Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light?

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CharlesChandler
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Wed Jun 04, 2014 6:32 pm

Lloyd wrote:I don't know what you think you're doing differently than what we're doing.
There is no difference of kind -- it's more a matter of degree. But IMO, Mathis' redefinitions are so fundamental that to have anything at all, he really has to go all of the way back to the source data, and rebuild physics from the ground up. Making slight modifications to fix logical errors, which involve new definitions of G, E, M, T, and D, actually invalidates the entire premise, and necessitates a whole new structure. It would be like saying that "F = M * A" is only correct if you redefine multiplication to yield a different type of product -- that isn't just a little fix to one formula -- it's redefining algebra, and now you no longer have a platform to stand on -- you have to rebuild everything. If you do not, the whole thing is just an exercise in sophistry.
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:43 pm

For me, I agree with Loyd. Is this really a "mechanical" Universe (or "mechanical" reality) in all that that entails? ;)
Or, do we just take helpings from the buffet of "theories/findings/math/papers" as we find them applicable to problems?

Personally, I think Mathis probably attempted to preserve the "foundation" initially, but found it (logically) too weak an edifice to correct and build upon. So, he took his own approach. This whole article, "Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation", kind of points to that in a way. A fairly basic experiment overturns "basic" theory -- where does it go from here? The EU community hacks at the edifice as well probably far more than many realize.
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:28 am

Chromium6 wrote:For me, I agree with Loyd. Is this really a "mechanical" Universe (or "mechanical" reality) in all that that entails? ;) Or, do we just take helpings from the buffet of "theories/findings/math/papers" as we find them applicable to problems?
I agree that the different between theory and reality can be somewhat philosophical at times. But fundamental redefinitions have to be consistently applied, and all of the implications have to be considered. If we were willing to accept ad hoc heuristics, which can easily explain away just about anything by simply adding another term to a formula, why did we ever leave the mainstream? :D
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Fri Jun 06, 2014 9:56 pm

So Charles do you think this is "mainstream"? If it happens as described below?
-------------

Image

A simple Van de Graaff-generator consists of a belt of silk, or a similar flexible dielectric material, running over two metal pulleys, one of which is surrounded by a hollow metal sphere.[1] Two electrodes, (2) and (7), in the form of comb-shaped rows of sharp metal points, are positioned respectively near to the bottom of the lower pulley and inside the sphere, over the upper pulley. Comb (2) is connected to the sphere, and comb (7) to the ground. A high DC potential (with respect to earth) is applied to roller (3); a positive potential in this example.

As the belt passes in front of the lower comb, it receives negative charge that escapes from its points due to the influence of the electric field around the lower pulley, which ionizes the air at the points. As the belt touches the lower roller (6), it transfers some electrons, leaving the roller with a negative charge (if it is insulated from the terminal), which added to the negative charge in the belt generates enough electric field to ionize the air at the points of the upper comb. Electrons then leak from the belt to the upper comb and to the terminal, leaving the belt positively charged as it returns down and the terminal negatively charged. The sphere shields the upper roller and comb from the electric field generated by charges that accumulate at the outer surface of it, causing the discharge and change of polarity of the belt at the upper roller to occur practically as if the terminal were grounded. As the belt continues to move, a constant 'charging current' travels via the belt, and the sphere continues to accumulate negative charge until the rate that charge is being lost (through leakage and corona discharges) equals the charging current. The larger the sphere and the farther it is from ground, the higher will be its final potential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator
If equal numbers of electrons hopped in both directions, nothing much would change. But that's where the size difference comes in. As Lowell and Truscott explained it, only one point of the sphere touches the plane, and it has just a few electrons to give and a larger number of empty states with which to absorb them. In contrast, a larger streak of the plane comes in contact with the sphere, so it has plenty of electrons to give. So more electrons hop from plane to sphere than vice versa, leaving the sphere negatively charged and the plane positively charged and creating the static. Other researchers showed how the theory could apply to grains of two different sizes.

Unfortunately, the theory doesn't work, report Heinrich Jaeger, a physicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, and colleagues. They mixed grains of insulating zirconium dioxide-silicate with diameters of 251 micrometers and 326 micrometers and dropped them through a horizontal electric field, which pushed positively charged particles one way and negatively charged particles the other. They tracked tens of thousands of particles—by dropping an $85,000 high-speed camera alongside them. (See video above.) Sure enough, the smaller ones tended to be charged negatively and the larger ones positively, each accumulating 2 million charges on average.

