static electricity misconceptions

"STATIC ELECTRICITY" MISCONCEPTIONS - - - William J. Beaty

Some elementary science textbooks contain subtle errors which
pose barriers to understanding.  "Static Electricity" is one subject which
is rife with errors.  Since the errors in textbooks seem to act like
"viruses" which can "infect" our minds, I hope that the following
discussion will act as a sort of "antivirus." (grin!)  It should help
those who read this webpage, and with luck my article might utilize some
of the same rumor-dynamics as the viruses.  These ideas might take off and
spread through the elementary education population, and "immunize"  large
numbers of people against these particular misconceptions.  So, please
feel free to print this out and pass it to everyone you know!  Don't miss
OTHER
ARTICLES

THE MISCONCEPTIONS:

'Static Electricity' is electricity which is static?
Friction causes 'static electricity?'
'Static electricity' has nothing to do with High Voltage?
'Static electricity' is a buildup of electrons?
Neutral objects have no charge?
'Electricity' is a form of energy?
'Charging' a capacitor fills it with charge?
'Static' is a rare event: sparks and dryer-cling?
Clouds are charged by rubbing together?
Ben Franklin's kite was struck by lightning?

NO, "STATIC ELECTRICITY" IS NOT ELECTRICITY WHICH IS STATIC

"Static electricity" is not electricity which is static. Instead, it is a collection of electrical phenomenon where...

The amounts of positive and negative electric charge within a material are not perfectly equal.

Electric fields (as opposed to magnetic fields) become very important. (Electric fields are also called "electrostatic fields" or "e-fields."

Electrical forces (attraction and repulsion) are seen to reach across space. Widely spaced objects may attract or repel each other. Hair might stand on end!

The motion or "staticness" of the charges is irrelevant. Separated or imbalanced charges can sometimes flow along. It is possible to create flows of so-called "static" electricity.

It's very misleading to concentrate on the "staticness" of the charges. It derails our explanations, and hides many important concepts such as charge separation, density of imbalanced pos/neg charge, and the presence of voltage fields surrounding the imbalanced charges. These things are important even when the "static electricity" beings moving along.

If water was explained just as badly as "static electricity", then most people would believe in two special kinds of water called "static water" and "current water." Only the hydraulics expert would know that the so-called "static water" is really just pressurized water. They would know that "static water" can even flow along, since pressurized water need not remain still or "static." In a similar way, "static electricity" has everything to do with pressurized charge, and nothing to do with "electricity at rest."

Here's a problem with the usual "static electricity" concept. Down inside its atoms, everyday matter contains equal numbers of positive and negative charges (Protons and Electrons) which are very close to each other. Are these charges the "static electricity?" They are static and unmoving, right? And each individual electron and proton carries a charge of "static electricity." Shouldn't we say that physical matter is partly MADE out of "static electricity?" If so, then where are the sparks, where are the rising hair and crackling noises? There are none, and this shows that the "staticness" is not an important factor. Inside matter, the positive and negative charges are close together, and so their effects cancel out. Even though matter is full of charges which are "static", there is normally no "static electricity" to be seen.

Also, the presence of charged particles is not an important factor, since matter is full of them, even when no "static electricity" appears. Instead, it's the net electric charge which is important. Or put more simply: it is the separation between positive and negative particles which is the basis for "static electricity." When quantities of protons are separated from electrons by a large distance, we do get sparks and rising hair. Call this "electric charge", not "static charge."

Whenever these opposite charges in matter are sorted out and separated into groups of positive and negative, then we say that "static electricity" has been generated. What does this have to do with the charges remaining still or static? Nothing! In fact, if the charge imbalance can be made to flow along, it will still retain all of its unusual characteristics. It will still attract hair and lint, and cause sparks, etc., even while it is flowing. This puts us into the ridiculous situation of talking about "Static Electricity" ...which moves! It's unfortunate that the term "static electricity" has become so widely adopted as the name for the phenomena. If it had been called something else, "charge imbalance" for example, it wouldn't be nearly as misleading. It's easy to think about an imbalance which moves or stays still. But it's impossible to visualize an unmoving substance which flows. And it's even more unfortunate that textbooks have widely adopted the misleading practice of stating that "static electricity is electricity which is static and unmoving." This is a lie, and is no less a lie when many textbooks say the same thing. Reality is not determined by majority vote. No matter how many people agree otherwise, the Emperor's Clothes remain missing.

