What Puts the “Tribo” in Triboelectricity?
October 2, 2024 9:13 PM Subscribe
SciTechDaily:
Groundbreaking Study Finally Reveals How Rubbing Generates Static Electricity. ACS letter: An enduring question in science has been why sliding plays a major role in the triboelectric generation of static electricity–the “tribo” in triboelectricity. We provide here a general explanation which is rooted in established science
. ARXIV: A Quantitative Model of Triboelectric Charge Transfer. Bonus Quanta: The Hidden World of Electrostatic Ecology
Invisibly to us, insects and other tiny creatures use static electricity to travel, avoid predators, collect pollen and more.
One of the coolest adaptations I read about some years ago was that some (perhaps many) spider's webs are conductive, so that when a charged-up bug flies near, it induces an opposite charge in the web, this causes the relatively lower-massing web to be attracted to the insect, and the sticky web essentially reaches out and grabs the insect.
posted by jamjam at 11:14 PM on October 2 [10 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 11:14 PM on October 2 [10 favorites]
Just gotta say that the picture used by the Wikipedia article on Triboelectric effect is *chef's kiss*
posted by Hardcore Poser at 3:14 AM on October 3 [19 favorites]
posted by Hardcore Poser at 3:14 AM on October 3 [19 favorites]
This has puzzled scientists for centuries and a great example of how a 'simple' phenomenon isn't simple at all, especially once you mess around with length scales....
Here's an open access minireview from 2022 on competing theories and counterintuitive results by scale for those who are interested.
posted by lalochezia at 4:28 AM on October 3 [1 favorite]
Here's an open access minireview from 2022 on competing theories and counterintuitive results by scale for those who are interested.
posted by lalochezia at 4:28 AM on October 3 [1 favorite]
Hardcore Poser: science serves cats. It’s nice they return the favor.
posted by MrGuilt at 5:03 AM on October 3 [1 favorite]
posted by MrGuilt at 5:03 AM on October 3 [1 favorite]
I wonder how much electricity teenage me would have generated?
Yeah, I went there ....
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:05 AM on October 3
Yeah, I went there ....
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 6:05 AM on October 3
I had a science teacher back in my school days tell us that when you rub something on something else, one of the items rubs the electrons off of the other item and collects them thus the change in charge. Loose electrons that can be rubbed off varies for the material it’s made from. So this teacher was spouting BS?
posted by njohnson23 at 6:45 AM on October 3
posted by njohnson23 at 6:45 AM on October 3
Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus first reported friction-induced static electricity in 600 B.C. After rubbing amber with fur, he noticed the fur attracted dust.
This never really gets discussed. It wasn't easier to rub two pieces of fur together to get static electricity? They never touched a piece of metal and got zapped? It's such a weird thing to name the phenomenon after. Is there something special about the amber phenomenon that you need to be this αριστοσ to understand?
posted by ockmockbock at 8:06 AM on October 3
This never really gets discussed. It wasn't easier to rub two pieces of fur together to get static electricity? They never touched a piece of metal and got zapped? It's such a weird thing to name the phenomenon after. Is there something special about the amber phenomenon that you need to be this αριστοσ to understand?
posted by ockmockbock at 8:06 AM on October 3
Presumably the same root as tribadism?
posted by tavella at 8:24 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 8:24 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]
The whole idea of "electricity" is over two thousand years younger than Thales of Miletus, who thought the static effect was something like magnetism. Everyone's who's pet a cat in the winter notices the zapping, and cats have been with us for a lot longer than that, but ions, electrons, current, volts, amperes, no one was thinking or wondering about those until the 1600s.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:25 AM on October 3
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:25 AM on October 3
Presumably the same root as tribadism?
Yep, from the Greek tribos, a rubbing, from trībein, to rub.
Who'd have thunk an internet discussion on static electricity would lead to talk of tribbing? I guess brushing up onto something new can spark a lot of excitement.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:33 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]
Yep, from the Greek tribos, a rubbing, from trībein, to rub.
Who'd have thunk an internet discussion on static electricity would lead to talk of tribbing? I guess brushing up onto something new can spark a lot of excitement.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 9:33 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]
They never touched a piece of metal and got zapped?
it's at least disputed how much to credit him with it anyway:
it's at least disputed how much to credit him with it anyway:
The only connection of Thales to electrostatics in any ancient source is one sentence found in Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers in his discussion of Thales: "Aristotle and Hippias say that he [Thales] attributed a share of soul to inanimate things, taking his proof from the magnet and from amber."...posted by BungaDunga at 9:47 AM on October 3 [2 favorites]
even if Diogenes Laërtius’ passage is accurate and Hippias did record a connection between Thales and electrostatics, there is absolutely no evidence that Thales ‘discovered’ or was the first to notice electrostatic charging (of course he wasn’t, these phenomena must have been noticed for millennia before Thales by anyone who ever wore wool or fur clothes in the winter or who ever spun thread), or that he carried out any systematic experiments addressing electrostatic charging. It is probable only that he superficially pointed to magnets and electrostatic charging with amber, since these were things with which his audience would have been familiar, to prove that there was a “soul” even in “inanimate” things... he is merely the earliest person mentioned in our sources to note them in the context of an ongoing philosophical debate about the nature of the soul.
I had a science teacher back in my school days tell us that when you rub something on something else, one of the items rubs the electrons off of the other item and collects them thus the change in charge. Loose electrons that can be rubbed off varies for the material it’s made from. So this teacher was spouting BS?
Even in light of this announcement, that's basically still how I would explain this to a middle/high school student. I don't really like the use of "rubbed off" but whatevs. what this research claims is the underlying mechanism for how the charge transfer happens (the "rubbing off"), which has been unexplained to this point.
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:00 AM on October 3
Even in light of this announcement, that's basically still how I would explain this to a middle/high school student. I don't really like the use of "rubbed off" but whatevs. what this research claims is the underlying mechanism for how the charge transfer happens (the "rubbing off"), which has been unexplained to this point.
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:00 AM on October 3
The triboelectric effect is how copiers and laser printers work. They contain multiple high-voltage (but very low current) power supplies to move the toner to the drum and then to the paper. That's the reason they shut off when you open them up. I've seen a lab tech fly across the room when they touched something on the inside of a machine that had the safety interlock bypassed.
What has always amazed me is how you can change the charge on a drum in one small area and not affect the entire drum surface.
posted by tommasz at 1:21 PM on October 3
What has always amazed me is how you can change the charge on a drum in one small area and not affect the entire drum surface.
posted by tommasz at 1:21 PM on October 3
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