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Even a bullet, fired straight up at the maximum speed a gunpowder blast can accelerate it to, will never leave the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. A combination of gravity and air resistance will slow it down until it reaches a maximum height, whereupon it will fall back down to Earth’s surface.
How high would a bullet go if you shoot it straight up?
A bullet fired straight up, with no wind, might reach a height of 10,000 feet (about three kilometers), but will come back down at only around 150 miles per hour: just 10% of the speed and with only 1% of the energy as the originally fired bullet.
What happens if you shoot a gun into the ground?
Do not shoot at a target placed on the ground. Bullets fired this way tend to ricochet up and over backstops and can travel half of their maximum range, striking someone or something with deadly energy. If you are shooting muzzleloaders, there is a danger of igniting the powder.
Can you dodge a bullet?
Regardless of your speed and finesse, no human can dodge a bullet at close range. Even the slowest handguns shoot a bullet at 760 miles per hour, SciAm explains. Humans can react to something in about 0.2 seconds on the fast end depending on the task and if they know something is coming.
How fast is a sniper bullet?
As the bullet is traveling subsonic at a spend of 940 feet per second, the bullet is diving an average of nearly two inches per foot of forward travel, with the problem getting much worse as distance increases.
Can guns fire underwater?
Because standard bullet ammunition does not work well underwater, a common feature of underwater firearms is that they fire flechettes instead of standard bullets. Rather, the fired projectile maintains its ballistic trajectory underwater by hydrodynamic effects.
How far can a bullet be lethal?
45 caliber bullet can go about 5,000 ft. in distance with the same factors involved,” Robbie Paskiewicz said. A 9 mm bullet can travel even farther because it’s smaller. “A 9 mm can travel 2.5 to 3 miles, sometimes a little further depending on the shape of the bullet,” he said.
Can a gun fire if dropped?
Tests conducted by gun bloggers has confirmed the gun will fire if dropped at a particular angle. Most modern handguns are “drop safe” in that, if accidentally dropped from waist-high level with a round in the chamber, they will not accidentally fire.
Is a bullet faster than sound?
When bullets fly through the air, they do so at amazing speeds. The fastest bullets travel more than 2,600 feet per second. That’s equivalent to over 1,800 miles per hour. To put that in perspective, it’s amazing to realize that bullets travel over twice the speed of sound!.
What is the fastest bullet?
The . 220 Swift remains the fastest commercial cartridge in the world, with a published velocity of 1,422 m/s (4,665 ft/s) using a 1.9 grams (29 gr) bullet and 2.7 grams (42 gr) of 3031 powder.
How fast would a human need to be to dodge a bullet?
In order to dodge a bullet shot at your center of mass, that you would need to move half your bodies width (1 ft for estimation) in this time. 1ft/4.25ms gives 235ft/s or 160mph. This is approximately the take off speed of a airliner.
Has anyone been hit by a falling bullet?
Nevertheless, people can be injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down to the ground. Between the years 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight of them died.
What is the fastest projectile?
USING an experimental gun about 60 feet long, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have blasted a small projectile to a speed of 10 miles a second, which is thought to be the highest velocity ever reached on earth by any object larger than a speck of dust.
How big is a sniper bullet?
The most popular military sniper rifles (in terms of numbers in service) are chambered for 7.62 mm (0.30 inch) caliber ammunition, such as 7.62×51mm and 7.62×54mm R.
Can AK-47 shoot underwater?
Thanks to the team at Smarter Every Day and The Slow Mo Guys, the AK-47 is also a way to learn about physics! Underwater, the bullet travels only about 5 to 6 feet (in the air, it can travel some 1,300 feet). That’s neat if unsurprising; water is much denser than air and puts up greater resistance.
Why do bullets stop in water?
Air is almost 800 times less dense than water. This means that going the same speed through air and water, a bullet will experience approximately 800 times more force in the water.
Can a bullet travel through water?
Typical bullets can travel just a few feet through the water before they’re slowed to a stop. CAV-X bullets can reportedly travel 60 meters underwater, and can go through 2 centimeters of steel fired from 17 meters away, indicating that it could even be used to penetrate submarines.
Can you shoot in space?
Fires can’t burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. No atmospheric oxygen required. The only difference between pulling the trigger on Earth and in space is the shape of the resulting smoke trail.
How far will a 22 bullet travel in water?
According to the makers, it not only has a range of up to 100 feet underwater, it can also be used to fire from the air into the water. The weapon could be used to shoot at divers or swimmers from a boat, for example – or even fire from underwater into the air.
How far can a bullet travel in air?
Even if you have a good sense of a bullet’s minimum lethal velocity, it’s still pretty difficult to clock the speed of a round fired in the air. Gunshots can travel as high as 10,000 feet, and the wind takes them in unpredictable directions.
