Where do bullets go when guns are fired straight up into the air?

Question

And what is an apogee? And how high can a bullet go that is shot straight up in the sky? What could happen when it comes down? The best answer will site resources.

Answer 1

When bullets are fired straight into the air they go well.....up. Just like you and me when we jump on a trampoline eventually gravity will get the better of it and it will start coming back down. Now if that were the only thing to take into account it would just come straight back down and thump you on the head, but because of extra forces caused by air flow and rotation the bullet won't go exactly straight up and down (thankfully). Now a bullet that's shot straight up is going an average 900 m/s, which means it'll get up about 4,000 meters in the air and when taking into account air resistance it'll come back down with a speed of about 100 m/s. This is a fraction of the speed but is still fast enough to pierce human flesh. To answer the final question, the apogee is the highest point that the bullet reaches.

Answer 2

You've asked 4 quesitons, each one gets a different answer.

When a rifle/shotgun/artillery shell is fired at a 90 degree angle the bullet/slug/shell/shot will travel straight up with minor curvature due to the earths movement and wind deflection. The basic formula is Ke=M^2 which means the kenetic energy in pounds is equal to the mass in grains times its velocity. Since energy can neither be created or destroyed the bullet/shell/shot will lose velocity due to gravity. Once gravitys downward force equals the upward movement of the bullet/shell/shot the net velocity is zero. Then gravity takes over, and the bullet falls back to earth. In an ideal enviroment without air the total energy applied to the bullet should equal the energy returning to the ground. But due to air resistance this won't happen.

Apogee is simply the highest point of bullet/shot/round or rocket's height.

How high can a bullet go? If less than 7 miles per second it will return to the earth. Beyond 7 miles or so per second it will escape the earths gravity and in theory keep right on flying.

What happens when UNAIMED bullets hit the ground? In a bad location? Things get broken or destroyed, and people can die.

Answer 3

Also saw this on myth busters, here's what they determined in a nutshell;

You can never truly fire a gun exactly straight up, and even if you did, the wind, the fact that a gun never fires perfectly straight, and that the bullet will tumble on the way down means the shooter isn't in any danger

Also a bullet fired as straight up as possible doesn't come down with enough force to kill. It reaches terminal velocity well before it hits the ground, and just doesn't have enough mass to deal a lethal wound, it probably wouldn't even penetrate the skin, just leave a bruise at worst. They weren't testing artillery shells here, mind you, just handgun and rifle bullets, a really heavy bullet might be a different story.

They did find a doctor who swore he treated people who had been injured and killed by falling bullets. They think it's likely that the bullet wasn't fired straight up, but at an angle, so it traveled in an arc and still had enough force behind it to kill. I tend to agree.

Answer 4

It goes up, but when falling, it moves to the east, due to Earth's moving.

Apogee is the highest point of an object's trajectory.

When a bullet comes down, it hits the ground with the same force that moved it upwards, and with the same energy it had at the beginning of the "journey".

The bullet can go as high as the charge produces gasses to move it thru the barrel and it depends on the barrel's length. Usually it is about 1 mile for handy firearms.

Answer 5

when a bullet is fired straight up in the air the bullet will travel up in the air for some distance when the force of the bullet dec. then the bullet will come down because of the pull of the gravity.

In astronomy, an apsis (plural apsides [ˈæpsɪdiːz]) is the point of greatest or least distance of the elliptical orbit of a celestial body from its center of attraction, which is generally the center of mass of the system.The point of closest approach is called the periapsis or pericentre and the point of farthest excursion is the apoapsis (Greek ἀπο, from), apocentre or apapsis (the latter term, although etymologically more correct, is much less used). A straight line drawn through the periapsis and apoapsis is the line of apsides. This is the major axis of the ellipse, the line through the longest part of the ellipse.
Related terms are used to identify the body being orbited. The most common are perigee and apogee, referring to Earth orbits, and perihelion and aphelion, referring to orbits around the Sun (Greek ‘ἥλιος hēlios sun).

Answer 6

Google Apogee. A bullet can go as far as the division of velocity by gravity. Did that make sense? Bullets are hard to shoot perfectly verticle (90°) because the gun is not ergonomically designed to be fired this way. What could happen when it comes down is that it reaches terminal velocity.

Answer 7

Myth busters answered this question on one of their shows. Fired straight up the bulled begins to fall straight back down at terminal velocity which is the fastest an object can fall in relation to it's resistance to the air it falls through, over 250 mph. this would not be a fatal strike. A fatal strike would be more likely occur if the bullet follows it's trajectory in an arc (look up apogee), in this event the bullet maintains much of it's speed and remains stable from it's rotation.

Answer 8

The best place to get the answer is physics 101. In theory (no wind, etc.) the bullet will return to Earth exactly to the point it originated (if fired on a perfect vertical). In the real world, it is difficult to fire at exactly ninety degrees. There is also wind. If you applied all the vectors, resultant vectors, and the proper equations, you can determine where the bullet will land. A word of caution, bullets return at a velocity that can be fatal.

Answer 9

they still follow a rapidly decaying arc of trajectry
after reaching apogee (highest point of upward travel)
at that point inertia slows -gravity starts to have its way with projectile then starts an arc back twords ground
a dangerous situation as un predictable where this
will land due to wind drift and other factors but be aware
that terminal velocity is reached shortly after apogee
and even lightest of projectiles can still do great damage
or kill this is a foolish practice and should not be done

Answer 10

The bullet will travel a projected path until something either stops the bullet, the bullet ricochets off of something to go on another path or the bullet will continue on its original path until gravity takes toll.