The Doppler Effect is defined as the apparent change in frequency of a wave, caused by the

relative motion between the wave’s source and the observer.

The Doppler formula

𝑎+𝑣
𝑓′ = ( )𝑓 where
𝑎−𝑐

f ′ − observed frequency,

f − actual frequency of sound wave,

a − velocity of sound wave,

c − velocity of source,

v − velocity of the obeserver

Let us consider the situation where the source is moving towards the observer.

If c = 0, which means the source is not moving, the formula gives 𝑓 ′ = f. In other words, the
frequency stays the same and there is no Doppler shift. If the source starts moving, the
denominator will get smaller, making the ratio bigger and the Doppler shifted frequency, 𝑓 ′ , will
increase. What happens as the source velocity gets bigger and bigger?

The difference sound velocity and source velocity gets smaller and smaller and 𝑓 ′ gets higher
and higher. Now, at some point, the source velocity will exceed the wave velocity. Right at this
point, 𝑓 ′ becomes infinite!

To get an idea of what this means, let us look at a picture of the waves when c = a:
Because the source is now traveling at the same velocity as the waves, the waves never get ahead
of the source, and the waves all pile up at one point. The distance between the waves goes to
zero and so the frequency becomes very high. More importantly, all of the energy gets
concentrated into a very small distance and this is called a shock wave. In this case, the observer
does not hear the approaching source at all until the shock wave hits with all of the energy in the
wave. For sound waves, this can cause a very loud noise, called a sonic boom. Any time a source
exceeds the speed of the wave, a shock wave will be formed.

If the source is traveling faster than the waves, the waves never catch up to the source, and a
different sort of pattern is formed:

The shape of the shock wave is called a Mach cone and the opening angle of the cone is called
Mach angle.