Home▸Engineering & Materials▸Bullwhip Crack 2D — Wave Speed, Taper & Sonic Boom

Bullwhip Crack 2D — Wave Speed, Taper & Sonic Boom

Interactive 2D bullwhip crack: send a pulse down a tapering whip, watch its speed grow as it runs from the thick handle to the thin tip, and see the tip break the sound barrier — the real physics behind the crack.

Engineering & Materials2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D side-view model sends a traveling loop down a whip that tapers from a thick handle to a hair-thin tip. As the loop runs outward, the mass of whip material beneath it shrinks, so its speed grows exponentially to conserve the pulse's energy — exactly the effect this page's 3D companion shows in three dimensions. Drag the hand crack speed and taper energy-concentration sliders to see how each one pushes the tip past the speed of sound, watch the live velocity-vs-position chart cross the Mach-1 line, and trigger the sonic-boom flash the instant the tip actually goes supersonic.

⚙ Under the hood

Send a traveling loop down a tapering whip and watch its speed grow exponentially toward the tip until it breaks the sound barrier, producing a real sonic boom.

bullwhipwave propagationsonic boomenergy conservationtapermach numbermechanics

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install