Then the researchers probed whether those charges could come from electrons already trapped on the grains' surfaces. They gently heated fresh grains to liberate the trapped electrons and let them "relax" back into less energetic states. As an electron undergoes such a transition, it emits a photon. So by counting photons, the researchers could tally the trapped electrons. "It's pretty amazing to me that they count every electron on a particle," Shinbrot says.
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:51 am

Chromium6 wrote:So Charles do you think this is "mainstream"? If it happens as described below?
I don't understand the questions.
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Sparky » Sat Jun 07, 2014 11:35 am

http://www.soulsofdistortion.nl/SODA_chapter4.html
Since the word on zero point energy was out in the world, a new breed of gold diggers has been born. Many inventors are on the hunt for this zero point energy since it is free energy. The story goes that even Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla discovered the application of free energy. Once you know how to delve it you can tap it from the vacuum in an abundance that is inexhaustible. Imagine this, your TV set having no power cable since it is running just on energy it receives from the vacuum? Can you imagine that, do you know what this means? Bye bye to oil, maybe now you get the picture. In a world that is heavily dependant on oil, many people in power today will not be pleased since they will lose all their power and wealth.

It is for this reason and the possible military applications that these inventions have been suppressed globally in the last few decades. The United States of America prohibits pending patents to be exported outside the USA if they are believed to have dangerous military applications. However retired army lieutenant Tom Bearden has patented an over unity free energy device called the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, the MEG. Over unity in this respect means that more energy is coming out of the device than what is going into it. Bearden claims that it produces a 100 times more energy output than the energy that is put into it to keep it running. His MEG device is not in conflict with the laws of energy conservation, the second law of thermodynamics, since it simply taps the energy from the vacuum. Jean Louis Naudin who replicated Bearden’s MEG device now corroborates his claim that the MEG is an over-unity device.

Bearden has redone 19th century James Clerk Maxwell’s work, the founder of the classical electrodynamics theory. He says the interpretation of the original work of Maxwell is seriously flawed and has been misinterpreted and simplified by Lorentz and Heaviside for better understanding. Bearden discovered that the original quaternion equations of Maxwell were overlooked and, as a result, so was the possibility of tapping free energy from the vacuum. Bearden is in good company about this statement since it was Max Planck the founder of quantum physics who had always suggested that the validity of Maxwell’s equation should be re-established.

In lay terms Bearden’s MEG devices is basically a charged dipole, consisting of two charged plates. He explains that the physical vacuum creates a virtual photon flux of electromagnetic energy that sustains the electrical dipole potential. The dipole potential is actually the equilibrium between the discharge and replenishment by virtual photons from the vacuum. Hence, the static electric field is not static at all; it only appears to be so, much like a waterfall, which from a distance looks like one static wall of water, but when studied at close range proves to be a constant flow of water. The secret of the Meg device is not to discharge the charge of the dipole in the same circuit of the dipole but in another separate electrical circuit. After this the vacuum will automatically replenish the discharged dipole to seek equilibrium. The charge that flows in the other circuit is said to deliver real electrical power.

In this way zero point energy is extracted from the vacuum and discharged in an electrical circuit. Bearden says that all our current sources of electrical energy such as batteries, dynamos and power plants all have one problem in common. When the electrical current is fed back to the source that created the electrical current to begin with, it will kill the source of the virtual photon flux with the vacuum. Unknowingly we’ve been taking buckets full of zero point energy from the river but were unintentionally throwing it straight back into the river.

Tom Bearden also made a very important new discovery concerning a new type of ‘electromagnetic energy’. According to Bearden the four Maxell equations used in today’s electrical engineering are simplified versions of Maxwell’s original work. According to Bearden it was Oliver Heaviside who removed the scalar part of the complex numbers in Maxwell’s equations leaving only the vectors in Maxwell’s equations for easy calculation.

This is why science today only knows the classical electromagnetic wave that is a transverse wave. In the transverse wave the electrical and magnetic fields of the electromagnetic wave oscillate perpendicular to the propagation of the wave. Bearden says that by removing the scalar part in Maxwell’s equations we missed the fact that energy can also propagate as a longitudinal wave at super-luminal speed (faster than the speed of light). Longitudinal waves are akin to sound waves and oscillate in the same direction as their propagation.

According to Bearden the internal longitudinal wave in the electromagnetic wave is the fundamental wave and exists in all known electromagnetic fields of any shape. The scalar component of the electromagnetic wave can be created from two opposing electromagnetic waves, a wave and its anti wave. Both waves will cancel each other’s electrical and magnetic field components when the waves are in phase spatially but 180 degrees out of phase temporally The result is an electromagnetic scalar wave. This scalar wave travels in the time domain and it is completely different from the transverse electromagnetic wave, which travels through three dimensional space. According to Bearden we must think of time as a compressed form of energy just like matter is. Remember Einstein’s famous law that tells us that energy equals mass times light speed squared? Now the same amount of abundant compressed energy can be found in the time domain and can be tapped when the longitudinal scalar EM waves of the time domain are converted into ordinary transverse EM waves. The conversion of scalar electromagnetic energy into transverse electromagnetic energy is called scalar interferometry and is the result of two interfering scalar waves. It is the opposite effect to the self-cancelling of two transverse electromagnetic waves which creates the scalar wave.

