My 5 year old nephew actually asked me this today and i had no way to explain before explaining what electrons are, what is a charge..
How do I simplify it?
In: 14
“Static electricity” is a funny name for what we can also call “charge separation”.
Normally, in most atoms, electric charges are balanced. That is, most of your atoms have the same number of protons and electrons. However, when certain objects rub together, they tend to transfer electrons from one object to the other. This makes one object positively charged and the other negatively charged — the charges have been separated.
This was first observed by rubbing a piece of amber (the mineral) with a cloth, way back in Ancient Greece. They didn’t know about protons and electrons. Well, sort of — the Greek word for amber is *elektron* and that’s where we get the word from!
(And if your name is Amber, in Greek you could be called Electra.)
An electric charge is either having extra electrons (negative charge) or having too few electrons (positive charge). When given a chance — a conductor, specifically — electrons will jump across from one object to another to “heal” the charge separation. When they jump through air, that creates a spark!
However, charges also naturally just bleed away into the air without a spark, slowly over time. This happens quicker in humid air than in dry air, which is why you get more “static” in dry climates.
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