“哦，你电到我啦!”这是这个干燥的季节里常听到的一句话。大家都知道这是静电的作用。“电(Electricity )”已经成为现代生活中不可缺少的能源之一。电灯、电话、电脑、电冰箱……带电的东西简直不胜枚举，可是你知道静电（static electricity）是谁最先发现的吗，为什么电的英文是Electricity，是谁为这种看不见摸不到却让人感到麻麻的东西起的名字？

Perhaps you've gotten a shock from touching¹ a doorknob after walking on a carpet. You might even have seen a spark jump. These activities result from static electricity. .If you rub a comb on a piece of cloth, you'll find that scraps² of paper will stick to the comb afterwards. If you have ever tried this, you have repeated an experiment done by Thales about 600B, and C.E and Gilbert in 1570.They both saw the effects of static electricity. Thales, a Greek,, was one of the first to describe what happened when amber³ was rubbed with a bit of wool. Later, British scientist William Gillbert repeated and expanded on the experiment. He named the effects electricity after the Greek word for amber, elektron.

amber: 琥珀