It’s a small downside of hot, dry weather: static hair that stands up in a Root Gummidge-style halo.
Now a viral TikTok video proposed a simple solution to static frizz that doesn’t require sprays or straighteners. Simply smoothing hair with a piece of aluminum foil appears to produce a sleek silhouette.
Scientists say the trick works through static discharge that builds up on hair after brushing. In hot weather, the humidity in the air is often lower, which means there is less water in the air to conduct the electrical charges away from hair. Fine hair, which lifts more easily, is particularly susceptible to the problem.
“The frizz is caused by static charge,” said Prof Richard Syms, from Imperial College in London. Different hairs will be either positively or negatively charged, meaning that the individual hairs repel each other.
Aluminum is one of the best metal electrical conductors, which means that when it touches the hair, it carries away excess charges.
“Wiping one material against another can transfer charge between them through a process called the triboelectric effect,” Syms said. “In this case, the charges are initially transferred to the tinfoil. The tin foil is a conductor and allows the charges to be carried away.”
From the foil, the charge will be transferred to your hand and down to the floor – unless you’re wearing insulating shoes, so the trick probably works better without wearing rubber-soled boots.
The basic concept of static electricity is that when two objects are rubbed together, electrical charges are transferred from one to the other, leaving one object positively charged and the other negatively charged.
But while rubbing balloons on heads is a staple of the school science fair, the physics of static electricity is surprisingly complicated. It is not easy to predict, for example, which of a few materials will be negatively charged (gain additional electrons) and which will be positively charged (lose electrons).
Laurence Marks, emeritus professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University in the US, and author of a landmark paper on the theory of static electricity, said: “The sources I see on the web indicate that hers is often positive. However, none of them seem to have actually measured it, so it could be an urban myth.”
Using a metal hairbrush can help reduce static in the first place. And if you don’t have any tinfoil handy, another option is to just wait for the effects of static to dissipate naturally over a short period of time. “If you want to see what can actually happen with static electricity, type ‘van de Graaff generator hair’ into Google and look at the images,” Syms said.
