What is static electricity and why does a balloon stick to your hair?
Balloon's Hair Heist
What is static electricity and why does a balloon stick to your hair?
You rub a balloon on your head, lift it away, and — boing! — your hair springs up to follow it like it's in love. Nobody glued anything. Nobody told your hair to do that. So what invisible thing just grabbed it?
The answer is hiding inside everything around you. Every object is built from tiny pieces called atoms, and each atom carries two kinds of electric charge: positive and negative. Most of the time they're perfectly balanced, like a tug-of-war with equal teams on both ends. When everything's balanced, you don't feel a thing.
