Bullet Shockwave Shadows
BY Herschel Smith
6 years ago
This is very interesting. As if you needed another reason to keep your hands away from the end of the cylinder where it meets the forcing cone, watch until the end when he shoots the revolver.
On November 5, 2018 at 11:56 am, billrla said:
That was certifiably cool and interesting.
On November 5, 2018 at 1:35 pm, Jack said:
Was it my imagination that 300BLK bullet did not align with path of flight? and that path of flight was not a straight line?
On November 5, 2018 at 4:38 pm, BRVTVS said:
@Jack
I think you are correct. The bullet is stabilized by its angular momentum to align parallel to the barrel. Gravity is beginning to take its toll and cause the path to deviate from the barrel direction. I think the apparent curvature of the path may be an illusion, possibly introduced by the optics used for the experiment.
On November 6, 2018 at 11:35 am, Jack said:
@BRVTVS – if you’re correct, then either the spin was too slow (or to fast), or something else was going on, as the rifle was no more than 25 yards from the mirror. Accuracy is going to suffer if the bullet is already deviating from path of flight at such a short distance.
On November 6, 2018 at 12:58 pm, BRVTVS said:
Spin has nothing to do with it. Spin serves to keep the bullet pointing parallel to the barrel, preventing it from tumbling, which would cause the bullet to deviate off course due to the Bernoulli effect. The bullet is in free fall the moment it leaves the barrel. It accelerates away from its straight line path at 32 feet per second per second. At 25 yards, it should already be falling a little less than 3 fps while traveling forward 1000fps. That works out to a deviation of about 1/5 of a degree, which is detectable to the eye (about 1/3 the angular diameter of the moon), or about 20 MOA. Try shooting a subsonic 22 round at a small varmint, they start dropping rapidly and knowing the range is critical to accuracy, even at well under 100 yards.