Static Electricity
Making the abstract concrete
Carnegie Mellon University
Fall 2019
Communication Design Studio 1, Stacie Rohrbach & Brett Yasko
Static electricity is something that we have all experienced at some point in our lives whether it be that special spark you’ve felt between yourself and another person or the strike of lightning that you’ve seen during a thunderstorm.
Static electricity happens in real-life all the time, however, explaining how this daily phenomenon actually occurs is a little harder to explain…to gain a better understanding of static electricity we must first look at the materials that contribute to how it’s made.
Although the spark we feel when coming into contact with static electricity in our everyday lives can seem trivial, static electricity can also happen on monumental scales through lightning or electric explosions and it can also play a significant role in modern technology.
For example, static electricity is currently being used at power plants and chemical factories by collecting pollution through static cling. In addition, photocopiers and lasers use static electricity to cluster droplets of ink so that it can be distributed to paper.
More recently static electricity has found importance in nanotechnology and is being researched as a possible energy source to charge our smartphones.
Although static electricity is something we typically experience in our everyday lives its impact on our environment and our modern world is something we continue to explore.
