The wool leaf electroscope

Tuesday 4 February 2014

This is a still from a video sent to me by two of my second year students Vann from Cambodia and Julia from Sweden. The nationalities aren't relevant but I thought I'd add a bit of international mindedness and show how physics stretches across borders. What they discovered was that the scarf in the photo became charged, how this happened they don't show but it did. when the scarf was rolled up the tassels repelled each other like the leaves on an electroscope. Then when they brought their hand close the tassels attracted to the hand. What seems to be happening is that the tassels induce an opposite charge on the hand which  attracts the tassels. When the tassels touch the hand they lose their charge and no longer repel each other. Interesting