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, ...

25 Science Experiments That Seemingly Defied the Laws of Physics (But Didn’t!) Physics is supposed to be predictable. Drop a ball, and gravity pulls it down. Heat water, and it boils. Light travels in ...

Basketball shoes on a gym floor, bicycle brakes in need of a tune-up, or the squeal of tires are everyday examples of squeaking sounds. Such sounds have long been attributed to stick-slip friction, or ...

Chief meteorologist Mark Dixon takes a look at a specific property of a pineapple in April 20's edition of Science Sunday. Chief meteorologist Mark Dixon checks out the science behind trebuchets in ...

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — To evade friction, try taking a quantum shortcut. Two teams of physicists are building tiny machines designed to operate with the maximum possible efficiency. According to ...

Curling is a thrilling sport filled with strategy, skill, sweeping, surprise and science! Curling is a mesmerizing sport filled with strategy, skill, surprise, a lot of yelling, and science—yes ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...