Introductory Remarks

Abstract

I’m always amazed to run into lively discussion on technological topics that I once thought put to bed. In our earliest introduction to the study of the physical science in high school we addressed the problem of friction — measuring the force required to move a slider over a flat surface. We were taught that the ratio of the force required to keep the slider in uniform motion to the force holding the slider to the surface was a constant called the “coefficient of friction”. What our teachers often neglected to tell us was that the coefficient of friction wasn’t always a constant and that there was a lot of physics buried in that constant which was obscured from our view. And the problem Is especially complicated when the materials of concern are as complicated as polymers.