This topic fascinates me, but my knowledge about shock waves — the physics behind them and the way they conduct energy — is very limited.
I wanted to ask then for some elucidations, about what happens to the kinetic energy carried by the wave when it passes from a low-density medium (such as air) to a denser one like water or even rock, and vice versa.
It is my understanding that shock waves happen when a disturbance is moving through a substance faster than information can be passed — IE faster than the local speed of sound. Now, air’s speed of sound at sea level and standard temperature is 343 m/s, while for water and rock (for example granite) that’s respectively 1,500 m/s and 5,950 m/s. As such I’d expect the shock wave to lose a lot of energy when passing from air to either one of those two substances, because they carry information much faster. But what about the opposite situation? A loss is inevitable of course, but what would be different?