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Lesson Plan

The City They Boomed

1964 Oklahoma City • NASA's X-59 quiet supersonic demonstrator was expected to cross Mach 1 for the first time in early June 2026, engineering the sonic boom down to a quiet thump in a bid to overturn the 1973 overland supersonic ban that Operation Bongo helped create. •
Before using this lesson plan: Read the full story or listen to the 6-minute narration (works as a bell-ringer).
Quick Use (jump to the section you need)
Key Vocabulary 4. Discussion or debate (15-30 min) Extensions

The City They Boomed: Lesson Plan

Overview

This lesson uses Operation Bongo II, the 1964 experiment in which the U.S. government deliberately subjected Oklahoma City to 1,253 sonic booms, to explore the physics of supersonic flight and the relationship between engineering limits, public consent, and government policy. Students compare the 1964 attempt to make the public tolerate the sonic boom with NASA's 2026 X-59 attempt to engineer the boom out of the aircraft entirely.

Subject areas: Physics, Engineering, History, Civics, Environmental Science Grade levels: 9-12, AP Physics, AP U.S. History, AP Government Duration: 1-2 class periods (45-90 minutes)

Essential Questions

  1. What is a sonic boom, and why does it happen?
  1. Why could engineers in 1964 not simply make a supersonic airliner quiet?
  1. When a technology imposes costs on people who get no benefit, who decides whether it goes forward?
  1. How did a nine-person citizens' group help stop a billion-dollar national program?
  1. What changed between 1964 and 2026 that might make overland supersonic flight acceptable now?

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • Explain how an aircraft exceeding the speed of sound produces a shock wave and a sonic boom
  • Describe why sonic boom was a physical obstacle that 1960s engineering could not remove
  • Trace how the Oklahoma City tests turned public opinion against the American SST
  • Analyze the roles of data, public protest, cost, and environmental concern in killing the Boeing 2707
  • Compare a "make people tolerate it" strategy with a "remove the problem at the source" strategy
  • Evaluate how engineering design choices (the X-59 nose) translate directly into policy possibilities

Key Vocabulary

  • Sonic boom: The sound produced when shock waves from an aircraft traveling faster than sound reach the ground
  • Shock wave: A sharp change in air pressure created by an object moving through air faster than sound can travel
  • Mach number: The ratio of an object's speed to the speed of sound (Mach 1 is the speed of sound)
  • Overpressure: The pressure rise of a sonic boom above normal atmospheric pressure, often measured in pounds per square foot (psf)
  • PLdB (perceived level decibels): A measure of how loud a sound seems to a human listener
  • SST (supersonic transport): A commercial airliner designed to fly faster than sound
  • 14 CFR 91.817: The 1973 federal rule banning civil supersonic flight over U.S. land

Activities

1. The physics of the boom (15 min)

Demonstrate or animate how a moving sound source compresses the waves ahead of it (the Doppler effect), then push past Mach 1 so the waves merge into a single cone. Discuss why the boom follows the airplane along its entire path rather than happening once.

2. Reading the data both ways (15 min)

Give students the real Oklahoma City survey result: 73 percent said they could live with the booms, 27 percent could not, and 40 percent reported property damage. Ask half the class to write the FAA press release and the other half to write the Citizens League pamphlet using the same numbers. Discuss how identical data supports opposite stories.

3. Engineering versus persuasion (15 min)

Compare two strategies for the same goal of overland supersonic flight: 1964 (ask the public to absorb the boom) and 2026 (reshape the aircraft so there is no boom to absorb). Have students identify which variable each approach treats as fixed and which as changeable.

4. Discussion or debate (15-30 min)

Should the 1973 ban be lifted now that the X-59 promises a quiet thump? Students take positions using evidence from both eras, including the trust problem created when the government once boomed a city and underpaid the claims.

Assessment

Students write a short response (one to two paragraphs) answering: "Operation Bongo set out to prove Americans would accept the sonic boom. Explain why it proved the opposite, and how the X-59 is designed to avoid repeating that mistake."

Extensions

  • Physics: Calculate the width of the boom carpet beneath a supersonic airliner at a given altitude.
  • History/Civics: Research how the ozone-layer argument joined the sonic boom argument to defeat the SST in Congress.
  • Engineering: Sketch how the X-59's elongated nose spreads out shock waves compared with a conventional nose.

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