What we call "Static electricity" also has another name: "high voltage." The familiar electrostatic phenomena which occur in everyday situations always involve voltages above 1,000V, and ranging up to around 50,000 volts at the most. If it attracts lint or raises hair, it's definitely over 1,000 Volts. Rub a balloon on your head, and you generate tens of thousands of volts! This is voltage without a current. Here's a way to think about it: pure electric current involves a current with low or zero voltage, while pure "electrostatic" phenomena involve electrical voltages with low or zero current. Scuff your feet on a carpet and you create a voltage difference of many thousands of volts between your body and the carpet. Study "static electricity" and you study voltage itself.

It would be wonderful if the term "Static electricity" could be removed from the English language and replaced by "High Voltage Electricity." Or possibly by "Separated Charge," or "Charge Imbalance," or "The Science Called Electrostatics." This won't happen anytime soon, since the mistake is too deeply ingrained in books and teachers, and in the minds of the public. The best solution is to have everyone stay aware of this issue. Try to avoid using the terms "Static Electricity" and "Static Charge." And very definitely do not TEACH that "Static" and "Current" are opposite kinds of electricity. After all, "charge imbalances" still are "charge imbalances" even when they flow during an electric current. Also, charge-flow and charge-imbalance can happen in the same wire at the same time. Therefor, anyone who believes that "static" and "current" are two types of opposite (and mutually-exclusive) electricity, will forever be hopelessly confused about the true nature of any electrical phenomena.

NO, "STATIC ELECTRICITY" IS NOT CAUSED BY FRICTION

"Static" electricity appears when two dissimilar insulating materials are placed into intimate contact and then separated. All that's required is the touching. Chemical bonds are formed when the surfaces touch, and if the atoms in one surface tend to hold electrons more tightly, that surface will tend to steal electrons from the other surface immediately as they touch. This causes the surfaces to become oppositely "charged"; they aquire imbalances of opposite polarity. One surface now has more electrons than protons, while the other has more protons than electrons. When the surfaces are later separated, the regions of opposite charge-imbalance also get separated.

For example, when adhesive tape is placed on an insulating surface and then peeled off, both the tape and the surface will become electrified. No friction was required. However, if one of the materials is rough or fiberous and does not give a very large footprint of contact area, then the process of rubbing one material upon another can greatly increase the total contact area. Friction may also remove thin layers of oil or oxide, exposing a more pure surface beneath. The peeling tape does not have to be rubbed in order to generate charge-imbalance, but the hair does need to be rubbed by the balloon. But the rubbing is not the cause of electrification, electrification can come about purely from contact. The term "Frictional electricity" is misleading. I try to instead use the terms "Contact Electricity" or "Electrification by Contact," or "separation of charge," or "creating charge imbalance."

NO, "STATIC ELECTRICITY" IS NOT A BUILDUP OF ELECTRONS

It is not a buildup of anything, it is an IMBALANCE between quantities of positive and negative particles which existed beforehand. It's an un-cancelling event which occurs between the large quantities of oppositely-charged particles which were already present in matter. If we could take some atoms and pull their electrons far away from their protons, we would have created "static electricity."

It's true that during "frictional electricity" or contact electrification, it is *usually* only the negative electrons which are moved from one surface to the other. But this transferring of electrons then results in two areas of imbalanced charge, not one. As negative particles are pulled away from the positive particles, the positives and negatives are no longer near each other and are no longer are able to cancel each other. Because of this, equal and opposite areas of imbalanced charge are always created during the un-cancelling. For a visual demonstration of this, see my Red/Green electricity article

And although the negative charges did the moving, this doesn't mean the positive charges are unimportant! Before the charges were separated, there were equal quantities of positive and negative charges present within the materials. After the separating of the charges is complete, the positive charges are just as important as the negative. In one place you'll have more protons than electrons, and this place will have an overall positive charge. In the other spot you'll have more electrons than protons, for an overall negative charge in that region. You've not caused a "buildup of electrons", you've caused an imbalance, an un-cancelling, a stretching apart, a separation of opposites which otherwise would cancel each other. In fact, one appropriate term for static electrification is CHARGE SEPARATION. Think for a moment: if you put the positive and negative imbalances back together, where does the "buildup of electrons" go? Nowhere, there was no buildup there in the first place. Putting the two polarities of charge back together eliminates the imbalance and forms normal uncharged matter again.

