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Preface: Rediscovering Friction
in the Twenty-First Century
This book is different from numerous other textbooks and monographs
about friction. In this work we study various effects and manifestations of
friction in order to identify those properties of friction that are invariant for
different friction mechanisms and thus constitute the very essence of friction as
a physical phenomenon. By doing that, we are making the case that friction
is a fundamental force of nature whose properties can be deduced directly
from the second law of thermodynamics, rather than treated as a collection
of phenomenological unrelated effects and empirical fact ...