Third Place - Contrived Category

Title: A Hairy Situation
Student: Fallon O’Connor-Brooks
School: Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School, Flossmoor, IL
Teacher: Brian Dvorkin

Make someone’s hair stand on end — Is that possible? Not short of scaring them, you say? Well, with physics and a little bit of static electricity, it is possible. As you see, my little sister’s hair is standing on end. This is created by static electricity. Protons have a positive charge, electrons have a negative charge, and neutrons have a neutral charge. Static electricity is created when there is an imbalance of positive and negative charges.

I charged the balloon by rubbing it against my sister’s hair. The balloon picked up extra electrons, which have a negative charge. By holding the balloon near a neutral object — my sister’s hair — I made the charges in that object move. This caused the balloon to stick to the wall, bringing my sister’s hair up along with it.