A glass breaks when a sound wave matches the frequency produced by glass when it vibrates. Can we use this phenomenon of resonance to split an atom?
[Physics] Can we split an atom using sound waves
acousticsresonance
Related Solutions
I think this has to do with sync of the oscilation of the glass molecules and the air molecules.
When the planes passes over your house the air molecules approach the frequency that the glass moleculs oscilate, thus making the amplitude of oscilation bigger. That is why the glass vibrates.
If we look at the sonic boom as a $\delta$-function, where we have a really loud sound for a really short time, then it will be able to excite all frequencies at the same way.
You can actually compute this by showing that $$ \delta(t)=\frac{1}{2\pi}\sum_n e^{int},$$ which show how the $\delta$-function is actually composed of all frequencies.
Then it's actually in resonance with any object. However, due to its short lifespan it cannot feed more and more energy into an object (like a window), making the amplitude of the oscillation bigger and bigger until the object breaks.
What most likely will destroy something like a window is the actual pressure front, due to the pressure gradient.
Best Answer
There is one inherent flaw to this idea which is that sound waves need atoms to propagate. This also means that there is a limit to the size of the wavelengths of the waves which is set by the "granularity" of the medium.
So the sound wave can't actually reach a scale where it is able to induce resonance in an atom. Furthermore the frequencies required to make the wavelength small enough are ridiculously high. So high in fact that they are limited by properties of the medium. Even at 1GHz the sound wave would only have a wavelength of $3*10^{-4}$m which is still 6 orders of magnitude away from the size of a hydrogen atom.
Even then We haven't considered quantum mechanics and the fact that the electrons and the nucleus will only interact through photon exchange or the weak interaction.
So in short, no we cannot shake apart an atom using sound waves and the principle of resonance.