ABSTRACT
Some 2500 years ago, Thales of Miletus* observed that rubbing a piece of amber would give the amber the ability to attract light objects. We can repeat Thales’s experiment today with an ordinary comb, making it attract small pieces of paper. This phenomenon we now call static electricity. It’s the “static cling” of clothes as they come out of the dryer. It’s the spark or shock from reaching for a metal object after shufing across a carpet. It’s the maddening tendency of Styrofoam packing “peanuts” to stick to just about anything. It makes people’s hair stand on end (Figure 12.1). Like so many ideas and observations of the ancient Greeks, little or nothing was done to develop the practical consequences. The study of electrical phenomena languished for the next two millennia.
