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Please, someone help resolve my confusion about shockwave calcs.
I found this accepted calculation, where the energy of a shockwave was found by applying KE, using the mass of the air the shockwave traveled through, and the velocity that the shockwave traveled through that air. This sounds invalid to me since that entire volume of air isn't being moved at that speed, small portions of the air are being jostled while the frontier travels through that volume of air at that speed.
I found this accepted calculation, where the energy of a shockwave was found by assuming that the frontier of the shockwave had the same amount of energy as a sonic boom, and then applying that energy level to the surface area of the shockwave's frontier. This sounds invalid to me since that's a very high energy level to be assuming. It's justified in that calc (imo poorly) because they're created through pure physical force (that doesn't tell us that they're as energetic as sonic booms) and because the characters are mach-speed through other feats (that tells us nothing about the energy of this feat). (I should note that this method does seem fine for the Godzilla calc that was based off of; that character's explicitly described as attacking by generating sonic booms.)
Ideally I'd like to use a method like the latter one, but with more reasonable assumptions about energy at the shockwave's frontier.
Both of those calcs are made weird with what I know of physics; if I remember correctly, for the same material at the same temperature, shockwaves travel through that material at the same speed. A shockwave being more energetic just lets it travel for longer; it's not made any faster.
I then found this thread from a year ago, where a certain formula was made illegible for shockwaves, as it was created to derive the energy yield of atomic bombs from their shockwave. A certain formula was still allowed to be used for general shockwaves, as long as that shockwave produces lethal-level destruction at the frontier being measured. However, DT acknowledged that many fictional shockwaves just end, with everything before it ends presumably being lethal to ordinary humans. Yet that there may be some more realistic shockwaves that disperse and should be handled more carefully.
My takeaway from this is that the only truly accepted method for shockwaves is the general explosion formula (with fireball/nuclear portions of the yield removed), and that this can only be used in cases where there's a relatively accurate level of destruction shown within the shockwave being measured.
If that's accurate, then shockwave calcs like the first two linked (such as the second calc here) will need to be removed from verse/character pages, and will need to stop being accepted.
I found this accepted calculation, where the energy of a shockwave was found by applying KE, using the mass of the air the shockwave traveled through, and the velocity that the shockwave traveled through that air. This sounds invalid to me since that entire volume of air isn't being moved at that speed, small portions of the air are being jostled while the frontier travels through that volume of air at that speed.
I found this accepted calculation, where the energy of a shockwave was found by assuming that the frontier of the shockwave had the same amount of energy as a sonic boom, and then applying that energy level to the surface area of the shockwave's frontier. This sounds invalid to me since that's a very high energy level to be assuming. It's justified in that calc (imo poorly) because they're created through pure physical force (that doesn't tell us that they're as energetic as sonic booms) and because the characters are mach-speed through other feats (that tells us nothing about the energy of this feat). (I should note that this method does seem fine for the Godzilla calc that was based off of; that character's explicitly described as attacking by generating sonic booms.)
Ideally I'd like to use a method like the latter one, but with more reasonable assumptions about energy at the shockwave's frontier.
Both of those calcs are made weird with what I know of physics; if I remember correctly, for the same material at the same temperature, shockwaves travel through that material at the same speed. A shockwave being more energetic just lets it travel for longer; it's not made any faster.
I then found this thread from a year ago, where a certain formula was made illegible for shockwaves, as it was created to derive the energy yield of atomic bombs from their shockwave. A certain formula was still allowed to be used for general shockwaves, as long as that shockwave produces lethal-level destruction at the frontier being measured. However, DT acknowledged that many fictional shockwaves just end, with everything before it ends presumably being lethal to ordinary humans. Yet that there may be some more realistic shockwaves that disperse and should be handled more carefully.
My takeaway from this is that the only truly accepted method for shockwaves is the general explosion formula (with fireball/nuclear portions of the yield removed), and that this can only be used in cases where there's a relatively accurate level of destruction shown within the shockwave being measured.
If that's accurate, then shockwave calcs like the first two linked (such as the second calc here) will need to be removed from verse/character pages, and will need to stop being accepted.
Current Mainline Proposal
Use the nerfed explosion formula from Antoniofer's blog with a value of 0.15 PSI. Shockwaves won't be able to use that if they fail to affect ordinary glass within their radius (as destroying windows is the benchmark for 0.15 PSI explosions). We'll accordingly need to write it as a bit of a case-by-case thing, to include situations where the shockwave simply doesn't reach anything that would falsify that level of strength.
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