shoot bullet straight into air, will it go through your hand if you tried to catch it when it came back down?

Question

its for math class.

Answer 1

reference #1.)

For further insight, we turn to Hatcher's Notebook (1962) by Major General Julian S. Hatcher, a U.S. Army ordnance expert. Hatcher described military tests with, among other things, a .30 caliber bullet weighing .021 pounds. Using a special rig, the testers shot the bullet straight into the air. It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second. "With the [.021 pound] bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds," Hatcher wrote. "Previously, the army had decided that on the average an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound. Thus, service bullets returning from extreme heights cannot be considered lethal by this standard."

Reference #2)

According to the article, doctors at King/Drew Medical Center, a major L.A. trauma center, published a report in a medical journal (Journal of Trauma, December 1994) saying that between 1985 and 1992 they treated 118 people for falling bullet injuries around New Year's Eve or the Fourth of July. Thirty-eight of the victims died.

King/Drew handles a lot more gunshot cases than other L.A. hospitals. But the King/Drew doctors also used fairly liberal criteria to identify falling-bullet victims (no gunshot heard or weapon seen, wound consistent with bullet falling from above, etc.). Given how confused trauma victims and witnesses often are about what happened, the numbers reported are probably high.

Ha! You decide...

Answer 2

If there was no atmosphere, the bullet would strike your hand at the same velocity it left the barrel. With an atmosphere, the bullet would feel drag from the air, limiting it's speed to its "terminal velocity". Since a bullet is very aerodynamic, it does not feel a lot of drag, and so it's terminal velocity is very high. The US army tested this in 1920 and found the terminal velocity of a bullet was about 300 feet per second. While fast, it probobly wouldn't go through your hand if it hit a bone. It would go into it though, and it would hurt like hell.

Answer 3

That will depend on the caliber of the gun, the altitude (air density), and weather or not you can see the bullet falling from the sky. I would recommend finding and watching the Mythbusters episode that details with this subject. Best of luck, but you when it comes down to it, a bullet shot straight up at a 90 degree angle and falling back to earth at a 90 degree angle will not be able to go through your hand.

Answer 4

yep, ill tell u why u shoot the bullet up, lets say it goes about 2 miles ( a guess). then it stops in midair, then comes back down at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s for two miles. dude i dont wanna be anywhere near that thing when it falls, its like dropping a coin off of the empire state building, that will kill a person if it lands on u.

Practically, the bullet will come apart before it starts falling, so no prob.

Answer 5

Yes.
Ther was a man who was hit by a stray bullet on the forth of july when everybody wass shooting off their rifles (Who knows why.) he didnt die but he had to b taken to the hospital.

Even if you did shoot a bullet into the air. You wouldnt be able to find it to catch it.

Answer 6

in theory, yes, in actuality, no.

if you factor out wind resistance (shooting the gun in a vacuum) the bullet would fall at the same speed as it was shot out of the gun.

here, on earth, there is no vacuum. when you shoot the bullet, the wind resistance (drag) on the bullet would slow it dramatically, allowing you to catch it without any problems.

Answer 7

Yep, till it develop into going quickly adequate to achieve get away speed. immediately up, it reaches a terminal speed of about 100 and twenty mph on the some time previous down, so it might want to no longer be deadly if it hit someone. At a lot of an attitude, it is going to safeguard maximum of its horizontal speed component and shall be deadly.

Answer 8

What the???