{"id":208423,"date":"2025-03-12T07:20:20","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/the-dynamic-acoustics-of-clapping-how-hand-shape-affects-sound"},"modified":"2025-03-12T07:20:20","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:20:20","slug":"the-dynamic-acoustics-of-clapping-how-hand-shape-affects-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/the-dynamic-acoustics-of-clapping-how-hand-shape-affects-sound","title":{"rendered":"The dynamic acoustics of clapping: How hand shape affects sound"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-dynamic-acoustics-of-clapping-how-hand-shape-affects-sound.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In a scene toward the end of the 2006 film, \u201cX-Men: The Last Stand,\u201d a character claps and sends a shock wave that knocks out an opposing army. Sunny Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was intrigued. \u201cIt made me curious about how the wave propagates when we clap our hands,\u201d Jung said.<\/p>\n<p>Jung is senior author of a study, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/PhysRevResearch.7.013259\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Physical Review Research<\/i>, that elucidates the complex physical mechanisms and <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/fluid+dynamics\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">fluid dynamics<\/a> involved in a handclap, with potential applications in bioacoustics and personal identification, whereby a handclap could be used to identify someone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cClapping hands is a daily, human activity and form of communication,\u201d Jung said. \u201cWe use it in religious rituals, or to express appreciation: to resonate ourselves and excite ourselves. We wanted to explore how we generate the sound depending on how we clap our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a scene toward the end of the 2006 film, \u201cX-Men: The Last Stand,\u201d a character claps and sends a shock wave that knocks out an opposing army. Sunny Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was intrigued. \u201cIt made me curious about how the wave propagates [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}