Why Does Glitter Stick to Everything?
Glitter: use it for even the most modest of arts and crafts projects and days later you're still finding it stuck in your hair, behind your ear, and all over your clothes.
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Ahh... glitter. It's great stuff, you use it for one art project and suddenly it's everywhere! It's on your clothes, in your hair clinging onto your arms. And just when you think you've finally cleaned it up You find a little more, stuck somewhere. So how and why, are these tiny shimmery plastic particles so sticky? Well turns out it's probably a combination of a couple of different factors. Like static electricity, and good old-fashioned Van der Waals' forces. Van der Waals' forces are weak electrostatic forces between uncharged molecules. They're why water forms droplets, why geckos can run up walls, and why tape is sticky. See, even though a piece of glitter looks like a tiny flat disc, to us, all surfaces have microscopic bumps. So t...
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Ahh... glitter. It's great stuff, you use it for one art project and suddenly it's everywhere! It's on your clothes, in your hair clinging onto your arms. And just when you think you've finally cleaned it up You find a little more, stuck somewhere. So how and why, are these tiny shimmery plastic particles so sticky? Well turns out it's probably a combination of a couple of different factors. Like static electricity, and good old-fashioned Van der Waals' forces. Van der Waals' forces are weak electrostatic forces between uncharged molecules. They're why water forms droplets, why geckos can run up walls, and why tape is sticky. See, even though a piece of glitter looks like a tiny flat disc, to us, all surfaces have microscopic bumps. So t...
