In addition to the hexagonally ordered clusters of levitating micro-droplets, a cluster with a chain structure can exist. The first systematic observation of this new phenomenon is reported in our paper: A. A. Fedorets et al. “Self-arranged levitating droplet clusters:… Read More
Our new paper: A. A. Fedorets, N. E. Aktaev, D. N. Gabyshev, E. Bormashenko, L. A. Dombrovsky, M. Nosonovsky “Oscillatory Motion of a Droplet Cluster” J. Phys. Chem. C 2019 The work was done mostly by young Russian colleagues, Drs…. Read More
Usually I write here about papers, of which I either an author or a co-author. This paper is mostly a contribution of a graduate student, Mehran Rahmani. He took my graduate course on Vibrations and decided to do a project… Read More
A message from our college’s research support team about an NSF report on its programs supporting scientific buisnesses and the commercialization of science caused me to read other NSF reports including the NSF Office of Inspector General latest report (https://www.nsf.gov/oig/_pdf/NSF_OIG_SAR_60.pdf)…. Read More
During the 14th century, tower clocks became a common element of urban life in Europe. The “cerchi in tempra d’orïuoli” (“wheels in the movements of a clock”) and “orologio che ne chiami ne l’ora” (“a clock that calls us at… Read More
Together with our collaborators from Civil Engineering, we are designing new superhydrophobic concrete pavements and we want to ensure that the hydrophobicity (water repellency) does not mean that the pavement is slippery in terms of traction / friction. Pavements and… Read More
For many years, I have been thinking about a mystery, related to dry friction. Friction is ubiquitous, and it is a universal phenomenon; however, the law of friction is not deduced from any general principles of physics. By “the law… Read More
Our new paper “Ternary Logic of Motion to Resolve Kinematic Frictional Paradoxes” by Michael Nosonovsky and Alexander D. Breki is published in Entropy 2019, 21(6), 620; https://doi.org/10.3390/e21060620 Abstract Paradoxes of dry friction were discovered by Painlevé in 1895 and caused… Read More
Research by Prof. Nosonovsky, along with his former graduate students, Dr. Vahid Mortazavi and Mr. Rob. Morien, and co-workers, Profs. Pradeep Menezes and Pradeep Rohatgi, is featured in an article by Mary Beckman in the magazine “Tribology and Lubrication Technology”… Read More
I happened to visit Zürich a couple of weeks ago, and it was tempting to see places, where Albert Einstein lived. Einstein lived in Zürich three times. First, when he was a Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) student in 1896-1900, second,… Read More
Condensed microdroplets play a prominent role in living nature participating in various phenomena, from water harvesting by plants and insects to microorganism migration in bioaerosols. Microdroplets may also form regular self-organized patterns, such as the hexagonally ordered “breath figures” on… Read More
Tungsten disulfide (WS2) and tungsten diselenide (WSe2) are used as solid lubricants. Embedding them as nanoparticles into a polymer matrix (A–OOO polyimide) can synthesize a composite material with self-lubricating properties. This paper is another result of collaboration with Russian colleagues… Read More
Konstantin Sobolev, Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Co-PI: Michael Nosonovsky, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering “Superhydrophobic and Photocatalytic Anticorrosive (XPAC) Coatings” The surface topographies of samples M1, M5, M6, and M10. The PVA fibers are highlighted in… Read More
Our project “Theoretically based methods for generating and monitoring levitating droplet clusters and biochemical experiments in microreactor droplets” (19-19-00076), PI: Dr. A. Fedorets (University of Tyumen, Russia), coPIs: Drs. M. Nosonovsky (UWM), L. A. Dombrovsky (Moscow, RAS), E. Bormashenko (Ariel… Read More
Solving friction problems could save U.S. millions of dollars March 27, 2019News Saving millions of dollars in energy costs. Preventing blood clots. Extending the life of concrete. These are some of the potential applications of Michael Nosonovsky’s research into friction and wetting…. Read More
A new paper by our international group: A. Fedorets, L. A. Dombrovsky, E. Bormashenko and M. Nosonovsky “On relative contribution of electrostatic and aerodynamic effects to dynamics of a levitating droplet cluster” Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 133 (2019) 712-717…. Read More
