Seeing the Unseeable: The Materials That Make Shockwaves Visible

  In the blink of an eye, a high-velocity impact occurs. A bullet strikes armor, a micrometeoroid pummels a spacecraft, a football player suffers a helmet-to-helmet collision, or a hypersonic vehicle slices through the atmosphere at Mach 7. These events unfold in milliseconds, yet the hidden force radiating through the material—the shockwave—holds the key to…