I'm actually a middle school science teacher and I had to comment to that this video is really well done. Probably not something I would use in everyday middle school classes, but something I would absolutely use as a resource at either an extra-curricular level or high school level. The information, visuals of the video, and clarity in presentation of information all merged together really well to create an engaging and comprehendible video. Nice job! Would love to see more like this from you. (As a side-note, I've shown your videos before in extra-curricular or off-day settings as an example of an awesome woman in science and engineering putting her work out in an engaging way for kids to discover. Love your channel; keep it up!)
As a high school science teacher...I agree, but I would change or explain that sound waves are longitudinal pressure waves and not transverse sine waves...especially the graphic showing the sine wave emanating from the speaker. This is a very well done and clear video about sonic booms. Thank you for both making this and sharing this Xyla. This would be a very relatable EDpuzzle for an introduction to Physics class.
@@albatross8361 On the other end, I've found watching at 1.5x helps fight ADD/ADHD... at least for me. Overstimulating makes it so I have to focus *_more,_* thereby having less chance of being distracted.
@@christinezacharer1035 The sine wave doesn't represent the actual wave being propagated through our environment (atmosphere, the reflective surfaces surrounding us etc). It's more of a representation of the electronically recorded waveform. It's what we would basically need to record the sound in the environment and then reproduce that sound artificially via a loudspeaker. It's an acceptable substitute for a brief explanation of soundwaves... the same way one would describe a force vector with an arrow.
As a 20 year veteran physics teacher I can say this is one of the best descriptions of the phenomenon I have seen online and this will so be used by my class this year. I also love being able to give my female physics students a role model so they can see themselves in physics and engineering and you are great for that. Please keep making more of these although i also love showing your engineering videos to my robotics class as they show how much prototyping, retooling, redesigning, etc that is necessary to make things actually work. Thanks for this and all the other content.. (btw one of your flight proven Seasons Yeetings ornaments has a place of pride in my classroom)
If you're looking for additional good videos to show your students, check out the Animagraffs video "How the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Works". There is a ton of useful information in that video, about sonic booms and a whole range of other related topics.
@@xylafoxlin Good presentation, but in all that you never mentioned that where you can hear the boom is within the conic section ie where the ground intersects the cone of the sonic boom. Parts of calculus books are devoted to conic sections, and that is a succinct way to look at it.
So you draw them in with bullet proof dresses, rocket powered christmas trees and stripper jokes and then when they least expect it you hit them with educational content. Very sneaky, I like it.
Literally this meme (except the dino is Xyla with science facts): i0.wp.com/mediachomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/zzclever-who-comic-01.jpg?resize=680%2C340&ssl=1
I enjoyed Science educator Xyla, good job! Also another sonic-boom analogue is the wake of a boat. that's what happens when the boat is going faster than the waves it makes, and that may be a great visualization for why you don't hear the boom from a rocket. start with a boat at the shore and have it go straight out until it is going 2.2 times the speed of waves, then see if the wake ever gets back to that same point.
This was a fun video (the pacing felt like a 15 minute long Short- it was very engaging the whole way through). I'd definitely enjoy this style of video in the mix for your channel!
GREAT EXPLANATION! ... ... ... although, slightly over-simplified ... ... ... as a pilot, you know air density is not constant, therefore, the speed of sound through air is not constant either.
Loved the really clear, and thorough, description! The animations/artwork that went with them were spot on, and worked perfectly. Really nicely done, and I'd love to see what other topics you find to bring your educator skills to!
Pistol Shrimp for Boomy award. A little shrimp has a huge snapping claw that can snap and create a cavitation in the water. The tiny cavitation bubble is compressed and collapses causing a sonic boom, enormous heat (5000+ C) and sometimes light. It can kill or stun other aquatic life.
Your channel is one of my teen's favorites because of her love of science and engineering. Anything you produce will get her logging on within moments of getting home to see what you are doing.
Man, the illustrations and animations in this video are really pro. Like, you didn't *need* to have the people on the magic carpet hold their ears when they flew by the rocket, but you did. The whole video production quality is tops. The "goofs" in the green screen red carpet gag are an exception, but in the context of the whole video they're actually more ironic than goofs.
Seems a model rocket travelling horizontally, instead of vertically, an audience within the boom carpet would experience a boomy 💥. Sounds like a video opty.
