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
Sonic boom other's way quickly enough. Eventually they merge into a single shock wave, which travels at the speed of sound, a critical speed known as "Mach 1", and is approximately at sea level and . In smooth flight, the shock wave starts at the nose of the aircraft and ends at the tail. Because the different radial directions around the aircraft's direction of travel are equivalent (given the "smooth flight" condition), the shock wave forms a "Mach cone", similar to a vapour cone, with the aircraft at its tip. The half-angle between direction of flight and the shock wave formula_1 is