But why does this item of clothing catch dirt?

Its surface is so clean, so smooth.

Barely out of its packaging, it is so beautiful and so immaculate that you even hesitate to wear it, for fear of making it lose its intact innocence.

You still face your fears, and you even enjoy putting on these brand new navy pants for the first time. Your day can begin.

But barely leaving your home, your new companion finds himself caught in a merciless invasion: hair, wires and dirt of all kinds... they didn't hesitate for a single second to stick to it , and don't care of his innocence.

And your pants become a real Christmas tree, decorated with plush garlands.

So what is happening to this fabric? How did he become a dirt magnet?

Well, I'm going to explain it to you, as part of this series of articles which has somewhat become our "It's not rocket science" of clothing.

As a bonus, I will obviously send you some solutions to limit the accumulation of lint on your favorite clothes.

Spoiler: you will even be entitled to an atomic physics course.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE FABRIC: A GOOD FIRST SUSPECT

Before embarking on scientific experiments, we can approach a first explanation which does not require physics lessons or laboratory research.

This is a first factor that was revealed to us by the work of Doctor Common Sense: the structure of matter.

In fact, the smoother a material, the less anchor points dirt will have to cling to it. Conversely, a rougher fabric will allow them to bond more easily for the day.

Fabrics such as corduroy, woolen cloth, or even knitwear allow fibrils to protrude onto their surface. The latter will happily extend their hand to the various particles that fall on them.

This is also the case for suede leathers. It is not for nothing that we clean them with a brush, since its bristles allow access to dirt. and detach them .

Less hairy fabrics, such as jersey or cotton twill, will not leave much lint to hold on to.

It's like climbing: you would have more difficulty hanging on to a glass wall than to a mountain with dense relief.

This is why you will more systematically see the lint from your scarf clinging to your woolen cloth coat than to the poplin of your shirt.

STATIC ELECTRICITY: FREQUENTLY GUILTY

This is the most common cause, and the answer to our question for majority of magnet cases dust(s).

It is also one of the first physical phenomena to have been described: it was in 600 BC that Thales of Miletus, a Greek philosopher, noted that an amber stone rubbed against a piece of silk attracted particles. Moreover, the word electricity itself comes from the Greek word elektvon. Its meaning? Well this word simply meant “amber”.

But the discoveries on this subject went no further, although other theorists were interested in the attractive capacity of certain materials following friction. It is thanks to progress in physics that we now know the underlying facts of the phenomenon.

To explain to you the how and why, we are going to go through a short course on static electricity.

And we're going to have to shrink a few picometers away , to speak of electrons, protons, and atoms.

PROTONS AND ELECTRONS ARE ON A BOAT...

I'll start by introducing you to protons and electrons.

There are trillions of protons around the world. The same goes for electrons.

They are distributed evenly in the atoms, which constitute matter itself. Every body is made of it: us, our wool coats, the hair of our cats, and many other examples taken completely at random.

Two protons constantly send each other virtual photons: a particle that appears and disappears quickly enough to go undetected. By throwing this particle at each other like a baseball, the protons create a force that pushes them away from each other. And electrons are just as playful, since they also interact with photons to move away from their namesakes.

On the other hand, protons and electrons get along quite well, I would even say that they attract each other, a bit like magnets.

In a way, they reject their peers but drain each other.

Protons have a positive electromagnetic charge, while electrons have negative charges .

To go further into this dimension of atomic physics ScienceClic has made an excellent video on the subject:

THE GREAT MOP OF ELECTRONS

Basically, a material has a neutral electric charge, since as many protons as electrons are on its board.

But that's without taking into account the movement of electrons: they are great travelers, convinced that the grass is always greener elsewhere.

When one material comes into contact with another, certain electrons will rush to pass from one support to another. And this is where an imbalance in the force is born: the first matter will become positively charged because it will find itself with a majority of protons, while the other will find itself in the opposite case, negatively charged.

However, as I told you, protons and electrons are very friends. A matter with a majority of electrons (negatively charged) will therefore attract any matter with a majority of protons (positively charged). Here, we can say that opposites attract.

A piece of clothing accumulating a positive or negative charge as a result of rubbing against your skin, a brush, or another piece of clothing will thus magnetize any particle with an opposite charge.

Such an electron transfer can be done in three ways:

• By friction
• By contact, when a positively charged substance pricks the electrons of a neutral substance
• By induction, when the electrons remain on their support while moving as far away as possible from a negatively charged substance which is approached.

There will therefore be no shortage of opportunities to generate static electricity.

But one question must undoubtedly be on your mind.

I am sure of it.

No ? Well I'll answer it anyway.

"How do we know which matter will become positively charged? Which matter will lose its electrons and which will gain them back?"

This question can be answered by a 245-year-old painting: the electrostatic series.

Initially developed by researcher Wilche in 1757, it allows us to know the direction of transfer of electrons in the event of friction between two materials. To do this, simply read the relative position of the materials on the list:

So if you take any element from the first list, such as your skin, and rub it against a polyester t-shirt, present in the second list, you will create a negative electrostatic charge on your t-shirt. .

The latter will therefore attract any positively charged particle.

This phenomenon also explains why your hair can fly away after a brush: on the table, human hair tends to be positively charged. According to biomedical engineering professor Troy Shinbrot, each hair will therefore leave its electrons to your brush and end up with a positive charge. These proton-charged hairs will thus repel each other, giving rise to what some subtly call “firecracker hair”.

To finish this hair aside, Doctor Hazen, researcher at George Mason University in the United States, explains that it is simply a transfer of your charge of electrons accumulated over a certain time. Remember the contact electron transfer mentioned above? We're in the middle of it, and it's your arm that literally served as an electrical cable.

Here too, it is the absence of a conductive entity which will have allowed your charge to accumulate until it comes into contact with the metal of the handle, whose electrical conductivity is extremely important.

And no, you will not be able to take advantage of this phenomenon to try to charge your smartphone.