Rubbing and Scrubbing

SEP 01, 1998

Though simply expressed, the laws of friction encapsulate a host of microscopic and nanoscopic phenomena whose elucidation has become one of the most fascinating pursuits in applied physics.

DOI: 10.1063/1.882435

Georg Hähner

Nicholas Spencer

The “rubbing and scrubbing department” was how David Tabor’s friction, lubrication and wear laboratory was described by certain uncharitable colleagues at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, some 40 years ago. The tables have turned. Tribology, as Tabor named his discipline (from the Greek tribos, meaning “rubbing”), has become respectable—even positively modish—in physics departments worldwide. And Tabor, having become the revered elder statesman of this flourishing field, is often accorded a place in reference of even the most hardcore tribo‐physics papers.

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More about the authors

Georg Hähner, Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.

Nicholas Spencer, Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology, Zurich, Switzerland.