Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The first documentation of static electricity dates back to 600 BCE ...

So why does it happen? The prevalence of static electricity was all due to the weather, according to David Harris, a physicist and curator of the Physics Museum at University of Queensland.

In this week’s Sunday Science Tidbit, we’re going to talk about static electricity. Static electricity is the result of an imbalance between negative and positive charges in an object.

The water content of the air is the issue. Static electricity results from charge separation through friction. All it takes is the act of walking across carpeting or sliding across the seat of a car.

Children can have fun with static electricity — when they rub balloons on their hair, the rubber and hair stick together because of the attraction between transferred charged particles.