Static Electricity

Hello, dear Scientists
                
I have come upon a tremendous discovery! Static electricity, as I call it, is something that has been around for a while, but only just recently have I figured out what it actually is. When you have differently charged particles, say one positive ion and one negative ion, they are attracted to each other. However, what happens when there are more positive ions than negative ions or vice versa? That is where static electricity comes into play.
               
By rubbing two different items together, the particles move from one place to another. The charges cannot be created or destroyed, as the Conservation of Charge says; however, they can be moved around!
              

  I discovered this by the point charges, or charged objects that are much smaller than the distance between each other. The electrical field varies directly with the product of the charges. In other words, the greater the charge, the stronger the field! A good formula to remember is:


F = k (q₁ X q₂) / d²  where F is the Force, q1 and q2 are the charges, d is the distance between the charges, and k is the proportionality constant.

An easy way to think of it is this: imagine something made of rubber, say a balloon, and rub it against your hair. Usually when you do this, your hair sticks up, right? (That’s how us scientists get our notoriously crazy hair!) Now, put it against a wall. It should stick, because the negative ions that move from your hair to the balloon has an imbalance with the neutral wall, therefore making it stick!

Rub Two Items from this list together and see how it goes!:
your hand
glass
your hair
nylon
wool
fur
silk
paper
cotton
hard rubber
polyester
polyvinylchloride plastic

Give it a try, and see what happens!

~Charles Cloulomb (and The Scientists)

Site: http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/static.html