Static Electricity

Today we talked about static electricity. We tried an experiment that we had read about once & then expanded upon it.
We sprinkled some salt & pepper on a piece of paper, then rubbed a plastic spoon on a wool sock. Lola held the spoon about a 1/2 inch from the salt & pepper sprinklings and watched the pepper jump onto the spoon while the salt did nothing.
While the wool rub gave the spoon a negative charge, the salt & pepper were both positive, but only the pepper was light enough to be attracted to the spoon.
Lola was quick to answer (correctly!) why just the pepper jumped & not the salt. Lola's uncle, who was visiting at the time, observed our project and wondered out loud why the directions for the experiment would call for a plastic spoon. He thought metal would be a better conductor so we tried the metal spoon too. Nothing happened. I didn't really know what to say!
Then we had some fun and tried rubbing the spoons on the sock & putting them near our hair to get our hair standing on end. It didn't really work, so we rubbed balloons on our head instead!