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 ...

Friction is hard to predict and control, especially since surfaces that come in contact are rarely perfectly flat. New experiments demonstrate that the amount of friction between two silicon surfaces, ...

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 ...

Step inside the strange world of a superfluid, a liquid that can flow endlessly without friction, defying the common-sense rules we experience every day, where water pours, syrup sticks and coffee ...

Water flows more easily through narrower carbon nanotubes than larger ones and we have struggled to explain why. Now, one team has an answer: it may all be due to quantum friction. Friction in its ...

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 ...

For the first time, ETH Zurich Materials Scientists have measured the rolling friction of microscopic, micrometer-sized particles. These measures allow them to better understand common items like ...

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 ...