A Matter of Electrostatic Adhesion

I observed a cluster of feather-light styrofoam packing peanuts scattered across the lower bookshelf, demanding an inquiry into static electricity! Directly hauling such buoyant globules with paper wings would be horribly crude. Instead, I rubbed the flat edge of an amber plastic ruler briskly against a discarded wool scarf, generating a vigorous negative electrostatic charge. Approaching the specimen, the electric field exerted instantaneous attraction! The peanut leapt upward, adhering firmly to the plastic edge without a single gram of manual exertion. A textbook exhibition of Coulomb's inverse-square law right after midday!