I am getting very staticky lately, as usual for the drier winter season. I wear a fluffy fleece jacket which makes it worse. I was wondering, because I (minorly) end up shocking myself pretty frequently, what would happen if I didn’t? Generally I will touch something metal (and not electronic) to discharge deliberately with the flat of my hand so it hurts less than just a fingertip. Like poor Peter in Office Space.
But what if I just stood motionless and didn’t touch anything? Would I remain negative forever, or does the static charge dissipate through my skin or feet or something?
Take a key or coin out of your pocket and touch that against something to discharge yourself painlessly. Beyond that, you might consider getting yourself an anti-static shoe strap - you discharge with every step.
Serious answer: the charge would slowly dissipate a tiny bit at a time through the air, the carpet, and whatever else you were touching. The same process as if you touched metal; it’s just that through the metal the charge leaves very quickly and all at the same time. Through the air, it happens very slowly and a tiny bit at at time.
Thanks, Quercus! I don’t know if it’s knowable or not, since the amount of static is going to vary widely based on ambient aridity and my fluffyosity, but do you know how long I would have to stand motionless for it to go away entirely (or at least enough not to be felt)? Even just a ballpark, like 10 seconds or an hour?
Also good info johnpost; unfortunately, I can’t control the humidity at work. And apparently our maintenance staff doesn’t care about it at all (or, for that matter, the temperature after 8pm!)
Certain types of clothing, like wool, fur, nylon, and polyester, are good at building up a charge. Wearing cotton clothes will get you zapped a bit less frequently. Some people say it helps to take one of those anti-static dryer sheets and rub them over your clothes, but I personally don’t know how well those work.
How quickly static dissipates from you into the air depends on a lot of things, one of the most important being the humidity. Under the worst of conditions it can take quite some time (tens of minutes) for your body to lose its charge.
Okay, but how big a charge can I keep building up? Sure, it slowly dissipates a tiny bit at a time – but let’s say I keep doing plenty of quick big stuff to counteract that, and then some.
I’m not sure how much you could build up but, a modern Van de Graaff generator can produce up to 5 megavolts. You would have to rub your cat very fast to match that. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say less than 5 megavolts.
If you do things like wear polyester pants and keep moving around and walk on carpet that has been laid over tile you can easily build up a charge of several thousand volts, which is the range you are in if you can actually see a spark when you touch something. At the high end I can’t picture you going much over about 50,000 volts or so.
A lot depends on the humidity. If the humidity is fairly high you won’t even get above a thousand volts no matter how much running around you do in your polyester jump suit.
(or, for that matter, the temperature after 8pm!)