How are electrical charge and static electricity related?
When charge is stored on the surface of an insulator or on an isolated conducting body, that is static electricity. Rub a balloon on your hair, and some electrons get pulled off your hair and get stuck on the insulating surface of the balloon. That is a static (non moving) charge. Because the surface is an insulator, there is no way the charge can even out across the surface, and can be quite clumpy. Now, if you brush that balloon against a conductive object that is supported by insulating means (a metal ball on a plastic handle, for instance) some of the charge on the balloon will jump over to this object and give it a static charge, but, since the object is conductive, that charge will spread out all over the surface in a way that minimizes its total energy. Clumped up charge has higher energy than evenly spread out charge. The balloon can transfer charge only from the spot that is close to something, but the conductive object can transfer charge from all over it, since it can crawl
