The sound barrier, in aerodynamics, is the point at which an object moves from transonic to supersonic speed. The term, which occasionally has other meanings, came into use during World War II, when a number of aircraft started to encounter the effects of compressibility, a collection of several unrelated aerodynamic effects that "struck" their aircraft like an impediment to further acceleration. By the 1950s, new aircraft designs routinely "broke" the sound barrier. At sea level the speed of sound is 340 meters per second which is about 760 miles per hour.
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Famous quotes containing the words sound and/or barrier:
“It is not the sound made by victors, or the sound made by losers; it is the sound of revelers that I hear.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 32:18.
“Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.”
—Bill Bryson (b. 1951)