Static Electricity Q's

From "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" by George Johnson,

"A French chemist, Charles-Francois de Cisternay Dufay, went on to discover that rubbed amber repelled objects that rubbed glass attracted. Electricity, he concluded, must come in two forms: "resinous" and "vitreous."


I'm going to assume Mr. Dufay asserted that rubbed amber was "resinous" (negative), given that amber is nothing more than fossilized tree resin. Therefore, I'm going to assume that Mr. Dufay asserted that rubbed glass was "vitreous" (positive).


"rubbed amber repelled objects that..."

According to Mr. Dufay, rubbed amber is "resinous," therefore it has an excess of electrons. Therefore, an electrically charged atom will "repel" objects.


"rubbed glass attracted"

According to Mr. Dufay, rubbed glass is "vitreous," therefore it has an excess of protons. Therefore, an atom that's positively charged will attract objects.



Do you see what is going on here? According to Mr. Dufay, negatively charged atoms will "repel" & positively charged atoms will "attract."

Why can't positively charged atoms "repel" & negatively charged atoms "attract?"

In other words, why must negatively charged atoms "repel" & positively charged atoms "attract" by DEFAULT?

Why can't it be,

"A French chemist, Charles-Francois de Cisternay Dufay, went on to discover that rubbed amber attracted objects that rubbed glass repelled."

Who's to say who gets more of what? You see, the way I'm reading this is that when you rub amber, it will become negatively charged. That is the only logical for a reader like myself to think that. But, why can't amber become positively charged when you rub it? This would answer my other questions above, but this would open up another more interesting question,

What is it that "says" who gets the excess & who loses?

For instance, amber becomes negatively charged when you rub it ...according to Mr. Dufay.

Okay, well why? Does it have to do with the size of the objects being rubbed? And the smaller object of the two will always end up negatively charged?

Does it have to do with the ratio of particles? Perhaps the smaller of the two objects has a greater ratio, even though the larger has an excess of particles in total.




Here's another question,

This is what my school text book reads,

"Nature arranges itself in such a way where charges always want to balance."

Therefore, a reader like myself is going to assume nature will always have a 1:1 ratio (neutral) charge by default.

Now why on earth would a charged atom (negative or positive) be attracted to a neutrally charged particle?

"Charges always want to balance out"

I understand that, but that does not satisfy the question. I'm only going to assume two things:

The author who wrote my school textbook should be kicked in the face for stating "nature arranges itself to be neutrally charged" WITHOUT clarifying that nature ISN'T neutral by default, but rather it "wants" to be.

OR

Atoms of either charge will try to neutralize themselves out by nature, & if there's no unlike charge nearby, then an atom will just be attracted to whatever is nearby just because, lol.



Which one is it?






& lastly,


How doe charged particles communicate?

"I'm gunna head over there to that positively charged atom," says the negatively charged atom.



Magnetic field?

...that's odd. "You" told me static electricity can't move. & if there's no electrical movement, then how can there be a change (move) in magnetic field?

Therefore, if the magnetic field is static, then one must toss out the "magnetic" communication & focus on another means of communication.

Or,

"That's just the way nature is."

^Okay, so what's Kaku's theory behind this? The same theory as Einstein's "Spooky action at a distance?"

Since magnetism has two poles...
and electricity has two poles...

It must have seemed only natural to think of static as having two polarities as well.

Furthermore, magnetism interacts with electric current...
and electric current interacts with static charge...

However it is possible for magnetism to act, and yet static is not present. And vice versa.

Example, we have heard no observations, since ancient times, that lodestone exerts a force on the same objects that are influenced by amber or glass. Yet they all can make things move.

How do these forces come about? We don't know to this day.

And so we must continue to ponder the similarities, and the differences, etc.

We look for anywhere there might be a gap in our understanding, waiting to be filled by the concept that unifies the various theories we have collected.

AlwaysLearning said:

According to Mr. Dufay, negatively charged atoms will "repel" & positively charged atoms will "attract."

Click to expand...

I think you misunderstood a little bit. What he said was: "...rubbed amber repelled objects that rubbed glass attracted." In other words, if an object is attracted to rubbed glass, then it will be repelled by rubbed amber. Similarly, if an object is repelled by rubbed glass, then it will be attracted to rubbed amber.

Negatively charged objects repel each other.
Positively charged objects repel each other.
Negatively charged objects attract positively charged objects and vice versa.

Or more simply:
Opposite charges attract each other.
Like charges repel each other.

AlwaysLearning said:

Who's to say who gets more of what? You see, the way I'm reading this is that when you rub amber, it will become negatively charged...
But, why can't amber become positively charged when you rub it?...
What is it that "says" who gets the excess & who loses?

Click to expand...

You can read about that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect

AlwaysLearning said:

Now why on earth would a charged atom (negative or positive) be attracted to a neutrally charged particle?

Click to expand...

That's an interesting question, and it's something that's easy to demonstrate. e.g. If you give a plastic comb a negative charge by rubbing it on your clothes, then you can pick up small pieces of paper with it, even though the paper is neutral.

Here's how I understand it:
The neutral object (in this case paper) contains positive charges (protons) and negative charges (electrons).

When the negatively charged comb is brought close to the paper, the electrons in the paper will be repelled and pushed slightly further away, while the protons will be attracted and pulled slightly closer.

Now, because the paper's protons are closer to the comb than it's electrons, the attracting force between the comb and the paper's protons is greater than the repelling force between the comb and the paper's electrons. So the net result is attraction between comb and paper.

Notice I said "slightly" above. The electrons and protons in the paper are still part of the same atoms, so they can't move far.

AlwaysLearning said:

The author who wrote my school textbook should be kicked in the face for stating "nature arranges itself to be neutrally charged" WITHOUT clarifying that nature ISN'T neutral by default, but rather it "wants" to be.

Click to expand...

That's not quite fair, the book says:
"Nature arranges itself in such a way where charges always want to balance."