eli5 How does the sound barrier break when planes fly? What is the boom? Plane accumulating wind or what is happening?
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After a certain speed, air acts more like water than it does air, so to speak. When you hit the surface of water, it makes a splash sound, right? When you ski on the surface of water, the splash sound is continuous, right? Kind of the same thing with the air. It’s constantly “breaking the surface” of the air, and making that continuous “splash” sound. But much louder, because the surface area of the airplane is breaking a lot of the air all at once instead of just the small surface area of, say, a bullet or a whip, which does the same thing when making that “crack” sound.
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