As man voyages farther toward the stars, and faster across the face of his own earth, the instruments by which he steers become vastly more important. And on planes or ships or spacecraft, the heart ...

The machine doesn’t care what it’s making—only that it’s making it fast. Frictionless systems optimize output. But meaning, memory, and margin live in the mess it leaves behind. The great smoothing is ...

Friction hampers the movement of all mechanical parts, including engines for transportation. Scientists built a system with virtually no friction. The system wraps graphene flakes around nanodiamonds ...

The familiar heat, wear and general grinding to a halt of friction are all caused by what's going on at the microscopic level when two things rub. And down there, even the smoothest surfaces usually ...

1.1 What is friction? Take this everyday example: when a coffee mug rests on a flat table, the kinetic frictional force is zero. There is no force trying to move the mug across the table, so there is ...

Scientists have developed a technique for creating surfaces that can slide past each other with virtually no friction, and their findings could create new opportunities for engineering in ...

A good old game of carrom has really stood the test of time. Set up a board and people around will flock to it while practising their finger gymnastics. You may not have noticed but the game often ...

Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. Slogans such as “taking the friction away,” “one-tap access” and “simpler, faster, better” ...

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 ...