Static electricity shows attraction and repulsion: the forces obey the inverse square law, the force being inversely proportional to the square of the distance.
Electrostatic charges can accumulate on the outside of insulators, but the charges cannot move freely over the surface, or through the insulators.
A charge which exists on an object is called a static charge because it does not move, but it is still capable of moving if a path is available.
Static electricity is most easily generated by friction, but it may also be generated by induction with an electrophorus which has been charged by friction.
An electrostatic charge may be induced in conducting material: this is the basis of the operation of the electrophorus, an early electrostatic device.
Objects like a balloon, comb, and other common objects made from insulating materials can be charged, simply by rubbing them against another insulator.
A Leyden jar was an early form of capacitor, a device for holding static charge and allowing crude experiments on the flow of brief currents.
A capacitor can be used to store a static charge and the capacitance of a capacitor depends on the dielectric of the medium separating the two charges.
Lightning is caused by the build-up of static charge, it carries a great deal of energy, and it has good and bad effects, fixing nitrogen and starting fires
Lightning is a form of static electricity, and thunder is caused by air being heated and expanding suddenly along the flash when the charge breaks down.
A Faraday cage is a metal screen that can protect somebody from lightning because it isolates them from charge on the outside. The cages also block radio waves.
In 1660 Otto von Guericke developed an electrostatic machine to generate charge. It was made by charging a ball of sulfur with static electricity.
In 1675, Jean Picard was carrying a barometer through the darkened streets of Paris, when he noticed a faint glow in the empty space above the mercury.
In 1702 Francis Hauksbee noticed rarefied air glows during an electrical discharge through a vacuum, and showed this to the Royal Society the following year.
In 1729, Stephen Gray used string to send an electrostatic signal in a barn, over a distance of 293 feet along a fine thread, the first telegraph.
In 1746 Abbé Nollet showed that electricity travels at an apparently instantaneous speed around a mile-circumference circle of monks, linked to a Leyden jar.
In 1775, a Royal Navy gunpowder magazine suffered a lightning strike at Purfleet in England, in spite of the fact that it was fitted with lightning rods.
We know now that static charge accumulates better at the point of a lightning rod, but the Purfleet strike was used to claim that knobby ends were better.
In 1785, Charles Coulomb showed that electrostatic repulsion and attraction are related to the product of the charges and the inverse square of the distance.
If Benjamin Franklin ever flew a kite in a thunderstorm to attract lightning, he did so in 1749: he certainly wrote about doing so in that year, and in 1752.
The next person to fly a kite in a thunderstorm after Franklin published his account was killed. Sometimes, a thought experiment or a better design is needed.