Re: breaking sound barrier movie

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, William Beaty wrote:

> That website states that the cloud goes away at higher aircraft speed.
> Really?  I thought that a shockwave was a shockwave, and if the
> temperature/humidity was right, a cloud would form, and at higher speeds
> it would simply be more conical.

Doh!  The site actually says that the cloud goes away as air passes
backwards, which is accurate.  However, that doesn't mean that the cloud
must vanish, since new hunks of cloud are continually forming as more air
encounters the shockwave.

I find the video fascinating because the shockwave exposes the existence
of "invisible clouds", of complicated patterns of temperature and humidity
in the air.  We usually think of air as being fairly uniform, but the
shockwave demonstrates that transparent air is just as complicated as any
cloud, it's just that no suspended droplets exist to make the complexity
visible.

If I could SEE the air in my office, I bet it would be filled with roiling
fractal vapor, with stacked layers of still near the floor, "smoke"
pouring up from the warm walls and window, and one large plume rising
above me like the hot ash over an eruption.  Smoke is to air as drops of
food coloring are to water.


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William J. Beaty                                  SCIENCE HOBBYIST website
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