Question

Try rubbing a plastic pen through your hair, and you'll find that you can pick up a tiny scrap of paper when the pen is about one centimeter above the paper. from this simple experiment you can estimate how much an atom in the paper is polarized by the pen! you will need to make several assumptions and approximations.

Answer 1

When you rub the plastic pen through your hair, you create static electricity because you increase the energy of the electrons due to collision brought about by the rubbing motion. It will then create a magnetic field on the plastic pen. That's why you can pick up the paper using the pen. The concept used here is electromagnetism.