Your Not Going to BELIEVE THIS: Participant at KKK initiation wounded

*Ding* question answered:

Question
In many parts of the world, people celebrate victories, birthdays and similar events by firing guns into the air with great exuberance and a seeming disregard for the welfare of themselves and others. Assuming the barrel of the gun is perpendicular to the ground when the bullet leaves it, approximately what altitude would it reach and what is its velocity (and potential lethality) when it falls back to Earth?

Answers
Firing handguns into the air is commonplace in some parts of the world and causes injuries with a disproportionate number of fatalities. For a typical modern 7.62 millimetre calibre bullet fired vertically from a rifle, the bullet will have a velocity of about 840 metres per second as it leaves the muzzle and will reach a height of about 2400 metres in some 17 seconds. It will then take another 40 seconds or so to return to the ground, usually at a relatively low speed which approximates to the terminal velocity. This part of the bullet's trajectory will normally be flown base first since the bullet is actually more stable in rearward than in forward flight.

Even with a truly vertical launch, the bullet can move some distance sideways. It will spend about 8 seconds at between 2300 and 2400 metres and at a vertical velocity of less than 40 metres per second. In this time it is particularly susceptible to lateral movement by the wind. It will return to the ground at a speed of some 70 metres per second. This sounds quite low but, because of the predominance of cranial injuries, the proportion of deaths and serious injury as a proportion of the number of gunshot wounds is surprisingly high. It is typically some five times more than is observed in normal firing.

As might be expected, measurements are rather difficult and the above values come from a computer model of the flight.

Sam Ellis And Gerry Moss , Royal Military College of Science Swindon Wiltshire

Different bullet types behave in different ways. A .22LR bullet reaches a maximum altitude of 1179 metres and a terminal velocity of either 60 metres per second or 43 metres per second depending upon whether the bullet falls base first or tumbles. A .44 magnum bullet will reach an altitude of 1377 metres and a terminal velocity of 76 metres per second falling base first. A .30-06 bullet will reach an altitude of 3080 metres with a terminal velocity of 99 metres per second. The total flight time for the .22LR is between 30 and 36 seconds, while for the .30-06, it is about 58 seconds. The velocities of the bullets as they leave the rifle muzzle are much higher than their falling velocities. A .22LR has a muzzle velocity of 383 metres per second and the .30-06 has a muzzle velocity of 823 metres per second.

According to tests undertaken by Browning at the beginning of the century and recently by L .C. Haag, the bullet velocity required for skin penetration is between 45 and 60 metres per second which is within the velocity range of falling bullets. Of course, skin penetration is not required in order to cause serious or fatal injury and any responsible person will never fire bullets into the air in this manner.

The questioner may like to read "Falling bullets: terminal velocities and penetration studies", by L. C. Haag, Wound Ballistics Conference, April 1994, Sacramento, California.

David Maddison , Melbourne Australia

John W. Hicks in his book The Theory of the Rifle and Rifle Shooting describes experiments made in 1909 by a Major Hardcastle who fired .303 rifle rounds vertically into the air on the River Stour at Manningtree. His boatman, probably a theorist unaware of the winds aloft, insisted on wearing a copy of Kelly's Directory on his head. However, no bullets landed within 100 yards, some up to a quarter of a mile away and others were lost altogether.

Julian S. Hatcher records a similar experiment in Florida immediately after the First World War. A 0.30 calibre machine gun was set up on a 10 feet square stage in a sea inlet where the water was very calm so that the returning bullets could be seen to splash down. A sheet of armour above the stage protected the experimenters. The gun was then adjusted to centre the groups of returning bullets onto the stage.

Of over 500 bullets fired into the air, only 4 hit the stage at the end of their return journey. The bullets fired in each burst fell in groups of about 25 yards across.

The bullets rose to approximately 9000 feet before falling back. With a total flight time of about a minute, the wind has a noticeable effect on the return point.

 

About 10 years ago, some genius fired a handgun into a tree to celebrate the Fourth of July. In her exhuberance, she forgot that a very busy road lay just beyond that tree.

It just so happens that an acquaintance of mine was driving down that road returning home from a fireworks display. The bullet entered my friend's wife's head whereupon she slumped and blood splattered all over the three kids in the backseat. By morning she was dead.

Idiot.

 

Those idiots really should go back to high school and re-study physics

 

Ma and Pa don't know fisics.

 

giddy, that's horrendous. RIP to her, and bless her family.


And as much as i'd like to recommend more physics to everyone, I don't think it would have made much of difference to the "let's shoot a gun in the air!" crowd somehow. Terminal intelligence just won't care about terminal velocity.

 

Not fast enough.

 

Chances are they didn't go to High School or Junior High for that matter and if they did they certainly didn't take Physics. Maybe they took Fix Its 101, but thats a different story.

...

I must say all this talk of bullets and knuckleheads is making me very curious. I really should run down to the local gunshop buy a glock and bust some caps off up in the air to see what happens. Whoops I mean CAPS.

 

It wasn't my website, as I said, I have no idea about the subject, I always sucked in physics.

 

No, the final should be almost the same as the intial velocity as the bullet comes down.

 

Or maybe God is Japanese, Chinese, Black, Blue, Purple, Green, or Yellow.

 

Somehow 840 sounds nothing like 70, but what do I know, I'm not a 'physics wiz'.

 

I think everybody's on the same page now, geek wise, SeverRocketsFan.

 

Gotcha.

 

Pretty callous to be discussing drag coefficients when somebody's life is at stake.