xsouthpawed said:
Hi, I'm learning about sonic booms right now in Physics (high school). And I was wondering if it is possible for a pilot to hear his sonic boom by first going faster than the speed of sound (breaking the sound barrier) and then slowing down (letting the waves rush past him)?
A similar question would be: can you drive a boat in such a way that at some point the boat is rocked by its own bow wave?
The bow wave trails the boat in a V-shaped pattern, with the boat at the point of the V. As long as the boat stays on a straight line it cannot outrun its own bow wave. If the boat increases velocity the angle of the V becomes sharper, but as long as you keep a straight line there is no such thing as outrunning your own bow wave.
What you can do, of course, is make a sharp turn, and then decelerate. That way you allow yourself to be overtaken by the bow wave that now comes up from behind.In the case of the shockwave that is trailing an aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound:
I don't know whether it's possible to make a sharp enough turn.
As the shockwave wavefront propagates it becomes spread out over a larger volume of air, and the intensity decreases proportionally.
When an aircraft flies at supersonic speed it takes a lot of time to make a turn and then drop below the speed of sound. The wavefront will eventually overtake the aircraft, but by that time the wavefront may have spread out so much that it's no longer a boom.
I'm reminded now of the Mythbusters episode where a supersonic capable aircraft made a number of passes (over a desert area), each time at a lower altitude. To make a sharp, explosion-like sonic boom reach ground level the jet had to fly pretty low.
If I hazard a guess I think making a turn and slowing down will take too much time. Taking more time means flying a longer distance. I guestimate that when the wavefront eventually overtakes the remaining intensity of the sonic boom is no longer enough to be heard above the jet noise of the jet aircraft itself.