The virtual photon flux that occurs between the dipole and the vacuum mentioned above is what scalar waves are. So scalar waves are very different from electromagnetic waves; for one thing they can travel over immense distances with no loss of energy at super-luminal speed (faster than light).

When scalar waves are created by a dipole, such as a battery, a generator or a permanent magnet with two poles, the polarisation of charge will create scalar waves that rush between the dipole and the vacuum. Every dipole in the universe from the atom with its positive and negative charges, to the Earth and the Sun with its magnetic fields and all the other heavenly bodies in the universe radiate scalar waves, so basically scalar waves are everywhere in the universe, they fill the vacuum of space making it a plenum of zero point energy.

In the early 20th century Nikola Tesla was the first to discover the scalar wave. He used induction coils to create these scalar waves. He had conducted many experiments while sending scalar waves around the Earth proving that scalar waves propagate over long distances with no loss in field strength. Unlike our current familiar electromagnetic wave that dissipates and looses its energy at a rate equal to the square of the distance from the source, Tesla’s longitudinal waves could travel any distance with practically no loss of energy.

Tesla in his time believed in the existence of the aether and that it could be harnessed for free energy that could be the salvation of humankind. He addressed the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1891 with these words; ‘.. with the power derived from it, with every form of energy obtained without effort, from stores forever inexhaustible, humanity will advance with great strides, it is a mere question of time when man will succeed in attaching their machinery to the wheelwork of nature’.

Tom Bearden’s scalar waves have also been discovered by Russian scientists. The Russians however have given scalar waves a different name; they refer to them as torsion waves. We will learn much more about torsion waves later. As a former military man, Bearden is convinced that the Russians used this technology to create an arsenal of scalar wave weaponry during the Cold War. These weapons are based on Tesla’s howitzer, a deadly scalar weapon that makes our present day weapons of mass destruction weak in comparison. In their mildest form these weapons can be used to modify and manipulate the weather, create hurricanes and tornados and can even be used to induce earthquakes. In their most aggressive application they could wipe out our present civilisation with a deadly force that is unstoppable.

On the other hand the peaceful application of scalar wave technology is beyond imagination; it is unlike any other technology that this planet has ever witnessed and may lead us into a Golden Age. It promises free energy, anti gravity propulsion, and healing applications that will cure any disease by means of time reversing the illness. According to Bearden, Antoine Priore in the sixties and seventies used a pre-cursor of his patented medical application of the scalar wave technology and Priore’s experiments on animals proved that he was able to cure all forms of cancer. The explanation for these miraculous cures is that the damaged cells are simply forced by the scalar waves to their previous healthy state. So scalar wave technology is a technology of miracles if we are to believe Bearden.

Bearden’s theory, which he has put in writing in a book called ‘Energy from the vacuum, concepts & principles’, is proven by the first marketed power device called the ‘Patterson Power Cell’, an innovative over unity energy device.

The Patterson Power Cell is developed and patented by James A. Patterson, scientist of the Clean Energy Technologies in Dallas. It is a glass enclosure filled with thousands of tiny palladium coated spheres that serve as the electrodes. It runs on heavy water. When started with a small input power of 1.4 Watts, the cell puts out an enormous amount of heat, hundreds of times the energy input. Claims are that the US Patent Office has tested it and four patents have been awarded. It’s being studied at different universities worldwide and is taken very seriously: now the dispute seems not to be if it works but how it works!
(6)
The charges align the zpe/aether between + and -....When the breakdown of the ions between the poles is reached, a tear in the aether allows zpe to flow as electrical discharge between the poles.

The aligned aether between the poles is a flow and can be sensed by electrostatic actions on differing objects. The flow before discharge is a distortion of the aether field, and after ions begin to conduct, it is a tear in the field, which allows energy to flow as electricity.
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:27 pm

CharlesChandler wrote:
Chromium6 wrote:So Charles do you think this is "mainstream"? If it happens as described below?
I don't understand the questions.

Just pointing out that a Van De Graaf generator requires "electrons hopping" which is mainstream but has anyone measured "electrons" hopping in the manner that Jaeger did with his experiment with a Van De Graaf generator?

Here's the basic theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_fo ... e_exchange

And this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb%27s_law
Tentative evidence of infinite speed of propagation

In late 2012, experimenters of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, at the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati in Frascati, Rome performed an experiment which indicated that there was no delay in propagation of the force between a beam of electrons and detectors.[16] This was taken as indicating that the field seemed to travel with the beam of electrons as if it were a rigid structure preceding the beam. Though awaiting corroboration, the results indicate that aberration is not present in the Coulomb force.

