We thought a lot about static electricity, how it can be generated and how it can be used today in the Lab. We rubbed drinking straws with a soft cloth and then balanced them on top of bottles. Can you guess what happened when we moved our hands towards the straw (without touching it!)? Then we rubbed balloons on the same soft cloths and used the static electricity to make an empty drinks can move. After perfecting our driving skills, we raced against each other! At the end, we used the van der Graaf generator to see if we could makes sparks fly…we certainly ended up with some hair-raising results!