Tap Dancing
Entry posted by DavidStack
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Because I have a habit of bouncing from activity to activity, I chose to participate in the musical this winter after my body failed to push through the pain of indoor track. With my luck, it turns out that the musical this year has multiple tapping numbers, so i get to learn how to tap dance! So I wondered, how do tap shoes make the noise that they do?
The physics is really quite simple. When the tapper pushes their foot to the ground, a lot of the kinetic energy is converted into sound energy, dispersing a crisp noise. Tap shoes produce a louder and crisper sound that the average shoe because tap shoes have metal plates on the ball of the foot and the heel, and metal (because of its free flowing electrons) conducts sound better than rubber - the typical bottom of a shoe - does. Tap shoes also produce a crisper sound when just the ball or heel of the foot makes contact with the floor because when the whole foot is on the floor some of the path way of the sound is trapped under the foot, creating a somewhat muffled noise that sounds more like a stomp than a precise tap. Thanks to physics, I understand how to make a crisper noise when I dance which will hopefully improve my dancing ability!
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