On a dry day, your hair flies apart when you brush it. How would you explain this?

Question

Accepted Answer

Welcome back, everyone. We have a true or false example. Our statement given says that on a dry day, combing your hair with a comb makes it fly apart due to the hair strands having similar charges that repel each other. So let's visualize a stick figure person with hair, we'll draw curly hair on them. And if we take a comb and are combing this person's hair on a day where we have lots of sun and low humidity. So we have ultimately dry conditions. So a dry climate as we further comb this person's hair, their hair is going to go from being frizzy and curly to more straight and defined. However, once the strands are straightened out, they're more close together. And within this dry conditions, we would have an a requirement of electrons to the hair. So as electrons are being required by our hair strands, the comb is going to then gain a opposite charge. So a positive charge and due to the fact that our hair strands that are straight end will now have similar charges being electro or negative charges based on the acquiring of electrons, we're going to recall that like charges rappel. And so as a result, and will draw an arrow to the other side of the head as a result, our straight strands of hair are now going to stick out as they're repelling one another due to again, their similar negative charge from the acquiring of electrons. And so because our hair strands repel one another, we can attribute this to our force as the electrostatic force, which is responsible for this entire phenomenon. And so as a result, based on what we've outlined the statement on a dry day, combing your hair with the corn comb makes it fly apart due to the hair strands having similar charges that repel each other, we would confirm is actually a true statement since it accurately aligns with the example that we outlined. So ultimately, I hope this made sense true is our final answer and I'll see everyone in the next practice video.

On a dry day, your hair flies apart when you brush it. How would you explain this?

Verified video answer for a similar problem:

Key Concepts

Static Electricity

Friction

Humidity's Role