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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 ...

Avoid common pitfalls when calculating work done by friction! This video highlights the most frequent mistakes students make, from misinterpreting frictional forces to applying formulas incorrectly.

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 ...

This article has been updated to include comments from Raymond Goldstein and Patrick Warren. It is a mathematical puzzle that stumped Galileo, but researchers in France think they have discovered how ...

Friction is an intrinsic physical phenomenon to curling. Without it, objects in motion would move endlessly, without slowing down. This would cause many safety-related problems: Cars or trains could ...

During the 2026 Winter Olympics, athletes will leap off ramps, slide across ice and spin through the air. These performances will look different to my students who have studied physics through sports.

Explore the dynamics of mass tipping with springs and friction in this detailed physics analysis! This video demonstrates how forces, torque, and friction interact to influence tipping behavior, using ...

Humans have been making fire using friction for thousands of years, with evidence of its use found in archaeological records across different cultures worldwide. Fire by friction is a testament to ...

A simple snap of the fingers boasts some complex physics. The arm loads up energy and then releases it explosively, so that the middle finger hits the palm with a sharp smack. A team has now shown how ...