In a scene toward the end of the 2006 film, “X-Men: The Last Stand,” a character claps and sends a shock wave that knocks out an opposing army. Sunny Jung, professor of biological and environmental engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, was intrigued. “It made me curious about how the wave propagates when we clap our hands,” Jung said. Jung is senior author of a study, published March 11 in Physical Review Research, that elucidates the complex physical