1.1 What is friction? Take this everyday example: when a coffee mug rests on a flat table, the kinetic frictional force is zero. There is no force trying to move the mug across the table, so there is ...

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 ...

Researchers have demonstrated how to entirely suppress static friction between two surfaces. This means that even a minuscule force suffices to set objects in motion. Especially in micromechanical ...

Moiré pattern evolution. Courtesy: Andrea Silva and Xin Cao. If you’ve ever struggled to shift a heavy piece of furniture, you have probably noticed that rotating the furniture while pushing it makes ...

Using high-speed photography and digital image correlation techniques, engineers show that friction along a faultline has a complex evolution during an earthquake that is dictated, in part, by slip ...