New high-speed video reveals the physics of a finger snap

Friction plus compressibility of the finger pads are key to a speedy snap

Nov 16, 2021

It all happens in a snap. New high-speed video exposes the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it physics behind snapping your fingers.

The footage reveals the extreme speed at which the gesture occurs, and shows that friction plus the compressibility of the finger pads are key to humans’ ability to snap properly, researchers report November 17 in Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Finger snaps last only about seven milliseconds — that’s roughly 20 times as fast as the blink of an eye, says biophysicist Saad Bhamla of Georgia Tech in Atlanta. After slipping off the thumb, the middle finger rotates at a rate up to 7.8 degrees per millisecond, nearly what a professional baseball pitcher’s arm can achieve, the team found. And a snapping finger accelerates almost three times as fast as pitchers’ arms.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...d-video-thanos