Static electricity

 Physics 4/5 Russel Fleming,

Unit 2 Charge & electrostatics p54-55

 Physics 4/5 Paul Morris,

Unit 2 Electric fields p29
Unit 9 Static electricity p160-163

Prepared by: Ramzi Nunu

Key concepts and related concepts
 Key concept:
Systems
 Relatedconcept:
Development & energy
 Global context:
Scientific & technical innovation
 System of inquiry:
The development of electrical systems has defined
the modern world and made new features possible.

Unit 9 Are all our futures electric?

Unit 2 Making sense of electrical circuits
Describe
 how positive and negative charges are produced
by rubbing
Recall that like charges repel and unlike charges attract

Explain the charging of objects in terms of the motion of

negatively charged electrons
Explain the differences between insulators and

conductors
Describe how a conductor can be charged by induction

Explain how a charged object can attract uncharged

objects
Give examples of the dangers and the uses of static

electricity
Describe the gold-leaf electroscope, and explain how it

can be used to compare electrical conductivities of
different materials

Objectives
What is electricity?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAFW4zdXpbY
Exploring static electricity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLgSXryMxwM
How to separate salt from pepper
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2JDZ9s86CM

• Difference between conductors & insulators

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NBTvJF6ghQ

Videos
Electric charge, or electricity, can come from
batteries and generators. But some materials become
charged when they are rubbed. Their charge is often
called electrostatic charge or static electricity.
Clothes containing nylon often crackle when they are
taken off. Pens and combs made of certain plastics
become charged when rubbed on your sleeve and
can then attract scraps of paper.

Electrostatic
charge
 Benjamin Franklin

“Aw, Go Fly a Kite!”

 Ben hypothesized that lightning is an electrical
phenomenon, and that the electrical effect of lightning
might be transferable to another object and cause an
effect that could be recognized as electricity. He set
out to prove it in an experiment
 In 1752, Ben Franklin decided to fly a kite. With the help
of his son, William, they attached his kite to a silk string,
tying an iron key at the other end. Next, they tied a thin
metal wire from the key and inserted the wire into
a Leyden jar, a container for storing an electrical
charge. Finally, as the sky darkened and a thunderstorm
approached, they attached a silk ribbon to the key.
Holding onto the kite by the silk ribbon.
 http://www.codecheck.com/cc/BenAndTheKite.html

“Aw, Go Fly a Kite!”

Ben flew the kite and once the thunder storm cloud passed
over Franklin's kite, where upon the negative charges in the
cloud passed onto his kite, down the wet silk string, to the
key, and into the jar. Ben however, was unaffected by the
negative charges because he was holding the dry silk ribbon,
insulating him from the charges on the key. When he moved
his free hand near the iron key, he received a shock. Why?
Because the negative charges in the key were so strongly
attracted to the positive charges in his body, a spark jumped
from the key to his hand. Franklin's experiment successfully
showed that lightning was static electricity.

“Aw, Go Fly a Kite!”

 All materials are made up of tiny particles of matter
called atoms. Atoms are thought to be made up of
smaller particles, some of which are electrically
charged as shown on the right.
 At the centre of each atom is a nucleus made up
of particles called protons and neutrons. Orbiting
the nucleus are much lighter particles called
electrons:
1. Electrons have a negative (-) charge;
2. Protons have an equal positive (+) charge;
3. Neutrons have no charge.

Where charges
come from?
 Normally, atoms have equal numbers of electrons and
protons, so the total amounts of negative and positive
charge within a material are the same, or the net
(overall) charge on a material is zero.
 But,when two materials are rubbed together, electrons
may be transferred from one to another. This upsets
the balance between the opposite charges within each
material, so that each is left with a net negative
(gaining electrons) or positive charge (losing
electrons).
 Note that rubbing materials together does not make
electric charge. It just separates charges that are
already there.
Where charges come from?
 Conductors allow electric current to flow through
it. Metals are the best electrical conductors. They
contain free electrons that move freely in the
conductor and can transfer the electric charge.

Conductors
 Metallic
materials are characterized by bonds
between atoms which share many electrons across
many atoms – perhaps thousands of atoms. This
means that electrons can move relatively freely in
these materials and so they can carry kinetic energy.

Conductors
 Insulators are materials that hardly conduct at all.
Their electrons are tightly held to atoms and are not
free to move, although they can be transferred by
rubbing. Thus, insulators are easy to charge by
rubbing because any electrons that get transferred
tend to stay where they are. An insulator should be
perfectly dry; moisture on an insulator can conduct
electric charge and ruin the insulation.

Insulators
 Covalent bonds involve the sharing of one or more
electrons between two adjacent atoms, so that the
shared electrons are bound into energy orbital of the
atoms they are bonding together – so the electrons
can’t move from atom to atom.

Insulators
 When you switch on light, the electricity passing
through the cable is actually a flow of electrons.
The cable has copper conducting wires through
its centre. These are enclosed in an insulating
material usually the plastic PVC.

