Static Electricity

 At 8:30 this morning I was checking my email when Maya texted me: "Static electricity question: when two objects are rubbed together, which one gains electrons, and which one loses electrons? Is there a way to know in advance which will happen?"

I was stumped, and replied, "The short answer is: I don't know." 

But why didn't I know? This is elementary-school science as well as a party trick. Rubbing balloons on one's sweater to hang them on the wall as decorations, shuffling on a carpeted floor and extending one's hand to an unwitting victim, picking up little bits of paper with a charged plastic pen barrel... Phenomena like these have been observed for ages, so why is that the limit of my knowledge?

I had a vague memory of having thought about this before, but the thought obviously fled. I was sitting at my laptop, though, so I pursued it. I found a Wikipedia article on Triboelectric Effect, a term I never encountered before, but which refers to static electricity by rubbing. It contained some lists, called triboelectric series, of materials that tend to become more or less charged, both positively and negatively, but those lists were inconsistent. It linked to a 2019 paper from the publication Nature Communications that offered material scientists a reproducible mechanism for creating a standard series. Relying in that way on experiment instead of some well-understood law suggested to me that we still don't really understand this! That's pretty astonishing after millennia (literally) of observation. If all we have is empirical lists that means it is unpredictable... unpredictable in the sense that we cannot - in Maya's words - "know in advance which will happen."

I found another 2019 paper, this one in Nature Reviews: Chemistry, titled "Long-standing and unresolved issues in triboelectric charging." The authors explicitly discuss the problems of a field and a phenomenon which has been so well known for so long, and yet which remains poorly understood. I'll let their opening paragraph speak for itself:

Nearly a century ago, Peter Shaw remarked in an article on triboelectric charging that “This class of research is simple-seeming. But those who have spent time on the subject will allow that it is very baffling; those who have not done so will at least remember that despite great efforts by physicists the subject has not yet passed the pioneer stage”. Since this article appeared, the work of several generations of determined scientists has left the subject only slightly better understood, and this modest progress is countered by the emergence of new baffling behaviours. Indeed, as Mark Twain famously described in a different context, researchers have “thrown much darkness on this subject, and it is probable that, if they continue, we shall soon know nothing at all about it.”

I'll give you a moment to chuckle. 

Among the anomalies they mention:

• Identical materials be rubbed together to produce opposite electric charges
• Items with the same charge can be made to attract
• Objects' relative position in the series changes when their shape changes
• Different methods of creating series yield different series

I find this confusion exciting. Physicists who study elementary particles love to talk about a "theory of everything," as if one more generation of more powerful accelerators will answer all our questions. But in the real world everything is much more complex. I have always preferred the view of the British biologist J.B.S. Haldane who wrote: "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." [emphasis mine] The authors of the paper on unresolved issues agree with me and I will let them have the last words:

We find that the simple game of rubbing a balloon on one’s hair provides delight on different levels. A child is delighted by the surprising tendency of the charged balloon to stick to a wall. As scientists, we are delighted by the surprise that this simple game may defy precise measurement, and, perhaps, the charging of a balloon cannot be precisely measured.

[Again, emphasis mine.] 

Florida Man... Again

On Saturday the NAACP issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida. Their press release explained it saying it “comes in direct response to Governor Ron DeSantis' aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools” and adds, “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.” 

The warning followed similar statements by other civil rights groups. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a predominantly Mexican-American group issued its travel advisory last Wednesday because of new anti-immigrant Florida laws. These new laws make it illegal for immigrants with inadequate documentation to drive in Florida with legally-issued out-of-state licenses. They make it a felony for the rest of us to transport such immigrants in our own vehicles. And they require hospitals that accept Medicaid to question patients about their immigration status.

Equality Florida, which supports the rights of LGBTQ people, issued its own travel advisory back in April. Last week they reaffirmed it, citing four bills signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in one day, which they call “the slate of hate.” The bills expand the scope of Florida’s “Don’t-Say-Gay” law; outlaw gender-affirming treatment for minors, even with parental approval; bar transgender people from using appropriate rest rooms; and ban drag performance in front of children. 

Sponsors of Pride Week events in Florida are already concerned about Equality Florida’s travel warning. They fear it will mean a loss of tourist revenue to their businesses and are calling instead for LGBTQ people to “flood the state” with their presence. Tourism in Florida is a $40 billion a year industry. But the truth is that the new anti-gay laws are themselves a threat to Pride celebrations. Port St. Lucie already had to cancel its Pride Parade because there was no way to prevent children in attendance from seeing marchers in drag. Orlando has the biggest one-day Pride event in the state, which brings in 200,000 people and $25 million in tourist spending. But it, too, is trying to figure out the legal repercussions of participants in drag.

