FRICTION

Who knew there was such a thing as tribology?

Humanity’s relationship with friction stretches back some million years to the first swipes and scuffs to spark a fire. It continued as Da Vinci wrestled with perpetual motion and Galileo rolled balls down planes and proceeded through the cogs and gears of the Industrial Revolution to 1965, when, according to the author, the field of tribology was born. Vail, the founder of DuPont’s first tribology research lab, explains that the science of friction seeks to understand how the bumps and barbs that make up an object’s surface snag and deform as they clamber over one another. It’s a force made of contradiction—friction is created by motion but it also impedes motion and at the same time enables it. Without it, wheels would spin in place rather than roll forward. Too much, and you wear down the wheel. From violin bows to tire treads, friction is everywhere. It’s slowing the rotation of the Earth itself, setting the moon drifting away from us. It’s sapping energy from our machines, which means, Vail suggests, there may be “tribological solutions” to climate change. But friction is complicated. Understanding it requires mechanics, thermodynamics, chemistry, quantum physics. Vail covers them all in her efforts to measure, control, and engineer friction. Her prose is friendly and clear (“Polymers are, in very scientific terms, squishier than ceramics and metals”), with historical tidbits and everyday anecdotes sprinkled among technical descriptions. (Teflon was a classified material in the Manhattan Project; WD-40 followed 39 false starts.) There’s something wonderful about a book that dives so deep into a topic so niche. At the same time, niche is niche. The science of coatings, lubrication theory—there’s more to friction than most of us want to know. The author’s passion for the topic reduces the drag, and the book is sure to inspire any future tribologists. For the rest of us, it can feel more like rubbing sticks, and not so much like catching fire.

A knowledgeable, readable, but overly detailed survey of the history and science of friction.