the.com/mach
the velocity that turns air into a slammed door and you into thunder
means A unit expressing speed as a ratio to the speed of sound, so Mach 1 is the speed of sound and Mach 2 is twice that.
from Named for Ernst Mach, the 19th-century Austrian physicist who studied how objects move through air and the shock waves they shed. The term came into use as aviation pushed toward the sound barrier, honoring the man who first photographed those telltale waves trailing a speeding projectile.
- named after
- physicist Ernst Mach, who doubted atoms existed
- sea level speed
- about 767 mph in standard air
- not constant
- slows in cold thin air up high
- the boom
- sound piling up into a pressure wall
- current record
- NASA X-43 hit nearly Mach 10
for instance
mach 1 — speed of sound at sea level, approximately 761 mph or 1,235 km/h
bell x-1 — first aircraft to break the sound barrier, piloted by chuck yeager in 1947
concorde — supersonic passenger jet that cruised at mach 2.04 from 1969 to 2003