Richard Tobin <
richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
Suppose I acquire a static electric charge by, say, rubbing a ballon
against my clothes. Is there some way, using only everyday household objects, that I can determine whether the charge I have is negative or positive?
-- Richard
Since rubbing a balloon against anything I can think of results in a
negative charge on the balloon, the question is kinda moot.
However, if you hang a charged balloon from a string and place a randomly charged object near it, the balloon will be either repeled or attracted
to the object depending on the object's polarity.
If you want to know how to prove a balloon is negative, it would take a
few simple electronic components to build something to do that, but
unless you are an electronic hobbiest, you would be unlikely to have
such laying about the house.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)