☼!!!!!!BOW SHOCK!!!!!!☼

Definition:

A bow shock is a boundary between a magnetosphere and an ambient medium. For stars, this is typically the boundary between their stellar wind and the interstellar medium.

In a planetary magnetosphere, the bow shock is the boundary at which the solar wind abruptly drops as a result of its approach to the magnetopause. The best-studied example of a bow shock is that occurring where the solar wind encounters the Earth's magnetopause, although bow shocks occur around all planets. The Earth's bow shock is about 100-1000 km thick and located about 90,000 km from the Earth.

Include any facts, details, examples, good LINCS words or phrases, questions, important info, etc. that might help students understand and remember this vocab word.

SO WHAT??? SECTION: Why are we studying this term? Why do you need to understand this word to be sucessful in science? How does this term apply to any of our class labs or the real world?

The defining criterion is that the bulk velocity of the fluid (in this case, the solar wind) drops from "supersonic" to "subsonic", where the speed of sound in plasma physics is defined as

Cite any sources

 1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bow_shock

 2.

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