Breaking the Sound Barrier—On Horseback

RAY: We discovered this phenomenon in the locker room in high school, with a wet towel. We would wet the end of a towel and you'd snap it, and it would make a loud, 'crack'!

The tip of the wet towel when it snapped at the end was going faster than the speed of sound, and that's why it hurt so much when we caught somebody in the butt. But the end of a whip is also traveling faster than the speed of sound.

It's creating a little sonic boom. Pretty cute, huh? Do we have a winner?

TOM: Yep. The winner this week is Alfred Kleck, from Fairbanks, Alaska. And for having his answer selected at random from among all the correct answers that we got, Alfred gets a 26-dollar gift certificate to the Shameless Commerce Division at cartalk.com, with which he can get the always stylish, red, black and gray Car Talk baseball jersey.

[ Car Talk Puzzler ]