Friday, January 30, 2009

Last spring break, my parents and I flew up to Oregon to visit my brothers who are going to school there. We snowboarded as much as possible, so we were outside a lot and it was really cold. As you can see from the picture, my brothers and I wore several layers of cloths in order to stay warm (they would be horrified with this picture because they prefer to act hard-core and wear as little as possible as a sign that they are true 'oregonians' ) Anyway, most of they layers we wear under our outer jackets are fleece and when you are trying to peel off your outer layers after getting home, an electric charge is created. Usually, the fabric of our sweaters would be neutral, however, because the weather was very cold and there was very little moisture in the air, when we peel the fabrics away from each other quickly, a charge is created. Even though they are the same fabric, one steals electrons from the other, like we saw with the tape and the saran rap in lab 21. Charge is always conserved, so if one sweater becomes positive, the other becomes equally negative. The charge that is on the sweaters is not very much and to make the sweater become neutral again you just have to touch it and your body acts as a ground, effectively removing extra charge. 

1 comment:

kohara said...

this reminds me so much of living on the mainland, where static electricity is really a nuisance. everytime you pull off a sweatshirt, etc., there'd be all that static! good one, hannah