Scott Waitukaitis

Yeah, so we do a very funny thing, which is we study when identical materials exchange charge.

So at least if you do a balloon and hair, you say, okay, they're different.

Something's different about them.

Therefore, charge should go in one direction.

But what we study is two identical materials.

They're as identical as you can possibly make them, and yet charge still flows between them when they touch, and typically charge flows in one direction.

And this is interesting because in nature, there are a lot of systems of identical materials that collide a lot and get really charged.

So a good example is if you have a dust storm, say in the Sahara, most of those sand particles are quartz.

And yet they collide and bounce and rub all over each other in these sandstorms.

And you can actually have lightning in the sandstorm because they're getting so charged.

The same thing happens in volcanic eruptions.

So you can find beautiful images online of lightning during volcanic eruptions.

Same thing happens on the surface of Mars.

So it was actually just shown a few weeks ago that there's lightning on Mars from Martian dust storms.

And this is interesting, too, because on Earth, it's thought that the first kind of primordial chemicals for life were made from electrostatic discharges.

And so if there is the kind of soup of life on Mars, it's probably because of static electricity.

Yeah.

So we've been recently working with oxides, which are basically some of the most common materials in nature.

So quartz is basically silicon dioxide.

So it's a really nice class of materials to work with because it has a lot of natural relevance.