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Friction review: Engaging look at friction shows how it keeps our world rubbing along

Athletes wearing a friction-reducing swimsuit dominated the 2008 Beijing Olympics Adam Pretty/Getty Images Friction: A biographyJennifer R. Vail, Harvard University Press IN 2009, World Aquatics banned a specific type of swimsuit from all international competitions in water sports, ruling that it gave athletes an unfair advantage. The development of this swimsuit included using NASA’s testing…

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‘Need cues to watch a movie because they are on second screens’: Even film students can’t put their phones down

With ever-shrinking attention spans, film students today are struggling to make it to the end of a feature-length movie without getting distracted by their phones. That’s according to a recent article by The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch. In a snippet that has since circulated on X, gaining nearly 2 million views since it was posted last…

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Beyond the Quantum review: A remarkable book on quantum mechanics reveals a really big idea

Pilot-wave theory may act like waves steering bottles on the sea Philip Thurston/Getty Images Beyond the QuantumAntony Valentini, Oxford University Press Physics, it is fair to say, hasn’t gone to plan. After decades of hopeful searching, dark matter still hasn’t been directly detected. We found the Higgs boson, but nothing to pave the way forward….

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