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Static Electricity
Introduction: As a child, you may remember having gone up to
the front of a television and having seen small bits of dust collecting
on the television screen. Or, if you've ever used a cloth and rubbed
it against a pen, you may have noticed that the pen now can attract
small bits of paper. In both of these scenarios, a branch of physics
known as electrostatics comes into play, which deals with the
properties of electric charges that have no acceleration and that are
either slow-moving or stationary.

Electrostatics consists of many concepts and principles, but there

are some that are central to static electricity as a whole. One of
these concepts is the fact that conductors of electricity tend to
have free, negatively-charged particles known as electrons,
whereas insulators do not. Moreover, objects generally become
charged as a result of gaining or losing these electrons. This
matters because negatively-charged objects generally have a lot of
electrons, or an excess of electrons, whereas positively-charged
objects generally have very few electrons, or a deficit of
electrons.

The charge of an individual object plays a role in whether there is

attraction or repulsion. Attraction between objects, when the
objects move towards one another, generally happens between
objects with opposite charges or between a charged object and a
neutral object. The neutral object will generally attract to charged
objects because charges in the neutral object will localize to
separate sides. Repulsion of objects, on the other hand, occurs
when the objects move away from another, resulting from the
objects having the same charges.

Aside from the interactions between objects in terms of repulsion

and attraction, it is also important to consider what is known as
the triboelectric series in physics, in which objects are listed in
order of the polarity of the separate of charges when the object is in
contact with another object. A material at the bottom of this series
will acquire a negative charge when in contact with a material at the
top of this series. The further apart that two materials are on the
series, the greater the charge is that is transferred from one object
to another.

Directions for This Lesson: In this lesson, you will learn about
static electricity. First, try the practice questions to determine what
you already know about static electricity.Then, watch the video
lessons to learn more about static electricity.