哦，你電到我啦!這是這個干燥的季節里常聽到的一句話。大伙都了解這是靜電有哪些用途。電已經成為現代日常不可或缺的能源之一。電燈、電話、電腦、電冰箱帶電的東西簡直不勝枚舉，可是你了解靜電（static electricity）是哪個最早發現的嗎，為何電的英文是Electricity，是哪個為這種看不見摸不到卻叫人感到麻麻的東西起的名字？

Perhaps you've gotten a shock from touching^{1 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