As the potter works the spinning wheel, the friction between their hands and the soft clay helps them shape it into all kinds of forms and creations. In a fascinating parallel, sea squirt oocytes ...

For the first time, physicists in China have virtually eliminated the friction felt between two surfaces at scales visible to the naked eye. In demonstrating "structural superlubricity," the team, led ...

Nanotribology is the study of friction, wear, and lubrication at the nanoscale. It focuses on understanding and controlling the interactions between surfaces in relative motion when the contact area ...

Explore how forces and friction work to hold a block against a vertical wall. This video explains normal force, frictional force, and equilibrium conditions, showing how these forces balance to ...

The question is not how to eliminate friction. The question is how to manage it so it becomes traction and traction becomes forward motion.

Friction is an intrinsic physical phenomenon to curling. Without it, objects in motion would move endlessly, without slowing down. This would cause many safety-related problems: Cars or trains could ...

How much do you know about friction? Jennifer R. Vail's charming, if sometimes technical, "biography" of the force showcases its amazing and largely overlooked role in everything from climate change ...

Robots may soon mimic the human sense of touch, with advances in flexible tactile detection aiming to endow them with the ability to sense friction and slip. Polymer optical fiber knots are at the ...

In "Friction," tribologist Jennifer Vail shows how the fundamental force that resists motion keeps driving us forward.

Fig. 1 Overview of the OFN sensor. (A) Schematic diagram of the OFN sensing system; (B) Photographs of the output light when the sensor was untouched, (C) subjected to normal force, and (D) subjected ...