Electrostatic approximation

In either formulation, Coulomb’s law is fully accurate only when the objects are stationary, and remains approximately correct only for slow movement. These conditions are collectively known as the electrostatic approximation. When movement takes place, magnetic fields that alter the force on the two objects are produced. The magnetic interaction between moving charges may be thought of as a manifestation of the force from the electrostatic field but with Einstein’s theory of relativity taken into consideration. Other theories like Weber electrodynamics predict other velocity-dependent corrections to Coulomb's law.
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Sparky » Sun Jun 08, 2014 6:48 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_fo ... e_exchange
A virtual particle is created by a disturbance to the vacuum state, and the virtual particle is destroyed when it is absorbed back into the vacuum state by another disturbance. The disturbances are imagined to be due to bodies that interact with the virtual particle field.
I am relieved to find that they agree with me..... ;)

:D
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Sun Jul 13, 2014 9:30 pm

Here's a paper on Tory Shinbrot's triboelectrification that looks related:
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Why do insulators charge one another?


In this letter, we investigate the spontaneous triboelectrification of similar materials. This effect, first reported in 1986, has been little studied but is easily reproduced. We report here using a model system of common balloons that identical insulators, prepared in the same way and rubbed symmetrically, break symmetry so that one balloon becomes positive and the other negative. Curiously, the distribution of charges on the balloons appear to be self-similar, with different charge patterns on the positive and the negative surface. We propose a mechanism in which an initial localized charge may spawn the production of smaller localized charges of the same polarity, and we speculate that a similar charging instability may be at work in other charging phenomena.
...
We emphasize that a balloon, once charged, has never
been observed to become neutral or change sign with
repeated rubbing. This is illustrated in fig. 1(b), where
we show the voltage on negative and positive balloons,
from separate experiments, after subsequent symmetric
rubs against an identical balloon. The voltage is measured
with a probe (see figure caption) placed 10 cm from
the closest point of the balloon along its centerline.
Figure 1(b) shows the characteristic result, which we
reiterate has been repeated numerous times, that once a
balloon has acquired a charge of a given polarity, its charge
increases (notwithstanding ubiquitous but small noisy
variations [3]) with repeated rubs, but never changes sign.

http://coewww.rutgers.edu/~shinbrot/Web ... alloon.pdf
----------

Experiments at Rutgers lend credence to existence of ‘earthquake lights’

http://img.washingtonpost.com/rw/2010-2 ... ge-001.jpg
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

Shinbrot referenced other light phenomena linked to making and breaking surface contact: Mercury glows as it slides on glass, Scotch Tape lights up as it is ripped off the roll and Wint O Green Life Savers mints create a spark when bitten. “These are effects that occur when cracks open,” Shinbrot said. “All of the data is really fascinating and unexplained.”

The examples he mentioned show off a phenomenon called triboluminescence, or instances where energy is released in the form of light through the forced breaking of chemical bonds, such as when a solid is crushed, rubbed or scratched.

“We know that electricity, among other things, helps hold materials together,” Ebel said. “When you break bonds, you change the electrical properties of the system, which could cause a cascade.”

Shinbrot’s lab originally was looking at the effects of electrostatics on pharmaceutical powders and how a charge can make them stick to surfaces. He had read about earthquake lights, and because he had the powders and the right equipment, he decided to try a related experiment. The team first tried using the pharmaceutical powders they already had on hand, such as acetaminophen, bu later moved on to unbleached wheat flour and special glass beads that can visualize areas of stress.

They also found that the voltage ­changes seem to be associated with ­changes in ­stresses from surfaces in contact rather than solids actually breaking apart as in some triboluminescent examples.


But many questions remain. While earthquake lights are sometimes reported days before the event, the experiment clearly shows electrical jumps with each crack and uncrack. Also, the actual measured currents with each movement are tiny.

Physicist Friedemann Freund of the NASA Ames Research Center in California nevertheless applauded the work: “The observation is really well done, the experiments are well conducted, but the full understanding is not yet available.”

Freund is conducting experiments this summer that he hopes will pull together all known information about earthquake lights in a way that makes sense given Shinbrot’s results — but he isn’t prepared to talk about them just yet.

Ebel thinks their model could translate well to areas with fault gouge — rock with a very small grain size, formed by tectonic movement along a fault zone — such as parts of California. But in Quebec, some earthquakes originate from depths of almost 20 miles where rock could even be liquefied.

“In a lab experiment, you can constrain conditions, whereas in the earth, things aren’t constrained,” he said. “You don’t know what the grain size is or the distribution of grains.”

He also wonders whether these results will hold at scales ranging not in inches, but spanning tens of miles. Shinbrot is in the midst of testing effects of scale using larger tanks of grain. Also, he wants to measure voltages at more places than just at the split to see whether there is a certain multi­dimensional pattern of electricity.

Kim is a freelance science journalist based in Philadelphia.

