Question

Can hair rubbed on air make static energy ?

Answer 1

We know static energy is an imbalance or disparity of electric charges on the surface of the material or within the surface of a material. By practical knowledge you have known from a long time that we can produce static electricity simply by rubbing our hands.

Complete answer:
By examining what happens, we observe that the rubbing of the objects creates negative charges, known as electrons ${e^{ - 1}}$. You have observed that when hair is rubbed with hair it does not produce any charge but if the same hair we rub with the hair comb, it produces static electricity.

Lets understand what happens: When we rub our hair with the comb, we transfer electrons from the hair to comb, and thus the comb becomes negative in charge and the hair acquires a positive charge, and as we know there is an electrostatic force of attraction between the positive and the negative charges and thus our hair rises towards the comb and follows its directions. So, here we observe that our hair rubbed with any object produces static energy but when it is rubbed in air, it does not produce static energy. We would always need at least an object to produce static.

Note: We can define static electricity in another way, that is the separation of the charge due to any event which causes the collection of effects, we call it as static energy. We can take another example : when you touch an iron or steel stair support, you experience a shock. This is also a result of producing static between our hand and the steel object.