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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Researchers deserve a round of applause for uncovering the science behind the acoustics produced from hand clapping that had not been clearly understood until recently. The daily gesture that people ...

In a scene toward the end of the 2006 film, "X-Men: The Last Stand," a character claps and sends a shock wave that knocks out an opposing army. Sunny Jung, professor of biological and environmental ...

Most of us think clapping is just about two hands hitting each other, but new research out this week in the journal Physical Review Research found that the clap that we hear actually comes from the ...

Have you ever clapped your hands to get someone’s attention? The resulting “crack!” sound is hard to ignore, rising above and penetrating through any background noise. Now imagine trying to do it ...