----------
Original Flour experiment:
Electrical spikes of 100 volts or more can result when a crack opens and closes in a bed of powder under stress in a laboratory-scale experiment. (Troy Shinbrot/Rutgers University/APS)
The electric flour voltage test
Granular materials give off a zap just before slipping
by Rachel Ehrenberg
3:15pm, June 11, 2012

Ordinary baking flour isn’t the most electrifying substance, but spilling a box of the stuff yields a jolt of voltage that has scientists excited about their prospects for sensing catastrophic events like earthquakes and industrial accidents.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ele ... ltage-test

----------
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/shi ... -lightning

Shifting grains may explain earthquake lightning
Along a fault, movement of earth could induce voltages
by Andrew Grant
3:00pm, March 10, 2014

April 19, 2014

DENVER— Beads and flour could help explain a rare and mysterious phenomenon: lightning strikes called earthquake lights that occur before or during major quakes. New results presented March 6 at an American Physical Society meeting demonstrate that shifting granular materials, which simulate earth along a fault, can induce remarkably high electric voltages.

A few years ago, physicist Troy Shinbrot of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., developed a simple experiment to determine whether earth under stress could create conditions favorable for lightning above the surface. When he tipped a container of flour, a sensor inside registered an electrical signal on the order of 100 volts (SN: 7/14/12, p. 13).

Two new experiments using glass and plastic beads strengthen the connection between the simple setup and earthquake lights. Tanks of beads were put under pressure until one section slipped relative to another, like failing slabs of earth along a fault. The voltage surged during each slip.

The effect seems similar to static electricity, but that shouldn’t build up between particles of the same material. “It’s all very curious,” Shinbrot said. “It seems to us to be new physics.”
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Mon Jul 14, 2014 1:15 am

While earthquake lights are sometimes reported days before the event, the experiment clearly shows electrical jumps with each crack and uncrack.
Right -- but will they consider that this isn't actually triboelectricity? :)
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Fri Aug 22, 2014 9:27 pm

Static's secret rests with material exchange

27 March 2012

The charge that develops when two materials are rubbed together is dependent on tiny fragments of the materials transferring onto each other, say US scientists. The effect can even invert the normal polarity of the charging, so materials that would normally become positively charged can turn negative and vice versa.

Contact charging has provided hours of entertainment with balloons, hair and synthetic fibre clothing for generations. But it has also provided something of a headache for chemists attempting to rank materials into a 'triboelectric series' relating their propensity to develop charge. As Bartosz Grzybowski from Northwestern University in Illinois explains, looking through the literature turns up a surprising number of irreproducible and contradictory results - even for the same pairs of materials.

Over the past few years, says Grzybowski, it has become increasingly clear that contact charging is much more related to the surface properties of an object than the bulk material from which it is made. While there is still debate over what carries charge between materials - whether it is electrons, ions or both - it has also emerged that nanoscale fragments of material are transferred from each material to the other, carrying their own charge with them.

Static charge
US researchers have discovered that the transfer of nanoscale fragments of material can reverse the overall polarity of the materials

© Wiley

'People had thought that this material transfer was probably only modifying charging to a small degree,' says Grzybowski. 'We've shown that, actually, through material transfer you can change the overall polarity of the materials. So something that initially is charging minus, if you touch it a little bit more [with the charging material], it will become plus.'

'This really shows that there are at least two important mechanisms involved, and material transfer can't be ignored,' says Dan Lacks, who researches contact charging at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, US. 'The bad thing is it's hard to control or predict how much it's going to happen,' he adds. 'In real life you're often not starting with clean materials so you don't know what they've touched or rubbed on.'

But it goes even further than that, says Grzybowski. Even the way the polymers are processed can affect how they charge. 'At one point we were studying Teflon beads from two different suppliers, and they turned out to behave totally differently,' he says. His team have some preliminary results showing that the orientation and arrangement of the polymer chains is strongly affected by any surface charge on the mould they are made in.

It has taken a barrage of high-end analytical techniques to pin down these complexities. Grzybowski's team used a combination of various kinds of atomic force and Kelvin probe microscopy, along with Raman and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, plus techniques to characterise the hardness and wear parameters of the different materials.

Grzybowski attributes these latest insights to a combination of new technology to examine the phenomenon at the nanoscale, and a little of the wisdom that comes with age. 'I did similar experiments 10 years ago with George Whitesides [at Harvard University, US]. Back then we agreed it was a nightmare and we should quit, because there was nothing we could correlate with anything else!'

Lacks agrees that while new techniques have played their role in recent developments, it is an influx of new ideas that has reinvigorated interest in tribocharging. 'Once new ideas come out, it motivates more people to test things,' he says.