Conductors
& Insulators
 Polarity: A water molecule consists of one oxygen
atom and two hydrogen atoms. Oxygen has a very
high electronegativity, meaning it has a very high
affinity for electrons. The oxygen in water molecules
pulls the electrons from the hydrogen atoms closer to
it, creating two poles in the molecule, where the
hydrogen end is partially positive and the oxygen end
is partially negative.

Polarity
of water
A number of elements fall between these two types.
These materials have electron structures that leave
one or two electrons with some freedom to move.
 In carbon (graphite form), one electron is free from
the crystal structure and this electron is effectively
delocalized like those in a metal. These substances
do conduct, but not very well, and they are called
semiconductors.

Semi-
conductors
1. Rubbing two objects of different material
together in which electrons are transferring
from one object to another.

https://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_materials.htm#.W5VlJc4zbIU

Ways to charge objects

2. Conduction: A metal rod with an excess of
negative charge is brought near to a neutral
object. Upon contact, electron move from the
rod to the object and spread about uniformly. The
metal sphere now has less excess negative
charge and the object now has a negative charge.

Ways to charge
objects
Ex 3. Study the diagram below and outline each
stage scientifically.

Example 3
3. Induction in which a charge is induced in an object
that is brought near to another charged object
(without being in touch) then grounded from the
other side to allow the opposite charge to transfer
to the ground.

Ways to charge objects

Ex 4. Study the diagram below and outline each
stage scientifically.

Example 4
Ex 5. Repeat the above for using a negative rod
instead

Example 5
1. There are two types of observed electric charge,
which we designate as positive and negative.

 Likecharges repel, while unlike charges attract.

 The closer the charges, the greater the force between
them.

Properties of electric charge

2. Electric charge is quantized, it is integral
multiples of e
 The unit of charge is called the Coulomb (C).
 The smallest unit of free charge known in nature is
the charge of an electron or proton, which has a
magnitude of ±1.602 × 10−19 C.
 An electron carries one unit of negative charge, −e,
while a proton carries one unit of positive charge, +e.

Properties of electric charge

3. In a closed system, the total amount of charge is
conserved since charge can neither be created nor
destroyed. A charge can, however, be transferred
from one body to another.

Properties of electric charge

Ex 1. Calculate the number of electrons in a charge
of 1 C?
A: Since the charge of 1 e is -1.602 × 10−19 C, then
1 coulomb will have:
no. of e = 1 C / 1.602 × 10−19 C ≈ 6.242 x 1018

Example 1
 
Ex 2. A student carries an experiment to determine
charge on a conductor; she finds that it is 5.6 C.
Outline the validity of the experimental output.
A: Since electric charge is quantized, or it is integral
multiples of e, we will check the validity of the
experiment by finding the number of electrons that
provides this charge.
no. of e = 5.6 x 10−19 C / 1.602 × 10−19 C ≈ 3.5 e
It CANNOT BE because number of electrons should be
a whole number, as mentioned.

Example 2
1. Inkjet printers: tiny drops of ink are forced out of a
fine nozzle, charged electrostatically and then passed
between two oppositely charged plates; a negatively
charged drop will be attracted towards the positive
plate causing it to be deflected as shown. The amount
of deflection and hence the position at which the ink
strikes the page is determined by the charge on the
drop and the p.d. between the plates; both of these
are controlled by a computer.

Application of
static electricity
2. Photocopiers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxUbPE8RsiM

3. Flue ash precipitation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcyFY3iAdlw

Application of static electricity

1. Refuelling: Sparks from static electricity can be
dangerous when flammable vapour is present.
 An aircraft and its tanker must be earthed during
refuelling; otherwise charge might build up as the
fuel rubs along the pipe. One spark could be enough
to ignite the fuel vapour.

Dangers of static electricity

2. Lightening: Tall buildings usually have a strip of
copper called a lightning conductor attached to
at least one side as shown.
 Describe how the copper strip is used for tall buildings
to reduce the risk of lightening striking?

 Suggest why aircrafts’ tyres

are made of conducting rubber?

Dangers of
static electricity
 Van Der Graff Generator
 Van Der Graff Generator is a machine used to
build up static charge, it can produce potential
differences of 100 000 V but it is only capable of
supplying a current of around 2 x 10-3 A.
Application of Van Der Graff generator

A. Producing electric spark, how?

B. Making hair stand upright, how?
C. Producing electric wind, how?
D. Switching the neon lamp on, how?
 Gold leaf electroscope*: is used to detect an
electrostatic charge it consists of a metal cap on a
metal rod at the foot of which is a metal plate with
a leaf of gold foil attached, as shown. The rod is
held by an insulating plastic plug in a case with
glass sides to protect the leaf from draughts.
1. Detect the presence of electric charge on a body, how?
2. Distinguish the magnitude of electric charge on a body, how?
3. Distinguish the type of electric charge on a body, how?

The electroscope
 Sit
in groups and try to suggest reasons why a
wrong conclusion might be drawn for detecting an
unknown charge, when the test charge is brought
too close to the electroscope cap?

ATL: Critical thinking (Practise

observing carefully in order to recognise
problems)