Removing "Friction" In-Game?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm just fascinated by this. Is the issue not that the not perfectly smooth surfaces can't pass through each other? Is there something going on besides bumps?

It is actually a variety of things, but the non-smoothness part is pretty straightforward. Suppose you take 2 pieces of sandpaper and rub them together, the little rough bits on each one will catch on each other and it will be hard to do. That's the most common sort of surface friction, two plane surfaces which contact each other resist relative motion because bits of each one catch on the other. At some level THAT happens because bits of solid matter cannot move through one another. THAT is almost certainly due to electrostatic repulsion between atoms, coupled with the fact that atoms in a solid are not free to move around, so they just get stuck.

There ARE other factors, like if you have some very smooth, clean, metal plane surfaces they can actually BOND, and then you will definitely get friction! In this case it is just "well, you're trying to tear apart a single chunk of a solid material, it has a sheer strength." There may also be some other, less well understood, factors at work.

The real problem with the 'getting rid of friction' idea as a concept is that friction arises as out of a complex set of factors that relate to deep parts of physical laws. To 'get rid' of it, in any realistic analysis, would require profound alterations to the nature of matter. It would SURELY require changing the electromagnetic force in ways that would basically break all of chemistry, and maybe some important parts of nuclear physics as well. I'm not at all sure you can have atoms without friction being a thing! I'm even more unsure that you could have molecules and no friction, and at that point you certainly don't have living things anymore.

So a realistic rendition of 'no friction' is 'poof, the lights go out, nothing exists'.

 

[Retreater]

I'd advise playing it for laughs. Friction isn't a single specific sort of thing. Frictional forces can arise for a variety of reasons, and in fact there's still some lack of understanding of some of the details. Additionally, some of these forces are also very important in other respects, so if you 'got rid of friction', what would happen to the viscosity of fluids? It just isn't one of those sorts of questions that, IMHO, has any really 'right answer'. So, I'd go ahead and come up with funny situations and outcomes and not worry about 'the science' because there simply is no plausible science.

Yes. It's going to be a campaign ending event for sure. And probably quite hilarious. Honestly, I just want it to be a good story for the young people who are leaving the group to attend college.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes. It's going to be a campaign ending event for sure. And probably quite hilarious. Honestly, I just want it to be a good story for the young people who are leaving the group to attend college.

In that case, I think it’s just far simplier to go with the idea that “everything in the world is covered in the slickest grease you can imagine”. Aka everything is a super slip and slide, with no worrying about chemistry and whether mountains would just fall on top of each other or xyz. Just pure zany slippery fun

 

[Umbran]

I'm just fascinated by this. Is the issue not that the not perfectly smooth surfaces can't pass through each other?

So, from my perspective, you seem to have come upon the idea of a situation in which you feel there would be no friction, and decided that the cause of friction is not having that state. That's not really a great logical approach to the hypothetical in the OP. Let me try to explain why, by analogy...

Let us say, for sake of argument, there is a housefly in my room. Slightly annoyed, I think to myself that I could, in theory, use a military-grade flamethrower to kill that fly. And, sure, I could do that. But that doesn't mean that there are flies in people's homes because there aren't enough flamethrowers to go around. The origins of flies has nothing to do with my proposed way to remove flies.

Even if these things were perfectly smooth, they still wouldn't be able to pass through one another (presumably for a combination of electromagnetic reasons and Pauli-type reasons - again, I look to Umbran for correction and/or elucidation). But they wouldn't generate friction, which - as per post 23 - is the process of irregular surfaces deforming in order to move past one another, thereby losing kinetic energy and generating heat.

You've basically got it - to consider what the world would be like without friction, we look at the detailed cause, and find the smallest change to that we can think of that would get rid of it.

Having all objects be intangible (able to pass through each other) is a big change, with far-reaching cnsequences. Having everything be really, really smooth on a microscopic level is a smaller change.

Friction isn't a single specific sort of thing. Frictional forces can arise for a variety of reasons, and in fact there's still some lack of understanding of some of the details.

Yeah, there's a reason why I said, "the best models".

 

[Umbran]

In that case, I think it’s just far simplier to go with the idea that “everything in the world is covered in the slickest grease you can imagine”. Aka everything is a super slip and slide, with no worrying about chemistry and whether mountains would just fall on top of each other or xyz. Just pure zany slippery fun

If I recall correctly, the lowest-friction surface known to humankind is smooth ice with a thin layer of water on it - which is why ice skaters can glide along for so long.

"Everything is like wet ice," isn't a bad way to go.

 

[Umbran]

It would SURELY require changing the electromagnetic force in ways that would basically break all of chemistry, and maybe some important parts of nuclear physics as well.

You might get away with simply changing the laws of thermodynamics. If the interactions at interfaces didn't result in heating, but instead in some way returned the kinetic energy to its sources, you'd get effective frictionlessness.

Of course, you'd also then get perpetual motion machines, and probably causality breaking time travel, and nobody wants that.

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm thinking there may be a cool idea with Zuggtmoy here...

 

[Umbran]

I'm thinking there may be a cool idea with Zuggtmoy here...

Seems less fungusy than oozy to me - so Juiblex would be the more fitting referent.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You might get away with simply changing the laws of thermodynamics. If the interactions at interfaces didn't result in heating, but instead in some way returned the kinetic energy to its sources, you'd get effective frictionlessness.

Of course, you'd also then get perpetual motion machines, and probably causality breaking time travel, and nobody wants that.

Hmmm....Would this result in all collisions becoming inelastic?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Seems less fungusy than oozy to me - so Juiblex would be the more fitting referent.

fast moving gelatinous cubes?