Jennifer R. Vail

When did we officially decide friction was a thing?

There's been evidence that we've learned how to manipulate it back in antiquity, but I think perhaps Da Vinci and Galileo were some of the first ones to really start to formalize it.

So Da Vinci was very interested in a perpetual motion machine,

But he quickly realized that this was a fallacy because there was this force working against him, and that force is friction.

And he actually set up a bunch of experiments where he was starting to understand and quantify friction.

So in the sense of really formalizing it in a scientific way, I would say da Vinci was the first one to do that.

Yeah, friction is actively resisting motion.

And another big name in studying friction, Amantan, he was also interested in a perpetual motion machine.

So it's this interesting theme throughout scientists trying to understand the world around them.

They end up stumbling upon friction because they are trying to get things to move forever and realized, eh, something's there getting in my way, and that something is friction.

Yes, definitely.

We lose a lot of energy to friction.

I think about one fifth of the energy that we use in the world and consume is actually going to friction.

So it's a huge industry trying to minimize friction.

We do classify it in different ways.

There's rolling friction, which is typically lower than sliding friction.

You know, if you slide a box across the floor, it's more effort for you if you're sliding it exactly on the floor.

Whereas if you put it on a cart with wheels, it's much easier.

And that's because it's a different type of friction.

We have different mechanisms behind friction.