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Image: An FA-18 Breaking the Sound Barrier
Source: Wikimedia Commons (here)
Jets in formation
Magical spectacle and
sonic booms thundered
A crack of the whip and a noticeable sound
Is it a breaking of the sound barrier?
It is! A loop near the tip of the whip causes
the sound but not the tip of the whip though
In aerodynamics parlance this occurs when an object
moves from a transonic to a supersonic speed
Thus we have unwittingly been breaking the sound
barrier all along. But Yeager did it big time then with
his rocket powered plane over the Mojave
way back in 1947
.
Like the jets in formation, he did it with a thundering boom!
Written for d'Verse OpenLinkNight week#100
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you ever been to an airshow? its pretty amazing to see them whip by and crack that whip in their wake...
ReplyDeleteThey sure break sound and hurt the ears of a hound haha quite the sight to see.
ReplyDeleteah .. physics poetry ... love that. maybe be used... have not been exposed to the bang... but the physics is clear to me :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the fun of learning a new thing. Great to see you, Hank.
ReplyDeleteThose jets in formation is something else ~ Wow on that supersonic speed ~ Good to see you Hank ~
ReplyDeleteHappy week ~
Hi Hank,
ReplyDeleteI always wondered how it would feel to go that fast and break the sound barrier..It must be a wild sensation.
just melts your bones when close!
ReplyDeleteALOHA from Honolulu
Comfort Spiral
~ > < } } ( ° > <3
Shakes me in my shoes when they come by! Great write Hank!
ReplyDeletemust be incredible to go at that speed and do that.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that boom a few times.... Once during a war-games excersize called "Reforger" in 1970's Germany I was parked in a wooded area, where we had been instructed to camouflage our vehicles. I guess it's the poet in me, or artist, i don't know, but sometimes I just sit and stare at the sky. No reason. Not looking for anything. But that day I was looking up into a clear, sunlit spring blue sky between the trees when i caught a glimpse of what appeared to be an aircraft - probably an F15 - shoot across the small area of sky that I could see. For a couple of seconds I wondered if I had actually seen that or if it was just a blur of something.... I'm sure that I was sipping on a bottle of something at the time. But then trailing him came the sound "vvvvrrrroooooooooommmmmmmmssssswwwwwooooooooooooshhhhh" and I knew what it was. About an hour later the military judges/umpires/refereees - whatever they are - came by to tell us that we were all dead. The pilots had killed us. Of course that wasn't a sonic boom.... that was just an aircraft traveling a little faster than sound. In the barracks once I heard a boom - louder than any thunder crack - I'll tell you. I think it even shook the building a little. It was exactly like an explosion. I didn't see that one though and don't know what it was.
ReplyDeleteI've been to a few military air shows, (and toured the AF museum in Ohio many times) - Wright Patterson AFB. And Lackland AFB in SanAntonio. The power always left me feeling very small. I'll never forget seeing the Stealth Bomber and Stealth Fighter ( I think it was early 1990's) in flight!
ReplyDeleteoh! this is interesting. getting the technicals poetically is a different take! Their speeds is mindblowing!! or should i say velocity :)
ReplyDeleteThat really IS interesting, Hank. I never realized that if one cracked a whip one was breaking the sound barrier....but now that you mention it, it sure makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I was young and we would hear that "boom" in the sky as a plane broke the sound barrier. Thanks for taking me back!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed this, Hank. I travel back and forth through the Mojave and both in Reno and Palm Desert we're near air bases, so this has a familiar feel (and sound) to it.
ReplyDeletewe are going beyond our limits..
ReplyDeleteevery day :)
It is quite the sight to see
ReplyDelete...interesting Hank... my eyes would be pleased to witness that but i'm not quite sure whether my ears would feel the same... smiles...
ReplyDeleteI am always fascinated of how these heavy metals fly... nice write Pare!
ReplyDeletePareng JJ
ps. thanks for the birthday greeting!..
Excellent write, Hank. Funny at the whirl last week I wrote about the lack of jets here. I have "maybe" 3 or 4 in my 12 years here.
ReplyDeletePamela
very interesting....enjoyed!
ReplyDeleteMy former father-in-law, now passed into the sonic boom in the sky, was a USAF test pilot at the same time Yeager was gaining headlines. He refrained from entering the space program, having already spent too much time away from family to dare another 11 month Houston stint. Still, his clame to fame - test piloting 5 different make of aircraft over Mach 2. As in - here you go, Captain, let's see if this thing flies. A cool write, Hank. ~ M
ReplyDeleteVery cool picture and poem !! Wonderfully penned !!
ReplyDelete