• Question: Would it ever be possible to create an entirely frictionless material?

    Asked by Zealousy to Rob on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Rob Temperton

      Rob Temperton answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      Good morning!

      I can’t imagine it will ever be possible to create a solid material that will have truely zero friction type forces on its surface. Friction is not a fundamental force – it is a general term that describes lots of different effects – one of which is effectively how rough the surface is. If you keep looking at a smaller and smaller region until you can see the atoms that make it up, you are never going to have a perfectly smooth surface.

      However, if you take a slightly broader definition of friction and also consider liquids, we have kind of already done it. Resistance in liquids is linked to a property called viscosity which describes how gloopy a liquid is – treacle has a higher viscosity than water. We can make liquids called superfluids which do truely have zero viscosity which as a result do all kinds of weird things!

      Rob

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