Sonic boom faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom. The whip is probably the first human invention to break the sound barrier. A bullwhip tapers down from the handle section to the cracker. The cracker has much less mass than the handle section. When the whip is sharply swung, the energy is transferred down the length of the tapering whip. Goriely and McMillen showed that the physical explanation is complex, involving the way that a loop travels down a tapered filament under tension. Sonic boom A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created whenever
Shock wave Shock wave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a medium but is characterized by an abrupt, nearly discontinuous, change in pressure, temperature, and density of the medium. For the purpose of comparison, in supersonic flows, additional increased expansion may be achieved through an expansion fan, also known as a Prandtl–Meyer expansion fan. The accompanying expansion wave may approach and eventually collide and recombine with the