Friction: from fingerprints to climate change

The study of friction is big business. Billions of dollars and billions of tonnes of carbon emissions could be saved if researchers and engineers could make cargo ships cut through the water more easily, or minimize car tyres rolling resistance, rendering them more fuel-efficient. Yet the research, as Winkless presents it, is largely a business of trial and error. The effects that make things go faster, slow down, lodge in place or move smoothly arise from dozens of often literal moving parts, from the macroscopic scale to the atomic. As a result, it s a nightmare to isolate any single effect, let alone measure it. There s currently no way to predict from first principles a system s coefficient of friction a measure of how much force is needed to slide one surface over another.

via www.nature.com

I like friction, except when I don’t. Life would be pretty boring if you eliminated it entirely.