if you shoot a gun strait in the air will it come down to the same spot that you shot it?

Answer 1

If you shoot straight up, the bullet will not come down where you shot it from, but you can adjust for the wind. Some excerpts from "Official Report of Vertical Time of Flight for Small Arms Ammunition" (U.S. Army Ordnance Office) expain this.

The firing platform at Miami was about ten feet square. There was a shield of thin armor plate over the heads of the men at the gun. Out of more than 500 shots fired after adjusting the gun so as to bring the shots as nearly as possible onto the platform, only 4 shots hit it, and one more fell into the boat. One of the shots that hit the platform was a Service .30-'06, 150 grain flat based bullet which came down base first and bounced into the water after striking the edge of the lower platform. It left a mark about 1/16 inch deep in the soft pine board. Two more bullets struck in a pail of water beside the machine gun.
It was concluded from these tests that the return velocity was about 300 feet per second. With the 150 grain bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds. Previously the Army had decided that on the average, an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound.
Calculations indicate that the 150 grain .30 caliber Service bullet fired straight up at a muzzle velocity of 2700 feet per second will rise 9000 feet, taking about 18 seconds to do it; and that it takes 31 seconds to return to earth, the last few thousand feet of the fall being at a nearly constant speed of a bit over 300 feet per second.
If this same bullet were fired in a vacuum upwards at the same velocity, it would rise to a height of 113,000 feet. It would take nearly 84 seconds to make the ascent, and exactly the same time to come back, return with the same velocity that it started with.
In the Miami and Daytona firings, much was learned about the effect of the winds aloft. Wind velocities were measured with anemometers, sounding balloons, etc., and it was found that the wind could be blowing in several different directions at the same time at different heights above the earth.
When a bullet is fired upward, it finally reaches a point where it only has 32 feet per second of velocity left. It will take this slow moving bullet another whole second to rise 16 feet and come to a stop. Then it will start to fall, and it will take another second for it to fall 16 feet. Thus there is an interval of 2 seconds during which the bullet is poised 9,000 feet above the earth, and during which it moves only 16 feet up and 16 feet down. During that time and all the rest of the time it takes the bullet to fall the gale of wind that often blows at these heights will be pushing the bullet before it. That makes it quite easy to see why it is hard to get a bullet to come back to earth near its starting place without checking the upper winds.

Answer 2

No. There are so many variables that are undefined. As a bullet exits the barrel it arcs up. It will do the same thing pointed straight up or down or sideways. Then you had wind which as the bullets travels up it will be blowing at different angle and different speed the whole way blowing it off even more. Then when the bullet reaches the stall point. The point at which the bullet loses all upward velocity and tumbles back towards the ground. The base of the bullet is heavier than the nose of the bullet so there for it will likely fall somewhat base first. Now as the bullet is tumbling and not spinning (Imparted from the rifling in the barrel) it is now even more blowing off course by any kind of wind.

If you were on the moon you might get it to go up and straight down do to the fact that there is no atmosphere to interfere with the bullet.

Answer 3

in line with threat the questioner is thinking no remember if the bullet will get away the earth's gravity and circulate into area fairly. nicely the respond isn't any. A bullet from an AK-forty seven leaves the muzzle of the gun at 710 m/s and from that component is continuously decellerated at 9.81m/s/s. using the calculation v^2 = u^2 + 2as, the bullet reaches a top of 25693 metres, this is approx 26km, which isn't severe adequate to not come down lower back, for the clarification that the area station orbits at over 350km. So yeah, the bullet comes down lower back and could surely injure or kill somebody.

Answer 4

First of all, when most people shoot "strait up" their arm is actually still leaning forward somewhat.

Even if you were to put it into a vice, wind and many other things cause the bullet to move.

On a bullets way down, it begins to tumble and therefore becomes incredible inaccurate. In order to keep its ballistic trajectory it would have to be fired a direction other than straight up to maintain the trajectory all the way until impact.

In short, NO. Impossible.

Also, the gun itself is probably not accurate enough to launch the projectile perfectly straight. For example, even a very good rifle that an Olympic team/SWAT sniper etc. would be proud to use varies with each shot, even if just slightly, at 100 yards... when firing straight up you are going to be shooting a lot farther than 100 yards. So the simple imperfection of the gun will fire the projectile at a slight angle in one direction or another.

Answer 5

If all the factors like wind and trajectory were perfect, yes it could. It will lose all of it energy, it turns around at the peak of its rise, so when it comes back to earth it will only have a fraction of its velocity. Mythbusters did an expirement on this and it didnt kill anything. It only went a few inches in the dirt when it came back down. So i dont think it will kill anything but a mouse or spider.

Answer 6

Realisticly, no. The distance a gun travels gives it a lot of chance to be affected by wind at different heights. And a .25 inch change left to right at 1,500 feet would translate into a much more drastic change upon re-entering ground level.

Answer 7

If you shoot directly up in the air, the wind will blow the bullet to a different area.

Answer 8

Extremely doubtful. First you would have to be totally straight up and down no angles whatsoever (which would be impossible). Second there are to many variables such as imperfections in the bullet itself, wind speeds, and directions and weather conditions. So my answer would be no. But never try this as it will come down somewhere and innocent people have been injured and died from this very thing

Answer 9

No it won't, no matter what. The bullet will tumble as it falls which will cause it to move to the side. Also, for DJ, sorry but the Mythbusters episode where they tried this determined that a bullet FALLING back to earth does not attain the velocity or energy to kill a person.

Answer 10

No. Not possible.

If you aim "straight up" and fire the rifle, the Earth, spinning at more than 1,000mph, will move you out from under the bullet.

It's called the "Coriolis effect".

For you to fire a rifle up and have the bullet come back down to your precise spot, you would have to aim a few degrees east. Your shot would then go upward at an ange and the Earth would rotate you under the bullet as it comes back down.