The Physics Behind Why Firing A Gun Into The Air Can Harm Someone. Would you fire a gun into the air in celebration if you knew that, when the bullet comes down, it could kill somebody? It's no surprise that bullets fired towards a target can easily destroy whatever they run into: a bullet from an AK-47 leaves the rifle traveling at over 1,500 miles per hour (670 meters per second): about double the speed of sound. Despite only having a mass of about five grams -- under a fifth of an ounce -- it's got the energy of a brick dropped from a 30 story building. Concentrated into a tiny surface area at the bullet tip, it can easily break through your skin. And once it does, that energy and momentum tears through your body, ripping a hole through blood vessels, muscle, and potentially vital organs. No wonder it can kill you.
But what if the bullet is fired up, rather than directly at a target? If you performed that experiment on the Moon, if the bullet went up at 1,500 miles per hour, then no matter what angle you fired it at and how long it took to come back to the lunar surface, it would come down at 1,500 miles per hour. A bullet fired away from the Moon's surface would be just as lethal as one fired across it. But on Earth, we have our atmosphere, which means we also have air resistance. 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.
But in reality, there are extra factors at play:
We do have wind, which can make bullets fired even straight up come down up to two miles away.
Not every bullet is fired straight up; many are fired at an angle. If the bullet never stops or tumbles, it can maintain much greater speeds: many hundreds of miles per hour.
All a bullet needs to do to be potentially lethal is break the skin, which occurs at different speeds for different bullets and different people.
So in order to know whether a bullet will break your skin or not, we need to look at two things: the bullet type and your skin type.
The generally accepted threshold for breaking the skin barrier is 136 miles per hour, although some bullet/skin combinations will cause the bullet to bounce off you at up to 225 miles per hour. The pointier a bullet is, the slower it can be moving and still break your skin. (Hollow point bullets are more dangerous not because it's easier for them to puncture your skin, but because they create more damage once they do.) Bullets of different sizes and calibers can puncture skin more easily: buckshot will perforate skin at 145 miles per hour and bullets from a .38 caliber revolver will do so at just 130 miles per hour. Bullets from a 9mm handgun may max out at speeds as low as 102 miles per hour. And a .30 caliber bullet, according to Mattoo's equation, might do so at only 85 miles per hour.
But what if the bullet is fired up, rather than directly at a target? If you performed that experiment on the Moon, if the bullet went up at 1,500 miles per hour, then no matter what angle you fired it at and how long it took to come back to the lunar surface, it would come down at 1,500 miles per hour. A bullet fired away from the Moon's surface would be just as lethal as one fired across it. But on Earth, we have our atmosphere, which means we also have air resistance. 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.
But in reality, there are extra factors at play:
We do have wind, which can make bullets fired even straight up come down up to two miles away.
Not every bullet is fired straight up; many are fired at an angle. If the bullet never stops or tumbles, it can maintain much greater speeds: many hundreds of miles per hour.
All a bullet needs to do to be potentially lethal is break the skin, which occurs at different speeds for different bullets and different people.
So in order to know whether a bullet will break your skin or not, we need to look at two things: the bullet type and your skin type.
The generally accepted threshold for breaking the skin barrier is 136 miles per hour, although some bullet/skin combinations will cause the bullet to bounce off you at up to 225 miles per hour. The pointier a bullet is, the slower it can be moving and still break your skin. (Hollow point bullets are more dangerous not because it's easier for them to puncture your skin, but because they create more damage once they do.) Bullets of different sizes and calibers can puncture skin more easily: buckshot will perforate skin at 145 miles per hour and bullets from a .38 caliber revolver will do so at just 130 miles per hour. Bullets from a 9mm handgun may max out at speeds as low as 102 miles per hour. And a .30 caliber bullet, according to Mattoo's equation, might do so at only 85 miles per hour.
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