SCIENCE FUN

We had fun with static electricity. Look what happened to Marc's hair when we rubbed the ballon on his head.

 Look what happened when we rubbed the balloon on our hair and then put it near salt or tissue paper!

I wonder what would happen if you put the balloon near running water from a tap?

I wonder what would happen if you put the balloon near pepper or baking powder?

I wonder what else you can rub the balloon against to make static electricity?

I wonder what would happen if we put an aluminium tin near the balloon?

I wonder what would happen if we put two balloon near each other (after rubbing them on our hair)?

What's happening?

Rubbing the balloons against the woollen fabric or your hair creates static electricity. This involves negatively charged particles (electrons) jumping to positively charged objects. When you rub the balloons against your hair or the fabric they become negatively charged, they have taken some of the electrons from the hair/fabric and left them positively charged.

They say opposites attract and that is certainly the case in these experiments, your positively charged hair is attracted to the negatively charged balloon and starts to rise up to meet it. This is similar to the aluminium can which is drawn to the negatively charged balloon as the area near it becomes positively charged, once again opposites attract.

In the first experiment both the balloons were negatively charged after rubbing them against the woolen fabric, because of this they were unattracted to each other.