the.com/mach number
Speed measured against sound, because bragging in mph wasn't humbling enough.
means The ratio of an object's speed to the speed of sound in the surrounding air, so Mach 1 means exactly as fast as sound travels.
from Named after Ernst Mach, the 19th-century Austrian physicist and philosopher who studied shock waves and supersonic motion long before anything man-made could actually break the sound barrier. The term 'Mach number' was coined by a Swiss engineer in the 1920s in his honor, and it only became a household term once jet and rocket engines in the 20th century gave humans a reason to care how their speed compared to sound's.
- definition
- ratio of your speed to local speed of sound
- named for
- ernst mach, who never saw a jet
- mach 1 varies
- depends on air temperature, not altitude alone
- fun catch
- mach 1 is slower in cold thin air