many of us are familiar with static electricity it's that spark you feel when you scrape your feet across a carpeted floor and you touch a metal door knob the electrical potential between you and that doorork knob is different and when you touch the door knob that electricity moves to equalize that potential before you touch the door knob the electricity was simply sitting there and waiting that's why we refer to this as static electricity everything has some type of electrical potential and static electricity by itself is not harmful it's when that electrical energy is discharged that creates problems for computer components the silicon that we use inside of these computers is very sensitive to static electricity this image shows the damage that can be created by ESD or electrostatic discharge this is taken from a scanning electron microscope and it is 4,300 magnification you can see the damage that's done by that discharge and that's why we want to avoid having that happen to our computer components when we touch our finger to that metal door knob that discharge is approximately 3,500 volts if you were to look at how many volts would be required to damage your computer equipment it's 100 volts or less this is why we want to avoid having any instance of electrostatic discharge anywhere near our computer components there are a number of things you can do to help minimize or even prevent electrostatic discharge one is that you can keep the humidity over 60% that much water in the air tends to prevent those types of discharges from occurring but keeping a room at 60% humidity would be uncomfortable and our air conditioning systems keep our temperatures low and remove all of that water from the air so to protect our computer systems and components we do something that we refer to as a self ground this is when we would touch some part of the metal chassis of the system that we're working on this will equalize the electrical potential between ourself and the equipment that we're working on and as we begin working with other components we won't have that electrostatic discharge another important best practice when you're working inside of these systems is to always unplug the power connection having that power connected will not have any effect on your ability to prevent electrostatic discharge and unplugging that power source means that we are preventing any case of electrical shock and like me you've probably seen diagrams that describe connecting your electrostatic straps directly to the electrical ground of a building since it is possible for that electrical ground to become energized you should never connect any part of yourself to a building's electrical ground one great way to avoid these types of electrostatic discharges is to wear an anti-static strap you would put the strap around your wrist and then you would connect the other end of the strap to some metal part of the device that you're working on if you're working on a desk you might want to put down an anti-static pad you would then connect the pad to the metal part of the device that you're working on so that you don't always have to be connected with a strap around your wrist and if you're standing and walking around while working on these systems you might want to put down an anti-static mat to minimize the instances of electrostatic discharge once you take a component out of a system or you're transporting these components from one place to the other you might want to put them inside of an anti-static bag the bag is specially designed to minimize cases of electrostatic discharge and it's a very safe way to move components and not have to worry about any type of static electrical damage here's a technician that's working on an anti-static pad you can see the pad is underneath the laptop that they're working on and they've also connected an anti-static strap to their wrist just to make sure that they minimize any instances of electrostatic discharge here's a better view of this strap it has a breakaway snap that's connected to the strap so if you need to walk away you can easily disconnect it walk away from your system and when you come back you simply reconnect the strap to your wrist and once you take the equipment out of that system you can put it inside one of these anti-static bags these look like foil bags but they're actually designed of a material that minimizes static electricity even with all these anti-static devices in place occasionally you might still have a small electrostatic discharge so it's always a good idea to never touch the components directly when you're working on them it's always a good idea to handle these components by their edges to minimize any potential for damage these components should also be stored in some type of heating ventilation and air conditioning regulated environment so we would usually keep these somewhere between 50 and 80° F or if you're outside of the United States it's between 10 and 27° C and these components generally do not like a lot of water in the air so you want to minimize the amount of humidity that they're subjected to very often you might throw in one of these silica gel packs into the anti-static bag where you're storing these components just to remove any extra humidity from the air and if you have the original box that makes a perfect place to store these components but if you don't have that box available you could also wrap that anti-static bag and the components within some type of bubble wrap just to protect it from the elements