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Re: [Phys-l] Final velocity of bullets



How about the air's drag on the rotation -- at least one post has reported at terminal it tumbles. What effect on the orientation does the reversal of direction for vertically fired bullet? Is it already tumbling? Does tumbling reduce terminal by additional than non-ideal orientation?

bc, can't think of where to start, and wonders if Denker is far from a computer.

Rick Tarara wrote:

My spreadsheet calculations (described earlier) included air-resistance in both the vertical and horizontal directions. What one finds is that as the angle increases and the time of flight increases the horizontal component tends to get quite small. This then leads to the fact that the final speed (properly derived from the horizontal and vertical velocities) tends not to vary too much--for my model no more than by 4m/s over 5-90 degree launches. However, dropping to 1 degree did increase the final speed by over a factor of two and if fired horizontally from 2 meters up, the short flight time would guarantee a final speed much nearer the muzzle velocity.

Rick


I don't agree with Michael's paragraph above and I suspect it
illustrates a difficulty that Rick also hinted at with his model.
Here are the fatal words:
" [it] will land with some horizontal velocity in addition to
terminal vertical velocity".


cut