How would the absence of
friction change the world
around us?
Answers
Answer:
If Earth doesn't have friction the following problems will occur: No living being can walk;because the moment they apply force they will slip. If a body is in motion it will continue to be in motion as there will be no opposing force. MARK ME AS AN EXPERT IF YOU THINK ANSWER IS CORRECT.
First, nearly all solid ground would turn into quicksand. Almost all construction would fall apart at the joints as the lack of friction put immense stresses on whatever connectors did not depend on any friction (basically only rivets don’t depend on friction, and they leverage the friction of the surfaces which have been riveted together). Which would be amplified by the fact that nearly all the ground had been turned into basically a liquid (from a structural rather than chemical perspective).
All the ground turning to quicksand would be very bad. Mountains and other outcroppings of solid rock would tend to sink and break apart due to there being layers of loose or fragmented rock/gravel/sand/dirt somewhere beneath them, every fault-line in the world would release all its stress at the same moment, leading to the largest earthquake ever everywhere, the loose material on the surfaces of slopes would all become massive landslides, killing off pretty much everyone not living out on an open plain with no large mountains or hills too close by. If friction weren’t restored within a fairly short time, most large animals, including humans, would die of exhaustion/asphyxiation from being trapped in quicksand with no way to reach anything like solid ground. Being on a ship or whatever would be help, they would all simply fall to pieces at their seams down to fairly small pieces, and that would be before the massive tidal waves caused by massive undersea displacements of suddenly frictionless seabed shifting.
Depending on exactly what you mean by “friction”, animal life as we know it could become untenable at the level of circulatory and pulmonary systems ceasing to function.
So, if friction disappears permanently, then it’s Everyone Dies.
If friction only disappears for some brief period of time, it might still be Everyone Dies ,but the outcome could vary based on what kinds of friction still exist and how long friction is gone.
The aftereffects of all those mountains collapsing and tidal waves and earthquakes all at once would have drastic consequences for anyone who had survived long enough for friction to return. So it might still be Everyone Dies, but that’s not absolutely certain.