Engineering's Daniel Lacks explains the origins of static electricity

Static electricity shapes everyday life—but its origin remains shockingly mysterious

Discover Magazine: Daniel Lacks, the C. Benson Branch Professor of Chemical Engineering, said static electricity remains surprisingly poorly understood at the microscopic level. He noted that even huge charges—such as a balloon reaching 10,000 volts—come from an imbalance of just one electron per 100,000 surface atoms, making the underlying mechanism extremely difficult to pinpoint.