eye on physics

Rubbing your feet develops a potential difference b/w you and the metal surface giving you an 'electric shock'!

The correct answer is: The net electric charge you've built up in your body escaps. Why? well remember Induction, charging by contact. You charge your body by rubbing your feet on the carpet, so you gained electrons. And when you come to the metal which is neutrally charged, all the positive charge gets attracted to you (negative charged) and get shocked.

Rubbing feet on carpet body loses electrons from body and gets positive charged. As metals have large no of free electrons, touching to metal after rubbing feet electrons flow and gets human body shocked..!!!

its all due to static electricity. As the material of your shoes/socks brushes against the carpet, friction causes free electrons to move from the carpet into your body. These electrons will accumulate on your body until you discharge them by touching a path to ground When you touch the metal, you are earthed, and the charge is removed. This is felt as a static shock.

feet rubbing lets you develop the static electricity on your foot & the charges can't pass through due to the insulation of carpet. Now if you touch a metal it conducts these charges.

Rubbing your feet on a carpet or rubbing a balloon on your hair builds a store of static electricity on your body. At that point, you are a crude capacitor, storing a potential equal to X. The nature of electricity is such that it is always looking for the path of least resistance to ground.

So when you get close enough to a grounding object like a metal doorknob (or a cat ;-), that potential X is greater than the resistance of the air between the finger and the doorknob, then the static electricity is able to jump the gap, creating a spark (charged electrons) between your finger and the knob until the potential is dissipated to a level less than the air resistance.

The shock is your body's spontaneous reaction to the sudden release of the static electricity.

It's the same principal used to fire a gasoline engine - you play the part of the coil that stores the charge, the distance between your finger and the doorknob is the same as the gap on the sparkplug, and when + how fast you approach the doorknob is equal to the engine's timing mechanism (regardless of whether it is the older distributor type or the more recent electronic ignition.)

A gap small enough to overcome the potential is required to create the spark - if you were to grab the doorknob quickly enough (ie: no gap), the static electricity (potential X), would dissipate directly to ground and there would be no spark, and therefore no shock.

Being more specific. You transfer eletrons from the carpet to your body though fricton. When getting in contact with conductible material is easy for these excess charges to be trasnfered again. When the eletrons pass through your body you feel the shock.