Our review paper about the Voronoi entropy. Bormashenko, E.; Frenkel, M.; Vilk, A.; Legchenkova, I.; Fedorets, A.A.; Aktaev, N.E.; Dombrovsky, L.A.; Nosonovsky, M. Characterization of Self-Assembled 2D Patterns with Voronoi Entropy. Entropy 2018, 20, 956. https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/20/12/956 The Voronoi entropy is… Read More
A. Breki and M. Nosonovsky “”Ultraslow frictional sliding and the stick-slip transition,” Appl. Phys Lett. 113 (24) 241602 (2018) DOI: 10.1063/1.5064820 In this paper, we study friction at a very low velocity (37 nm/s), so that we have, in a… Read More
Dr. Nosonovsky has delivered his invited lecture “From static to Dynamic Nanofriction” at the 5th International Nanotechnology Conference Nano2018 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, on November 19, 2018. Photos from medieval Mtskheta near Tbilisi: The medieval castle and archaeological site… Read More
When I was looking for faculty positions at research universities some 10-15 years ago, I was often told that at first I need to become one of the world best experts in my area of research (namely, Tribology, the study… Read More
Our new paper A. Breki and M. Nosonovsky “Einstein’s viscosity equation and nanolubricated friction” has been accepted to Langmuir. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.8b02861 (See also the blog entry “Einstein and nanofriction”.) The generalized Einstein equation for the viscosity of a dispersion/suspension, μ… Read More
Jacob Israelachvili (FRS, NAS member, Tribology Gold Medal recipient) passed away on Thursday. He was perhaps the most famous contemporary scientist in the field of adhesion, friction, and hydrophobicity, known for his invention of the Surface Force Apparatus and for… Read More
The concept of entropy can be successfully applied to various surface phenomena ranging from friction to capillarity to self-assembly of colloidal crystals and microdroplet clusters. Friction and surface degradation are dissipative processes and the growth of entropy is an immanent… Read More
The intellectual life of every nation is shaped by its national philosophical tradition. Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger for the Germans. Descartes, Pascal, and Derrida for the French. Dostoevsky and Berdyaev for the Russians. In America, the original local branch of… Read More
Albert Einstein’s 18-pages long doctoral thesis (submitted in July 1905 and published next year in the German journal Annalen der Physik) is his most cited paper. While the objective of Einstein’s work was to determine the size of atoms and… Read More
My another unusual article has been published in an open access journal. Nosonovsky M. Cultural implications of biomimetics: changing the perception of living and non-living. MOJ Appl. Bionics Biomech. 2018;2(4):230‒236. http://medcraveonline.com/MOJABB/MOJABB-02-00072.pdf I am cautious with open access journals, since many… Read More
Normally I would not discuss my publications unrelated to my main field of research (mechanical engineering and surface science) in this blog. However, this one, although in a History peer-reviewed journal, deals with the history of mechanics and astronomy. More… Read More
N. Aktaev, A. Fedorets, E. Bormashenko, M. Nosonvosky “Langevin Approach to Modeling of Small Levitating Ordered Droplet Clusters” J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2018, 9, pp 3834–3838, (Impact Factor = 9.35) DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.8b01693 The Table of Content image shows theoretical predictions… Read More
Completed the NSF I-Corps (innovation corps) program, together with my graduate student Sridhar Lanka. Now we are almost ready to become innovative entrepreneurs and startuppers! 🙂 Learned a lot about customer discovery, the value proposition canvas, and minimal viable products,… Read More
Our proposal “Acoustic Real-Time Detection of Pathogens and Nanoparticles in Water and their Removal” was awarded UWM 2018-2019 Research Growth Initiative® award. This internal competition grant is externally peer-reviewed. I will be hiring a Research Assistant PhD student (inquiries by… Read More
Prof. Nosonovsky’s article about how modern theories of friction can help engineers is published in the ASME’s “Mechanical Engineering” magazine with the circulation of more than 100,000 hard copies. The article (which was selected for the cover story) discusses such… Read More
Between static and dynamic friction MECHANICAL ENGINEERING SEMINAR Friday, November 17, 2017 3pm, DMSC-103 Abstract. We will discuss various theories and experimental observations related to the onset of sliding and to ultraslow friction. The transition from stick to slip has… Read More
