Paper 4, Section II, A
Part II, 2009
A perfect gas occupies a tube that lies parallel to the -axis. The gas is initially at rest, with density , pressure and specific heat ratio , and occupies the region . For times a piston, initially at , is pushed into the gas at a constant speed . A shock wave propagates at constant speed into the undisturbed gas ahead of the piston. Show that the pressure in the gas next to the piston, , is given by the expression
[You may assume that the internal energy per unit mass of perfect gas is given by