A force is a push or a pull. For example, when you push open a door you must apply a force to the door. You also must apply a force to pull open a drawer. You cannot see a force but often you can see ...

A couple of commenters expressed concern over the use of centrifugal force after my rant on the use of the word force. So, what is the deal with these two terms? Are they ok to use? Are they real ...

Probably everyone is familiar with the phenomenon: water drops cling to a pane of glass, if it is tilted out of the horizontal plane. Only when a certain angle is reached they slide off. This raises ...

Why is pancake syrup an example of a resistive force? Some forces are called contact forces because they require objects to touch. One is tension force, found in stretched wires. Another is the force ...

Frictional experiment: artist’s impression of the metainterface between a rigid piece of glass (top) and a metasurface (bottom). The textured regions are where the glass and metasurface are in contact ...

Gavin Hesketh receives funding from The Royal Society, the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. He is affiliated with the Lightyear ...