Re: electrostatic charging via condensation?!

[Chuck Britton <britton@odie.ncssm.edu>]

As usual, Bill brings to us the everyday reality and questions of physics

> Here's something I received recently:
>
> > wrestled with this idea for years. Ever since the day I was standing on
> > a rubber mat degreasing air craft parts. The freon in the tank was hot.
> > There were refrigerated coils around the top of the tank to condense the
> > freon vapors and return the liquid to the tank. As I placed my left hand
> > into the tank, torrents of freon condensed on and ran off my hand. As
> > long as the left hand was in the freon vapors a small spark steadily
> > jumped from my right fore finger to the tank.
>
> More at :
> http://members.tripod.com/~LYNN_MILLS/index-2.html    Lynn Mills
>
> This is a very strange phenomenon.  Condensation is not known to cause
> electrostatic charging!

But I think we might want to take a look at the EVAPORATION process for a
bit. We know that the  earth has a reasonably high density of negative
charge on it's surface (repenished by the thunderstorms and their very
interesting but poorly understood mechanisms).

Whitecaps on the ocean and spray from waterfalls sends substantial numbers
of negative ions into the air. (The surface charge concentrates on the tip
of the whitecap etc.)

Might evaporation from a more quiescent surface ALSO carry these negative
ions into the atmosphere??

I've never seen any reference to such, but it seems plausible.

It's no accident that stressed		Chuck Britton
spelled backwards is desserts.		britton@odie.ncssm.edu