You missed one important thing. Speed of sound depends not only by the medium, but also other factors. In atmospheric air it depends mostly by the temperature. With higher altitude, temperature drops. About 2K per every 1000 ft. So in higher altitude, we have slower speed of sound. That's why airline pilots uses Mach number instead of knots at some point of climb - to not exceed speed of sound on top of the wing, where air moves faster than other places around aircraft.
I live down the coast a bit from Vandenberg, and it's interesting how much the perceived loudness varies of sonic booms from various Space-X launches. The exact trajectory they're launched on matters a lot.
Just wanted to thank you for the presentation at the Builders Stage in Normal, IL on Wednesday! You and the boys did a great job of sharing your "why I'm an engineer" stories. I'm a retired engineer, but the talk sounded a lot like some chats I've had with friends. Thanks for helping inspire the next generation of engineers!
@@ADBBuild light or more accurately massless particles always travels at it's max speed, it can't go slower or faster. When traveling through a medium it's not actually slowing down the massless particles, it's the waveform interacting with the material creating a combined waveform that isn't entirely massless anymore, and thus travels slower. So travelling trough a medium actually changed the light so something else during transit.
Excellent video! I snapped a picture of #5 Blue Angel F/A-18 screaming past me at an airshow last month - which caused my spiral down a shockwave rabbit-hole. While of course the jet wasn't going fast enough to generate a sonic boom - clearly visible in my picture is the pressure wave extending out from the tail of the aircraft, bending the light behind it. The humidity in the atmosphere that day was low, so there was very little vapor cone to obscure the wavefront, plus the jet was almost exactly perpendicular to my location; I estimate that fraction-of-a-second-edge-on-viewing-angle is what allowed that to be visible to me. I am endlessly fascinated by the picture.
Another common place for sonic booms in everyday life is inside certain turbochargers and superchargers. Between the conditions inside the compressor section and the speed of the compressor itself, the blade tips may exceed the speed of sound and create sonic booms. Depending upon the number of blades and the rotational speed at which it takes place, that can be anything from a rattling sound to a tone.
I got to see the launch of Voyager 2 in Florida, 1977. I don’t remember a sonic boom but I remember the crackling sound from the Titan engines which I’ve been told are a series of mini sonic booms from the exhaust stream as it goes supersonic. I’ve also been up close to an F16 with its afterburners lit up. It was really pretty - pink and purple flames with shock diamonds caused by the supersonic exhaust. More than loud - you could feel the rumble through your skull and chest cavity. (Also, no back ache… core strength exercises and yoga and plenty of fiber)
Very well explained and especially well animated and visualized. The ability to do something and the ability to explain it simply without compromising on accuracy are not the same skill, but no surprise they are both skills you have!
Lady in STEM, Expressive Face, Expressive Hands, Warm looking Purple Velour Jumpsuit (super-comfy looking), I get to Learn Stuff- This is a great day...
You are such a natural teacher, I knew how sonic booms happen and knew why we couldn't hear one from your rocket but I didn't know about the maths relating to the frequency being undefined which was very interesting to find out. I wish my engineering lecturers were as good as you
You're a good presenter and the content is good either way. Builds that reference big concepts, but gloss over the details are fine by me, but going deeper like this is also good.
Most common sonic boom boomies - now I'm wondering if, since the start of the 20th century, more sonic booms have been created by bullets than by thunder. (Though the average person is still far more likely to hear thunder on a routine basis - which is one definition of common)
Based on some random googling, there's around 1.2B lightning strikes a year, and at least a few years ago, at least 12B rounds of ammo made a year. Not every round will be fired, and some percentage would be subsonic, and it's probably ramped up a lot the last few years. Based on wild speculation, I'd guess the number of supersonic gunshots probably exceeded thunder during WWI and then again in WWII, and then stayed that way from that point on, with the changes in manufacturing, weapons, culture, and the way conflicts are fought
You are a gifted "teacher"! You manage to explain all the science in a fun and easy to grasp way. As for topics: go for what passionates you. Any topic brought in your vibrant manner will be well worth watching!
I grew up in the 70's in the high desert near Edwards air force base. Sonic booms were common everyday from the flights out of Edwards. I remember hearing them during class. Now a days, there's a whole generation who's never experienced a sonic boom.
