You may think you know static electricity, but its true nature has long eluded scientists. We’ve now made a huge leap towards ...

Scientists have finally explained how rubbing a surface creates electrical current, drawing a parallel with stroking a cat although the findings have far wider ramifications. Static electricity ...

As humans we often think we have a pretty good handle on the basics of the way the world works, from an intuition about gravity good enough to let us walk around, play baseball, and land spacecraft… ...

Static electricity is harmless most of the time, but if you are electrically charged and touch something conductive, you pass that charge on. If you touch metal, you pass the electricity to the metal.

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 ...

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 ...