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Work in the shock frame. The undisturbed upstream gas enters the stationary discontinuity at speedwhile the downstream gas, which moves with the piston in the laboratory frame, leaves atThe Rankine-Hugoniot conditions for a perfect gas areandEliminating the velocities between these equations gives the perfect-gas density jump

The mass and momentum equations also implysoSubstitution of the density ratio into mass conservation, followed by this momentum relation, givesUsing the adiabatic sound speed $c_1^2=\gamma p_1/{\rho }_1$ therefore yieldsFinally, eliminating $U$ from $V=\beta p_1/({\rho }_{1}U)$ gives the piston-driven normal shock relationFor a compressive shock $\beta >0$, the first boxed equation has $U>c_1$: the shock propagates supersonically into the undisturbed gas, approaching the sound speed in the weak shock limit $\beta \to 0$.