Now I get to do something with that force scale I built. I had a request some time ago to talk about friction. Friction is surprisingly complicated. When two surfaces rub against each other, why is ...

Say we consider a simple experiment of balancing a wooden rod on two fingers. The finger on the left, (1), will remain stationary, whereas the finger on the right, (2), will be moved toward the left.

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 ...

The best part about living in Vermont is that we get to experience all of the seasons. Sometimes cool weather appears out of nowhere and we don’t have the proper attire so we rub our hands together to ...

The friction between a silicon ball and silicon wafer was measured in the experimental set-up shown on the left. The new research demonstrates that there is a direct relation between two effects: the ...

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 ...

This article has been updated to include comments from Raymond Goldstein and Patrick Warren. It is a mathematical puzzle that stumped Galileo, but researchers in France think they have discovered how ...

Wear has major impacts on everything from the bearing of a wind power plant to an artificial hip joint. However, the exact cause of wear is still unclear. Scientists now show that the effect occurs at ...