Electrostatics deals with the interactions between stationary electric charges.
As early as a few centuries before Christ, it was known that amber, when rubbed with a wool cloth, could attract other objects—provided they were not too heavy. The Greek word for amber is electron, from which today’s words such as electricity and electrostatics are derived.
In the 18th century, experiments revealed that there are two different kinds of electricity. For example, if a light piece of cork is touched with a glass rod that has been rubbed with silk, the cork is repelled. The same observation can be made with a resin rod rubbed with wool or silk. However, if the cork pieces from different experiments are mixed, some of them attract each other.
Shortly afterward, Benjamin Franklin introduced the terms positive and negative electricity to describe these observations.
Today we know that the universe is made up of atoms, which essentially consist of two types of charges. The carriers of negative charge are the electrons in the atomic shell, while the protons in the atomic nucleus carry an equal but positive charge. These two charges balance each other, so that atoms are overall electrically neutral.