A contact force is any force that requires contact to occur. Contact forces are ubiquitous and are responsible for most visible interactions between macroscopic collections of matter. Pushing a car up a hill or kicking a ball across a room are some of the everyday examples where contact forces are at work. In the first case the force is continuously applied by the person on the car, while in the second case the force is delivered in a short impulse. Contact forces are often decomposed into orthogonal components, one perpendicular to the surface(s) in contact called the normal force, and one parallel to the surface(s) in contact, called the friction force.