What causes someone to get a static electric shock?
Not many people know what actually causes static shocks, so here’s the explanation: Electrons can be exchanged between materials on contact; materials with weakly bound electrons tend to lose them, while materials with sparsely filled outer shells tend to gain them. This is known as the triboelectric effect and results in one material becoming positively charged and the other negatively charged. In other words, the less-conductive materials will try to “steal” electrons from the better-conductive ones. For example, plastic will “steal” electrons from metal, making the plastic negatively-charged and the metal positively-charged. If you then touch one of those materials, the excess charge will flow through your body into the ground, giving you an electric shock.
