After Thousands of Years of Research, We're Still Trying to Figure Out Static Electricity
Static Electricity Don't try explaining this to children. We don't even fully understand it yet. Just call it "magic." Ken Bosma via Wikimedia Today in the Things We Thought We Understood But Really Don't file, a Northwestern University researcher has upended what was previously thought to be a pretty good understanding of how static electricity works. Static electricity goes beyond the usual theory that it's a simple imbalance of charges caused by the exchange of ions, the researchers' paper says. Rather, it is the result of an actual transfer of material. Static electricity has been under investigation for a few millennia now, with research dating back to the ancient Greeks. But the Northwestern team wasn't convinced that everything was as it seemed. So they applied Kelvin probe force microscopy to the problem, which allowed them to see the varying levels of charge distributed unevenly across the surface of objects. What they found is...