several pens or pencils on a table and placing an item on top of them. See "bearings" for more on the historical development of bearings.

A rolling element rotary bearing uses a shaft in a much larger hole, and spheres or cylinders called "rollers" tightly fill the space between the shaft and the hole. As the shaft turns, each roller acts as the logs in the above example. However, since the bearing is round, the rollers never fall out from under the load.

Rolling-element bearings

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