A tiny worm that leaps high into the air — up to 25 times its body length — to attach to flying insects uses static electricity to perform this astounding feat, scientists have found.

Static electricity often just seems like an everyday annoyance when a wool sweater crackles as you pull it off, or when a doorknob delivers an unexpected zap. Regardless, the phenomenon is much more ...

The paper, recently published in the journal PNAS, found that roundworms can use static electricity to leap up to 25 times ...

James Gibert, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and Hongcheng Tao, postdoctoral researcher, observe their test apparatus as it generates an electric charge by rubbing two surfaces ...

Static electricity—specifically the triboelectric effect, aka contact electrification—is ubiquitous in our daily lives, found in such things as a balloon rubbed against one’s hair or styrofoam packing ...

But new research shows there’s another force working to their advantage: static electricity. At human scale, static electricity is little more than a curiosity. You walk across the carpet, friction ...

Rubbing two balloons together leads George to a shocking discovery. If you rub two identical balloons together, they both pick up a static charge. This strange and unexpected behavior has been ...