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

Scientists at Northwestern University may have figured out why walking on carpet in your socks, petting your furry friend, or rubbing a balloon on your hair creates 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 ...

If someone walks across a carpet filled with electrons, that person will pick up static electricity. When that person goes to shake another person's hand, a shock will occur. The same happens when ...

As he walked into the building, the carpet ignited from the 40,000 volts of static electricity that had built up. "It sounded almost like a firecracker or something like that," he said. "Within about ...

Anyone who has ever pet a cat or shuffled their feet across the carpet knows that rubbing objects together generates static ...

Static electricity was first observed in 600 B.C., ... Anyone who has ever pet a cat or shuffled their feet across the carpet knows that rubbing objects together generates static electricity.

Static electricity was first observed in 600 B.C., ... Anyone who has ever pet a cat or shuffled their feet across the carpet knows that rubbing objects together generates static electricity.

This explains why petting fur or shuffling along a carpet can lead to a light zap. ... But, static electricity was first reported in 600BC by Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus.