The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a honeybee. In many ways, your world is small. Your four delicate wings, each less than a centimeter ...

For centuries, static electricity has been the subject of intrigue and scientific investigation. Now, researchers from the Waitukaitis group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) ...

Caterpillars respond defensively to electric fields similar to those emitted by their natural predators, scientists have found. Caterpillars respond defensively to electric fields similar to those ...

Northwestern University scientists have made a new contribution to understanding a long-standing phenomenon called static electricity. In their most recent research, the researchers found that such ...

Rubbing two balloons together leads George to a shocking discovery. If you rub two identical balloons together, they both pick up a static charge. This strange and unexpected behavior has been ...

Many electronic components are sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD). A static charge is an unbalanced electrical charge at rest. An electrostatic discharge is created when insulator surfaces rub ...

A century after Nikola Tesla sketched a turbine with no blades, researchers are now using that same counterintuitive design to pull useful power out of static electricity. The latest experiments pair ...

Feeling the buzz of a static shock can be a nuisance, whether it's from clothes, throw blankets, furniture, or anything else that gets static-y. If you're tired of experiencing those tiny shocks, you ...

Oh, that dreaded crackle when you pull clothes out of the dryer! It seems like some days, especially when it’s cold and dry, everything wants to stick together. But what’s really going on? I’ll break ...