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Do you wanna see a really cool trick? Watch this!

I'll take this balloon, rub it on my shirt, and gently place it on the wall, and ta-dah! It sticks to the wall! Thank you very much. This balloon sticking trick might seem like magic. But it's not at all. 

The balloon sticks to the wall because of something called static electricity, and static electricity isn't magic, it's science! Do you wanna know how I made the balloon stick? Lets start by talking about opposites.

I bet you already know some words that are opposites. Like, the opposite of day is... that's right, Squeaks, night. And the opposite of up is... right again... down. Well, meet two new opposites. The names of these opposites are positive and negative. An they're special because they attract each other. That means they pull on one another. 

If you've ever played with magnets, then you've already experienced things that attract. When I line up two magnets just so, they pull on, or attract each other. In fact, when move them even closer together, they attract each other so much they stick. Just like the balloon stuck to the wall!

But I didn't see any magnets on my balloon. And that's because there aren't any. The balloon, the wall, and everything else in the universe is made up of tiny little particles. These particles are way too small for us to see. And some of these particles are positive and some of these particles are negative. They're opposites. And guess what? Positive and negative particles attract each other, they pull on each other just like the magnets did. 

Let's look at my balloon a little more closely. Most of the time, there's about the same number of positive and negative particles in any object you think of, like my balloon, or my shirt. But when I rub the balloon on my shirt, the balloon takes some of the negative particles from the shirt. Now the balloon has extra negative particles. And when there's and imbalance of positive and negative particles in things, like when the balloon has more negative particles than positive ones, it's said to create static electricity. 

And when I put the balloon next to the wall, those extra negative particles are attracted to the positive particles in the wall, and the balloon stick to the wall!

At least for a while. Any time two different things rub together, there's a good chance that static electricity will form. Static electricity is what makes your hair stick up when you take off a fuzzy sweater, and it also can give you a shock when you touch something after walking across the carpet, like a doorknob, or another person.

So static electricity isn't magic, it's science, which is also a lot of fun!

Thanks for joining us on SciShow Kids. do you have a question about the world around you? Get some help from a grown up, and let us know in the comments below, or send us an email at kids@scishow.com. We'll see you next time. 

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