Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I had this idea that since teachers say that we don't actually touch anything because your electrons repel with the electrons of the other thing, would it be possible to separate the electrons from a group of atoms or to scale those atoms up to make their electrons be more separate from the nuclei to therefore make that group of atoms just float in clean air, maybe if that is possible it could be applied to something like a hovercraft to make it float completely. I was able to do something similar on a positively charged magnetic plain (long and big "sheet") where I put a positively charged magnet in the bottom of a small booklet and then put that on the sheet and the magnet and booklet were floating, but the magnetic plain had to be there which makes it not come in handy
Thanks a lot

I like your thinking. If interested, you can look into magnetic levitation train or maglev. The trick part of trying to do this with electricity and not magnetism is the question of scale. When you stand on the ground, not touching it, there is a very complicated balance of forces.

While trying to elaborate on your question I found this very interesting article:

http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/a ... iction.cfm

I found it by google search of "Friction at a molecular level" It turns out, as I was expecting, that is very complicated.

Great question!

Thanks!!

I have a question related to this, since we have electrons, approx. 2.3*10^28, and they are all negatively charged, if we got very powerful negatively charged magnets under us, would we float a bit?

Most matter is electrically neutral. For each electron there is a proton in the nucleus of an atom, with equal charge. Electrons surround the protons, so they are the ones that "touch".