Heck I’m confused right now. We do learn that friction is some sort of force that happens when surfaces sliding each other but doesn’t it sound like it’s just an effect? And is friction all bad? And need to be gone?
And the experiment we have to learn more doesn’t help much. I just understand that there’s less friction between the surfaces of rice but idk how it makes the pencil able to lift the bottle? Please help and thank you.
In: Physics
I’m not familiar with the rice bottle, but I’ll give it a try explaining, keeping it at least ELI10.
Imagine pushing a heavy box across a wooden floor. Both the box and the floor may look perfectly smooth to your eye.
It may **look** like this _______________________
But if you look really closely (down to microscopic levels) there will always be tiny little ridges/bumps in the material. So if you zoom in far enough,
Both the box and the floor will look more like this: ___/__/_/_____/___
These little bumps will “hook” into eachother as you push the box. That’s friction. Depending on the materials involved it may be very high (ex. a car tire on dry asphalt), or very low (f.ex. polished steel on glass)
Whether friction is good or bad depends on the situation.
* Sometimes high friction is good. F.ex. between your car’s tires and the road.
* Somedimes high friction is bad. If you run your car’s engine without oil friction will be high, causing it to wear out quicker.
* Sometimes low friction is good. Like between your ice skates and the ice.
* Sometimes low friction is bad, like if you walk across ice and you boots slip, causing you to fall.
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