Static electricity often just seems like an everyday annoyance when a wool sweater crackles as you pull it off, or when a doorknob delivers an unexpected zap. Regardless, the phenomenon is much more ...

Ancient Greeks discovered that when animal fur and amber were rubbed together, the fur could be used to attract feathers, glass dust and other lightweight objects. It wasn’t until 1600 AD, however, ...

Static electricity is an imbalance in the amount of positive and negative charges found with in the surface of an object. The sudden flow of static electricity or Electrostatic discharge (ESD) can ...

Bob Renkes of Petroleum Equipment Institute is working on a campaign to try and make people aware of fires as a result of "static" at gas pumps. His company has researched 150 cases of these fires.

Zaps of static electricity are commonplace in everyday life. But can static electricity give enough of a jolt to start a fire? Static electricity is the result of an imbalance between negative and ...

Sebastian Deffner is affiliated with the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Static electricity is a ubiquitous part of everyday life. It’s all around us, ...

Incredibly, for the first time, scientists have unraveled the mechanisms at play when rubbing a surface creates an electrical current, something that was first recorded in 600 BCE yet not fully ...

Static electricity is a ubiquitous part of everyday life. It’s all around us, sometimes funny and obvious, as when it makes your hair stand on end, sometimes hidden and useful, as when harnessed by ...

Curious Crew is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and ...