The Clapping Circle

Purdue is full of unique experiences that everyone should experience before their time as a Boilermaker is done. One of these experiences is the clapping circle near Heavilon Hall. The clapping circle is circle of landscaping bricks radiating outward from a center point. The circle of bricks is surrounded by a retaining wall that is also a circle of benches for waiting, studying, and let’s be honest, even sleeping. Behind the benches are small hills quite a few feet tall with trees growing on top of them preventing a lot of sound from escaping the circle. These hills act as an amphitheater and make the sound of a clap reverberate back to the focal point at the center of the circle causing an echo. The strange thing about this echo is that when you clap you do not hear an average echo of a clap, what you hear instead is more of a squeak. This is caused by the steps of Heavilon being directly in line with the opening of the north side of the circle. The sound waves travel towards the steps and begin to bounce off back into the circle, but since each step is higher than the last, the waves take longer to return changing the pitch of the clap. When on a tour for Boiler Gold Rush most groups travel to the clapping circle and let everyone get a chance to experiment with physics and hear for themselves the echo that their clapping causes. During Boiler Gold Rush most groups go and experiment with the physics behind this by trying it out for themselves. If you didn’t do BGR or your group didn’t go to the clapping circle then it is a must that you try it out before your time at Purdue comes to conclusion.