My thoughts when I saw the title of this video: 1) Not all sonic booms are equally loud. A tiny whip tip is not going to generate as much force as a jet, so its boom has less volume. 2) That rocket is super aerodynamic. Much thinner and sleeker than a jet, no wings, and tiny fins instead of tail wings. That's much less drag, so it'll have a smaller boom. 3) Rockets are loud, and we stand far away from them for safety. So with a smaller boom, all the rocket noise, and our distance away from them, I really wouldn't expect a sonic boom to be very noticeable.
73 y.o. Retired Pharmacist here. I love your explanation on this complex subject . A thought popped into my head that with your great body of practical science knowledge and the variety of your projects to date, you could put together a great college course. You are a great instructor. 👍
First - thank you for explaining why I never heard a sonic boom: My 38mm minimum-diameter glass-wrapped Cirrus Dart on an I-435T Blue Thunder was one of my favorite to fly (at 16 yrs old). Not favorite to watch though, because there was really nothing to see. Like trying to watch a bullet. I like to see the solid metal point on your nosecone. Mine was solid-urethane and it abraded about 1/2" on the first flight.
If you want to hear the sonic boom from Spite, you could launch it from an aircraft downwards. Or put a recording device on an aircraft orbiting your launch area.
@@jakobrosenqvist4691 Wernher von Braun once said of the V2 rocket (the worlds first rocket powered guided ballistic missile) that "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet." So it could be argued that a missile is just a rocket that lands on the wrong planet, and happens to carry an explosive (non-scientific) payload.
Well Done, Xyla! Your lesson content and teaching construct/ tactics were effectively combined to provide an accessible lesson for those with a basic understanding as well as specific enough information (mathematical formulae) to validate the factual data. Combined with the fun graphics, the "Boomy" awards and your boundless passion and energy, this production was a home run!
If you were ever way too close to a lightning strike (in the struck building, for example), you know how much it's a sonic boom. At that distance you don't hear the deep boom and rumbling caused by the sound waves bouncing off everything on the way to you and slowing down to normal speed of sound, you hear and feel the sharp supersonic crack assaulting your senses at the same perceived moment as the light flash. Unforgettable experience.
Excellent explanation Xyla and it touches a little bit on how some of the aerospace companies are TRYING to bring back supersonic air transport. They want to design the craft so the majority of the shockwave is directed UP rather than in a symmetrical cone.
nice. so many good things in this video... like a reminder of the awesome rocket, the follow up about the sonic boom question, with all the relatable explanation, including the visual effects reason, and the always cute hostess showing off three cute outfits... thanks!
Stellar video Xyla! Snippets of your knowledge and teaching abilities come through on your build videos but you “boomed” this one out of the park. I didn’t know your 140 could go supersonic.
I lived in Camarillo, CA in the 80s. Even from there I could hear the Space Shuttle when it returned (to land at Edwards). It shook my windows. Also a sonic boom is usually a double boom-boom as the two shockwave fronts pass over you.
You’re really good at explaining complex concepts. What about putting a camera/mic on a balloon off to the side of the launch? It’d be cool to be able to see a clear shot of the rocket as it’s breaking the sound barrier. Are there regulations against launching two ultrasonic rockets at the same time? They could have cameras aimed at each other maybe 360 cameras in a clear payload bay? Timing the launches would need to be precise. Traditional igniters are kind of inconsistent. But the new ignition system I made is very precise. I mentioned it in your discord a couple weeks ago. I would love to send you a custom launcher if you’d be willing to try it.
In a rocket launch, you do actualy hear sonic booms. They are not from the rocket body it self but from shock waves insdie the exhaust gases of the rocket motors. It is this caracteristic crackling sound you can hear from big rockets.
When I worked for the Navy out at the Pacific Missile Test Range at Pt. Mugu and China Lake, we flew aerial targets, which were basically missile emulators, as well as full-scale aerial targets (FSAT) - manned and unmanned both. During my time, they were transitioning from the QF-4 in to F-16s and other aircraft. We flew them as drones (subsonic), and as aerial targets - both supersonic and transsonic. Sometimes it was just race-track them until they fell into the ocean, then (in theory), the Navy helicopter squadron that was flying the thing would go out and recover it. I say in theory, because good luck with that if it happened on a Friday afternoon, particularly before a holiday weekend. When we flew them off Hawaii, we'd occasionally get Japanese fishermen drag one back to us, for which I hear they were paid rather well. I think they quit flying them in Hawaii when a transsonic, hypergolic-fueled target that had gotten "lost" for several decades had the separator between the fuel tanks give way and it went high order. It took one man's life, and badly disfigured another - the guy who I talked to about it - and I'm pretty sure the state of Hawaii said "No more of that sh*t, haoles." Anyway, I'm not clear what they did with the so-called "transsonic" targets, other than testing them at those configurations to find out how they acted within those just under supersonic speeds. Some kind of threat emulation, I'm sure.
