Why do whips snap

A sonic boom is a sound associated with the shock wave created by an object travelling through air faster than speed of sound. They create enormous amounts of sound energy, much like explosion. The act of producing the sound from a whip is called Whipcracking. The end of bull whip is also known as cracker. When the cracker moves faster than speed of sound, it creates a mini-shockwave, a sonic boom as it breaks the sound barrier.

This is the sound which you hear. The whip is probably the first human invention to break the sound barrier. It's clear that it occurs, but I see no reason why it should occur in that way. In the extreme and unlikely cases the whip could snap into 2.

Momentum conservation is the reason. From Wiki : The crack a whip makes is produced when a section of the whip moves faster than the speed of sound creating a small sonic boom. Alfred Centauri Alfred Centauri In fact, I don't think a whip hurts more than an equivalently thin, long stick.

I'm still really confused, Wiki didn't help me much. Moving the whip forward gives it some initial Kinetic Energy, and momentum. It's then moved in an opposite direction creating some kind of bend, now, some force is applied so I'm not positive why momentum has to be conserved, but if it is, then I what I understand is that the kinetic energy and any deformational energy of the whip moves towards the tip?

The problem I then have is, how would one calculate the actual speed of the tip? It's limited by existing energy, and the elasticity, correct?

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Physics Stack Exchange works best with JavaScript enabled. Even though those parts are moving twice as fast, it is the loop itself that generates the sonic boom," Professor Goriely said. The idea that the tip travels twice as fast as the loop is like how the uppermost point on a car tire is traveling at twice the speed of the car for just an instant. The tapering of a whip makes a loop traveling along it speed up by a factor of ten. The lightweight free end allows an extra factor of two to three in speed.

But one thing still worries me. I was unable to find any definite evidence such as high-speed photography showing that the tip is moving faster than the speed of sound. Maybe the crack is just the sound of the tip folding back, and slapping another part of the whip.

New Scientist on whip cracking Kruszelnicki Pty Ltd More Homework.