Well, everyone was out at a Superbowl party and left me home to fend for myself so i ate leftovers. That's when I saw the saran wrap on the bowl and remembered static friction from the last test. When rolling the wrap out of the container, electrons are pulled from the level below and the top layer is positive, which is why it sticks so well to itself. This is because the posititve charged side and the negative charged sides are attracted to each other. And especially because the refrigerator is so cold, the saran wrap must stick to it better (because the physics room needed to be colder for the lab to work better). Then, when I crumpled it up and threw the saran wrap into the trash, it didn't stick to itself because the electrons from the negative side transferred to the positive side so it was no longer polar.Sunday, February 3, 2008
leftovers...
Well, everyone was out at a Superbowl party and left me home to fend for myself so i ate leftovers. That's when I saw the saran wrap on the bowl and remembered static friction from the last test. When rolling the wrap out of the container, electrons are pulled from the level below and the top layer is positive, which is why it sticks so well to itself. This is because the posititve charged side and the negative charged sides are attracted to each other. And especially because the refrigerator is so cold, the saran wrap must stick to it better (because the physics room needed to be colder for the lab to work better). Then, when I crumpled it up and threw the saran wrap into the trash, it didn't stick to itself because the electrons from the negative side transferred to the positive side so it was no longer polar.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
generally, i find these things we discussed about plastic wrap to hold true, but just as often, the darn thing seems to have a mind of its own too. static electricity is pretty unpredictable, like frank and berton getting shocked together today.
Post a Comment