February 24, 2026
Office tape, meet Top Gun
Scientists crack the case of "screeching" Scotch tape
Internet melts down: That screechy tape is firing tiny sonic booms
TLDR: Scientists say tape’s screech comes from tiny cracks zipping faster than sound and firing shock waves. Comments fixate on the old vacuum X-ray stunt, joke that desk tape is a jet engine, and argue whether this matters—while agreeing it’s safe and surprisingly cool science.
Your office drawer just went supersonic. Scientists say the awful squeal from fast-peeled Scotch tape comes from tiny cracks racing faster than sound and popping off shock waves—basically mini sonic booms in your stationery. The crowd went full popcorn-mode. One camp screamed, “My tape is a fighter jet now,” while another rolled eyes at “funding a study to prove tape is loud.” The drama escalated when commenters dragged in the wild old claim: tape can make X-rays in a vacuum. Cue the receipts: links to the 2008 experiment where unwinding tape in a chamber produced a grainy X-ray of a finger. Techies rushed in to calm the room—this only happens in a perfect vacuum, so your gift wrap is safe, folks. Nostalgia also hit hard: people reminisced about crushing Wint-O-Green Life Savers in the dark to see sparks, connecting it to the same weird “materials make light when stressed” thing. And yes, the “fingernails on chalkboard” PTSD was real—lots of jokes about banning tape in open-plan offices. The nerdiest tussle? What “supersonic” actually means here (faster than sound in the tape material, not your living room air). Verdict: ordinary tape just became the internet’s loudest science teacher, and everyone’s either laughing, learning, or both. Read the paper here and the X-ray throwback here.
Key Points
- •A new Physical Review E paper attributes Scotch tape’s screech to shock waves from supersonic micro-cracks during peeling.
- •Scotch tape was invented by 3M engineer Richard Gurley Drew in 1930; the snail-style dispenser was co-invented with John Borden.
- •Peeling tape exhibits triboluminescence, a light-emission phenomenon documented since the 17th century and noted in 1939 for tape.
- •X-ray emission from peeling tape in vacuum was reported in 1953 and confirmed in 2008 by UCLA using a vacuum chamber.
- •Co-author Sigurdur Thoroddsen previously used ultra-fast imaging (2010) to study peeling dynamics and associated sound.