At a busy street crossing, people wait for the signal to change. When one person steps out first, others soon follow.

Sometimes you think you have a complete understanding of something and then BOOM—a simple problem throws everything out the window. Let's consider a very basic physics problem involving pushing a ...

Led by Martin Müser, PhD, a materials simulation professor at Saarland University, the team of physicists discovered that molecular dipoles are the true reason why humans, animals, and even machines ...

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 ...

For over a hundred years, schoolchildren around the world have learned that ice melts when pressure and friction are applied. When you step out onto an icy pavement in winter, you can slip up because ...

Because of friction, sleds don't technically touch the snow and instead ride on a small layer of water created by the heat of the sled sliding down the hill. Sledding is one of many ways Wisconsinites ...

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 ...

Charging from friction. Flexoelectricity and tribology may explain how. Credit: Laurence Marks/Northwestern University The electric shock you get from shuffling along a carpet might be the first ...

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 ...

MIT scientists have coaxed atoms into an exotic “edge state” for the first time, allowing them to flow completely friction-free. The breakthrough could lead to better superconductor materials. As ...

For centuries, people believed ice was slippery because pressure and friction melted a thin film of water. But new research from Saarland University reveals that this long-standing explanation is ...