Matt Nelson

Applied Curiosity

Science EN ↓ 1 episodes

Applied Curiosity is a podcast about exploring how things work by building, testing, and asking better questions. We talk physics, engineering, and design through real examples, real experiments, and real curiosity Just learning by doing.

Author

Matt Nelson

Episodes

The Physics of Flying at Mach 5 16.01.2026 9:08

In this episode of Applied Curiosity , we dive into what really happens when an aircraft flies faster than Mach 5. At hypersonic speeds, air stops behaving like air, temperatures soar, shock waves form, and heat becomes the biggest enemy of flight. We explore how compression turns motion into fire, why shock waves cling to the aircraft, and how engineers try to survive inside this extreme physics....