Talk:Sonic boom

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Why does the shock front create a boom?

I know that a supersonic aircraft generates a sonic boom. The graphic adjacent to " Perception, noise, and other concerns" states:

"... When v = c, the sonic boom is visible. When v > c, the Mach cone is visible." What aspect of the sonic boom "is visible"? Geometrically, the line of the shock wave it is the locus of the tangent to the circles representing the range of the sound from the plane at points along its trajectory.

I don't think the article explains the relationship between that line and the creation of the "boom" (or, the N-wave described in reference[1])

Gpsanimator (talk) 07:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Graphic placement

As someone who does not know very much about the physics of sound (which I would assume represents the majority of people visiting this page), while I vaguely understood how a sonic boom worked, I was trying to understand the exact mechanic of why it happened, and the first animated graphic placed at the top of the page does little to help due to how short it is, but the animation next to 'Perception, noise, and other concerns' is very helpful and clearly demonstrates what causes a sonic boom, and I think it may be wise to move that to the top and replace the other animation, which doesn't provide much value as it only shows the particle when it has already passed the speed of sound and is too short to really understand what point it is supposed to be demonstrating. AnOldSky (talk) 16:41, 23 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]