Phillip Broadwith



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References
H T Baytekin et al, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2012, DOI:10.1002/anie.201200057

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/ ... ansfer.asp

--------


Material Transfer and Polarity Reversal in Contact Charging

Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed.

Dr. H. Tarik Baytekin, Dr. Bilge Baytekin, Jared T. Incorvati, Prof. Dr. Bartosz A. Grzybowski*

The outcome of contact electrification between dielectrics depends not only on the transfer of charge but also on the transfer of material. Although only minute quantities of materials are being exchanged during contact, they can reverse the polarity of dielectrics. The reported results corroborate the mosaic model and suggest that the observations are because of the mechanical softness/hardness of the materials.

--------


The Mosaic of Surface Charge in Contact Electrification

Science

H. Tarik Baytekin, Alexander Z. Patashinski, Michal Branicki, Bilge Baytekin, Siowling Soh, Bartosz A. Grzybowski

When dielectric materials are brought into contact and then separated, they develop static electricity. For centuries, it has been assumed that such contact charging derives from the spatially homogeneous material properties (along the material’s surface) and that within a given pair of materials, one charges uniformly positively and the other negatively. We demonstrate that this picture of contact charging is incorrect. Whereas each contact-electrified piece develops a net charge of either positive or negative polarity, each surface supports a random “mosaic” of oppositely charged regions of nanoscopic dimensions. These mosaics of surface charge have the same topological characteristics for different types of electrified dielectrics and accommodate significantly more charge per unit area than previously thought.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6040/308.full

----------

What You Learned About Static Electricity Is Wrong

By Ars Technica
06.25.11 |
By John Timmer, Ars Technica

For many of us, static electricity is one of the earliest encounters we have with electromagnetism, and it’s a staple of high school physics. Typically, it’s explained as a product of electrons transferred in one direction between unlike substances, like glass and wool, or a balloon and a cotton T-shirt (depending on whether the demo is in a high school class or a kids’ party). Different substances have a tendency to pick up either positive or negative charges, we’re often told, and the process doesn’t transfer a lot of charge, but it’s enough to cause a balloon to stick to the ceiling, or to give someone a shock on a cold, dry day.

Nearly all of that is wrong, according to a paper published in today’s issue of Science. Charges can be transferred between identical materials, all materials behave roughly the same, the charges are the product of chemical reactions, and each surface becomes a patchwork of positive and negative charges, which reach levels a thousand times higher than the surfaces’ average charge.

Where to begin? The authors start about 2,500 years ago, noting that the study of static began with a Greek named Thales of Miletus, who generated it using amber and wool. But it wasn’t until last year that some of the authors of the new paper published a surprising result: contact electrification (as this phenomenon is known among its technically oriented fans) can occur between two sheets of the same substance, even when they’re simply allowed to lie flat against each other. “According to the conventional view of contact electrification,” they note, “this should not happen since the chemical potentials of the two surfaces/materials are identical and there is apparently no thermodynamic force to drive charge transfer.”

One possible explanation for this is that a material’s surface, instead of being uniform from the static perspective, is a mosaic of charge-donating and charge-receiving areas. To find out, they performed contact electrification using insulators (polycarbonate and other polymers), a semiconductor (silicon), and a conductor (aluminum). The charged surfaces were then scanned at very high resolution using Kelvin force microscopy, a variant of atomic force microscopy that is able to read the amount of charge in a surface.

Surface before static charging (top) and after (below). Science

The Kelvin force microscopy scans showed that the resulting surfaces were mosaics, with areas of positive and negative charges on the order of a micrometer or less across. All materials they tested, no matter what overall charge they had picked up, showed this mosaic pattern. The charges will dissipate over time, and the authors found that this process doesn’t seem to occur by transferring electrons between neighboring areas of different charge—instead of blurring into the surroundings, peaks and valleys of charge remain distinct, but slowly decrease in size. The authors estimate that each one of these areas contains about 500 elementary charges (that’s ±500 electrons), or about one charge for each 10nm2.

The reason that this produces a relatively weak charge isn’t because these peaks and valleys are small; the charge difference between them is on the order of 1,000 times larger than the average charge of the whole material. It’s just that the total area of sites with positive and negative charges are roughly equal (the two are typically within a fraction of a percent of each other). The distribution appears to be completely random, as the authors were able to produce similar patterns with a white noise generator that fluctuated on two length scales: 450nm and 44nm.

So, what causes these charges to build up? It’s not, apparently, the transfer of electrons between the surfaces. Detailed spectroscopy of one of the polymers (PDMS) suggests that chemical reactions may be involved, as many oxidized derivatives of the polymer were detected. In addition, there is evidence that some material is transferred from one surface to another. Using separate pieces of fluorine- and silicon-containing polymers allowed the authors to show that signals consistent with the presence of fluorine were detected in the silicon sample after contact.

