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How can you bend water?
Turn on the tap so that there is a thin trickle of water coming out, but enough that it doesn’t break up into individual droplets. Now find a plastic spoon (or blown-up balloon if you don't have a plastic spoon). Rub the spoon against your clothes (this works really well if you’re wearing nylon or acrylic!) and bring the back of the spoon close to the trickle of water, but not touching. What happens?
The trickle of water will bend towards the spoon. If you let the spoon touch the water you will need to rub it again to make it work.
Why does this happen?
Everything is made up of tiny parts called atoms. These atoms have three parts: neutrons, protons and electrons. Neutrons are not involved in this experiment so we’ll just think about the protons and electrons. Protons and electrons have opposite electric charges. An electric charge is usually written as a positive (+) and a negative (-). Take a look at a battery and you’ll see these signs at either end – electric charges make electricity flow.
Inside the atom, the protons have a positive charge (+) and the electrons have a negative charge (-). Normally, each atom has the same number of positive and negative charges, so that they cancel each other out and the whole atom has no electric charge (we call this neutral). When you rubbed the spoon against your clothes, you pulled some of the electrons out of the plastic atoms. Now those electrons are inside your clothes! Because there are less electrons on the spoon, the spoon atoms now have more positive charge than negative – the whole atoms are positive. This kind of charge is called static electricity. Opposite electrical charges attract each other. Water atoms have a positive end and a negative end. When you bring the spoon close to the water, the atoms turn round so their negative end is facing the spoon and they try to get to it.
How do we use static electricity?
Photocopiers use static electricity to copy documents. The thing you want to copy is copied in static electricity inside the copier, where it is sprayed with toner. The toner only sticks to the charged part of the paper.
