Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Live Science. Formerly, she was the Content Manager at Space.com and before that the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a book author, with her upcoming book 'Octopus X' scheduled for release in spring of 2027.
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Sign up for our skywatching newsletter and explore the universe with us!The ubiquitous squeak of sneakers on a basketball court may be caused by more than just friction, a new study suggests. Researchers have found that the sharp chirp of rubber on a hard floor happens when tiny areas of slipping between the shoe's sole and the floor move at supersonic speeds — and, in some experiments, the process involved miniature, lightning-like sparks. What's more, the findings could lead to an improved understanding of earthquakes and aid in the design of grippy surfaces., shows that soft rubber does not slide the way many people imagine. Instead of the whole sole sticking and then slipping at once, motion bunches into fast, wrinkle-like fronts called"" that detach and reattach the rubber across the contact zone. Those repeating pulses generate the vibrations that our ears hear as squeaks.Solar flares may be triggering earthquakes, controversial study claims Scientists have long explained squeaks from shoes, bicycle brakes and tires using stick-slip friction, a stop-and-go cycle in which surfaces repeatedly catch and then break free. That model works well for manyTo understand the physics of this process, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences teamed up with experts from the University of Nottingham in the U.K. and the French National Center for Scientific Research. They used high-speed optical imaging and synchronized audio to watch soft rubber move quickly along smooth glass. But what they saw was not smooth sliding. Instead, motion bunched up into opening slip pulses, sweeping across the rubber in starts and stops.Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors "Fundamentally, these findings challenge the long-held assumption that soft-material friction can be fully captured by simplified, one-dimensional ‘stick-slip’ models," first study authorThe findings reveal more about the physics of friction. In classic stick-slip friction, the whole contact surface alternates between sticking and slipping. In this study, however, the motion was more localized, as only small regions opened and slipped, and then moved on, while other regions stayed in full contact. For some experiments, the team also saw tiny flashes caused by the friction, which they described as miniature"lightning" sparks. In some tests, those sparks, or electrical discharges, appeared to trigger the slip pulses. The sparks were not the main source of the squeaking noise, but they showed how electrical energy could build up in the system when the rubber moved.Solar flares may be triggering earthquakes, controversial study claims The researchers also found that the rubber's shape, more than its movement, was the main determinant of the squeak's pitch. When flat rubber blocks slid across the glass, the slip pulses were irregular, producing a broad"whoosh" rather than a clean squeak. But when the researchers added thin ridges to the rubber, the ridges confined the pulses and made them repeat at regular intervals. In effect, the ridges acted like guides, channeling the pulses into a repeating cycle. This locked the sound into a specific frequency, or tone. The team found that this squeak frequency depended mainly on the height of the rubber ridges. In fact, the pattern was so reliable that the team designed blocks of different heights and used them to play the Imperial March theme from "When it came time to actually play the Star Wars theme song, we had to rehearse for three solid days to get the video right," said Djellouli."None of us are exactly trained in making music with squeaky rubber blocks, so getting the timing and technique down took a lot of practice. I think the funniest part was the relief in the lab when we finally finished the recording after three days of constant, high-pitched squeaking. Our colleagues were very happy to finally have some quiet again!"The findings have implications beyond shoe design. The slip pulses in the experiments share key features with rupture fronts in earthquakes, where sections of a fault suddenly break and slide at very high speeds."Soft friction is usually considered slow, yet we show that the squeak of a sneaker can propagate as fast as, or even faster than, the rupture of a geological fault, and that their physics is strikingly similar," study co-authorBeyond shedding light on the physics of earthquakes, the work could help engineers design surfaces that switch between slippery and grippy states on demand.."This new insight into how surface geometry governs slip pulses paves the way for tunable frictional metamaterials that can transition from low-friction to high-grip states on demand."Djellouli, A., Albertini, G., Wilt, J., Tournat, V., Weitz, D., Rubinstein, S., & Bertoldi, K. . Squeaking at soft–rigid frictional interfaces. Nature. Kenna Hughes-Castleberry is the Content Manager at Live Science. Formerly, she was the Content Manager at Space.com and before that the Science Communicator at JILA, a physics research institute. Kenna is also a book author, with her upcoming book 'Octopus X' scheduled for release in spring of 2027. Her beats include physics, health, environmental science, technology, AI, animal intelligence, corvids, and cephalopods.Follow the BBC's Kingdom and all your favorite natural history documentaries on your travels with this great deal on a top-rated VPN
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