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 ...

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 ...

I have a problem. I admit it. Isn't admitting you have a problem the first step to recovery? My problem is Angry Birds Space. I just can't stop trying to figure out how this stuff works. Oh, I am not ...

(Nanowerk News) Working together to study friction on the atomic scale, researchers at UC Merced and the University of Pennsylvania have conducted the first atomic-scale experiments and simulations of ...

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 ...

Controlling the friction between two moving surfaces — and possibly even reducing it to zero — is one of the outstanding challenges in modern tribology. Two recent discoveries may make this dream come ...

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 ...

Some forces are called contact forces because they require objects to touch. One is tension force, found in stretched wires. Another is the force found in a spring. And last are resistive forces: ...

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 ...

It’s no wonder earthquakes are so difficult to predict. Even simple laboratory simulations of the friction breakdowns that send tectonic plates lurching into motion are maddeningly difficult to ...