Triboelectric Charging

The Triboelectric Charging Concept Builder engages the learner in an investigation of what happens when two objects are rubbed together. The connection between the relative affinity for electrons of two or more materials and the charge that they acquire when rubbed with one another is explored. There are 33 total questions that are organized into 16 different Question Groups and spread across three Activities. The three activities include What's the Charge?, Triboelectric Series, and Rank the Materials. Activity 1 - What's the Charge? challenges learners to predict the type of charge two materials would acquire when rubbed together. In Activity 2 -Triboelectric Series, learners use observations about what happens when an unknown material is rubbed with two or three known materials in order to place the unknown material in the proper area of a triboelectric series. And in Activity 3 - Rank the Materials, learners use observations of charge acquired by three or four materials when rubbed together in order to rank the materials on a triboelectric series. Question-specific help is provided for each of the 16 situations. Use of this Concept Builder with our Task Tracker system allows teachers to track student progress.