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A 2 minute discovery
A train sounded like a cannon. A small blue bird held the answer.
Japan's bullet train had the speed. What it did not have was a quiet way into a tunnel.
The shock
Each train pushed a wall of compressed air through the tunnel. When that pressure escaped at the far end, it produced a thunderclap strong enough to disturb entire neighbourhoods.
The unlikely clue
Engineer and birdwatcher Eiji Nakatsu noticed that a kingfisher crosses an even harder boundary - from air into water - at hunting speed, yet creates remarkably little splash.
The translation
Its beak does not meet the new medium as a blunt wall. The long taper lets pressure build gradually. The redesigned train nose borrowed that transition instead of copying a bird for decoration.
The idea worth keeping
When crossing a boundary creates a shock, reshape the transition so change arrives gradually.
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One more wild idea?
A shark's skin is rough. So why can roughness sometimes improve flow?