Excerpt |
---|
A force that arises when one macroscopic body presses against another. When one of the bodies is a flat surface |
Page Contents | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
|
...
An object in contact with a surface will sometimes experience a contact force that has a component parallel to the surface. Since the perpendicular component receives a special label as the normal force, the parallel component is also generally given a name: the force of friction. This breaking up division of the contact force is useful, since in many cases the friction component of the contact force can be related to the normal component.