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Airplanes do have static wicks [0] which could be seen as a form of local ground. I love these as an example of the adjacent engineering challenges that arise.

Busses also (used to?) have ground straps that you may see dragging. Apparently this was somewhat common on cars as well. "bus ground strap" is unsurprisingly difficult to search for, but I did find a discussion on Quora [1] that claims rubber formulations were responsible for vehicles picking up a static charge.

All of this is interesting once seen as an attempt to remove the potential difference between local "ground" and ambient environment.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_wick

[1] https://www.quora.com/Cars-used-to-have-grounding-straps-han...



In one office I had to ground a desk chair that would build a static charge. Just a wire down the back to drag on the floor between the wheels.




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