Hand clapping is ubiquitous behavior for humans across time and cultures, serving many different purposes: to signify approval with applause, for instance, or to keep time to music. Acousticians often ...

In a pivotal scene from the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand, a mutant claps his hands and blasts a shockwave across a battlefield. In a theater somewhere, Sunny Jung watched—and wondered. “It made me ...

Researchers elucidate the complex physical mechanisms and fluid dynamics involved in a handclap, with potential applications in bioacoustics and personal identification, whereby a handclap could be ...

I don’t feel old but I’m old enough to remember being too old for Soulja Boy when he first came out. Back in 2007 when “Crank That” was terrorizing sound systems at wedding receptions and sending ’90s ...

Modern American ballparks are surrounded by all the trappings of the fan experience: loud music, fried foods and cold beers, T-shirt guns, mascots dancing while the crowd sings about Cracker Jacks—and ...

A round of applause, please: Scientists have finally figured out what’s behind the sound of clapping. The research pinpoints a mechanism called a Helmholtz resonator — the same acoustic concept that ...