Sticky tape is a tool we know so well, yet so little about. We all know sticky tape has adhesive, but it also has a release coating layered on top of the adhesive (on the sticky side of the tape). Glue molecules won't stick to each other, and this coating stops it from doing this, or ‘cohering’. Restricting cohesion enables tape to instead ‘adhere’ to the non-glue molecules of the surface to which it is being stuck (a.k.a. ‘the substrate’). Therefore, adhesive force is what holds your tape to your surface.