Sonic boom and the "rise time" of the shock which makes the boom seem louder. On most aircraft designs the characteristic distance is about , meaning that below this altitude the sonic boom will be "softer". However, the drag at this altitude or below makes supersonic travel particularly inefficient, which poses a serious problem. The pressure from sonic booms caused by aircraft often are a few pounds per square foot. A vehicle flying at greater altitude will generate lower pressures on the ground, because the shock wave reduces in intensity as it spreads out away from the vehicle, but the sonic booms
Speed of sound than in liquids, and faster in liquids than in gases, because the solids are more difficult to compress than liquids, while liquids in turn are more difficult to compress than gases. Some textbooks mistakenly state that the speed of sound increases with density. This notion is illustrated by presenting data for three materials, such as air, water and steel, which also have vastly different compressibility, more which making up for the density differences. An illustrative example of the two effects is that sound travels only 4.3 times faster in water than air, despite enormous differences in compressibility of the two