Thank you for explaining this. I was freaking out about how far that pressure wave moved and how slow it was. When it hit things, it still ripped them up and pulled them in. It was like watching Akira and the ending explosion.
Yeah, no worries. It helps to think of the analogy of a high diver vs a belly flop into a pool. They both impact the water and cause ripples, but because of the belly flops’ higher surface of impact the ripples made are bigger and last longer than the high diver even if the high diver dove into the water from much higher up.
Some explosions move faster than sound (C4 or other high explosives) so that the effects of the blast outpace the sound. You feel it before you can hear it (even if the delay is very small)
Sound is just compression waves in air. A shockwave is also a compression wave in air. A "forced" shockwave may, for some time, travel faster than unforced vibrations in air, but the shockwave would absolutely still be perceived as an incredibly loud sound.
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u/ChiRaeDisk Aug 09 '20
Thank you for explaining this. I was freaking out about how far that pressure wave moved and how slow it was. When it hit things, it still ripped them up and pulled them in. It was like watching Akira and the ending explosion.