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We Finally Know What Creates Static Electricity, After Thousands of Years (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 1 month ago by yamaonan@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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We finally have an answer: The beginning and the end of the sliding motion that produces static electricity experience different forces – resulting in a charge differential between the front and the back that results in the crackle of static electricity.

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[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 67 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I had no idea this was unknown, and it's even crazier that the model for it is still not complete even after this breakthrough. More power to them, being able to fully understand triboelectricity and eventually fully controlling it will be great. Hopefully they're able to crack the rest of the mystery soon.

[-] mox@lemmy.sdf.org 18 points 1 month ago

More power to them

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

There are a ton of things that we know how to replicate and sometimes think we know how they work, but being able to see in more detail or with better pattern recognition can lead to further understanding. The best part is the new understanding can lead to all kinds of possible applications, like being able to regulate static electricity by manipulating surfaces to either increase or decrease the amount created.

Heck, this could possibly lead to lighter materials for electrical insulation if the effects are relevant for electrical conduction in general.

[-] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Like things we thought we nailed down in the 19th century and haven’t thought to revisit with modern methods and equipment. Then someone decides to look at it again and uncovered a boatload of previously unknown data.

“We thought we understood hiccups, but this changes EVERYTHING!”

(I dunno if hiccups are secretly a scientific black box or not, but you get the idea.)

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

Fun hiccup fact: the default human state is hiccups, and there's a small part of the brain that normally suppresses them. There have been rare cases where it'a damaged and someone just... never stops hiccupping. A fate worse than death imo.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

If there was ever an argument against intelligent design, it's shit like this.

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

See also the giraffe nerve that takes a 15 foot detour because it didn't evolve to go on the other side of their hearts. It's theorized to have travelled even further in dinosaurs:

(Source)

[-] bradboimler@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

This is horrifying to me for some reason

[-] bassomitron@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Oh for sure, I fully understand that there are tons of things/mechanics we take for granted every day that we don't actually know how it/they work(s) at the most fundamental level. Static electricity just seemed like a pretty important one that I'd just assumed it was well and thoroughly researched/understood.

Anyway, completely agree with you that this breakthrough is great news and that there are some exciting practical applications that may emerge as a result, particularly the more that model is understood/completed.

[-] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 32 points 1 month ago

I'll read the article in a moment. Right now I am here to acknowledge the adorableness of the thumbnail.

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So the generic "particles just rubs" in the texbooks were lies and they didn't know shit?

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 26 points 1 month ago

We knew enough to make it extremely useful, but didn't have a full understanding of the underlying mechanics.

Hate to break it to you, but that is how knowledge works. Even things we have an extremely detailed understanding of are likely to have underlying mechanisms we are not aware of.

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You broke nothing, it just annoys me that if you don't hit university they refuse to teach you the unconfortable truth on plenty of things and you come out of school with a biased idea that everything has been explained already (history, math, physics...).

[-] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Maybe you just went to bad schools?

My experience with science and other teachers of every grade was that they stressed how we make new discoveries all the time.

[-] darthelmet@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

I had wildly different experiences with teachers within my own schools growing up. There was legitimately no standard that valued this kind of nuanced exploration of the world. Just a focus on standardized tests. It was almost entirely on the individual teachers to spend more of their time and effort to go any further than that.

I had some great teachers that made everything interesting and taught us more like the classes I eventually had in college, but I definitely have had more that were like this one math teacher I remember who, when I asked about why we had to do a math problem in a specific way we were learning about, answer something along the lines of “because I say so.”

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Maybe I went to bad schools, maybe my country has a dysfunctional education system, but I suspect the matter is widespread because it's way easier to teach factual information rather than dive into the nuances of how confident we are about our explanations.

Some reductive examples: Pluto is / is not a planet, wings work because the path air takes is longer than on the other side, the cause for this war was xyz, you can't subtract below 0 (that's at a very early age of course), this philosopher thought X.

Oh I guess a CRUCIAL one is how most teachers are horribly unfit to answer "Why should I care about this?", but that's beside the point, in a way.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

It's not inaccurate. The electrons do "just move" but the energy transfer mechanism was unknown for static buildup. With enough kinetic energy (aka friction heat, I hate the concept of friction) the charges are going to move and collect easier, just like charging a battery. Just really tiny batteries

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it -3 points 1 month ago

Oh I assure you Timmy once you grow up you'll appreciate friction ;) ;)

[-] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Well, to be pedantic, friction is still the enemy there. But that just ruins the joke. Pedantry strikes again.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 16 points 1 month ago

"For the first time, we are able to explain a mystery that nobody could before: why rubbing matters,"

sigh The jokes write themselves. He had to know, when he said that.

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Just don’t forget to wash your hands after.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

That would explain why rapid spinning films over a surface build up incredibly powerful static fields. It's been observed that the contact surface area doesn't seem to matter, and it's easier to build up with greater velocity. It's all about where the energy is going, and it's into those imperfections. Cool