What happens to a bullet that is shot to the air?

Question

I think that is if it goes up it has to get back down, isn't it dangerous when is coming back.

Then it must be pretty dangerous to do a warning shot to the air, and all cops do it...hmm

Answer 1

What goes up, must come down...

The saying "What goes up must come down" is an appropriate starting point. If you fire a gun into the air, the bullet will travel up to a mile high (depending on the angle of the shot and the power of the gun). Once it reaches its apogee, the bullet will fall. Air resistance limits its speed, but bullets are designed to be fairly aerodynamic, so the speed is still quite lethal if the bullet happens to hit someone. In rural areas, the chance of hitting someone is remote because the number of people is low. In crowded cities, however, the probability rises dramatically, and people get killed quite often by stray bullets. Most major cities have laws in place to try to keep people from shooting guns into the air in celebration.

Answer 2

This is actually a 2 part quesiton- so I'm going to answer it in 2 parts, ok?

The study of bullets and artillery is called "Ballistics". When a gun is fired, as soon as the bullet exits the barrel gravity starts to pull on it with a negative velocity of -32 feet per second per second. The forward momentum caused by the gunpowder burning decreases due to air resistance and gravity. A bullet doesn't fly in an arc like a rainbow- it actually flys in a hyperbola. As an example the .22 Long Rifle bullet. 20" barrel, and the bullets velocity when it leaves the barrel is 1570 feet per second (We're using "Stingers"). The rifle is correctly sighted in- and the bullet goes up and matches the line of sight at 20 yards, continues flying up to 1.5" above the line of sight at 50 yards, drops back into the line of sight at 80 yards, is 1" low at 100 yards, is roughly 12" low at 125 yards and has dropped almost 8 feet at 200 yards. The .22 long rifle is not an accurate long range bullet, obviously.

Now, is it possible for a gun to shoot a bullet into orbit, a La' "From the Earth to the Moon" as Jules Verne imagined? Technically, yes- it has to achieve a velocity to overcome air resistance, and gravity- which means a velocity around 7.5 miles per second. Saddam Hussian had hired the worlds best gunsmith to custom build such an artillery piece- had a barrel about 150 feet long, was about 8" in diameter and supposedly had a range of some 250 miles. It was never fired and was dismantled after the first Gulf War.

Historically there's been a few guns capable of doing such long range work- the Paris Gun, had a range of 75 miles, wasn't very accurate but its target was Paris, France in WW 1. The Germans had only built one, and it was only fired a few hundred times before the barrel was shot out. It was scrapped after WW 1

Answer 3

Any solid object propelled into the air travels (except for the effects of air resistance) in a parabolic trajectory. Maximum range is achieved with an elevation of 45 degrees with respect to horizontal.

A shot straight up also follows a parabola; just the degenerate case of a straight line (straight up and then straight down). Watch the top of your head in this case.

Muslim cultures seem more prone than others to firing bullets into the air upon any excuse: various celebrations, funerals, marriages, etc. I'd like to see a study on how many of them are injured or killed by bullets fired into the air and coming down and hitting them, compared to other cultures by the same cause.

To boil it all down to a more simple statement: "Yes, what goes up must come down." Oh well, excluding objects raised to orbital velocity or above... Damn. Nothing is really simple, is it?

Answer 4

Depending on the angle you shot the bullet. If you shot it straight up, it will fall according to the free fall principle: the bullet leaves with an initial velocity of say, 500 meters per second, but gravity and air friction is always present to eventually reduce it to 0 m/s; that's the exact moment when the bullet stops in mid air and it is the highest extent the bullet will travel, then gravity will do all the work, increasing the bullets falling speed at 9.81meters per second squared, and its speed will increase exponentially until it hits the ground. So the farther the ground is from the bullet at 0m/s, the greater the speed it will travel until it hits the ground; but then there is always air friction at work against it, it won't do much because of the aerodynamic design of the bullet.

Answer 5

It goes down, and it is not dangerous when going down. It loses momentum when it shoots up, and just goes down as fast as a pin or a book would if it were dropped from the top of a building of the same height that the bullet started going down. Unless the bullet has a sharp point or weighs 100 lb, it's not dangerous.

Answer 6

A bullet that is shot into the air will eventually come back down. The danger depends on how fast it comes back down and what it hits when that happens.

Answer 7

Myth busters i believe did an episode on this and most cities dont let you fire a gun into sky because what goes up must come down. If your in times square odds of the bullet hitting a person is very high. So yes its very dangerous

Answer 8

If you shoot a bullet up, it will come back down due to gravity and air resistance. The speed of the bullet is not enough to overcome to force of gravity. When it falls back down, it's maximum speed will be 250 km/h, not as dangerous as a bullet shot straight at you, but it will cause damage.

Answer 9

the bullet will stop climbing at some time, and start falling. Somewhere on the way down it will reach a terminal velocity and not gain any more speed. Terminal velocity is determined by the amount of air friction on the object and the gravitational pull. It will never get close to reaching the speed it had leaving the gun's barrel, and shouldn't have enough force to do any real damage.

Answer 10

If shot in the air, it will come down.

The only difference is that a bullet shot straight up in the air will come down to the same place, which is very unlikely due to wind and angle of projection.

Any angle from where the bullet was shot is very lethal.