Friction usually announces itself through contact. A chair scraping across a floor, a tire gripping asphalt, a hand sliding ...

Physics is supposed to be predictable. Drop a ball, and gravity pulls it down. Heat water, and it boils. Light travels in straight lines. Yet throughout history, scientists have encountered ...

Without the force called friction, cars would skid off the roadway, humans couldn't stride down the sidewalk, and objects would tumble off your kitchen counter and onto the floor. Even so, how ...

Researchers have uncovered friction without contact—driven entirely by magnetic interactions. As two magnetic layers slide, their internal forces compete, causing constant rearrangements that ...

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 ...

Curling is a thrilling sport filled with strategy, skill, sweeping, surprise and science! Curling is a mesmerizing sport filled with strategy, skill, surprise, a lot of yelling, and science—yes ...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — To evade friction, try taking a quantum shortcut. Two teams of physicists are building tiny machines designed to operate with the maximum possible efficiency. According to ...

When tectonic plates move, they rarely do so smoothly. Sometimes they slide almost imperceptibly; at other times, stress is ...

Memory fault: friction study could provide new insights into why earthquakes happen. (Courtesy: iStock/allanswort) Experiments by Sam Dillavou and Shmuel Rubinstein at Harvard University have, for the ...

The best part about living in Vermont is that we get to experience all of the seasons. Sometimes cool weather appears out of nowhere and we don’t have the proper attire so we rub our hands together to ...