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  • Our STEM projects are designed so that participants get it wrong before they get it right. You will observe your students struggling as they attempt to create their own STEM projects. This process is an empowering experience, building perseverance, frustration tolerance and growing overall confidence! With your support, students will step out of their comfort zones to think, build and problem-solve for themselves.
  • Productive Struggle Opportunities
    -Tracing
    -Cutting
    -Taping

In this Rosie Labs guide you will find:

  • Productive struggle opportunities for students during their project build,
  • Lesson objectives and concept overview,
  • Optional STEM topic video to share with participants,
  • Step-by-step instructions and video of the Rosie Riveters’ Static Electric Dancers Project,
  • Optional STEM activities to further explore the objectives and concepts used in the project build.


Objective

Provide students with a basic understanding of atoms and how their particles interact with each other to create electricity. 

Concept Overview and Experiment Inspiration

Have you ever gotten a “shock” while walking or running in your socks or watched someone’s hair fly up in the air when it’s rubbed against a balloon? If you have, you’ve seen, or felt, static electricity in action!

Absolutely everything in the whole wide world is made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of three types of particles called protons, neutrons and electrons. Each particle carries what is called a charge. Protons are positive (+), and electrons are negative (-). The really cool thing about these particles is that when they interact with each other they do some interesting things. Similar to the poles of a magnet, like particles (+, + or -, -) repel each other (push away) and opposite particles (+, -) attract each other (come together).

If you look closely at the atom diagram below, you’ll notice that the number of protons and electrons is equal. This is because their positive (+) and negative (-) charges attract each other, which helps to stabilize (balance) the atom. When just one particle is out of balance things start to get really interesting. Some may even say ELECTRIFYING!

Atom Model

When your socks rub against a carpet or a balloon rubs against a head of hair, some of the electrons in an atom to break away to create an imbalance. So when there is an imbalance of protons and electrons between your sock and your skin, you will feel a little shock! For the head of hair, the same charges cause hair to stand up straight and repel away from each other.

This powerful phenomenon that happens in the imbalance between protons and electrons can also be used to make tissue paper dance and fly! Use the instructions below to make a Static Electric Dancer!

Science Goals

  • Atoms are the building blocks of all matter
  • Atoms contain particles that have positive, negative or neutral electrical charges
  • Static Electricity is the transfer of an electron from a negatively charged object to a positively charged object in an electric field.

Vocabulary

Atoms – tiny particles that are the building blocks of all matter. Atoms are made up of particles with electric charges called electrons, protons and neutrons
Static Electricity– the build-up of an electric charge on the surface of an objects that is the result of an imbalance between electric charges in atoms.
Proton – a particle with a positive charge (+)
Electron – a particle with a negative charge (-)

Required Materials

  • tissue paper
  • tape
  • scissors
  • cardboard sheet or plate
  • balloon
  • pen, pencil, or other writing tools
  • butterfly or snake template

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1

Use the template to trace the image of a snake/butterfly or create your own design.

Here is a template you can use: Butterfly and Snake Printouts

Step 2

Cut out your design.

Step 3

Tape the end/edge of your design to the carboard sheet (Ex. The end of the snake’s tail or the where the butterfly’s wings attach to its body)

Step 4

Inflate and tie your balloon. Rub the balloon along carpet, wool, or hair to build up electrons.

Step 5

Place the charged balloon near your creation and watch it dance/fly.

Optional STEM Activities

Resource 1

Grab a packing peanut can and a balloon to see the “power” of static electricity in action!

  • First, blow up the balloon up and tie it off.
  • Next, Rub the balloon along the carpet. This will loosen up the electrons from the carpet and give your balloon a negative charge. The extra electrons on the balloon from the carpet aren’t moving they are “static”. To move them you need place them near something they can attract to (protons) in this case the packing peanut can.
  • The attraction between the electrons and protons pulls the packing peanut toward the balloon!

Resource 2

Static Electric Clean up!

Use a pen and small scraps of paper (small circles made from a hole puncher) to experiment with the transfer of electrons! Rub the pen on a sweater or a carpet and attempt to “pick up” the small bits of paper.