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 ...

A university in England has passed a rule replacing clapping with jazz hands at student council meetings and other official student events. Oxford University's Student Union said in an article the ...

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 ...

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 ...

Not everyone is jazzed about this new rule at the University of Manchester. The British school’s student union has banned clapping, whooping and cheering at their events — suggesting the use of “jazz ...