Sparks are Flying
HAPPY POST-VDAY, BESTIES!
The day of love has come and gone, but there’s no love lost for all of us over here at CocoLemon. Sparks are still flyyyyyin’ through the air over here. At all times.
There are many reasons for this—one being that our love for each other and all of you is 24/7, two being that our love for our job is also 24/7, and three… well that other love affair that lasts 24/7 for us is (has been and always will be) science.
If you haven’t heard before, I’m here to tell you that everyone I work with qualifies as one of the nerdiest people I’ve ever met (myself included).
A little known fact about this job is just that: we are nerds through-and-through.
We were the kids that loved art class but also hardcore excelled in chemistry. There isn’t a ton you can do with our specific set of interests, but there was one thing we all landed on collectively that connects us with our creativity, other beautiful humans, and the laws of nature we seem to revere no matter how much we don’t consciously think about it.
We are the creatives that didn’t lean into physical art or music or the humanities, but instead leaned into creating something from nothing with canvases that come with completely different rules, multiple times a day, and approach those situations with a bizarre amount of knowledge about acidity and ammoniated substances.
So, naturally, we are here today to talk about some more science.
It does indeed tie back into the day of love we all celebrated yesterday in the sense that sparks have been, are currently, and always will be flyin’.
There only difference is that we’re thinking a little less emotional spark and a little more “wow ok that door handle just shocked tf out of me.”
Because we’re in dry season, friends. And dry season is ripe with varying degrees of literal shocks to your body and hair anytime you touch anything, at all, ever. SOOOOOOOOO—
…let’s talk static electricity.
xoxo.
first things first: what is static electricity?
To put it simply—static electricity is exactly as it sounds. It’s electricity and it’s static. It’s the term used when something is possessing a charge that’s not moving in the slightest. Just waitin’ in the wings to find somewhere to go. I't’s amped, it’s ready, and it truly can strike at any time.
And, interestingly enough, it’s caused by movement.
Two separate things creating friction between them that results in stationary electricity.
When those two objects rub together, there’s a transfer of electrons that happens. One of the involved parties leaves the interaction with the transferred electrons, leaving it net positive. The other leaves net negative. Sometimes you don’t even have to create much friction—you can also just simply touch something or be near something and bam, electrons exchanged.
Kinda crazy. It’s giving lice. But like… electrical.
If you’ve ever been shocked by an innocent turn of a doorknob, touching a surface, or grabbing something that resulted in a zap, you’ve been the victim of an exchange of electrons IRL. That shock is produced by interacting with something (or someone) that’s got an opposite charge than you do at the time the assault occurred. I’m positive and that handle is negative? Zap. And now I possess a new electrical charge than I did two seconds ago.
I don’t know about you, but things like this keep my brain busy 24/7. Like you’re telling me all I had to do was be in the vicinity of something that wants to trade electrons because I’ve got the charge that’s the yin to its yang? The laws and balance of nature are wild.
second things second: what’s it got to do with my hair?
Ya know those times, in the really dry months, when you can’t seem to get your hair strands to stay tf down? It’s like every time you touch it or it touches something, it’s suddenly standing on-end, has a life of its own, and doesn’t care that you don’t want it to do that?
It’s got everything to do with that.
There’s a heck of a lot more exposure to this phenomenon in the cold months because the air is hellllaaaaa lacking moisture. With much less water vapor floating around, there’s now fewer opportunities for it to neutralize the charge before it finds its way to you.
Your hair, much like every other material object around you, does indeed fall victim to the whims of electrical charges. When you come into contact with other things—rubbed against, brushed against, bee-bopped into—there’s that transfer of electrons that we’re such big fans of that leaves you with a net positive or net negative charge.
And, as we know from our dear friend magnets that never want to succumb to us pressing them together no matter how hard we try… like-forces repel. A positive and a negative are besties, but a positive and a positive or a negative and a negative are mortal enemies. (Fun to think that even nature agrees that when things are too alike, they do not get along.)
So if you’re leaving an interaction where electrons have been passed in such a fashion, you’ve got either an entirely positive or an entirely negative charge happening. And your hair strands, much like matching ends of magnets, do not want to be near each other in the slightest. They start repelling. Rebelling, if you will. Like-forces are not friends.
And now you’ve got the look of someone who might have just fallen victim to pulling a sweater over their head, but also could be confused for someone in the habit of messing with electrical sockets for fun. The choice is yours to combat it or not (tbh there have been so very many, if not all of my days of existence, where I have not given one iota of a care what I looked like), but you do run the risk of those few folks wondering if you’re just really into playing around with electrical currents for funsies. I don’t think this is happening as much as I’m pretending it does, but I am here to make this sound ominous for funsies.
third things third: okay so like… what am I to do about that?
The good news is that there’s a handful of steps you can take to combat looking like you just touched an electrical socket. Mix and match as you please or just ball-out and try em’ all at once. Live your life.
Humidifiers
Static is a much bigger nuisance in the dry months because the air is lacking moisture in a way it isn’t during warmer months.
Adding moisture back into the air is a fantastic way to try and combat it.
Hang clothes to dry (inside)
This one’s obviously a much bigger task to take on, so it’s here as more of a fun-fact than anything else.
You can, indeed, hang your clothes to dry inside your house and, as they dry, it’ll release moisture into the air that’s lacking in seasons like this.
Houseplants
Houseplants are a fantastic way to get moisture back into the air in your home—they play a part in the water cycle for a reason.
Their process of transpiration is them releasing water vapor back into the atmosphere. What a fun lil hack :)
Anti-static hair products
Okay here’s a fun fact—remember over the summer when we talked about needing anti-frizz products to shield your hair from the exchange of water from your hair to the air? Well well wellllllll, I’m here to tell you that you can use those exact same anti-frizz products to fill it with moisture. Because they’re meant to moisturize your hair to the degree it needs and then basically seal it shut to the outside world, we can kill two birds with one stone with these bad boys.
But, essentially, you’re just looking for anything that’s moisturizing, anti-frizz, emollient-heavy, and/or products that have ionic & conductive ingredients (found in some hair oils, some serums, and some natural oils like jojoba, coconut, and argan).
fourth things fourth: what products can help me attempt to remedy this electrical epidemic?
Given that we’re going to need a mix of the products you’d gravitate toward in the super humid months and the ones you need to hydrate during the winter ones, you’ll want to check out a couple of our blog posts. Tackle Frizz is going to be your need-to-know for those products that shield your strands from the air itself, and Fall for Hydration is going to address all the ones you’d want to look for to make sure your strands are hydrated but not too weighed-down like we need more in the warm months.
A couple other things you can do—
Static-control brushes
Wear more silk and cotton (wool and synthetic fabrics generate more static)
Avoid plastic combs and brushes (lean into wooden, metal, or boar-bristle ones)
love all of you newly-appointed hair electricians so very much.
Thank you for checking back in with us over here at Coco. We love sharing as much of our nerdy lil’ tidbits as we can with you and we hope they help. Even if just a little bit. :)
