Static Electricity Experiment: Control Static Cling

(updated 21 November 2022)

Static cling is when some clothes come from the dryer, they cling together. It also happens when dress slacks or a skirt will cling to your legs when your wear them. A good experiment would be to study this phenomenon and propose a way to control or minimize static cling.

This lesson will answer those questions.

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Purpose of experiment

To determine a way to reduce the static cling on certain items

Initial experiments

Do some research about static electricity to determine possible factors in static cling. Some factors include:

• Type of material
• Other materials in dryer
• Humidity

Measuring cling

Determine how you will quantify static cling. In other words, how do measure the amount of static cling? Is there some sort of a test you can use to compare the amount of cling from one experiment to another?

Have some rating system for amount of static cling observed

• Perhaps take pictures
• Perhaps write out description
• Could use a numbering rating system

Experiment

Keeping everything else constant, perform some experiments to determine:

• What materials seem to get the most static cling?
• Do other materials in the the dryer affect the amount of static cling?
• The affect of humidity on static cling
• Other factors

Wet items the same amount for each test. Also keep items in dryer the same amount of time.

Record data

Keep a record of your experiments and data.

Minimize

Once you have determined the major factors in static cling, you can decide on a way to minimize the amount of cling. Try a given combination under the same conditions as before to see if the cling is much less that before.

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Resources and references

Websites

Experiments Resources