WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I ENVIED SALLY CULVER. Though she was five years younger, she had somehow managed to get herself a fan club. It began one summer evening, when Mrs. Culver brought her 1 year-old ...

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 ...

“Two hands clap and there is sound; what is the sound of one hand?” asks the latest adaptation from House of Orphans and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. One Hand Clapping opens the ...

Nearly every human culture uses clapping to cheer, protest, pray or perform – but a new study reveals that the familiar gesture is as much a scientific event as it is a social one. “This is the first ...

The sound of Paul McCartney and Wings’ “One Hand Clapping” used to only be heard on bootlegs, or in snippets available on archival releases over the years. But it’s new (mostly) complete official ...

Scientists have finally unravelled the complex process that generates sound during handclaps, a discovery that shows how even simple acts can be rich with physics. The research, published in the ...