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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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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Dumping literal tons of hot volcanic material down a lab flume may finally have revealed how searing mixtures of hot gas and rock travel so far from volcanic eruptions. These pyroclastic flows can ...

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

During an earthquake, friction is a key control on the initiation, propagation and termination of fault motion. Laboratory experiments that use variable slip rates suggest that friction evolves in a ...