Hickok45: How Bullet Force Affects Dueling Tree Action

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ditto1958

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I watched this video the other day, and it was pretty interesting. With the exception of .22 LR and .380 ball ammo, pretty much everything he shot at the tree hit it pretty hard.

If I recall correctly, .357 magnum, 10mm and .44 magnum were particularly impressive.
 

22/45 Fan

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What he is measuring is "power factor" (bullet weight x velocity) or the bullet's momentum, not it's energy. So a heavy bullet at modest velocity can have a higher power factor than a light bullet going faster. IDPA and USPSA have minimum power factor requirements for their matches.
 

grobin

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What he was demonstrating is muzzle energy. It increases as the muzzle velocity squared. The formulia can be found here in too much detail at
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy
Note that the 22 and 380 weren't too different from each other. Also note that the 22 is responsible for more deaths than any other caliber
Irreguardless of the bullet weight a heaver bullet does not hit harder than a lighter faster one-it may well do more damage.
 

22/45 Fan

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grobin said:
What he was demonstrating is muzzle energy. It increases as the muzzle velocity squared. The formulia can be found here in too much detail at
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy
Note that the 22 and 380 weren't too different from each other. Also note that the 22 is responsible for more deaths than any other caliber
Irreguardless of the bullet weight a heaver bullet does not hit harder than a lighter faster one-it may well do more damage.
He was not demonstrating energy (KE= MV^2) , he was demonstrating momentum (Momemtum=MV) which is also a measure of bullet performance but is also a demonstration of it's ability to "move" things.

The .22lr is responsible for a lot of deaths but is a poor round for quick incapacitation. The victim may die but not right away. If you include the centerfire .22's in your claim it's more true since the .223/5.56 is our military round and it has killed a LOT of people.
 

grobin

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Look at the library article it is energy. The amount of movement of a stationary object is proportional to the energy.
I didn't say that the 22 was a hard hitting cartridge just that it is well proven to be sufficient.
I agree that the 5.56 is a bad round it; was chosen on the wounded take more than one enemy out falicy. This is true for the US and others but not for combatants who simply turn it back on is by leaving their wounded or just shooting them.
As for the effectiveness of a caliber the 191? tests done showed that as long as we are throwing rocks that the larger mass and size determines the effectiveness. If we look at modern bullets not wadcutter or CNN rocks it is not so obvious.
What is obvious is that to be effective you need to hit a vital spot.
That takes practice! The easier to fire and the cheaper the ammo the better!
 

micro

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Research the history of weatherby rifles design. Mr. Weatherby and all his engineers believed in velocity over everything since way back in the 50's. Check out the muzzle velocity of the weatherby 300 mag compared to all the other 300 mags, win, rem, etc.
 

22/45 Fan

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micro said:
Research the history of weatherby rifles design. Mr. Weatherby and all his engineers believed in velocity over everything since way back in the 50's. Check out the muzzle velocity of the weatherby 300 mag compared to all the other 300 mags, win, rem, etc.
Weatherby was fixated on "hydrostatic shock", the ability of a bullet to disrupt tissue via shock waves through the flesh. It is related to velocity more than anything else, not just kinetic energy.

If the bullet doesn't penetrate the target, as it does not with a steel plate, then momentum is the factor that causes the plate to move.
 

micro

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22/45 Fan said:
micro said:
Research the history of weatherby rifles design. Mr. Weatherby and all his engineers believed in velocity over everything since way back in the 50's. Check out the muzzle velocity of the weatherby 300 mag compared to all the other 300 mags, win, rem, etc.
Weatherby was fixated on "hydrostatic shock", the ability of a bullet to disrupt tissue via shock waves through the flesh. It is related to velocity more than anything else, not just kinetic energy.

If the bullet doesn't penetrate the target, as it does not with a steel plate, then momentum is the factor that causes the plate to move.
Yep. The weatherby 300 mag was my deer hunting rifle. Never had to track a wounded deer thru the mountains, hehe.
 

DGW1949

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How force is applied should match the task at hand.
If the task was to close an opened bank vault door...regardless of how fast/hard it was struck with the weight of your fist, striking it would not be nearly as effective as simply leaning your upper body weight against it. Plus, it's purty-obvious what would happen to the bones in your hand if you tried the former approach...Simple physics at play...

Not unlike trying to use a lightweight, hyper velocity varmint round to stop a deer or bear. And yeah, the same sort of a thing applies to handgun bullets too...point there being that while the examples I've used are rather extreme, the fact remains that SOME aspects of cartridge performance simply do not fit within the confines of the nifty formulas, charts and mathematical-equations which we've been presented with over the years. If it did, the 'Super Vel' company would still be in business, and we'd still be seeing the 'fly-weight/super high velocity' type of handgun ammo which they pioneered being touted as the 'do all-end all' of combat ammo.

Just something to think about, that's all.

