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txinvestigator

bauerdj wrote:
txinvestigator wrote:A bullet shot exactly straight up will fall as Charlie described; however, if there is any angle and the barrel is not straight up, then the bullet will generally maintain enough velocity to be fatal.
I can't quite figure out why this would be true. I would think as the barrel moved off of vertical the velocity would SLOWLY increase. I would think that at say 10 deg. off vertical there would only be a small increase in velocity and would not be much more likely to be fatal then true vertical.

I may be missing something that make this incorrect but if so I can't understand the physics involved.

Dave B.

Yeah, I shortened it and made it simpler than it is. I think the key is to know at what angle the bullet would lose fatal velocity before beginning its arc downward. I am not a physicist

Theoretically; A bullet fired at 90 degrees will actually lose all velocity before beginning to fall back to earth. Then it will only reach velocity from gravity. As the angle is decreased from 90 degrees, there is a point in which at the bullet will not lose enough velocity from being fired to cease being potentially fatal.

Does that make any sense?

txinvestigator

A bullet shot exactly straight up will fall as Charlie described; however, if there is any angle and the barrel is not straight up, then the bullet will generally maintain enough velocity to be fatal.

The underwater thing depended on the caliber. It surprised me to learn that smaller calibers actually penetrated further than larger ones. I believe that about 2 to 3 feet under made you safe from most.

txinvestigator

charlie wrote:The cable show Mythbusters had an intresting segment the other night.

What happens when one plugs the end of a gun barrel with his finger and pulls the trigger? Does the gun blow up leaving the hand unharmed like in the cartoons?

They fashinoned a fake hand out of ballistic gel and fake bones and pushed the index finger into a shotgun barrel. They fired the shotgun remotely. The hand was destroyed. The shotgun was unaffected.

They tried seveal variations of this. They plugged a rifle barrel at the muzzle and a shotgun as well. In both cases, the muzzle blew off and the barrel slighly bulged. In one case the shotgun barrel blew a hole behind the obstruction. What was impressive was that they were unable to get a barrel to spit into ribbons.

Seems to say a lot about modern firearms barrel strength, although they didn't try a double or triple charged round, the barrels seemed to hold up well.

They had a moulded gel human shaped figure against the shotgun butt and it appeared undamaged, implying that a shooter would be unhurt.

I still wouldn't want to have a barrel failure.

Has anyone on the forum had a barrel failure? What happened?

Did you see the episode where they shot into a swimming pool to see how far under a person had to be to be safe? They also did the old 'if you shoot a bullet straight up it will come down and kill a person' myth also.

I really like the show. The debunked the myth about explosive decompression in aircraft also.

They also tested whether driving a pickup truck with the tailgate down saves gas. Suprisingly, it doesn't. They got better gas milage with the tailgate up.

A car magazine, I forget which one, did this years ago in a wind tunnel and with fuel rate measuring equipment on a track. They concluded that with the gate up, a bed or cushion of air is created in the bed. This allows air to flow smoothly over, around and past the vehicle.

With the gate down a back draft is created at the end of the bed, creating additional drag.

Did I say I love that show?

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Re: finger in barrel- mythbusters on tv