ON THE CONTRARY, EVERYDAY 'STATIC ELECTRICITY' INVOLVES IMMENSE VOLTAGES

When two insulating surfaces are adhered (or rubbed) together, two opposite regions of imbalanced charge appear. When these surfaces are later pulled away from each other, a very strong "electric field" appears between them, and this e-field can raise hair, attract lint, etc. In addition, this e-field is an example of pure voltage, or voltage without current. The strength of this e-field is incredibly large when compared to the voltage of batteries and of common electronic circuitry. It is many thousands of times stronger, sometimes hundreds of thousands of times stronger. Everyday "static electricity" involves immense voltages. The tiniest "static spark" is caused by about 1000 volts. Longer "car door sparks" and "doorknob sparks" can involve as much as 10,000 volts. For more info, see: Measuring the "Static Electricity" on your body also Car-door sparks, electric people

ACTUALLY, PHYSICAL OBJECTS ARE MADE OUT OF CHARGE

We always talk of matter as if it only had passing relation to electrical effects. Yet if we look in detail into the nature of matter, we find physical substances, made of molecules, made of atoms, made of positive and negative electric charge. Matter is not electrical? No, quite the opposite: electric charge is the major component of all atoms. Therefor matter is *made out of cancelled electric charge.* If we cancel out some opposite charge by placing positive charge together with negative charge, do we get nothing? No, instead we get material substance. Positive protons plus negative electrons equals neutral atoms. Physical objects normally have no charge? Wrong. Physical objects *are* the charge.

ELECTRICITY IS ENERGY? NO, ELECTRICITY DOES NOT EXIST!

The term "electricity" is a catch-all word with many meanings. Unfortunately these meanings are contradictory, and this leads to the unsettling fact that there is no single substance or energy called "electricity." And the problem is not as simple as having different kinds of electricity. Instead, we wrongly use the word "electricity" to name completely different things. When we say "quantity of electricity," we could be talking about quantities of electrons or quantities of electrical energy. ...or quantity of potential, or forces, fields, net charge, current, power, or even talking about classes of electrical phenomena. All of these are found under the definition of the word "electricity." This is a major mistake, it's like saying that miles, pounds, and degrees are measures of the same single "stuff." Part of this problem would vanish if we used the word "electricity" only to designate a field of science or class of phenomena; in the same way we use the words "physics" or "optics." We do use it this way occasionally. But then we immediately turn around and do the equivalent of teaching our kids that "optics" is a substance which comes out of light bulbs, or that cars can move because they are filled with "physics"!

See: What is Electricity?

Here are a few examples of errors caused by the contradictory meanings.

WHICH ONE IS THE "ELECTRICITY": In AC electric circuits the *charges* sit in one place and wiggle back and forth, but the *energy* moves continuously forward. This is analogous to the way that sound moves continuously forward while the air wiggles back and forth. By applying contradictory definitions to the the term "electricity," we teach that electricity (charge) sits in one spot in the wires and wiggles, but at the same time electricity (energy) moves forward rapidly. Garbage! How can anyone possibly understand this?! It's like saying that sound and wind are the same thing! And the error is directly traceable to the bogus, contradictory "electricity" concept.

Another: There are two forms of electricity, positive electricity and negative. NO, the two forms of electricity are static and current. NO, there are many forms of electricity: triboelectricity, bioelectricity, myoelectricity, piezoelectricity. NO, there is only one electricity, the form of energy called Electromagnetism. NO, electricity is energy flow, haven't you ever heard of "watts of electricity?" ...Which is right? All of them and none, because the word "electricity" has more than one contradictory definition. None are right, since there is no "electricity" which is charge, energy, and phenomena all at once. And all these statements are correct, because the word "electricity" is commonly used to name all these different things, and dictionaries support this. Volts of electricity. Amperes of electricity. Kilowatt-hours of electricity. Watts of electricity. Coulombs of electricity. Meaningless and confusing when taken together, yet inextricably entwined in hundreds of textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias.

