What is the scientific reason for "fly away" hair?

Question

chenping · Answer

haha.. what ya mean by fly away? @@ Do u mean the hair standing in the Electrostatic chapter? :P

anonymous · Answer

If you are talking about hair standing up from a static charge then you could say, for example: When you rub your head with a balloon, the negative charges in your hair are transferred to the balloon leaving your hair positively charged. The hairs are separated from one another because like charges repel each other and opposites attract(i.e positive charges are attracted to negative charges, not other positive charges). So because there are no negative charges your hair strands want to repel against each other.
The hairs stand up when you put the balloon close to your head as they are attracted to the negative charges on the balloon. I hope that is what you were talking about...