But it’s not. Lab-Sized Earthquakes Challenge Basic Laws of Physics. Really? No. Invariably, no. A more accurate headline would be “Lab-Sized Earthquakes Advance Understanding of Physics”

A model earthquake on a lab bench shows that a basic assumption of introductory physics doesn’t hold up at small scales. The finding could have a wide variety of implications for materials science and engineering, and could help researchers understand how earthquakes occur and how bad they might be.

And a more accurate lead-in would be rewritten to say a basic assumption of introductory physics class …

In reality, friction is a very complicated thing, and there are two common approaches to complicated things in introductory physics: ignore it, or use a very simple model of it. Which is why introductory physics problems include a lot of frictionless surfaces (and no drag), and when friction is included, a linear model is used. This really should be no surprise — we generally don’t teach them relativistic kinematics in the intro class, either. It’s hard enough to get a grip on the basic tenets of momentum, force and energy without getting into the nitty gritty details.

Other than that, though — interesting stuff.