Sonic boom Sonic boom A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created whenever an object travelling through the air travels faster than the speed of sound. Sonic booms generate enormous amounts of sound energy, sounding similar to an explosion or a thunderclap to the human ear. The crack of a supersonic bullet passing overhead or the crack of a bullwhip are examples of a sonic boom in miniature. Sonic booms due to large supersonic aircraft can be particularly loud and startling, tend to awaken people, and may cause minor damage to some structures. They led to prohibition of
Shock wave be: Some other terms The abruptness of change in the features of the medium, that characterize shock waves, can be viewed as a phase transition: the pressure-time diagram of a supersonic object propagating shows how the transition induced by a shock wave is analogous to a "dynamic phase transition". When an object (or disturbance) moves faster than the information can propagate into the surrounding fluid, then the fluid near the disturbance cannot react or "get out of the way" before the disturbance arrives. In a shock wave the properties of the fluid (density, pressure, temperature, flow velocity, Mach number) change