Friction usually announces itself through contact. A chair scraping across a floor, a tire gripping asphalt, a hand sliding ...

Friction is hard to predict and control, especially since surfaces that come in contact are rarely perfectly flat. New experiments demonstrate that the amount of friction between two silicon surfaces, ...

I learned to respect friction, as a phenomenon with many nuances, when I was a graduate student. One day, while teaching a problem session in elementary mechanics, I unwisely invented a new problem to ...

Here’s the rub with friction — scientists don’t really know how it works. Although humans have been harnessing its power since rubbing two sticks together to build the first fire, the physics of ...

Without the force called friction, cars would skid off the roadway, humans couldn't stride down the sidewalk, and objects would tumble off your kitchen counter and onto the floor. Even so, how ...

Curling is a thrilling sport filled with strategy, skill, sweeping, surprise and science! Curling is a mesmerizing sport filled with strategy, skill, surprise, a lot of yelling, and science—yes ...

Physics is supposed to be predictable. Drop a ball, and gravity pulls it down. Heat water, and it boils. Light travels in straight lines. Yet throughout history, scientists have encountered ...

Memory fault: friction study could provide new insights into why earthquakes happen. (Courtesy: iStock/allanswort) Experiments by Sam Dillavou and Shmuel Rubinstein at Harvard University have, for the ...

Researchers have uncovered friction without contact—driven entirely by magnetic interactions. As two magnetic layers slide, their internal forces compete, causing constant rearrangements that ...

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