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We've been having great results with our HOD experiments, but when we came to the carpet shuffling one (Unit 8 Day 5) we didn't have any sparks. Then Unit 9 Day 3 we (surprisingly) had absolutely no balloons in the house.
That night I was taking laundry out of the dryer, and it happened to be 2 large tablecloths. I also happened to have forgotten the fabric softener, so there was MUCH static. Lightbulb moment! My girls had just gone to bed but were not yet asleep in their dark room. I went in with the tablecloths, and as we pulled them apart we had a really cool display of sparks!
Just thought of that again today and thought I'd share.

threegreatkids,

How wonderful! See, now if the other experiments would have worked for you, you'd have missed this terrific teachable moment.

What a great idea!

Blessings,
Carrie

Thanks! I need to do that experiment tomorrow and realized tonight that I have NO balloons! You are the official HODie Super Hero of the Day!

Thanks for the idea! Our electricity experiment with the balloons didn't produce sparks either a few weeks ago, but I think I will pull some laundry out of the dryer and let DS see the sparks now -- wish I had thought of it at the time!

I tried everything! No sparks. We are a spark-less house. LOL. I don't know what could be the cause of that. So instead we wrote down why we thought we couldn't produce sparks.

Is it because our house is all tile and no carpet?

Is it because we wear pretty much all cotton due to allergies?

Is it our low humidity?

We have no clue but we still had fun trying. Then Dad pulled out his science kit from school and showed us sparks.

I told the children to be on the look-out for aberrant sparks. You never know....

Daisy did you try turning out the light in the garage and rubbing it fast on your hair then pulling away. That worked for us. We could only see it in the complete darkness. You have to rub hard. We do not have carpet and it is humid here too. It took a little work but we got it to happen. It was worth it.

Hope others have good results, too! We are an extremely static-y family...always shocking one another. We live in a northern climate and have been running heat since late September, so that helps. We are so static-y that I always heed the recommendation at the gas station to discharge electricity by touching the metal on the car. That is the kind of "experiment" I'd rather avoid!
Daisy, if you weren't on the opposite side of the country I'd invite you to come share our sparks and perhaps discharge a bit of our static Sounds like we're opposites in this regard.

We were doing this experiment today and could not get sparks on the carpet either. We have a plastic slide inside that generates alot of static so the sparks really started flying then! Some people do have more of a charge too. My 9 yo has alot of charge so she made alot of sparks for us (she can even zap out small electrical devices!)

We are a sparkless family too. Texas here. So when we did this experiment a couple of weeks ago...no luck . We also tried the drier...no luck . So we just talked about it and tried all kinds of shocking techniques. Then ureka! This past week we had our first really cold weather and we're shocking each other like crazy. You know what the best part is? Every time we shock each other we lovingly say, "Hey, Benjamin Franklin." They won't ever forget that !

3musketeers wrote:Every time we shock each other we lovingly say, "Hey, Benjamin Franklin." They won't ever forget that !

Hahaha! That is so funny. At least they get the point.