I Can Air Resist a Piston? A Serious Discussion

[Frabjous]

All I can say is, check your physics textbooks.

Looking at a 2012 edition, the couple of pages in Freedman do not address shock velocity. You are reading in your own biases.

 

[A.T.]

But if there's a small region of compressed air in front of the object, then in that compressed region the speed of sound will be higher than the speed of sound in the surrounding air. The shock wave may be travelling faster there but it's still Mach 1.0 in that medium.

The air in front of the blunt object is not just compressed but also moving along with the object, so the speed of the local medium adds to the speed through the local medium (see Galilean Transformation). But whatever the contributions here are, the final result is that the bow shock right in front of the supersonic blunt object moves at the same speed as the object, and stays at a constant distance ahead of it. So it will pass you before the object hits you.

 

[boneh3ad]

By "shocks" do you mean "shock waves?
According to my Physics text* :
"A shock wave is produced continuously by any object that moves through the air at supersonic speed"
As noted my piston is not supersonic.
And BTW, I think the Wikipedia page is incorrect when it claims, in the opening sentence:
"In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium."
The speed of sound is a medium is the speed that a pressure wave travels in that medium. A shockwave is a pressure wave - it travels at the speed of sound in that medium, not "faster than the local speed of sound in the medium."
So much misinformation!
*Young H. Freedman R. (2018) University Physics with Modern Physics, 15th Edition , Sears & Zemansky

I've provided you with several references that corroborate my analysis and my claims. They've been supported by 100 years of aerodynamics observations/experiments and have contributed to the designs of aircraft that fly millions of miles per year.

If you want to be a skeptic in the face of a preponderance of evidence, be my guest. I will not be providing further guidance for someone who simply refuses to engage seriously.

 

[berkeman]

I will not be providing further guidance for someone who simply refuses to engage seriously.

And with that, this thread is done.