if u get alot i mean alot of static electricty in ur hair and u rub ur hair on the ceiling would you stick?

Question

yes or no and please explane

Answer 1

Yes and No.

Yes, it is possible in theory.
No, it is not possible in practicality.

Gravity is pulling you down toward the Earth with a given force (called your "weight"). In order to stick to the ceiling, you would need an electrostatic force pulling up on you with, at the bare minimum, an equal magnitude as your weight.
This is entirely possible to achieve....not to mention, the electrostatic force is several order of magnitude stronger than the gravitational force which makes it easier.

However....in order to achieve this very sizable upward force, you would need to build up a very significant charge on your body in order to induce the opposite charge on the wall and thereby stick.
In order to build up such a huge charge, you would need to have a pretty big electrical potential between your hair and the ground...and with this comes the risk of electrical shock, discharging what charge you have and possibly causing injury.

It is clear that, in principle at least, it is possible....after all, one can achieve a similar effect by charging up a rubber balloon and sticking it to the ceiling. But a rubber balloon is very light and a good insulator, the human body is several orders of magnitude more massive and thus would need several orders or magnitude more charge.

So, no, your not going to be able to do this in a practical sense.

Answer 2

An interesting question!

I will generalize it a little bit because a number of answers are wrong concerning electricity and its behavior with respect to gravity and mass. Electric charge exerts a force on other electric charges which is proportional to the amount of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Opposite electric charges attract while like charges repel. When your hair gets a static charge on it, it can stand up on end because the like charges on each strand of hair are repelling each other and the hair is acting as an insulator so the charges stay confined to the hair.

In order to support your weight, the force exerted by charges in your body (I will assume your whole body is charged up since if only your hair acted to hold your weight it would be quite painful!) must cancel the force exerted by gravity on the mass in your body. Knowing your mass, we can come up with the amount of charge that would be needed to make your body stick to a perfect insulator (not sure that the ceiling would be good enough insulator...anything you touch while charged will tend to bleed off the charge and you will no longer stick to it). Equations are:

Coulomb's Law: F = kq1q2/r² where k = 1/4πε and ε= permittivity of free space. We will assume free space or air is between you and the oppositely charged object that is attracting you just to simplify things. In metric units, k = 9 x 10^9 N m²/C².

Gravitational force: W = mg At the Earth's surface, g = 9.81 m/s² and m is mass in kg while W is force in Newtons (N). A 100 lb person would be approximately 408 N, and I will use that for this example.

To make a 100 lb person (408 N) stick or float in free space (assuming charges don't bleed off of the person in an arc), the following would need to be true:

F = kq1q2/r² = 408 N

Lets assume that the distance between the person and the ceiling (again, ceiling is assumed a perfect insulator like glass...he he, there is a glass ceiling in this answer) is very small, perhaps 0.01m (1 cm). Lets assume that on the other side of the ceiling is a metal plate that is charged positively and it represents q2 while the person is charged an equal amount negatively by q1. Let q = q1 = -q2, the equation becomes:

9 x 10^9 N m²/C² * q * q / (0.01 m)² = 408 N
Solving for q: q = 2.13 x 10^-5 Coulombs.
Since the charge of an electron is 1.6 x 10^-19 C, this amount of charge is equivalent to 133,072,661,855,594 electrons!!

The person could defy gravity with this much charge on them that close to an oppositely charged object, but watch out for the doorknobs!!!

Answer 3

In theory, yes it is possible.

Static cling is caused by a buildup of electrons on one substance and the absence of eletrons on the other. The electon side is negatively charged an the other side is positively charged. The electrons are attracted to the positively charged side (the ceiling)

Of course, there's real-world forces that prevent this sort of thing from actually happeneing. It would require a tremendous buildup of static charge on your body to overcome the gravitational force pulling you down.

The force for gravitational accelleration (the downward force) is F= ma
F is the force exerted on your body. 'm' is the mass of your body, and 'a' is the gravitational acceleration constant, which is 9.81m/s^2

Therefore, the force on your body (assuming you weigh 100Kg) is
F = (100Kg)(9.81m/s^2)
F = 981 Kg m / s^2 or 981 Newtons

The force from static cling, using Coulombs law is:
F = (k)(q1)(q2)/r^2
F is the force of the static cling,
'k' is the physical constant equal to 8.99x10^9 Nm^2/C^2
'q1' is the positive charge
'q2' is the negative charge
'r' is the distance between the two surfaces.

Let's assume that q1 and q2 are equally opposite charges. Therefore, q1 = q2. Let's also assume that you have a material that is infinitely resistive (no electrons can jump across to the other side) that is .01m thick.

Solving for q, we get this equation:
q = sqrt(F(r^2)/k)
q = sqrt(981N(.0001 sq m)/8.99x10^9N m^2 / C^2)
q = sqrt((.0981N m^2)/8.99x10^9N m^2 /C^2)
q = sqrt((.0981)/8.99x10^9)C
q = sqrt(1.09121x10^-11)C
q = 3.30335x10^-6 C
q = 3.3 Micro Coulombs!

That is a tremendous amount of energy to build up on your head (and the ceiling), but it is possible to do so.

In all likelihood, you would probably discharge the static electricity to ground and kill yourself in the process. Electricity in small doses can be fun but it can be very very dangerous when dealing with large amounts like that...

Answer 4

No, your hair is unable to support your weight by so flimsy a bond as static electricity. Sometimes I'll get a balloon or something staticky and stick it to the ceiling, but even flicking it will knock it off the wall.
However, assuming it was a short ceiling or if it was the wall, your hair itself would stick to the wall. It just would be unable to support your weight.

Answer 5

I dont think you could. I think the human body is too heavy. I dont know if you could build up enough static electricity to hold the body to anything.

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Answer 6

Congratulations. You have won the George W. Bush Award for the most brainless question of the day.

Answer 7

no, because static electricity isn't strong enough to hold over 100 pounds off the ground. Even if you could generate enough to (in theory) hold someone up, it would just end up shocking them instead of holding them up.

Answer 8

ummm no, for one because it would be really hard to get that much static electricity in your hair, but even if you could, gravity will not allow it, matter weighs more than electricity, that kind anyway

Answer 9

Yeah that would probably kill you. How many volts are in a shock you get when you touch a door knob? It would be that times a few thousand I'm guessing.

Answer 10

No you wouldn't stick. Even if it were POSSIBLE to get that much of a charge built up, you would vaporize.