Scientists have explored friction at the microscopic level. They discovered that the force generating friction is much stronger than previously thought. The discovery is an important step toward ...

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, ...

A microscopic model describing frictional forces between a tip and a surface near its melting point predicts different behaviour for grazing friction compared with ploughing friction On a macroscopic ...

Chemists and physicists at the University of Amsterdam shed light on a crucial aspect of friction: how things begin to slide. Using fluorescence microscopy and dedicated fluorescent molecules, they ...

At a busy street crossing, people wait for the signal to change. When one person steps out first, others soon follow. Scientists in Amsterdam have found that this same kind of behavior happens at a ...

On a macroscopic scale, the physics of friction is well understood: skiers do their utmost to minimize it whereas racecar drivers hang on to it desperately during high-speed cornering. Yet, 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 ...

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 ...