Water Bending Trick: How Does It Work?

[Busin]

I was wondering how the trick where a stream of water is bent with a statically chared comb works. See here: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryexperiments/ht/bendwater.htm" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Will this work on all water, or does it have something to do with the fact that the water was moving through the pipe or something?

Would it be possible to build a hand dryer which pulls the water off of your hand using static electricity?

 

[f95toli]

It works with all "types" of water. The water molecule (H2O) has what is known as a electric dipole moment; which gives rise to a net force when the molecules are affected by the electric field from the comb (which is carrying excess negative charge in this case) .

 

[Busin]

So could static electricity be used to dry stuff, if it was powerful enough?