What is the barrier of sound and why does it takes a certain speed to break?

880 views

Just curious 🙂

In: Physics

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine a pond, if you drop a rock into it, a wave spreads out at a certain speed. Sound moves through the air in a similar way.
Say instead of dropping a rock, you pull a stick over the surface, you can move the stick as fast, or faster than the speed of the waves. You’ll notice that the waves bunch up and form a wake behind the stick. The same thing happens with a supersonic plane.

As a plane goes faster than the speed of sound, it begins to move through the air faster than the pressure waves it produces, this actually changes the way the air behaves around the wings and the engine of the plane, this means to make a supersonic plane, you can’t just strap a more powerful engine to a plane and make it fly supersonic, you have to design the plane in a special way. This is why figher jets have that triangle shape, instead of the straight wings on slower aircraft. This is what was referred to as the “sound barrier”.

You are viewing 1 out of 5 answers, click here to view all answers.