y ago
  > What about quarks you say? Great idea! Or, it would be if quarks were stable enough to travel even the microscopic distances required. Quarks are stable; the problem is that they're confined. Free quarks can't be observed; we can only observe bound quark states like protons or pions, which are much larger than electrons. (Actually, as best we can tell, even if we could observe free quarks, their masses would be quite a bit larger than the mass of the electron.)
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  Well, it's a surface phenomenon. Like all surface phenomenons, it's much, MUCH more complex than it appears at first sight.
larrys 12y ago
Perhaps someone who knows more about this than I do could explain why in this article it says that static electricity is not a form of energy. But I know I've see cases where you can get static electricity to light a bulb for a brief time. http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html Actually here it is: http://www.scientificsonline.com/human-powered-light-bulb.html http://www.scientificsonline.com/human-powered-light-bulb.ht...
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  You can think of static electricity as potential energy, like a brick on a ledge. If something causes the brick to fall, its potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. Work can be done when the brick hits something, but not for long. Likewise, if something discharges the static electricity, it's not "static" electricity anymore, but a pulse of current electricity. A limited amount of work can be done by the kinetic energy represented by the moving charge.
mullingitover 12y ago
> Determining which scenario is right may be tough. Repeating the experiment under conditions that would eliminate any water would be very difficult, Jaeger says. I wonder how hard it'd be to do this in a vacuum chamber. All the water could vaporize and get pumped out of the chamber, problem solved?

41 points by zw123456 12y ago

dang 12y ago

Url changed from http://gizmodo.com/we-still-dont-know-how-static-electricity-works-1579257797 http://gizmodo.com/we-still-dont-know-how-static-electricity..., which points to this.

thret 12y ago

Even after reading the article I find the simple explanation quite convincing. Is the explanation for static electricity from rubbing dissimilar materials together also not entirely correct?

mpyne 12y ago
Well the explanation of an imbalance of charge accumulation causing static electricity is still simple and correct. The hard part I think is giving a simple explanation for why rubbing some materials together causes the charge carriers to preferentially end up on one of the materials being rubbed.

beloch 12y ago

Static Electricity is simple in theory, but hard to observe directly. Why? How do you directly observe electrons moving from surface to surface? To observe something directly you basically need to bounce stuff off of it and observe where that stuff goes. e.g. Bouncing hundreds of ping-pong balls off of a basketball and tracing their trajectories will give you a pretty good idea of the basketball's outline. We do this all the time just by opening our eyes and observing light that is scattered/reflected/radiated by the objects around us. Unfortunately, we start to run into quantum limits when we try to observe electrons. Observing electrons with photons is like observing that same basketball by bouncing cannonballs off of it. We can reasonably expect to hit the basketball and maybe even observe a tiny deflection in the first cannonball, but the basketball will be long gone before we can fire a second cannonball and we need several deflections to get even a rudimentary image! Things only get harder if we want to know things like the basketball's position and speed! Electrons themselves are one of the preferred tiny things to bounce off of other tiny things to observe them (e.g. electron microscopy), but bouncing basketballs off of basketballs doesn't work very well either. What about quarks you say? Great idea! Or, it would be if quarks were stable enough to travel even the microscopic distances required. Also, quarks are charged... So there you have it. Static electricity is hard to observe directly because of quantum limits on observation. We can only make indirect observations and see how well they agree with the theory. On the bright side, there is at least some hope of detecting the transfer of molecules.

pdonis 12y ago
> What about quarks you say? Great idea! Or, it would be if quarks were stable enough to travel even the microscopic distances required. Quarks are stable; the problem is that they're confined. Free quarks can't be observed; we can only observe bound quark states like protons or pions, which are much larger than electrons. (Actually, as best we can tell, even if we could observe free quarks, their masses would be quite a bit larger than the mass of the electron.)
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
Well, it's a surface phenomenon. Like all surface phenomenons, it's much, MUCH more complex than it appears at first sight.

larrys 12y ago

Perhaps someone who knows more about this than I do could explain why in this article it says that static electricity is not a form of energy. But I know I've see cases where you can get static electricity to light a bulb for a brief time. http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html Actually here it is: http://www.scientificsonline.com/human-powered-light-bulb.html http://www.scientificsonline.com/human-powered-light-bulb.ht...

CamperBob2 12y ago
You can think of static electricity as potential energy, like a brick on a ledge. If something causes the brick to fall, its potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. Work can be done when the brick hits something, but not for long. Likewise, if something discharges the static electricity, it's not "static" electricity anymore, but a pulse of current electricity. A limited amount of work can be done by the kinetic energy represented by the moving charge.

mullingitover 12y ago

> Determining which scenario is right may be tough. Repeating the experiment under conditions that would eliminate any water would be very difficult, Jaeger says. I wonder how hard it'd be to do this in a vacuum chamber. All the water could vaporize and get pumped out of the chamber, problem solved?