I think the 3 most important things we’ve learned about static electricity are:

  1. The contents of an atom because that explains why the only thing that transfers from atom to atom is the electron. The electron is orbiting around the nucleus (made of protons and neutrons) which means that the electrons are already moving which makes them easier and more likely to move from atom to atom. So when two objects rub together and one becomes negative, it’s because the electrons are moving from one object to the other leaving the other object positive.
  2. How objects can be charged in two ways; conduction and induction. I think this is really important because if we didn’t know how to charge an object we couldn’t do many labs or the labs would have false information due to the objects would have different charges than we think they do. Example: We start a lab by rubbing a balloon on hair, then we placed the balloon next to a metal can to see how it reacts, we wouldn’t know that some of the charge goes into the metal can, creating a problem for the next object in the lab.
  3. Conductors and insulators because some objects hold a static charge and other do not, if we did not know this we would assume that the static can pass through any object, which it can’t, making our final information wrong. Conductors let electrons pass through it easily, while insulators do not. It is also a safety precaution because if your trying to create a shock with a Van der Graff generator, you need to hold onto something metal (conductor) with something like glass or plastic (insulator) so you don’t receive a shock.

I think the lab that was the most helpful in the understanding of static electricity was the one where we charged a piece of vinyl and a piece of acetate and watched the reaction when we put neutral-neutral, negative-negative, positive-positive and negative-positive. I think it was the most important because it showed the laws of electric charge, opposite charges attract, like charges repel and neutral objects attract to charged objects, which is extremely important to get proper information when doing a lab.