What happens when you bring the balloon near your hair after rubbing it

Have you ever wondered why if you rub a balloon on your hair it makes your hair stand up on end? It’s all to do with something called static electricity.

It’s also static electricity that sometimes gives you a shock when you touch something metal. The conductive metal discharges any static electricity that has built up on your skin creating a small electrostatic shock.

To make your hair stand on end all you need to do is blow up a balloon and rub it on your jumper or hair.

Then place the balloon above your hair or some tissue paper and watch the hair or tissue paper become attracted to the balloon.

Investigate

Try recording the time hair stands up for if you rub it across your head, once, 5 times and 10 times.

Do you think there will be a difference?

What is static electricity?

All objects are made of atoms. Inside atoms are protons, electrons and neutrons. Protons have a positive charge, electrons negative and neutrons have a neutral charge.

Opposite charges attract each other and like charges repel.

Mostly charges in an object are equal and balanced, static electricity occurs when the charges become imbalanced.

When you rub a balloon on a jumper you add electrons to the surface of the balloon. Your hair is now more positively charged than the balloon so when the balloon comes close, the hair is attracted to the balloon and so sticks up on end.

The same explanation works when you stick a static electricity charged balloon to a wall. Opposite charges attract, so the negatively charged balloon is attracted to the more positive wall.

You could try lots of different items to find out which stick to the balloon.

More static electricity experiments for kids

Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls shows how to bend water using static electricity.

Try our jumping tissue paper frogs experiment.

Static Electricity Facts

Static electricity is called static electricity because the charge stays in a certain area for a period of time rather than flowing elsewhere.

Lightning is an example of static electricity. Lightning occurs when static electricity builds up in clouds which the causes a huge spark to form between the cloud and the ground!

Printers use static electricity to attract the ink to paper.

Electrical components can be very sensitive to static electricity, which is why they are packaged in anti static bags.

Static electricity is the buildup of electrical charge in an object. Sometimes static electricity can suddenly discharge, such as when a bolt of lightning flashes through the sky. Other times, static electricity can cause objects to cling to one another. Think of how socks fresh out of the dryer stick together. This happens when objects have opposite charges, positive and negative, which attract. (Objects with the same charges repel one another.) Could enough static electricity make a balloon stick to a wall? How much do you think you would have to rub it?

Background
When one object is rubbed against another, static electricity can be created. This is because the rubbing creates a negative charge that is carried by electrons. The electrons can build up to produce static electricity. For example, when you shuffle your feet across a carpet, you are creating many surface contacts between your feet and the carpet, allowing electrons to transfer to you, thereby building up a static charge on your skin. When you touch another person or an object, you can suddenly discharge the static as an electrical shock.

Similarly, when you rub a balloon on your head it causes opposite static charges to build up both on your hair and the balloon. Consequently, when you pull the balloon slowly away from your head, you can see these two opposite static charges attracting one another and making your hair stand up.

Materials
•    Balloon
•    An object made out of wool (such as a sweater, scarf, blanket or ball of yarn)
•    Stopwatch
•    A wall
•    A partner (optional)

Preparation
•    Blow up the balloon and tie off the end.
•   Have your partner prepare to use the stopwatch.

Procedure
•    Hold the balloon in a way that your hand covers as little of its surface area as possible, such as by using only your thumb and pointer finger or by gripping the balloon by its neck where it is tied off.
•    Rub the balloon on the woolly object once, in one direction.
•    Hold the balloon up on the wall with the side that was rubbed against the wool facing the wall, then release it. Does the balloon stay stuck on the wall? If the balloon stays stuck, have your partner immediately start the stopwatch to time how long the balloon remains bound to the wall. If the balloon does not stick, move to the next step.
•    Touch the balloon to a metal object. Why do you think this is important to do?
•    Repeat the above process but each time increase the number of times you rub the balloon on the woolly object. Rub the balloon in the same direction each time. (Do not rub the balloon back and forth.) How many rubs does it take to make the balloon stick to the wall for a few seconds? What about multiple minutes?
•    You can repeat this whole process two more times. Do your observations for each trial match with the previous trials?
•    Extra: Does rubbing in one direction give a different result than rubbing back and forth? Try comparing the same number of rubs in one direction with those done back and forth. Does one stay on the wall longer than the other?
•    Extra: Try comparing the effectiveness of different materials for producing a static charge. Does rubbing wool work better than rubbing silk? Design an experiment to test several different materials: silk, wool, nylon, polyester, plastic, metal, etcetera.

Observations and results
In general, did the balloon stick to the wall for a longer amount of time as you increased the number of times you rubbed the balloon on the woolly object?

Wool is a conductive material, which means it readily gives away its electrons. Consequently, when you rub a balloon on wool, this causes the electrons to move from the wool to the balloon's surface. The rubbed part of the balloon now has a negative charge. Objects made of rubber, such as the balloon, are electrical insulators, meaning that they resist electric charges flowing through them. This is why only part of the balloon may have a negative charge (where the wool rubbed it) and the rest may remain neutral.

When the balloon has been rubbed enough times to gain a sufficient negative charge, it will be attracted to the wall. Although the wall should normally have a neutral charge, the charges within it can rearrange so that a positively charged area attracts the negatively charged balloon. Because the wall is also an electrical insulator, the charge is not immediately discharged. However, because metal is an electrical conductor, when you rub the balloon against metal the extra electrons in the balloon quickly leave the balloon and move into the metal so the balloon is no longer attracted and does not adhere.

What happens if you rub a balloon to your hair?

What happens when you rub balloon on your hair and put it on a wall?

How do you attract balloons to your hair?