The exact relationship between the charge transfer and the processes seen here—chemical reactions and the transfer of materials between the surfaces—isn’t clear at this point. But there are plausible mechanisms by which these processes could build up charges, and the authors very clearly intend to follow up on these findings.

In the meantime, you can be duly impressed with how much charge you can shuffle around when you build up static. Each square inch is equivalent to about 6.5 x 1014 square nanometers, so based on the authors’ numbers, that’s a lot of electrons.

Source: Ars Technica

Citation: Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1201512

http://www.wired.com/2011/06/how-static ... ity-works/
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

Chromium6
Posts: 537
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2011 5:48 pm

Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:10 pm

From Ken Shoulders:
-----------

1 [Short-Range Electron Attractive Force] 8/24/04 (1 page)
Short-Range Electron Attractive Force
by
Ken Shoulders

Statement of Action:

There is an attractive force found between closely spaced, free electrons instead of the universally touted
repulsion force. This attractive force is effective only at dimensions in the order of atomic spacing, being in
the range of 10-10 meters, leaving older repulsion laws intact for large spacing. When this force binds two or
more electrons, their expressed field at a distance is reduced. This is a newfound property of this otherwise
well-known particle.

The Effect:

As shown by many writings of the author, as well as G. A. Mesyats in Russia (1), electrons easily cluster
into complex structures having unique properties not available to single electrons. These electron clusters
have been named EVs or EVOs by Shoulders in various papers available for download from:
http://www.svn.net/krscfs/, and Ectons by Mesyats. There are several theories for their existence mentioned
in associated literature references but a complete description is still lacking.
Whatever the effect is that fosters this electron clustering action, it behaves like an unseen substance that
enshrouds electron groups, partly masking their charge. It is a short-range force resembling a positive
charge negating the effect of repulsive electronic charge and can further be defined as a near-field effect
that seems to be an innate property of the electron occurring at the time of its creation. This local action is
reminiscent of the induction field in electromagnetic theory. This attractive force is a property of the
individual electron and not a large group effect, as it extends down in size to electron pairs as is seen in the
electron accretion method of forming EVOs, described early on by Shoulders in an issued patent and the
references cited above.

Non Discovery Sequence:

All references cited above show accumulated evidence for the existence of EVOs in various sizes and
forms. Seeing the large total of accumulated evidence over such a long period of time brings up the
question of how finding it was passed over for so long. A citation on how this likely happened is given
below.

From the earliest realm of electrical investigation using cat hair and amber through the more technically
advanced era of silk and a glass rod, it was determined that like charges always repel. What should have
been a temporary guideline using this data was erroneously cast in cement as a sacred truth and immutable
law by fakirs crying from the scientific tower of Babel. This belief persisted throughout the very technical
age of arc and spark investigation in spite of outstanding but unheeded evidence of charge accretion
appearing everywhere in the so-called cathode spot phenomenon. The old law of like charge repulsion is
good but not all-encompassing, because at any one time, there are likely more free electrons adhering to
each other in this world than there are being repelled by each other. Electron clusters are ubiquitous.
When the electron clustering effect was first found by the author, its mention to all others was treated as
scientific sacrilege as the message from the fakir was still echoing through the halls after these many years.
The message here is: Believe what your senses tell you and not what others say. What I see is that the like
charge between electrons more often attracts than repels -- whenever the spacing between them is small.
[1] Explosive Electron Emission by G. A. Mesyats, ISBN-7691-0881-5, 1998, URO-PRESS,
Yekateringburg.

http://www.svn.net/krscfs/
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

Chromium6
Posts: 537
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2011 5:48 pm

Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by Chromium6 » Wed Oct 11, 2017 10:12 pm

Why does rubbing a balloon on your hair make it stick?
New research indicates how static electricity puts the charge in material, offering answer to centuries-old question

Date:
August 29, 2017
Source:
Case Western Reserve University
Summary:
New research indicates that tiny holes and cracks in a material -- changes in the microstructure -- can control how the material becomes electrically charged through friction.


Changes in microstructure, such as this void and fibrils created by straining a polymer sheet, appear to control how the material charges through friction.

For centuries, scientists have tried to understand triboelectric charging, commonly known as static electricity.

Triboelectric charging causes toner from a photocopier or laser printer to stick to paper, and likely facilitated the formation of planets from space dust and the origin of life on earth.

But the charges can also be destructive, sparking deadly explosions of coal dust in mines and of sugar and flour dust at food-processing plants.

New research led by Case Western Reserve University indicates that tiny holes and cracks in a material -- changes in the microstructure -- can control how the material becomes electrically charged through friction.

The research is a step toward understanding and, ultimately, managing the charging process for specific uses and to increase safety, the researchers say. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Materials.

"Electrostatic charging can be seen everywhere, but we noticed some cases where materials appeared to charge more -- like a balloon rubbed on your head, or packing peanuts sticking to your arm when you reach into a package," said Dan Lacks, chair of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and one of the study's lead authors.

