Early on, engineers debated the very nature of the Panama Canal. They finally abandoned ideas about a sea-level canal (like the Suez) when engineer John Frank Stevens instead insisted upon a different option—a locks canal.

Concepts like the “frictionless surface” enabled Newton to lay the groundwork for modern physics. He may never have imagined that his ideal could actually be achieved, but now, thanks to a group of tribologists (scientists who study interacting surfaces in relative motion), the prospect of eliminating friction between two interacting surfaces has come to fruition.