Unit 6 Photo

            Have you ever taken a balloon, rubbed it on your head and put it on the wall and it stuck to the wall? Well, this unit, I learned the physics behind this. Notice in the picture the balloons are sticking to the wall. The balloons were charged with friction when they were rubbed on people’s hair and were given a negative charge. When one of these balloons is brought near the wall, the wall polarizes, meaning the positive charges in the wall move close to the negatively charged balloon and the negative charges in the wall move away from the balloon. The attractive charges will be closer together and the repulsive charges will be farther apart. Coulomb’s Law, F=kq1q2/d^2, states that force is inversely proportional to the distance and directly proportional to charges. Therefore, the attractive charges have a greater  force because their distance is smaller which is why the balloon sticks to the wall.

Although the picture above demonstrates a real life situation when the balloon sticks to the wall, here is an animated version that can show the explanation of polarization and the difference forces.