Does the end of the rope. Go supersonic and if so, why
In: Physics
Sound waves are just air compressing and decompressing.
Imagine a spring. The spring gets squished together and then bounces apart to its regular shape.
A force causes air molecules to get squished, then they un-squish and bump into adjacent molecules causing them to squish. The process repeats creating a wave through the air.
That pressure wave runs into your ear drum and it gets interpreted as sound.
No, the end doesn’t go supersonic. When you move something, it displaces the air it moves through, pushing it to the side. The displaced air makes little pressure waves which can be detected as sound. When you move something slowly through the air, the waves are too weak to be noticed by our ears amongst all the other noises. But as you move something faster though the air, the pressure waves become stronger until you can hear them as a woosh.
Now, a correctly cracked whip can actually make the tip go supersonic which is what makes the loud crack. The sound, as you may notice, is distinctly different than the whoosh of spinning things in the air.
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