Re: What causes a whip to snap?

Yes, this is the accepted reason.  It has been shown experimentally that
the tip of a whip puts out a sound wave.  In the case of a bull whip, there is
actually a strong sonic boom.

Imagine starting with the whip at rest along the floor in a straight line.
You come along and grab the handle and swing the whip forward.  The handle
moves as fast as your hand, but the end trails by a little distance.  You
have done work to the whip and given it kinetic energy.  Your hand has changed
the momentum by applying a force to the whip.

Now stop your hand.  This lowers the momentum of the whip, but does no work
because there is no displacement (work = force times displacement in direction of force).
The kinetic energy is still in the whip, but the whip is stopping from handle to tip.
Smaller and smaller parts of the whip are moving with roughly the same kinetic energy
that the whole whip started with.  If the kinetic energy is staying the same, but the mass
of the whip the is moving is getting smaller, then the speed of that smaller part must be 
increasing (KE = 1/2 * (MASS) * (SPEED)^2).

By the time only the tip is moving, that is a lot of speed, and can exceed the speed of sound
and produce a sonic boom (very small volume).  This works for wet towels or any other object you might try
to whip.  The amount of sound will depend on the length of thw whip, the work done by you, and how flexible
the whip is.  Wet towels actually produce sound like a clap, especially when applied to someone else's skin.

Sincerely,
Tom "Whipper-snapper" Cull