How Filipinos Use Science to Defy Gravity
Elphaba defies gravity by flying on her broomstick; Filipinos do it by sticking brooms to the wall.
If you’ve been on social media lately, you’ve likely seen the videos of Filipino students sticking various objects to the wall by quickly sliding them against it. Pens, brooms, and even chairs are left hanging on the wall, along with a few battle scars in spots where students rubbed too hard.
And while Elphaba’s magic is a mystery, this Filipino magic can be explained by science!
A common explanation given on social media is that the objects stick because of friction, and this is partially true. Friction is a force that resists motion between surfaces. This can be explained by the two main types of friction: static friction, which keeps objects at rest from moving, and kinetic friction, which slows down objects that are already moving.
However, simply rubbing objects against the wall isn’t enough to make them stay there—gravity would still pull them down. The frictional forces alone are not enough to hold anything up. Unfortunately, we are not Elphaba; we cannot defy gravity simply by believing hard enough.
The real magic comes mostly from the walls themselves. Every surface, no matter how smooth it looks, has microscopic bumps and grooves called asperities. When the asperities of the object and the wall come into contact, very weak electrical forces called Van der Waals forces occur between them. This provides some form of adhesion that holds the two together.
Additionally, if one surface is soft (such as the thin layer of paint on many walls), the soft layer may heat up and deform when rubbed against quickly. This would cause it to interlock around the hard surface, essentially locking it in place on a minuscule scale.
The deformation caused by the quick upward movement also dramatically increases the number of contact points between the object and the wall. In turn, this dramatically increases the amount of Van der Waals forces that can be formed.
Although these forces don’t form strong bonds, there is strength in numbers. As seen in the many videos online, the accumulation of contact points and weak forces is just strong enough to hold something up (at least temporarily). So while our “magic” is certainly not unlimited, science shows that even gravity can be challenged—no broomstick required.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KMRWidCE_rI
https://www.britannica.com/science/friction
https://byjus.com/physics/frictional-force/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020768315000323
