Want to see a really cool trick?
Watch this!
I’ll take this balloon…
...rub it on my shirt…
... gently place it on the wall...and...
…ta-dah!
It sticks to the wall!
Thank you very much!
This balloon-sticking trick might seem like magic.
But it’s not at all!
The balloon sticks to the wall because of something called static electricity…
...and static electricity isn’t magic...
it’s science!
Do you want to know how I made the balloon stick?
Let’s start by talking about opposites.
I bet you already know some words that are opposites.
Like, the opposite of day is…that’s right, Squeaks!
Night, and the opposite of up is…right again…!
Down.
Well, meet two new opposites!
The names of these opposites are positive and negative.
And they’re special because they attract each other.
That means that they pull on one another.
If you’ve ever played with magnets, then you’ve already experienced things that attract.
When I line up two magnets just so…they pull on, or attract each other.
In fact, when I move them even closer together, they attract each other so much that they
stick.
…just like the balloon stuck to the wall!
But I didn’t see any magnets on my balloon!
And that’s because there aren’t any.
The balloon, the wall, and everything else in the universe is made of tiny little particles.
These particles are way too small for us to see.
And some of these particles are positive, and some of these particles are negative.
They’re opposites!
And guess what?
Positive particles and negative particles attract each other...they pull on each other
just like the magnets did.
Let’s look at my balloon a little more closely.
Most of the time, there’s about the same number of positive and negative particles
in any object you can think of … like my balloon … or my shirt.
But when I rub the balloon on my shirt, the balloon takes some of the negative particles
from the shirt.
Now the balloon has extra negative particles.
And when there’s an imbalance of positive and negative particles in things -- like when
the balloon has more negative particles than positive ones -- it’s said to create static
electricity.
And when I put the balloon next to the wall, those extra negative particles are attracted
to the positive particles in the wall...and the balloon sticks to the wall!
At least for a while.
Any time two different things rub together, there’s a good chance that static electricity
will form.
Static electricity is what makes your hair stick up when you take off a fuzzy sweater…
...and it also can give you a shock when you touch something after walking across the carpet,
like a doorknob, or another person!
So static electricity isn’t magic...
it’s science, which is also a lot of fun!
Thanks for joining me on SciShow Kids!
Do you have a question about the world around you?
Get some help from a grown up, and let us know in the comments below, or send us an
email at Kids@SciShow.com.