the.com/van der waals force
The universe's way of saying even nothing wants to hold hands sometimes.
means A weak, short-range attraction between molecules or atoms, caused by fleeting shifts in their electron clouds, that lets even electrically neutral matter stick together a little.
from Named after Johannes Diderik van der Waals, a Dutch physicist who in his 1873 doctoral thesis corrected the ideal gas law by proposing that real gas molecules exert a slight mutual attraction and take up actual space — work that later earned him the Nobel Prize. The force itself was only explained at the quantum level decades later, when physicists showed that temporary, flickering imbalances in electron distribution around atoms create brief dipoles that tug gently on their neighbors.
- magnitude
- weak enough to ignore, strong enough to trap geckos
- gecko trick
- millions of foot hairs exploit it to climb glass
- origin
- random electron wobbles create temporary flickering dipoles
- range
- fades fast, only matters at near-atomic distances