Imagine a heavy book resting on a table. If you try to gently push the book across the table with the tip of your finger, it ...

Friction is an everyday phenomenon; it allows drivers to stop their cars by breaking and dancers to execute complicated moves on various floor surfaces. It can, however, also be an unwanted effect ...

“We found that sipping through a straw defies all the previously known laws for the resistance or friction of flow through a pipe or tube,” explains Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York ...

Although robotic devices are used in everything from assembly lines to medicine, engineers have a hard time accounting for the friction that occurs when those robots grip objects - particularly in wet ...

Friction is an intrinsic physical phenomenon to curling. Without it, objects in motion would move endlessly, without slowing down. This would cause many safety-related problems: Cars or trains could ...

Chemists and engineers have discovered a fundamental friction law that is leading to a deeper understanding of energy dissipation in friction and the design of two-dimensional materials capable of ...

A team of researchers has uncovered new laws governing the flow of fluids through experiments on a technology thousands of years old: a drinking straw. This knowledge could be useful for improving ...