You rub two insulators against each other and attain a charge imbalance. Is there a rule as to which of the materials will end up with a negative charge and vice versa? Does it depend on which one has more or less lose valence electrons?

    • sbird@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      The short answer is, to “lose” means to have lost something (e.g. “Did you lose your keys?”, but in this case it’s electrons) while to “loose” is used to describe getting something to be able to move freely / unstuck (which could arguably be used to describe the loss of electrons in a material, since you’re rubbing them loose)

      So both spellings can work :D

      • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe
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        21 hours ago

        And the messed up thing is they both are pronounced opposite to the spelling.

        You’d think “loose” would have the longer O sound, but “lose” does. 🤦

    • homes@piefed.world
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      2 days ago

      It’s particularly amusing because this is a very rare example of when either spelling (two different words) could be correct in this context without changing the overall meaning of the sentence at all.