'Charging' a capacitor fills it with charge? Capacitors store electric charge? NO, because 'CHARGED' AND 'UNCHARGED' CAPACITORS ACTUALLY CONTAIN EQUAL AMOUNTS OF CHARGE

The word "charge" has more than one contradictory meaning, so if you are using it, you are probably creating misconceptions. "Charge" refers to several things: to net-charge, to quantities of charged particles, and to "charges" of energy.

For example, even when metals are totally neutral, they contain vast quantities of movable electrons. You can imagine that all metals are soaked with a sort of "electric fluid" of negative particles wandering among the "solid" positive particles. If copper is like a wet sponge, then the sponge is the protons and the water is the electrons. However, since the positives and negatives cancel, could we say that wires contain no charge at all? Or should we say the opposite: that they contain immense quantities of charge because they are constructed from electrons and protons? Are they "charged" because they are partly composed of "liquid" electric charges, or are they "uncharged" because they contain equal quantities of opposite charges which cancel out? I don't know the answer. Maybe it's better to abandon the word "charged", and use other, less misleading terms. Don't say "charged", say "electrified." Speak of "charge imbalance" and "the cancelled charge within all matter."

Another: if I place an electron and a proton together, do I have twice as much charge as before, or do I have a neutral hydrogen atom with no charge at all? What I DO have is confusion. Conflicting use of "charge" makes descriptions of electric circuits seem complex and abstract, when the explanations are really just wrong.

Another: electric currents in wires are a motion of *neutralized* charge, so if you teach that a wire is uncharged, and also teach that current is a flow of charge, how can anyone make sense of a situation where a wire has no charge at all, yet contains an enormous flow of charge? This situation arises everywhere in electric circuits, and so the confusion is spread everywhere too.

Another: when you charge a capacitor or a battery, you move charges from one plate to the other inside the device, and the device as a whole contains exactly the same charge whether it's "charged" or not. When speaking of "charging" batteries or capacitors, we've suddenly started talking about energy, and a "charged" battery has quite a bit more energy than an uncharged battery. Yet it contains exactly the same net-charge, and contains the same quantitity of + and - particles. Before being "charged," a capacitor is neutral, and no matter how much "charge" you put into it, the capacitor remains neutral overall. In a capacitor, for every electron you remove from one plate, you inject an electron into the other plate, so none are gained or lost from the device. Capacitors and batteries are "charged" with energy, not with electric charge. This concept is very important for gaining a solid understanding simple circuitry, yet we rarely teach it specifically because the misleading term "charge" stands in the way. Those rare people who figure it out become experts. But it's not hard to be an expert when nearly universal confusion rules a field of study.

'STATIC ELECTRICITY' IS ACTUALLY AS COMMON AS MATTER

If you believe typical explanations of "static electricity", you will come to see "static" as a fairly rare phenomena that has little connection with the rest of the world. Yes, yes, lightning is impressive, and copiers and laser printers are convenient, but if "static" didn't exist, the world wouldn't be much different, would it?

In fact, electrostatics is a bit more important than we commonly assume. Contrary to popular belief, standard "electric current" circuits are deeply connected with electrostatics. For one thing, it is the electrostatic force that drives electric current! "Voltage" is an electrostatic phenomena, it is electrostatic fields. Without electrostatics, there could be no current and no electrical devices. It is totally wrong to build a false wall between "Static" and "Current", it's as silly as teaching that "pressure" and "movement" are two separate types of water. "Static" and "Current" are two fields of study, not two substances or energies. They are subject areas which were created entirely by humans, they don't *really* exist separately in the real world.

"Static electricity" is important in many other places besides lightning, photocopiers, and doorknob sparks. For example, your muscles are driven by long-chain molecules which are forced to slide across each other. This sliding is performed by electrostatic attraction and repulsion between parts of the molecule, and so your muscles are electrostatic motors! They are "linear motors", as opposed to the rotary electrostatic "pop bottle" motor found elsewhere on my website.

Another example: nerves function as tiny capacitors, with charge pumps to electrify them, and ion gates to discharge them. Imagine a nerve as being a long tubular "Leyden Jar" having billions of tiny "VandeGraaff generators" scattered across its surface, and with billions of "spark gaps" which always close in sequence as the nerve impulse travels forward.

