How much friction—or the force that resists motion between two sliding surfaces—do you think there is between two pieces of paper? Try a very quick test before you even start this project. Take two stacks of sticky notes with 5 pages each, and interleave the pages, or overlap them one by one. Then try to pull them apart, like in Figure 1. Easy, right? Now try it with 20 pages per stack. Can you pull them apart at all? Why is it so much harder?
sticky note friction experiment
Figure 1. Try to pull apart two small stacks of sticky notes with interleaved pages.
The pages of the sticky note pads are held together by friction. Even a small number of interleaved pages can result in a surprisingly large amount of friction, making the sticky notes impossible to pull apart. This phenomenon is commonly demonstrated with phone books. People have tried pulling two interleaved phone books apart by playing tug-of-war or even attaching them to cars or tanks driving in opposite directions. See the Bibliography and search the internet for "phone book friction" and you will find plenty of videos showing the experiment. There are even demonstrations that show a car hanging from a crane supported by two phone books.
How can the phone books support so much force? To understand this, first you need to understand a little more about friction. The friction force between two surfaces depends on two factors: the normal force, or the force acting perpendicular to the surfaces pushing them together, and the coefficient of friction, a constant that describes the friction between two materials. For example, your shoes and a carpeted floor have a higher coefficient of friction than your shoes and ice (note: technically there are different coefficients of friction depending on whether an object is sliding or static [not moving], see the Physics Classroom reference in the Bibliography or consult a high school physics textbook for more details). The friction force is related to the normal force and coefficient of friction by Equation 1:
F=μN
where
F is the friction force in newtons (N)
μ is the coefficient of friction (no units)
N is the normal force in newtons (N)
So, the higher the coefficient of friction, or the higher the normal force, the higher the resulting friction force. What, then, results in such a high friction force between the interleaved pages of the sticky notes? The coefficient of friction does not change because the materials stay the same (paper), so it must be a high normal force. What causes a high normal force? When you try to pull the sticky notes apart, the interleaved pages are squeezed inward. This increases the normal force on the pages. Conceptually, this works just like a Chinese finger trap—the harder you pull, the harder the pages squeeze together. Take a look a Figure 2 to help you understand.
phone book friction physics
Figure 2. This diagram shows a side view of two stacks of sticky notes with interleaved pages. The section of interleaved pages is twice as thick as the binding of either individual sticky note pad. This means that the pages in the non-overlapping area of each pad must be at an angle (labeled θ in the figure; note that the angle is measured from the page to a horizontal line, not between pages). Because of this, when you try to pull apart the pads, the tension in each individual page (red arrow) has a horizontal component (blue arrow), but it also has a vertical component (green arrow). This vertical component squeezes the pages together, increasing the normal force acting on each page and thus increasing the friction.
To help you visualize this, take your interleaved stacks of 20 sticky notes again. Hold them very loosely and look at them edge-on. You can even try pushing them toward each other a bit. You should be able to see small gaps between the pages, and maybe some of the pages will bend a bit. Now, pull on the sticky notes as hard as you can. The pages should flatten out and squish together, and the gaps between them will disappear.
In this project, you will measure exactly how much weight different numbers of interleaved sticky notes can hold by hanging weights from the sticky notes, vertically. How do you think the amount of weight they can support will change with the number of pages? Will the change be linear, exponential, or something else? For example, if the change is linear, then if you double the number of pages, you would expect the weight supported to also double. However, if the change is exponential, the weight supported would more than double. What do you think is more likely, based on your background research?
Common misconceptions about the phone book friction experiment
Due to the popularity of this experiment, a few common misconceptions or incorrect explanations of the physics involved can easily be found online. We have listed a few of these misconceptions here, along with explanations. Make sure you avoid them in your science project! For advanced students