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February 25, 2026<\/p>\n
3 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Squeak! The surprising new physics of why basketball games are so noisy<\/p>\n A new study explains why basketball shoes make a high-pitched squeaking noise when they rub against the hardwood. The ridges on their sole hold the key<\/p>\n By Joseph Howlett edited by Lee Billings<\/span><\/p>\n Every time reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander blows by a defender in an NBA game, you\u2019ll hear the unmistakable squeak of basketball sneakers against the hardwood. Physicists now understand where these joyful sounds come from.<\/p>\n Joshua Gateley\/Getty Images<\/p>\n It\u2019s officially squeak season.<\/p>\n The National Collegiate Athletic Association\u2019s March Madness is right around the corner. The National Basketball Association (NBA) is fresh off its All-Star break, with the playoffs on the horizon. The playoffs for the women\u2019s three-on-three league Unrivaled start this weekend\u2014and Angel Reese will be back!<\/p>\n So turn on your TV and pump up the volume. Try tuning out the color commentary, the pulsating music and the \u201cdefense\u201d chants, and what you\u2019ll hear is basketball\u2019s true soundtrack: a symphony of squeaks.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n Today, in a study published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists have made a \u201cWemby\u201d-sized stride forward on the timeless scientific mystery of why basketball sneakers make those joyful noises.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were not expecting to find so much richness and depth, from a physics point of view, underneath the sole of a shoe,\u201d says Adel Djellouli, a scientist at Harvard University and co-lead author of the study.<\/p>\n In a new study, scientists explore the physics that give rise to the familiar squeak of basketball shoes sliding on a hard surface.<\/p>\n Adel Djellouli\/Harvard University<\/p>\n Most scientists who had considered the problem believed that shoe squeaks were a straightforward example of the common \u201cstick-slip phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see stick-slip in action. Just plop a heavy book on a table and try to gently slide it across. Instead of a smooth slide, you\u2019ll get a jerky, stop-and-start kind of motion.<\/p>\n Basketball squeaks, the theory went, were an example of the same phenomenon. When a player stopped on a dime, their shoe\u2019s rubbery sole would slip slightly\u2014many times per second in the same stop-and-start pattern\u2014producing a squeak. This is how violins work and why a squeaky door hinge rings at a lower pitch when you open it slowly.<\/p>\n But with the power of high-speed cameras and acoustic analysis, Djellouli and his co-authors have shown that basketball shoes are special.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s all about the bumps. Those long, raised patterns of ridges that line the bottom of a sneaker are really the maestros of basketball\u2019s soundscape. Watch the bottom of a shoe rubbing against the hardwood in slow motion, and you\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n The sole\u2019s ridges don\u2019t lift and stick all at once. Rather only a tiny part of each ridge separates from the ground at any one time. That pocket of separation glides down the ridge until it reaches the end of the sole, at which point the air outside the shoe receives a little kick. Those separation waves ripple down the ridges thousands of times per second, kicking the air rhythmically. The rate of kicks is exactly the frequency of the squeak\u2014the faster the kicks, the higher the pitch.<\/p>\n The team decided to demonstrate their new mastery of sneaker squeaks by playing a song. They chose Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars.<\/p>\n Adel Djellouli\/Harvard University<\/p>\n That frequency depends on the shape of each ridge, which guides the waves down with a characteristic speed. \u201cThe idea of a waveguide for friction was not known,\u201d says Gabriele Albertini, a structural engineer at the University of Nottingham in England and Djellouli\u2019s co-lead author. To demonstrate their finding, the scientists reverse engineered rectangular blocks of synthetic sole with distinct pitches. They were even able to play Darth Vader\u2019s theme from Star Wars on a piece of glass. \u201cIt took us three days to rehearse,\u201d Djellouli says. \u201cWe could have just shown it in a graph, but where\u2019s the fun in that?\u201d<\/p>\n The sneaker study falls under the larger umbrella of \u201cbimaterial friction,\u201d the special physics of two different materials rubbing together. The phenomenon of two different faults slipping against each other to produce an earthquake, for instance, is much like a sneaker rubbing on hardwood. Rather than the entire fault stopping and starting, ripples of separation move along it similarly to what happens with the sneaker. The team believes its rubber setup could become an easy way to study earthquake physics in a lab.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a more advanced and technically sophisticated analysis of a problem I dipped my toe into 20 years ago,\u201d says Martyn Shorten, a stick-slip expert at BioMechanica, a consulting firm in Oregon. \u201cI love it!\u201d<\/p>\n So next time you see NBA player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander take someone\u2019s ankles, remember that the spectacle\u2019s squeaky score is something to behold as well. And when you cop your favorite player\u2019s new signature shoe, you\u2019re buying a finely tuned musical instrument that simulates an earthquake with every step. Who knows\u2014maybe we\u2019re just a few years off from \u201csignature squeaks!\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 25, 2026 3 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Squeak! The surprising new physics of why basketball games are so noisy A new study explains why basketball shoes make a high-pitched squeaking noise when they rub against the hardwood. The ridges on their sole hold the key By Joseph Howlett edited by Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[1188,5479,6249,20560,4970],"class_list":{"0":"post-45283","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-physics","10":"tag-shoes","11":"tag-squeaky","12":"tag-surprising"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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