And Florida’s agriculture industry is facing problems from its anti-immigrant laws that have nothing to do with a LULAC travel warning. Immigrant workers are already leaving the state ahead of the enforcement of the new anti-immigrant laws. Others are considering the move. The state itself realizes that its $7.4 billion farm sector is dependent on immigrants. It is a low-wage sector with difficult and dangerous working conditions and - even before the passage of these new laws - was having difficulty recruiting workers.

Most of Florida’s 100,000 farm workers are seasonal or migratory. Roughly half of them are now working on H2A visas. These visas, specifically designed for so-called “unskilled” workers are explicitly temporary, typically no more than a few months. As a result, many H2A holders overstay their visas and are therefore technically “undocumented.” Growers all over the country are desperately trying to extend the H2A program, which would allow workers to stay longer. Their bill, which already passed the House of Representatives, is stuck in the Senate, because they don’t want it to include any protections for workers’ rights. The Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act of 1983 doesn’t currently cover H2A visa holders. But a number of senators are rejecting a law that would create a class of permanent residents with no legal rights. Growers who watch their language say that extending MSPA to H2A holders would open them up to a flood of “frivolous lawsuits. But those who are more candid say they’re afraid their workers will form unions.

But let’s return to the NAACP and its concern with Florida’s new laws that ban the teaching of history. Yesterday, Texas Senator Ted Cruz responded to the NAACP’s travel warning with this tweet:

This is bizarre. And utterly dishonest. 

In the 1950s & 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinary good helping lead the civil rights movement. 

Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way.

I will leave aside the irony of Senator Cruz describing anything (or anyone) as “bizarre” and “dishonest.” Instead I will simply share some of the history that Florida’s new laws make it illegal to teach.

In July of 1963 the St. Augustine, Florida NAACP Youth Council organized a sit-in at the local Woolworth’s lunch counter. I say “sit in” but what the youth did was go to the counter - like any other customers - to order a burger and a Coke. The wait staff told them repeatedly that “We don’t serve n——“ and that they would be arrested if they didn’t leave. The police did arrest all of them. Twelve youths who were 18 or older were all released on bond. But the four minors, Audrey Neil Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Willie Carl Singleton, and Samuel White, were told that they would be locked up unless they testified that they were coerced into participating by the local NAACP chapter head, Dr. Robert Hayling. The four begged their parents not to go along with this trick, which would have opened Dr. Hayling to a felony conviction for endangering the welfare of children. As a result of their courage, they were sent to “reform school.”

I put that phrase in scare quotes because the Florida School for Girls and the Florida School for Boys were notorious, violent labor camps. The School for Boys was known for beatings, rapes, torture, and murder of its “students” by the adult staff. A 2014 survey by forensic anthropologists discovered 55 unmarked graves away from the institution’s cemetery. They documented at least 100 deaths. Willie Carl Singleton later served in Vietnam and passed in 1989 at the age of 41 Samuel White lived to the age of 58. But to their dying days, neither ever told anyone about their experiences  at that “School for Boys.” JoeAnn Anderson remembered her mom visiting at the School for Girls and crying to see her knees bleeding from the time she spent scrubbing floors. She also remembered her arrest by Deputy Everett Haney. He told a another deputy,“You know what? If we kill these two n—s and say they tried to escape … nothing would be said.” The children were eventually released six months later, but only after an international campaign of outrage about their treatment.

And the NAACP chairman, Dr. Hayling? A few weeks later he and three other men were kidnapped by the Ku Klux Klan and brought to a large rally and cross burning outside the city. They were beaten almost to death and then stacked up to be burned themselves. The Florida State Police rescued them from burning, but Dr. Hayling was arrested. He was charged - and convicted! - for assaulting the mob of Klansmen! 

The following year there was another episode that led to international outrage. This time the owner of the Monson Motor Lodge poured a gallon of acid into the motel’s swimming pool because Black people were swimming in it. And, unlike the beating and near-burning of Dr. Hayling, this was done in daylight with journalists present. And it, too, like the imprisonment of the four teens, caused an international outrage.

Perhaps the retrospective honor that Ted Cruz pays to the NAACP of the sixties is due to Executive Director Roy Wilkins threatening to take away the St. Augustine chapter’s charter. Dr. Hayling told him over the phone that he would put the charter right into the mail, but would not back down from the white supremacists. Dr. Martin Luther King, though, was a supporter, both of Dr. Hayling and of the St. Augustine Four. While she was incarcerated he wrote Audrey Neil Edwards, praising her as a warrior.

But I think Ted Cruz is just “utterly dishonest.” He aligns himself with Klansmen and racists today. In what alternate universe would he have done anything else in 1963 and 1964?