Friction Forces and Their Properties

Friction is a force that acts between two surfaces. Its ultimately an electrical
force between molecules in the surfaces. Even the smoothest of surfaces is
irregular on a microscopic scale (fig. 6-26). When two surfaces contact,
microscopic irregularities adhere, as suggest in Fig. 6-27a. This makes it
difficult for the surfaces to move across one another, and at the macroscopic
level the effect of the microscopic irregularities manifests itself as a force that
opposes any attempts to move the surfaces relative to one another.
Experiment shows that the magnitude of the frictional force between two
surfaces does not depends on their area. But does depend on the normal force
between them. Figure 6-27b shows why this makes sense: as normal forces push
the surfaces together, the actual contact area increases. This causes more adherence between the surfaces, and thus increases the frictional force.
As Fig. 6-27 shows, friction is actually a complicated phenomenon involving
microscopic process. The simple equations well develop in this section to
describe friction as a macroscopic force are but approximate descriptions of
what happens as a result of the underlying microscopic processes. Friction is
important, especially in situations we encounter in everyday life, but we emphasize that it s not a deep and fundamental aspect of physics.

Behavior of Frictional Forces

Imagine trying to push a heavy trunk across the floor. You begin by exerting a
horizontal force on the trunk, but its really heavy and nothing happens. You
push harder. Still nothing. Finally, as you push even harder, the trunk begins to
slideand you may notice that once it gets going you dont have to push as hard
as you did to get it started (Fig. 6-28)
Whats going on here? Why is it harder to get the trunk started than to keep
it moving? When the trunk is sitting at rest on the floor, the microscopic regions
of contact between trunk and floor, as pictured in Fig. 6-27, have a chance to
form relatively strong bonds. As you push on the trunk, at first you simply distort
those bonds without breaking them: they respond with force that opposes your
applied force. This is the force of static friction, Fs, so called because it arises
when the two surfaces in question are at rest (i.e., static) relative to each other.
As you increase the force you apply to the trunk, the opposing force of static
friction increases to remain equal in magnitude to the applied force, and the
trunk remains at rest.
Eventually, though, your push becomes strong enough to break the bonds
between trunk and floor: this is the breakaway point shown in Fig. 6-28. The
trunk begins to move. As it does so, microscopic bonds continually form and
break, but they dont have time to strengthen, so the force required to overcome

them is not as great as was required to get the trunk moving. The frictional force
between surfaces in relative motionin this case trunk and flooris the force
of kinetic friction, Fk.
Before you started pushing your trunk, it was sitting at rest with no net force
on it. So the force of static friction must have been zero. Then, as you pushed
harder, static friction pushed back with a force equal to your applied force.
Eventually the applied force reached the maximum value that static friction
could counter. Experimentally, we find that this maximum value is proportional
to the normal force between the surfaces: we therefore write

Fs sN . (static friction)

(6-2)

Here the proportionality constant, designated s , is the coefficient of static

friction, a quantity that depends on the nature of the two surfaces in contact. We
use the sign rather than = because the force of static friction ranges from
zero up to the maximum value given in Equation 6-2.
Once surfaces are in relative motion, experiment shows that the force of
kinetic friction is also approximately proportional to the normal force between
the surfaces:

Fk kN , (kinetic friction)

(6-3)

where k is the coefficient of kinetic friction. Unlike static friction, the force of

kinetic friction is independent of the value of any applied force. Weve marked
both Fk and the maximum Fs on Fig. 6-28.
Equation 6-2 and 6-3 give only the magnitudes of the frictional forces. For
kinetic friction, the frictional force between the surfaces is parallel to the surfaces and in a direction that opposes their relative motion (Fig. 6-29a). For static
friction, where there is no relative motion, the frictional force opposes whatever
force or sum of forces is applied in the direction parallel to the surfaces
(Fig. 6-29b).
For a given pair of surfaces, the coefficient of static friction is larger than the
coefficient of kinetic friction. This fact represents mathematically what we
found in our trunk example: that it takes more force to get an object moving than
to keep it moving. Since they describe proportionality between two forces,
coefficients of friction are dimensionless. Typical values of k range from less
than 0.01 for smooth or well-lubricated surfaces to about 1.5 for very rough
ones. For metallic surfaces k is about 0.5 and s about 0.75; lubrication reduces
these coefficients to roughly 0.05 and 0.15, respectively. Rubber on dry concretea vital interaction in driving an automobilehas k about 0.8 and s as
high as 1. A properly waxed ski on dry snow has roughly the same frictional
coefficient as teflon on teflon; k 0.04, while the synovial fluid that lubricates

joints in the human body reduces k to a low 0.003 only one-hundredth the
value for dry bone on bone.
If you push a moving object with a force just equal to the force of kinetic
Friction, the net force on the object will be zero and, according to Newton. It will
move at constant speed. Since friction is nearly always present, but not as
obvious as the push of a hand or pull of a rope. You can see why its so easy to
develop the preconception that force is needed to make things moverather
than, as Newton recognized, to make them accelerate.
We emphasize that friction, and Equation 6-2 and 6-3 that describe it, are
not fundamental aspects of physics. The equations, in particular, are empirical
expressions that describe the results of experiments and account in an approximate way for complicated but more basic interactions at the microscopic level.
Our friction equations have neither the precision nor the fundamental, universal
character of Newtons laws.
We now look at some examples where frictional forces are important
examples that we treat just like all other examples involving Newtons law.