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 ...

Clapping is both a scientific event and a social gesture. A study explores the complex physics behind the sound of clapping. The noise originates from compressed air, not just hand collisions.

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. OXFORD, U.K. — The University of Oxford is ...

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 ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

Where exactly did the tradition of clapping to express pleasure come from? In the course of researching this, I was surprised to find how many people want to argue about whether it is appropriate to ...