Re: Why do some people have servere problems with static electricity than other

Hi Vicki!

The same problem has happened to me before, but only when I picked up plastic grocery bags. The plastic bags had become electrified because they rubbed on the car seat surface (or perhaps they rubbed on my leg as I was carrying them.) Such a thing can even happen in Florida as long as the relative humidity is below 50% or so.

But it was the grocery bags that became electrically charged, so why did *I* feel the spark? Good question. This occurrence is called ELECTRIFICATION BY INDUCTION. If I should hold a charged object against my body (or even just hold it nearby), that object will attract opposite charges in my body. As a result, the rest of my body will be left with excess charge, and if I touch a conductive object such as a person or a metal car, a spark will jump and I will feel a "zap."

Detailed description: suppose the plastic bag sits on the car seat and becomes positively charged. Human bodies are electrically balanced: they are filled with equal quantities of positive and negative charges. When you pick up that bag, the positive charge on the bag will pull upon the negative charges in your body and cause them to move towards the bag. There is now a negatively charged region on the surface of your body adjacent to the charged grocery bag. But the rest of your body is missing some negative charges now, and so the grocery bag has "induced" a separation of charge in your body. "Charging by induction".

If your grocery bags are paper, not plastic, then I don't have a good explanation. Paper is slightly conductive, and therefor a paper bag won't become charged up from rubbing on the car seat (the charges leak back together as fast as they get separated.) Perhaps you became electrically charged when you left your car? There is some info about this on my website, including a bit about people who seem to become electrically charged even when they haven't been rubbing against anything.

CAR DOOR SPARKS AND CHARGED-UP PEOPLE

STATIC ELECTRICITY PAGE