Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation 86
sciencehabit writes: "If you've ever wiggled a balloon against your hair, you know that rubbing together two different materials can generate static electricity. But rubbing bits of the same material can create static, too. Now, researchers have shot down a decades-old idea of how that same-stuff static comes about (study). '[The researchers] mixed grains of insulating zirconium dioxide-silicate with diameters of 251 micrometers and 326 micrometers and dropped them through a horizontal electric field, which pushed positively charged particles one way and negatively charged particles the other. They tracked tens of thousands of particles—by dropping an $85,000 high-speed camera alongside them. Sure enough, the smaller ones tended to be charged negatively and the larger ones positively, each accumulating 2 million charges on average. Then the researchers probed whether those charges could come from electrons already trapped on the grains' surfaces. They gently heated fresh grains to liberate the trapped electrons and let them "relax" back into less energetic states. As an electron undergoes such a transition, it emits a photon. So by counting photons, the researchers could tally the trapped electrons. "It's pretty amazing to me that they count every electron on a particle," Shinbrot says. The tally showed that the beads start out with far too few trapped electrons to explain the static buildup, Jaeger says.'"
I'm pretty sure that this article (Score:4, Funny)
Simple...logic! (Score:4, Funny)
The extra charge is for the other two seats your mama needs on the plane.
Static Electricity, How Does It Work? (Score:4, Funny)
It must be a miracle! Just like Climate Change and Magnets!
Static must die! (Score:2, Funny)
Most of the damn year I curse the static electricity, especially in the winter when unloading steel trolleys covered in plastic wrap.
Some day I will get a time machine and go back in time to murder the parents and grandparents of the asshole who invented plastic wrap and leave a note that says "this is what happens when you invent plastic wrap". Then I come back to present day to see if anybody else has invented it. Rinse and repeat until the most baffling mystery of humanity is an enormous amount of strange notes stapled on the foreheads of dead people and scientists are soiling themselves and repenting their sins whenever they dare to even think of developing a plastic wrap.
Then I get a long list of winning lottery numbers and stock data and go back in time to make money in order to buy a golden mansion and whole harem of porn star concubines to the guy who invents new materials that free the humanity from the horrors of static electricity forever.
Re:Condescending Willy Wonka (Score:2, Funny)
Why would you want to fuck a magnet?
Re:Condescending Willy Wonka (Score:2, Funny)