What is Electrostatics and How to Charge?

Take a comb or a plastic scale and rub it on your hair for a few minutes. After that, put the comb near the tiny pieces of paper. You see those small paper pieces stick into the comb. This phenomenon is known as “Electrified”. Just dive into this to learn more about Electrostatics.

What is Electrostatics?

Electrostatics is a branch that comes under the physics tree.” Electro” means the charges, and “statics” means staying rest. So, Electrostatic is a study about static charges.

How to Charge a material?

In 600 B.C. Thales, a Greek Philosopher, first identified this same scenario (discussed in the intro) with his amber. Later in the 17th century, Physician William Gilbert experienced this with materials like ebonite, glass, etc. 

When rubbing the substances into some materials gains charges. This method is known as Electrified or Charged. Usually, charges on the materials have an equal number of electrons and protons that is neutral. Rubbing these neutral materials acquire or lose electrons and become electrified. If the material loses electrons, that becomes positively charged. It becomes negatively charged when it gains electrons.

All materials like to be in a neutral state. So, they always transfer their charges to other materials at contact.

Real-Time Excercise:

Let’s do this simple exercise to learn more about charging.

Things you need:

Balloon

Sweater(Woollen Cloth)

Steps to achieve:

• Now fill the balloon with air and keep it a nominal size. Don’t pop the balloon by overblowing.
• Rub the balloon in the sweater for a few seconds
• Now place the balloon on the wall
• Observe what happens

Explanation:

Eventually, You see the balloon stick on the ball. Because rubbing the balloon in the woollen cloth increases the electrons in the balloon to make it Negatively charged. Meantime sweater loses its electrons and becomes Positively charged.

When the balloon is near the wall moves all negative charges on the wall aside due to repulsion. Only positive charges are present near the balloon. These attract the balloon and hold them into the wall. Learn more about the electrostatic, properties of charges.

Things we learned:

• Electrostatic
• Charged materials
• Experiment on charging

Now we learn about Electrostatics and have experience in charging a material. I hope you enjoyed it. Subscribe to us to get new article notifications.