Researchers found friction can occur without contact, driven by magnetic dynamics, and does not always increase with load. The effect could enable controllable, wear-free technologies.

I learned to respect friction, as a phenomenon with many nuances, when I was a graduate student. One day, while teaching a problem session in elementary mechanics, I unwisely invented a new problem to ...

One of the dirty little secrets of physics is that there is no generally accepted explanation of the basic laws of friction. An advance in the theory of cracks will stimulate fresh thinking on the ...

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 ...