Self-Amplification of Solid Friction in Interleaved Assemblies

It is nearly impossible to separate two interleaved phone books when held by their spines. A full understanding of this astonishing demonstration of solid friction in complex assemblies remains elusive. In this Letter, we report on experiments with controlled booklets and show that the force required increases sharply with the number of sheets. A model captures the effect of the number of sheets, their thickness, and the overlapping distance. …