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The secret of squeaky basketball shoes
- NEWS AND VIEWS
- 25 February 2026
The secret of squeaky basketball shoes
When shoes slide across a floor, wave-like deformations of the sole can generate squeaking. The pitch of the squeak depends on the rate at which deformations are generated.
Bart Weber http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4756-46660
Bart Weber
Bart Weber is at the Advanced Research Center for Nanolithography, 1098 XG Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and at the Institute of Physics, University of Amster-dam, 1098 XH Amsterdam.
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Basketball players often sense the movements of teammates and opponents not only by sight but also by the sharp squeaks that their shoes make on the polished court. These familiar sounds arise from rapid, subtle dynamics at the shoe–floor interface that are invisible to the naked eye. Writing in Nature, Djellouli et al.1 report high-speed optical-imaging experiments showing that the squeaking originates from wave-like deformations of the shoe sole. These waves sweep across its interface with the floor at velocities approaching 300 kilometres per hour. They lift the shoe out of contact at spatially localized points as they sweep past, enabling it to slide across the floor. The repetition rate of the waves moving across the shoe is set by the stiffness and thickness of the shoe sole and directly matches the frequency of the emitted sound.
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Nature 650, 841-842 (2026)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00295-4
References
Djellouli, A. et al. Nature 650, 891–897 (2026).
Carpick, R. W. Science 359, 38 (2018).
Aghababaei, R., Warner, D. H. & Molinari, J.-F. Nature Commun. 7, 11816 (2016).
Gotsmann, B. & Lantz, M. A. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 125501 (2008).
Holmberg, K. & Erdemir, A. Friction 5, 263–284 (2017).
Grosjean, G. & Waitukaitis, S. Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 098202 (2023).
Jimidar, I. & Méndez Harper, J. Phys. Today https://doi.org/10.1063/pt.aysx.thdp (2025).
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
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Materials science
Engineering
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