I found this imponderable in the book Why Do Clocks Run Clockwise? And other Imponderables.Its quite an interesting book.
Why Do Whips Make a Cracking Sound When Snapped?
Whips can attain a speed of more than seven hundred miles per hour when snapped, breaking the sound barrier. What you are hearing is a mini sonic boom.
Wow! Who woulda thunk? I also found another interesting one. It's sort of a long one.
Why Do You So Often See One Shoe Lying on the Side of the Road?
Since we have initially researched this Imponderable for our first book, we have spoken to countless officials at the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Safety Traffic Administration. We have observed that Rich Hall devoted an entire chapter to the subject in his Vanishing America book without really answering the question.
We have even found out that there was another soul brave enough to tackle the subject, Elaine Viets, columnist for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. She devoted two columns to this Imponderable. In her first column, she advanced several plausible theories:
*They are tossed out of cars during fights among kids.
* They fall out of garbage trucks
*Both shoes in a pair are abandoned, but one rolls away.
But being a good reporter, Viets wasn't satisfied with her own conclusions. She turned to her readers, who responded with their own guesses at the causes of what some called SSS (Single Shoe Syndrome):
*Discarded newlywed shoes (you do see single cans on the highway,
come to think of it)
*A variation on the "fighting kids theory"-they are specifically
thrown out of school buses, during fights or as practical jokes.
This is the best we've been able to come up with. Anybody else have a better explanation?
Some of the things that they say are so funny! Makes you really ponder on them.