While writing about the ordered self-assembled levitating microdroplet clusters, I found that many people (including some reviewers in physics journals) tend to perceive the cluster by analogy with the Leidenfrost effect. In the Leidenfrost effect, a droplet, close to a… Read More
This famous Ancient Egyptian painting on Pharaoh (more accurately, Nomarch) Djehutihotep’s tomb (c. 1880 BCE) entered many tribology textbooks as possible evidence of the use of lubrication in Ancient Egypt. Engineers are quite enthusiastic, although Egyptologists are much more skeptical…. Read More
Our new paper in J. Phys. Chem Lett. (Impact factor = 9.35) deals with a new technique to create a levitating ordered cluster of any arbitrary small number of microdroplets. Before, only large and polydisperse clusters were created, so the… Read More
A researcher from Bangladesh asked me about my “2007 work with a generalized formulation of the Cassie-Baxter and Wenzel equations.” The Wenzel equation was introduced in 1936, and it deals with wetting of a rough surface by a water droplet… Read More
In continuation of my posting from April 20, 2017, “The lowest surface energy is not 6.7 mJ/m2, as it was reported for n-Perfluoroeicosane”. Together with Zhou Chen (who is a graduate student at the Technion and was in my class… Read More
Now I can look at the educational process from the two sides of the aisle: as a faculty member and as a parent. My son Mark became a new freshman in the department of Civil Engineering (congratulations, Mark!). I pay… Read More
Submitted a proposal for the teaching and learning conference. Call for Proposals How to teach kinematics and dynamics to engineering students in the 21st century? I will talk about challenges of teaching traditional Mechanical Engineering courses (kinematics and dynamics) in… Read More
The static friction and the kinetic / dynamic friction are two different phenomena. The coefficient of static friction is always greater than that of the dynamic friction. Therefore, the limit of small sliding velocity (V→0) is different from the case… Read More
There is a very old question, when it comes to faculty evaluations and promotions: whether we measure scientific accomplishments by the quality of publications or by the amount of money raised? The question may sound weird, but there is a… Read More
Water is known to form ordered hexagonally symmetric structures (such as snow crystals) in its solid state, however not as liquid or vapor. Typically, fogs and aerosols are composed of randomly moving small droplets lacking any ordered structure. Surprisingly, self-organized… Read More
In a celebrated and often cited (almost 900 citations) paper by Nishino et al. (1999) “The Lowest Surface Free Energy Based on -CF3 Alignment” Langmuir 15:4321-4323, it has been reported that the maximum possible water contact angle with a smooth… Read More
Nonlinear Physics Seminar: “Non-wetting and phase transitions induced by spatial and temporal patterns” Start time: 12:00pm Danciger B bldg (seminars room) End date: Wednesday, April 19th End time: 01:30pm Lecturer: Prof. Michael Nosonovsky Affiliation: University of Wisconsin Abstact: Small-amplitude fast… Read More
The Kapitsa pendulum (an inverted pendulum on a vibrating foundation), which is stabilized due to fast high frequency vibrations of a foundation, is an example of how vibrations can be substituted by an effective force. A mathematical technique of averaging… Read More
The law of rotational dynamics states that the moment of inertia times the angular acceleration equals the applied torque. This is analogous to the 2nd Newton’s law. But can the former be logically deduced from the latter? The rotational law… Read More
Traditionally, Mechanics is divided into three parts: the Statics (a study of forces without regard of motion), Kinematics (a study of motion regardless forces), and Dynamics (the study of forces and motions in combination). Well, this is a continental classification,… Read More
There is a wide-spread misconception about Newton’s laws of motion. Many people believe that all mechanics can be deduced logically from Newton’s laws in a manner similar to how geometry can be deduced from Euclid’s axioms. This is incorrect. By… Read More
A famous Japanese poem, the “Frog Haiku” composed by Bashô in 1686, says: 古池や 蛙飛び込む 水の音 (“Old pond — a frog jumped in — sound of water”). Splashes of water are fascinating phenomena. An award winning photograph “Milk Drop Coronet”… Read More
Some people state that mechanics is not a fundamental science, but rather an applied discipline. I belong to a school of mechanicians, who would strongly disagree with that assertion. For me, mechanics is a part of physics; however, it has… Read More