Another one: when Uranium atoms are hit by neutrons and their nucleii split, the main source of released energy is the repulsion between alike-charged positive protons in the fragments of the nucleus. Therefor, nuclear reactors release the electrostatic energy of uranium nucleii. A plutonium bomb is actually a "static electric" repulsion bomb!

Another: when dissimilar materials touch, charge is separated. When dissimilar semiconductors touch, we get "contact potential", a microscopic electrostatic phenomenon which makes numerous devices possible: LEDs, solar cells, thermocouples, ...and diodes, transistors, computers, radios, television, internet, etc. Semiconductor electrostatics is essential to modern electronics.

Another: one type of transistor in particular, the FET or "field effect transistor", is purely an electrostatic device. Electrostatic fields within it are used to open and close the conductive channel which regulates current. See "Charge Detector" for some suggested experiments. Are these sorts of transistors rare? No. Every single transistor in the memory, CPU, and IO chips of modern PCs are FET transistors. Most of the transistors in modern TVs and stereos are FETs. Few people realize that "static electric" devices have taken over the electronics industry, or that PCs are made from microscopic electrostatic components, or that all the data in all the computers all over the world is stored as tiny patterns of electrostatic charges.

"ATP" is the fuel which drives living things, from bacteria to humans. One part of the 1997 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to the researchers Boyer and Walker who discovered how energy is placed into ATP. It turns out that ATP is assembled by an enzyme which is run by a tiny rotating electrostatic motor! The "spring" in each ATP is "cocked" by a little rotating molecular machine run by electrostatics. The reaction is reversible, and ATP can drive the motor, changing it into an electrostatic generator. A typical human body contains around 10^16 of these rotary electrostatic motors.

A big one next. The world is molecules. And molecules are atoms, and atoms are themselves composed of positive and negative charged particles. Atoms are held together by electrostatic attraction. If matter is made of little dots, then the "bars" that connect all the dots together are made of electrostatic fields. Also, atoms are connected to each other through chemical bonding, and chemical bonding is based upon electrostatic attraction/repulsion forces. Without "Static Electricity" there would be no chemistry, no living things. Without "Static Electricity", solids and liquids would be gas, the molecules of the gas would fall apart into atoms, and the atoms would turn into separate electrons and nucleii. Without electrostatics, the entire universe would be a boring, featureless cloud of neutral-particle gas. Some people consider electrostatics to be boring. On the contrary, electrostatics is the thing that makes this universe an interesting place!

NO, BEN FRANKLIN'S KITE WAS NEVER STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

Many people believe that Ben Franklin's kite was hit by a lightning bolt, and this was how he proved that lightning is electrical. A number of books and even some encyclopedias say the same thing. They are wrong. They have fallen victim to an infectious myth, an "urban legend of science" which is slowly spreading to more and more books. When lightning strikes a kite, the spreading electric currents in the ground can kill anyone standing nearby, to say nothing of the person holding the string!

Franklin wrote about "drawing down the lightning" from a thunderstorm. What he actually did was to show that a kite would collect a tiny bit of imbalanced electric charge out of the sky during the early parts of a thunderstorm, before lightning strikes became a danger. Feeble electric leakage through the air caused his kite and string to become electrified, and the hairs on the twine stood outwards. Twine is slightly conductive on a humid day, and the twine served as Franklin's "antenna wire." The twine was then used to electrify a metal key, and tiny sparks could then be drawn from the key. (A metal object is needed because sparks cannot be directly drawn from the twine. The twine is slightly conductive, but not conductive enough to allow sparking.) No noise, no big flash, just boring yet earthshaking science experimenting. The presence of sparks suggested to Franklin that some stormclouds carry strong electrical charges, and it IMPLIED that lightning was just a large electrical spark.

The common belief that Franklin easily survived a lightning strike is not just wrong, it is dangerous: it may convince kids that it's OK to duplicate the kite experiment as long as they "protect" themselves by holding a silk ribbon with a key tied in the middle. Make no mistake, Franklin's experiment was extremely dangerous. He could have been killed at any moment, and if lightning had actually hit his kite, today he would be regarded as a colonial politician who was killed by stupidity, not as a famous scientist who founded a major new research area.

Created and maintained by Bill Beaty. Mail me at: billb@eskimo.com.
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