Jonathan McRae

Into the air?

Is it like air molecules strip off ions here and there?

Or how does it become negatively charged or neutrally charged?

And so that is essentially sort of electrons sort of spreading and thinning out until their charge is almost unrecognizable or unmeasurable.

So what about the materials themselves?

Because like there are some materials that are super prone to static electricity, like balloons and hair, for example.

Surely there's something in the material of rubber or of hair that makes them more prone to being charged or discharged?

Right, and so by rubbing these materials together, what's happening?

So if you think of rubber, it doesn't really, the surface of a balloon, for example, that doesn't hold charge very well?

Why...

Do we not know this?

I mean, electricity is something that obviously is super useful, very well studied.

We use it in all sorts of things.

We research 2D materials and the transfer of electricity.

We study piezoelectricity to see if fabrics can generate and store electricity.

Why do we not know how static electricity works?

So tell me about your research and why understanding this might be useful.

Right.

And so talk to me about what you were doing, because you were using a technique called acoustic levitation to levitate a sphere of oxide in the air.

Can you talk me through that?