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
Explosive within the substance (usually below 1000 m/s) in contrast to detonation, which occurs at speeds greater than the speed of sound. Deflagration is a characteristic of low explosive material. This term is used to describe an explosive phenomenon whereby the decomposition is propagated by an explosive shock wave traversing the explosive material at speeds greater than the speed of sound within the substance. The shock front is capable of passing through the high explosive material at supersonic speeds, typically thousands of metres per second. In addition to chemical explosives, there are a number of more exotic explosive materials, and exotic