Step inside the strange world of a superfluid, a liquid that can flow endlessly without friction, defying the common-sense ...

For more than 200 years, scientists have argued about a deceptively simple question: why does a sheet of frozen water let us ...

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 ...

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 ...

For nearly two centuries, textbooks blamed icy spills on pressure and friction, but new simulations tell another story. The ...

Nanoscale knowledge of the relationships between water, friction and mineral chemistry could lead to a better understanding of earthquake dynamics, researchers said in a new study. Engineers used ...

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 ...

Nanomachines will depend on our knowledge of friction, heat transfer and energy dissipation at the atomic level for their very survival. In the scramble to revolutionize the world with nanotechnology ...

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 ...

Editor’s note: I found this article to be a very refreshing and different way of looking at a battery than most EEs are used to. Although it is fairly basic, I realize that in our audience there are ...