ZAP! Clothing and Car Seats Collide

Overview

Objectives/Goals The purpose of this experiment is to explore the dangers of static electricity at gasoline fuel pumps. There have been many articles written reporting that electrical sparks caused from common everyday static electricity were causing vapors from the gasoline at the fuel pumps to ignite. The problem occurs when a driver's clothing rubs against the car seat producing a build up of static electricity. When the driver touches the metal fuel pump, a spark can occur causing the vapors to ignite. The experiment conducted tested which type of car seat materials and clothing materials would produce the least amount of static electricity to avoid fuel pump fires and which produced the most static electricity to produce fuel pump fires. Methods/Materials Three types of car seat materials, cloth, leather, and vinyl and five types of clothing materials, wool, cotton, polyester, nylon and silk were tested. Equal sized balloons were rubbed ten times with each of the materials and then observed how strong the static electrical attraction was to each type of car seat. The terms strong, medium, weak or not at all were used to describe the attraction. Results The data supports the hypothesis that polyester clothes combined with vinyl car seat material will create the least amount of static electricity. The data concludes that the lowest frequency of static electricity was produced between the polyester fabric and the vinyl car seat, shown by weak or none at all during the experimental trials. The cotton fabric rubbed on the cloth car seat also showed weak levels of static electricity. 100% wool and 100% silk made the strongest levels of static electricity will all three types of car seats. Conclusions/Discussion According to the data, the vinyl car seats produced the least amount of static electricity with the five fabrics tested. Vinyl is not widely used in making car seats anymore, but a lot of older cars still have vinyl car seats. Leather car seats caused the strongest levels of static electricity with all five fabrics tested. This is a problem since many people choose leather car seats in the newer cars. The data showed that most of the combinations of materials and car seats created a lot of static electicity, which could increase the chance of a spark being produced.

Competition history

• CSEF 2003 Materials Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1120

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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