Search

Modern scientific research requires important investments and highly depends on public funding and support. These features have been reinforced during the 20th century with the rise of 'Big Science' which required from scientists to convince and to gain support from different stakeholders: policy-makers, industrialists, foundations and general public. Electrostatics played an important role both in the transformation of research scales in physics laboratories and in the presentation of science to the general public. In this paper, we analyze how these changes occurred in France in the 1930s. A turning point in this history was the construction of the Palais de la Decouverte (Palace of discovery) in Paris as a Universal Exhibition pavilion and the exhibition of a large electrostatic Van de Graaff machine in its main Hall. This event was the outcome of different histories. First, the development of 'atomic machines' designed to provide megavolts to accelerate particles, thus inaugurating 'Big Science' laboratories in the thirties, a development promoted in France by Frederic JoliotCurie. Second, the movement around Jean Perrin leading to the organization and public funding of French scientific research, with the establishment of an Undersecretary of State for scientific research and the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Third, the birth of a new concept in scientific museology introduced with the Palais de la Decouverte: a museum without collections designed to exhibit vivid science and awake scientific vocations. Index Terms--Electrostatics history, atomic physics, nuclear physics, museums, scientific exhibits, science and public.

Electrostatics, though one of the oldest sciences, is also nowadays a dynamical and very wide research area. Static charge, well known for its destructive power when accumulating in storms and causing lightning, is now used in many systems as a mastered force to produce acoustic waves, to control aerodynamics, to filter pollution. Its control still remains a very important challenge in many systems, from spacecrafts, high voltage cables, to petro chemistry, and agriculture. We intend here only to highlight some aspects of this very rich and multiform science, without forgetting the great pioneers, Gilbert and Faraday. Index Terms--Electrostatics, piezoelectricity, tribocharging, liquids triboelectrification, electrodynamic actuators, electrets, charge storage, electrostatic risk, charge measurements.

What has been the contribution of surface potential studies during the last four decades to our understanding of insulation physics? Which are the promising techniques emerging in this field? The present review covers the industrial context accounting for the development of surface potential measurements on insulating materials, the way they have been implemented, as well as the great variety of models produced to explain the charging and potential decay mechanisms. Several polarization or transport processes can be responsible for the decay of the potential. Though most of the models initially stemmed from electrostatics and semiconductor physics, around the notion of mobility, experiments on polymers required 'thermodynamic' models, describing progressive charge detrapping. We also underline here that the three main different physical processes likely to be involved in the potential decay (dipolar relaxation, dispersive transport, slow detrapping) can lead in disordered materials to the same time response, the challenge being here is to design inventive new procedures to distinguish them. This comment also applies to most of electrical measurements on disordered materials. Kelvin probe microscopy, return voltage and thermostimulated potential measurements also illustrate the multiform development of surface potential measurement techniques, as their future prospects. Index Terms--Charge injection, charge measurements, dielectric polarization, modeling, nondestructive testing, polyethylene insulation.