So if you do hear a sonic boom from the rocket it's because the rocket is heading more or less towards you and is more or less horizontal. This is a bad thing because it means it was launched AT you, and it probably means you're under attack.
That's a long freaking tether. And the balloon needs to have enough lift to lift itself and 400m+ worth of whatever the tether is made of. And Xyla needs to have enough money to buy the balloon and 400m+ of tether and a reel that can hold it and a trailer that can transport the reel and a vehicle that can pull the weight of all of the above. ;)
@@shadowfaxcrx5141 Just have an Arduino or similar recording the sound to a SD card, with a remote controlled mechanism to vent some of the lifting gas and descend the balloon on command.
Yes, Xyla, this type of video is very much appreciated. I may be a test engineer, but there was an age when I would have really appreciated this sort of explanation with such clear imagery. Well done. Keep up the great work.
Some fun tidbits. You will always hear a sonic boom around rockets its just the rockets have to be really big for the frequency to be low enough for you to hear because the only one that is aimed downward is from the engine and it is FAR louder than the airflow shockwave source. That said there _is_ a 'collapse clap' if the engine turns off quickly enough as well. An Atlas or Shuttle launch required people to be far away because it was entirely supersonic and hypersonic shockwaves propagating from the engine exhaust flares. When Pinatubo erupted VEI6 in the early 1990s it did so 'silently' because the ejected material came out above the speed of sound and traveling almost entirely upwards. It made noises but one would expect an 'Earth shattering kaboom' from something in the low nuclear force range but because it was substantially made up of super-hot gasses and highly ablative low density ash it absorbed its own shockwave within its outer layers. Rocket motor exhaust will do this as well and generally you're actually behind all that when the rocket breaks the sound barrier. The entire dynamic of creating a rocket is to ensure that for most of its flight envelope it is never touched by the closure of the traveling shockwave more than that one time when it forms as it is accelerating from the pad, so the shockwave is literally closing _into_ the engine exhaust. In atmospheric hobbyist flights it does also collapse back forward after the engine has died as well. If you're someplace downrange from an air defense battery's launch site you _will_ hear the sonic cracks of the launched interceptors. Hope that all adds to your presentation! Anecdotally I was at scout camp when they strapped a well balanced brick to an M but wouldn't let us stand anywhere near it and we DID hear a series of 'pops' as the aerodynamics struggled against the thrust at mach 1. (mid 1980s)
I loved this format, Xyla. A mix of this format and "watch me make something cool" on your channel would be great! Back when I was a "steely-eyed missile man" and ran my own teensy aerospace company, I was at the launch of many supersonic rockets. Never heard a boom once--for precisely the reasons you describe. Was at the launch of a minimum-diameter, "O' class vehicle that was predicted to go to 12+km, and hit mach 3 on the way up. When it came back (a few hours after launch), the gorgeous paint job had been stripped away from the front meter of the vehicle due to aero heating. This was with Mike Dennett who was with Cesaroni Aerospace at the time.
This is a video that should never been needed if people just had paid attention in school. But I’m glad anyway it was made, because it was fun as hell 😂
Splitting hairs: You're not actually seeing your hand, you're just seeing the light bouncing off of it. Yes, you can 'see' a shockwave, by observing it's effects in a visible surrounding medium, such as water vapor or smoke. No, _technically_ you can't see a sound wave, but you can sure-as-shooting see it's effect on things around it. Arguments like these usually hinge on either a misunderstanding of the definition of a specific mode of perception or on how we process those perceptions in our brain. Since the definition (according to Google) of the word "See" is "1. perceive with the eyes; discern visually." and "2. discern or deduce mentally after reflection or from information; understand." You can, in fact, 'see' a shockwave, even if one is not currently present. Furthermore, since all we are _ever_ seeing is the results of things interacting, then it could be argued, both, that we _never_ see anything but light, and that we _always_ see anything to which we can observe it's interactions with it's environment. Ambiguities like these are why you shouldn't make concrete statements of Truth, without considering that your argument might simply be one of definition or semantics.
