There's a TV show called Mail Call. It has a military type narrator. They were showing a helicopter picking up a piece of artillery. It hovers over the artillery while the ground crew attaches it. He said the first thing the crew has to do is ground the chopper to eliminate the static electricity buildup. The rotor blades can pickup 50,000 volts according to the story.
There are lots of ways of picking up a static charge. Car's famously do it, and people hang a carbon-loaded rubber strip on the back bumper to avoid getting a shock when they got out of a car.
Check out a Wimshurst machine sometime.
I don't think aluminium oxide burns very well.
It was aluminized pigment paint with iron-oxide (?primer)... thermite in combination. Instead of pale flame, it got really bright.
A long, long time ago, yes.
These days, the tires have carbon or other conductive additives.
onsdag den 8. februar 2023 kl. 18.46.14 UTC+1 skrev Robert Roland:
tires have had carbon black added for 100+ years ...
Car tyres have been loaded with 25% carbon black pretty much forever.
Some modern tyres replace this with finely divided silica - for less rolling resistance - and that can make electrostatic charging worse.
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