Winter is coming and I am looking for a way to deal with the static electricity I tend to suffer with in winter months.
I know getting a humidifier is a good idea, but I can’t put one up at the supermarket or at work (where I get a lot of shocks).
I have heard leather soled shoes will conduct and discharge electricity before it ever gets to the point where I carry a static charge. Any truth to this?
Do socks make a difference (will leather shoes still conduct electricity and ground me if I am wearing cotton socks)?
I found a product called ‘safeclip’ that is supposed to clip onto crocs to discharge static electricity, but I don’t think the company sells them anymore.
http://www.safeclip.se/what_en.shtml
According to this page, even dry leather has a much lower resistance than rubber, on the order of 500 kilohms, which is more than low enough to ensure that static charges will dissipate (although, the 20 megohm figure for rubber seems too low as even that can easily dissipate static charges). I’m pretty sure that socks won’t make much of a difference either since shoes aren’t exactly dry environments, even ventilated shoes. However, that won’t mean much if you aren’t standing on a conductive surface, although static electricity itself is generated by rubbing certain materials together and wearing leather soled shoes is often advised to reduce static (example).