I think what she meant was that the thing you are seeing around the wings which people tend to identify with the sonic boom, is actually a different phenomenon. The boom is constantly booming as long as the speed is supersonic, but those condensation patterns around the wings come and go depending on the amount of moisture in the air as the object passes.
You would be everybody’s favorite teacher. The content is well organized, presented clearly, and in a manner to keep people engaged. Love this video! Love your channel!
Definitely keep making science explainers; you're good at it, and they're fun to watch. Also really enjoyed the quality of the animations, your animator(s) did a fantastic job.
THIS. IS. FANTASTIC. focusing on one particular scientific aspect from a previous video is a great pairing. PLEASE MORE!
18 часов назад
I'm gonna post a guess *before* watching the video and see if I get it right: the sonic boom is created by compression at the tip of the rocket in the direction of travel, and travels radially outwards from there. Which means, in order to hear the sonic boom, you would need to be in front of or off to the side of the rocket. But, for a *launching* rocket, you typically are pretty much directly "behind". So, there *is* a sonic boom, but you're on the wrong side of it. This is different for a *landing* spacecraft. SpaceX's Falcon 9 boosters generate a characteristic triple sonic boom from the engine bells, the landing legs, and the grid fins when they come back to land. The Super Heavy booster generated a mighty sonic boom. The Boeing X-37B also creates a sonic boom when it lands, which is can be somewhat startling because it is so secret, the public is generally not informed about it. And, of course, the mighty Space Shuttle did as well.
THIS WAS AWESOME!! Topics to discuss are ones that make you as happy and joyful to talk about as this one. The message is always received better when the presented is impassioned.
Excellent video. The best aspect is that we see a woman doing and talking about actual engineering. Thanks for the bit about Christine Darden, who also rocks.
Its not actually a sonic boom. It creates a different thing called a "cavitation wave". Analogous, but technically a different phenomenon since it doesn't involve anything moving at super-sonic speeds (especially not super-sonic in water where the speed of sound is way higher). Still really cool though! Shrimp are awesome
Old guy here. Back in the 60s, in the depth of the cold war, during the summer, in Lafayette Indiana, we would here hours of sonic booms from the B-58 Hustlers doing flight practice on "sonic boom" routes. They weren't supposed to go supersonic until they got over Lake Michigan. The B-58 would take off from Bunker Hill AFB in beautiful and scenic Peru IN, and go north-west to start their route over the length on Lake Michigan. They would almost start early, and be supersonic before Lafayette. This was about 1960-62 or so. I remember being scared as a 5 year old, listening to the hours of sonic booms in the early evenings. Other evenings you would see B-47 or B-52 doing low level "oil burner" routes at 100 ft or less altitude. That said, I enjoy the "explainer" videos.
Another old guy here... and used to hear sonic booms on the roof and windows of my grade school in Iowa. Probably the USAF guys from Omaha? It's probably best that they stopped doing that, but it was a bit interesting.
Also, even if you had tried to use the sound from the rocket camera, you still wouldn't have heard the boom; it's a sonic effect, and by definition you're going faster than it.
For what it's worth, i like these more essay style videos, i like learning how things work. i mean, in this specific case i already knew a lot of this stuff, but more videos with science and talkies would still be much appreciated.
I absolutely loved this science communication side and it would be cool to see more. You explain things very well and it was enjoyable watching the animations and examples, also your humor is a great added plus to this
"How's your back?" IT'S FINE YOUNG LADY!! ;) I am a little disappointed that we can't get a sonic boom off our HPR rockets. I wonder if we had a microphone on a drone around the altitude where it goes supersonic if we could pick it up?
I love the way you present information. Yes, your content is great and well thought out, but also your enthusiasm and humour is infectious. Great work. Keep it coming.
I like this format a lot. Nice to intersperse with project videos. Also, my daughter and I really enjoyed your presence at the Builders Stage at Illinois State University. Thanks for putting yourself out in the public sphere and for the inspiration to young women in stem.
Awesome video, Xyla! I've never commented before on any RU-vid video, but you did such a fantastic job on this one. I couldn't not comment. In truth, I like all of your video's, but this one was exceptional! Thank you so much for what you do.
A fun demo of the boom carpet on the vertical plane might be to put up a balloon near FAR; if Spite breaks the sound barrier at about 250m, a balloon with a (standalone, not bluetooth) microphone on a 1000ft/~300m tether would probably be able to capture it.
