• Question: How do people give static shocks?

    Asked by to Becky, Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Magic!

      Not really magic, that was a lie, with Physics! Which is far cooler anyway.

      Everything is made up of atoms, when you rub some things together the electrons in the atoms one thing can get pulled off and put on the other thing. When that happens they have an unbalanced charge. Nature doesn’t like things being unbalanced, that’s why we fall over when we stand on one leg (or I do anyway). When a charge is unbalanced nature corrects it by making electrons from the thing with more electrons fly across to the thing with fewer electrons. If you get it right the thing with more electrons can be you, and the thing with less electrons can be the back of your friends neck.

    • Photo: Thomas Elias Cocolios

      Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Additional to Simon’s answer, you have to keep in mind that most of the time, those extra electrons are simply sinked to the ground through your body. However, if you are wearing big shoes with nicely insulating soils, then you keep on building up more & more charges until you have so many that they can fly ‘on their own’.

      Note as well that some fibres are more likely than other to give away electrons from rubbing. So if you want to play with static charges, wear a synthetic jumper and big bad shoes!

    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      Simon and Thomas have both given good explanations here, so I will add that another good way to make a static shock is with something called a Van de Graaff generator, maybe you’ve seen one in your science class? This uses a moving belt under a hollow metal globe to build up an electrical charge on the surface. If you put your hand on this while wearing your big bad shoes, you’ll build up a lot of charge too! Then you can make very impressive static shocks! 🙂

      Also, did you know that lightning is basically a massive electrostatic discharge! So it’s the same idea as an static shock, where there’s a build of charge in one place that then needs to go somewhere, but on a much bigger scale. Cool, huh!

    • Photo: Daniel Roach

      Daniel Roach answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      And to add to Clara’s lightning comment, seen as how everyone’s done such a good job explaining static shocks…

      Did you know that most of the power of a lightning bolt doesn’t go from the clouds to the earth… but from the earth up into the clouds?

      The initial series of ‘bolts’ – called ‘step leaders’ clear a path of ionised air from the cloud to the ground. This ‘burns out’ a clear, conductive path in the air and then – bam! – the main part of the electrical current slams up from the ground to the cloud. I always thought this was pretty cool.

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