Northwestern University scientists have made a new contribution to understanding a long-standing phenomenon called static electricity. In their most recent research, the researchers found that such ...

The first documentation of static electricity dates back to 600 BCE. Even after 2,600 years’ worth of tiny shocks, however, researchers couldn’t fully explain how rubbing two objects together causes ...

Static electricity is the buildup of an electrical charge on the surface of an object. Lightning is the most dramatic and potentially lethal example of static discharge. A far more benign illustration ...

Static electricity—specifically the triboelectric effect, aka contact electrification—is ubiquitous in our daily lives, found in such things as a balloon rubbed against one’s hair or styrofoam packing ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Static electricity was first observed in 600 B.C., but researchers have struggled to explain how rubbing causes it. In 2019, researchers discovered nanosized surface deformations at play. The same ...

We've probably all heard explanations about how static electricity builds up in response to friction. According to the authors of a new paper, nearly all of them are wrong.

A parasitic worm uses static electricity to launch itself onto flying insects, a mechanism uncovered by physicists and biologists at Emory and Berkeley. By generating opposite charges, the worm and ...