Northwestern University scientists have made a new contribution to understanding a long-standing phenomenon called static electricity. In their most recent research, the researchers found that such ...

We've probably all heard explanations about how static electricity builds up in response to friction. According to the authors of a new paper, nearly all of them are wrong.

Static electricity is the buildup of an electrical charge on the surface of an object. Lightning is the most dramatic and potentially lethal example of static discharge. A far more benign illustration ...