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by bullyboy1 on July 10th, 2005

bullyboy1

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When bullets fired from weapons fly into the air they must fall. So where do they fall and can they actually kill someone?

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  • by Leezee on December 28th, 2005

    Leezee

    Just an addition to Farino's answer - if you throw a feather into the air very fast, it gets to the top of it's trajectory then almost immediately "floats" downward at its (slow) terminal velocity, and will never hit the ground (or the point where it left your hand) as fast as you threw it up. A bullet is the same - it would still fall very fast, but would not fall as fast as the muzzle velocity of the weapon unless you fired it in a vacuum (on the moon maybe??).

    Terminal velocity of a 30 cal bullet is 91 m/s according to http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/March01.htm but the muzzle velocity on firing was 823 m/s. This is a significant drop in the energy of the bullet to 40 Nm of torque, whilst the army suggests 80 Nm is required to create a "disabling" wound. Thus, although it would seriously injure you, it *hopefully* wouldn't kill you!

    Two asides: 1. The bullet took 49 seconds to get back to earth (so you've got time to hide!!), 18s up and 31s down. 2. Out of 500 shots fired from a fixed gun adjusted perfectly only 4 bullets actually dropped on a ten foot square area - you'd never hit yourself if you fired from a gun you were holding... unless you were really unlucky...

    Hope this helps.

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