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The physics of sneaker squeaks: High-speed imaging shows how they arise from supersonic detachment pulses
- February 25, 2026 at 4:00 PM
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Basketball shoes on a gym floor, bicycle brakes in need of a tune-up, or the squeal of tires are everyday examples of squeaking sounds. Such sounds have long been attributed to stick-slip friction, or a cycle of intermittent sticking and sliding between surfaces. While this framework explains many rigid-on-rigid systems such as door hinges, it does not fully capture the physics of soft-on-rigid interfaces, like shoes on a floor.
Originally published at Phys.org