"Our idea was that a strain on the materials was causing a higher propensity for the materials to become charged," Lacks said. "After blowing polystyrene to create the expanded polystyrene that comprises the peanut, the material maintains this distinct charging behavior indefinitely."

Testing the idea

Scientists have long known that rubbing two materials, such as a balloon on hair, causes electrostatic charging. To test the theory that strain affects charging, the researchers stretched a film of polytetrafluoroethlyne (PTFE) and rubbed it against a film of unstrained PTFE.

"Triboelectric charging experiments are generally known for their -- as some would say -- charmingly inconsistent results," said Andrew Wang, a Case Western Reserve PhD student and co-author who led the work. "What was surprising to me, initially, was the consistency of the unstrained versus strained charging results."

Lacks, Wang and Mohan Sankaran, professor of chemical engineering and the other lead author of the study, repeatedly found a systematic charge transfer in one direction, as if the materials were made of two different chemical compositions.

After rubbing, unstrained films clearly tended to carry a negative charge and the strained film a positive charge. The finding was not consistent 100 percent of the time, but statistically significant.

In contrast, unstrained films rubbed together and strained films rubbed together appeared to charge at random.

Analyzing the results

Collaborators at Bilkent University, in Ankara, Turkey, used X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy to analyze samples of strained and unstrained films and found at the atomic level, they looked nearly the same.

The only detectable difference in the strained film from the unstrained film was the presence of voids in the material -- holes and fractures created by stretching, which changed the microstructure. Some holes and fractures were detected with the naked eye, while others were so small they required the aid of a scanning electron microscope.

The researchers created molecular simulations of strained materials on a computer, which showed the birth of the voids but no other significant changes. That further indicated the change in microstructure is the likely cause of the systematic charge transfer.

"We think the void regions and the fibrils we see around them when we strain the polymer have different bonding and thus charge differently," Lacks said.

Although the experiment focused on one material, strain may affect all materials, Sankaran said. "The strain we put on the PTFE was large because we were looking for big effects," he said. "All materials may have a little strain from processing."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 135355.htm (more at link)
On the Windhexe: ''An engineer could not have invented this,'' Winsness says. ''As an engineer, you don't try anything that's theoretically impossible.''

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CharlesChandler
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by CharlesChandler » Thu Oct 12, 2017 1:31 am

Triboelectric charging causes toner from a photocopier or laser printer to stick to paper, and likely facilitated the formation of planets from space dust and the origin of life on earth.
Now that's interesting, that they're saying that the electric force might have something to do with planetary formation. I don't see how they're going to do it with triboelectric charging, but just the same, at least they introduced the idea.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll spend the rest of the day sitting in a small boat, drinking beer and telling dirty jokes.

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The Electromagnetic Nature of Tornadic Supercell Thunderstorms

jimmcginn
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Re: Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation

Unread post by jimmcginn » Thu Oct 26, 2017 10:19 pm

Chromium6:
If you’ve ever wiggled a balloon against your hair, you know that rubbing together two different materials can generate static electricity. But rubbing bits of the same material can create static, too. Now, researchers have shot down a decades-old idea of how that same-stuff static comes about.

The same-material phenomenon produces important real-world effects, such as generating lightening in volcanic eruptions, gumming up the processing of powders in manufacturing, and causing explosions in grain elevators. Physicists thought they understood what was going on, but suddenly "the dominant theory appears to be dead,"

Charles Chandler:
Meteorologists have the same problem, trying to figure out how thunderstorms get electrified. Clearly it happens because of collisions between ice particles, because these show up nicely on radar, so we know where they are, and this is precisely where the powerful electric fields develop (which are also detectable using the more advanced radars), and where lightning eventually occurs.
James McGinn:
Suppose you encountered a slow moving river. And suppose the reason the river was moving slow was because it was clogged up with rocks, boulders, and bushes. And then lets say you had a bulldozer and you used it to move rocks and boulders and to uproot the bushes, pushing it all to the side to create a channel for the river to flow. You might now have a fast moving river. How would we characterize the effects of the bulldozer? Would we say that the bulldozer generated the flow of the river? Obviously we would not say this. The flow of the river is a result of its slope and gravity. The potential for the rapid flow of the river already existed. The bulldozer did not create the potential, nor can it be said to have generated the flow. The bulldozer removed the resistance to flow.

I think the same applies to understanding static electricity. I think that the activities that I quoted above, rubbing together of material and collisions between ice crystals, do not actually generate static electricity. Instead they have something to do with removing the resistance to flow. The potential for static electricity exists naturally as a result of the electrified solar wind that enters earth's atmosphere from above. These activities did not create the potential for flow, the sun does. Nor can they be said to have generated the static electricity, the sun did.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

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