Gauge Blocks (Van der Waals forces) - Sixty Symbols

Professor Phil Moriarty struggles with gauge blocks.
More links and info below ↓ ↓ ↓

This project features scientists from The University of Nottingham

Sixty Symbols videos by Brady Haran

Additional editing and animation: Pete McPartlan

[Bob_Burton]

Do the technicians know that you dropped the blocks ?

They do now !

[tubester]

If they were my gauge blocks I would be mad at you for dropping them on the floor.

[MrVenatr]

Can remember when I was 16 and starting my apprenticeship being shown these and it was like magic.

[brochan]

Johnny Ball showed me this phenomena on his tv show back in the '70's. It's nice to know now what the physics is to explain it.

[hoarp]

In the machine shop, we call it 'wringing, its a pretty common word, people talk about wringing two slips together all the time'. And usually we call them slips, rather than gauge blocks. Someone probably already said this...!!

[MadScientist]

If you want to try this you can do it with hardrive platters, they're also precision machined.

[WildBillCox]

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting.

[ProgressiveEconomicsSupporter]

That is a known, undesired effect of metals clean of oxide layer. A problem in space technology, were contacting metall surfaces stick together. There just metall layers fuse coldly together, as if molten

[ashkara]

Well this is A Level Physics. Finally something I was familiar with beforehand on this channel. At first I thought it was cold welding, but I was wrong apparently.

[keithglaysher]

Prof, thanks for that you are a genius! been looking for the reason & you found it in a way I understand it. Cheers Prof.

[picobyte]

@sixty Harddrive platters also work very well.Never tried removing the magnetic layer but the degauser should make it nonmagnetic as those gauge blocks.

[dhavalbhalara]

Will extremely smooth two different materials will stick together?

[ashboon]

I would like to mention that this is how cold welding works, for engineers out there.

[marksummerfield]

I've had this happen to me and thought it was a thin layer of oil or something. Now I know. Cool vid

[AndreaCalaon]

At 1 atm pressure if you prevent air from getting in between two surfaces you have slightly more than 1Kg normal force per square cm, which is more than enough for some nice tricks. If you work with precision mechanics you know that very flat and smooth sufficiently large matching surfaces can cause dangerous sudden detachments...

[MathAndComputers]

How has the drum beat analysis been going, Prof. Moriarty? Any promising results? :)

[dynamicgecko]

Is this what's called "Cold Welding" or are they separate things?

[AwakenConsc]

Question for the scientists:

Is gravity actually a long range version of the Wan Der Walls forces with objects that are much more massive than small molecules?

or in other words:

Is the Wan Der Walls force actually just a short range version of gravity with small molecules?

Note: sorry if this question makes you roll your eyes. Please try very hard not to hate on me for asking this.

[Merto]

I dont think the surfaces must be absolutely flat. They just have to fit perfectly so the atoms are as close as possible.

Is this effect similar to the effect happening during cold welding?