DGW
 

22/45 Fan

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DGW1949 said:
If it did, the 'Super Vel' company would still be in business, and we'd still be seeing the 'fly-weight/super high velocity' type of handgun ammo which they pioneered being touted as the 'do all-end all' of combat ammo.
I don't know how to break this to you but Super Vel is back in business and touting the same fly-weight/super high velocity ammo.

However, you make a valid point that sheer velocity is not the only measure of ammo performance and, as I tried to describe above, there are situations where momentum is more a more useful measure than kinetic energy.
 

DGW1949

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22/45 Fan said:
DGW1949 said:
If it did, the 'Super Vel' company would still be in business, and we'd still be seeing the 'fly-weight/super high velocity' type of handgun ammo which they pioneered being touted as the 'do all-end all' of combat ammo.
I don't know how to break this to you but Super Vel is back in business and touting the same fly-weight/super high velocity ammo.

However, you make a valid point that sheer velocity is not the only measure of ammo performance and, as I tried to describe above, there are situations where momentum is more a more useful measure than kinetic energy.

You are correct in that Super Vel is in fact, back in business and that yup, they are still marketing the same type of ammo which they did back in day..."back in the day" meaning before they did go out of business.
Now that's not to say that their approach to "stopping power" was the sole reason that their attempt(s?) at business failed, because I really don't know. What I do know though, is once their lightweight/super-high velocity ammo came on the scene, a fair number of police depts. (as well as other manufacturers) were quick to jump on the band wagon. And of course, the gun-rag writers were also....

Greatest thing since sliced bread, that's what we were being told...and just look at all of that expansion. :lol: :lol: :lol: .
Problem was, what seemed to be such a great theory very often wasn't panning-out in the real world. Perhaps it should have been marketed towards shooting things like ground chucks, jack rabbits or feral cats 'n dogs instead, because it probably would have actually worked great for that...just sayin'.

Regardless of Super Vels present state though, the point I was trying to make in terms of the topic at hand still remains the same...namely that relying on formulas, mathematical equations, charts, and stuff may not always work out like we think it will because somewhere along the line, some plain ole common sense also needs to be employed...you know, so one doesn't accidently end up swinging his first at a bank vault door, so to speak. :wink: .

DGW
 

427mach1

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This is a classic engineering/physics problem involving a collision of two objects. During a collision, momentum is conserved. It is momentum delivered to the target that will dictate how fast the target moves after collision. Momentum is the product of mass and velocity, so any combination of mass and velocity that produces a larger bullet momentum will move the target more than a bullet moving with less momentum. You can have a 500 grain bullet moving 1000 fps or a 100 grain bullet moving 5000 fps and they will both deliver the same amount of momentum to the target, assuming an inelastic collision. Trust me, I'm an engineer and I stayed in a Holiday Express last night......
 

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427mach1 said:
You can have a 500 grain bullet moving 1000 fps or a 100 grain bullet moving 5000 fps and they will both deliver the same amount of momentum to the target, assuming an inelastic collision. Trust me, I'm an engineer and I stayed in a Holiday Express last night......
That's the weak assumption in this argument. A light high velocity bullet is much more likely to fragment against a hard target and dissipate it's energy and momentum in directions that do not transfer momentum in a useful direction.

Even if it penetrates the target and remains completely within it, much of the energy and momentum are dissipated sideways and not as a unidirectional "push". That's why "knockdown power" of even heavy bullets is a myth.

I'm also an engineer and have stayed in Holiday Inn Express in the past, but not last night. :)
 

427mach1

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22/45 Fan said:
427mach1 said:
You can have a 500 grain bullet moving 1000 fps or a 100 grain bullet moving 5000 fps and they will both deliver the same amount of momentum to the target, assuming an inelastic collision. Trust me, I'm an engineer and I stayed in a Holiday Express last night......
That's the weak assumption in this argument. A light high velocity bullet is much more likely to fragment against a hard target and dissipate it's energy and momentum in directions that do not transfer momentum in a useful direction.

Even if it penetrates the target and remains completely within it, much of the energy and momentum are dissipated sideways and not as a unidirectional "push". That's why "knockdown power" of even heavy bullets is a myth.

I'm also an engineer and have stayed in Holiday Inn Express in the past, but not last night. :)

We both agree that it is momentum, not energy that causes the plate to move. And the inelastic assumption is not a bad assumption. The primary difference between elastic and inelastic collisions is that in an elastic collision, kinetic energy is conserved. In inelastic collisions, kinetic energy is not conserved. But in both elastic and inelastic collisions, momentum is conserved.

You might want to go back and do a momentum balance in two or three dimensions to model a fragmenting bullet against a hard target. You will see that all momentum in the bullet's original direction of travel is transferred to the plate along the same axis. Remember, momentum is a vector quantity.

It would be interesting to see a ballistic pendulum and get some quantitative results for analysis. I recall Mythbusters doing this at one time, albeit simulating a rock thrown from a lawnmower.
 
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