Life Without Friction

395 Words2 Pages
Although friction may seem like a minor issue, its absence would chance life as we know it. There would be many negative effects of this like not being able to gain traction on any surface and your earplugs always falling out. Also, there would be many positive effects, such as eliminating the need for coolant in engines and lubricant in machines. Moreover, the absence of friction would be both bad and good. Without friction, many obvious things which we take for granted would not function the way we like. Shoelaces would untie themselves, zippers would always unzip (unless they were upside-down), nails, screws, nuts and bolts would work themselves. The world would not be the same without friction. Indeed it would not resemble the world as it is today. You could argue that without friction, the Universe would not have been able to form as it did, for example, in the early years of the Earth's existence, it went through a period known as the Great Bombardment, where thousands of meteors, asteroids, and other loose rocks and matter smashed into the Earth. Had there been no friction during this time, each asteroid hitting the Earth would not explode as you would expect for many reasons. First, entering the atmosphere, it would not heat up due to the absence of sliding friction. Second, instead of an impact as you would expect in our world where the rock would explode, it might slide of of the surface of the Earth, causing the Earth to change orbit, however, the two objects (Earth and asteroid) would simply deflect of each other, leaving each rock intact. If you are talking about modern life without friction, it would be a different story. For one, we would not be able to stand on the floor very well. We would be likely to simply slide across the ground because of the absence of static friction. It is also likely that the Earth would me much colder. Heat can be
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