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2024-11-11

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We Finally Know What Creates Static Electricity, After Thousands of Years (www.sciencealert.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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We finally have an answer: The beginning and the end of the sliding motion that produces static electricity experience different forces – resulting in a charge differential between the front and the back that results in the crackle of static electricity.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Maybe I went to bad schools, maybe my country has a dysfunctional education system, but I suspect the matter is widespread because it's way easier to teach factual information rather than dive into the nuances of how confident we are about our explanations.

Some reductive examples: Pluto is / is not a planet, wings work because the path air takes is longer than on the other side, the cause for this war was xyz, you can't subtract below 0 (that's at a very early age of course), this philosopher thought X.

Oh I guess a CRUCIAL one is how most teachers are horribly unfit to answer "Why should I care about this?", but that's beside the point, in a way.