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Gun myth for gun experts to comment on
Dominus Nox
BANNED:
A friend of mine told me a gun myth that I wanted to get commentary on.
Basically it goes like this: If you take a gun and fix it to a mount so it is perfectly perpendicular to the ground, and the ground if flat, and you hold an idential bullet to the the the gun fires next to the gun barell and release it the instant the gun is fired and the bullet from it leaves the barell, the two bullets will hit the ground at the same instant.
The belief is that gravity pulls both bullets down at the same speed whether one is moving foeward at high velocity or not, so both will drop at the same rate even if one is moving forward at high speed, and thus both will contact the ground at the same instant, even if the one keeps sliding, skipping or rolling foward and the other just drops straight down.
Any gun experts want to comment on this?
Kyle Aaron:
Yes, it's true. And you don't need to be a gun expert to know it - it's late high school physics.
Dominus Nox
BANNED:
--- Quote from: JimBobOz ---Yes, it's true. And you don't need to be a gun expert to know it - it's late high school physics.
--- End quote ---
I thought so, still it's one of those things that may seem obvious at first glance but has a trick in it.
Thanks for the confirmation.
O'Borg:
--- Quote from: JimBobOz ---Yes, it's true. And you don't need to be a gun expert to know it - it's late high school physics.
--- End quote ---
:confused:
It's been a long time since I did physics at school, but isnt normal gravity something like 32 meters per second (squared), whilst the muzzle velocity of a pistol is going to be 900m/s or more?
flyingmice:
--- Quote from: O'Borg ---:confused:
It's been a long time since I did physics at school, but isnt normal gravity something like 32 meters per second (squared), whilst the muzzle velocity of a pistol is going to be 900m/s or more?
--- End quote ---
Those are two perpendicular forces. The gravity acts on both bullets. The velocity downward is the same, but the fired bullet has an additional horizontal component. If there is an upward component to the fired bullet, some of the forces will cancel each other out, and if there is a downward component the two forces will add, but not if they are perpendicular.
-clash
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