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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

It's perhaps the second week of your introductory physics course. Your instructor starts talking about friction and writes the following two formulas on the board. Then there is probably some sort of ...

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.

How can a horde of active robots be automatically brought to a standstill? By arresting their dynamics in a self-sustained way. This phenomenon was discovered by physicists at Heinrich Heine ...

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 ...