Kinetic Energy and Acceleration of a Bullet

  • "While small in size (the most popular handgun bullet is 9 mm in diameter) bullets posses enough kinetic energy to cause serious damage. Using a kinematics formula, it is possible to determine the acceleration of a bullet when the muzzle velocity and barrel length of a gun are known." Acceleration of a Bullet - The Physics Factbook
    • v2 = vo2 + 2as

    • Where
      v is the muzzle velocity
      vo is the initial velocity of the bullet, which is zero
      a is the acceleration
      s is the barrel length
      https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/MichaelTse.shtml

  • From this formula, it can be derived to find the acceleration of any bullet
  • Below is a graph that depicts the different energies different calibers poses:
BulletEnergies
https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bullets.html

  • The energy and acceleration of different bullets are pointless unless they are accurate, in the next slide we will look at what makes bullets accurate.

 

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