It's Electric !

Experiment #3
Carla Shoemaker
March 10, 2010

Static Electricity

Questions to think about before we get started:

What is static electricity?
What causes static electricity?
Does it have something to do with friction? What is friction?
Why does there seem to be more static electricity in the winter?

Science Standards: 4th grade standard 11 Motion

GLE 0407.11.1 Design a simple investigation to demonstrate how friction effects the movement of an object
5th grade standard 10 Energy
GLE 0507.11.1 Demonstrate different ways energy can be transferred from one object to another

Background information: You walk across a room, scrubbing your feet you reach the doorknob and ZAP!! you feel a shock. Or, you come inside from the cold. You pull your toboggan off of your head and WHOOPS!! your hair stands out from your head. What is happening here?
Everything around us is made of atoms (so far scientists have found only 115 different kinds of atoms). Everything is made of different combination of these atoms. More information


Classroom Demonstration Activity:

1. Tell students to think about how the solar system works, the sun is the center of the solar system. Each of the nine planets orbit around the sun.
2. Have one student be the sun (really they are the atoms).
3. Have nine other students be the planets (really they are the protons, electrons, and neutrons).
4. Explain to students that an atom is mostly empty space, and the electrons are very far away from the nucleus.
5. Have students (the atoms) hold marbles (protons, electrons) in their hands.
6. As the nine students begin to move around have them exchange or transfer marbles with each other.
7. While students are doing this play the song It's Electric on the computer. (I did not include a link to this song because I have a computer virus right now, but will include it later)
8. This gives students a visual aid to how electrons and protons are transferred from one atom to another.

Lets Experiment Now:
page 85 Wave A magic wand

Materials you will need:

pencil, glass bowl, silver balls for cake decoration (I used sprinkles and they worked just as well), LP record, and a clean dry cloth or handkerchiefProcedure:

Step 1: Rub the record briskly with the handkerchief. It will gain electricity. I put the handkerchief in the dryer with some other towels for a few minutes before I rubbed the record. This caused the handkerchief the become more static filled.

Step 2: Immediately put the record on top of the glass bowl. Have the silver balls or cake decorations ready. Drop a few of the balls or sprinkles on the record. you will see that they roll about and then suddenly stop. This is because some parts of the record have more static than other parts and this area attracts the decorations.

Step 3: Take a very sharp pencil and take it toward the balls or sprinkles. They will move away from the lead of the pencil. Some actually will jump off the record. The electricity gets weaker where the pencil points.


In closing: Electricity can have great power. For example, it can make machines work, drive fast trains, run your television and radio, and make the toaster or oven work. Electricity travels from power stations along wires and into power points. We have just seen that electricity can also be on object or in our bodies as well this kind of electricity that we have just made is what is known as static electricity!

Extra:
There are so many activities for demonstrations of static electricity in the classroom. I would also have the students do the balloon activity. Rubbing a balloon on their hair and sticking it to a wall. I also have a cool activity called Super Sparker which can be found on the website http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/sparker.html. ( I will talk about this activity in class when I present my project).

Answers to questions: I hope now we have an idea what static electricity is, friction is the rubbing of one object against another( we created this when we rubbed the cloth on the record), and why is there more static electricity in the winter than in the summer? In the winter the air is much dryer than in the summer. Friction needs drier air to make static electricity. In the summer the air is much more humid or has more water vapor in it.

Extended Resources
Erin Roth