Bullet Work

Cased snugly within the tube of the barrel, the bullet is ready for action. If you're familiar with Newton's third law of motion, you'll understand how the key to this action is reaction. Newton's third law of motion states that if an object exerts a force on another object, the second object will exert an equal and opposite force on the first object. By "equal and opposite," we mean that the strength of the force will be exactly the same, but that it will be exerted in the opposite direction.

In the case of the bullet, the ignited propellant gunpowder exerts a powerful force on the gun. As the propellant burns, it releases gases that generate an enormous amount of pressure behind the bullet. This pressure pushes against the back of the barrel, and the gun must exert an equal and opposite force on the bullet itself.

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In the barrel, there's nowhere to go but out. The propellant continues to burn as the bullet travels down the barrel -- until it emerges with a bang at the end as the gases are released. But that's not all the barrel can do for the bullet. Many guns also feature special grooves on the inside of the barrel. These grooves cause a bullet to spin as it moves. This spin stabilizes the yaw of a bullet, helping to maintain its straight line of flight during its trip through the air.

Although it just got blown out of a gun with tremendous force, the bullet is up against a slew of invisible obstacles that affect its trip through the air. All these forces alter a bullet's trajectory so that it doesn't travel in a perfectly straight line. The first use of gunpowder in Europe was recorded in It had been used in China for hundreds of years. The cannon appeared in Later in , the hand cannon appeared. Early projectiles were made of stone.

Stone was used in cannon and hand cannon.

Where do bullets go when guns are fired straight up into the air?

In cannon it was eventually found that stone would not penetrate stone fortifications which gave rise to the use of heavier metals for the round projectiles. Hand cannon projectiles developed in a similar fashion following the failure of stone from siege cannon. The first recorded instance of a metal ball from a hand cannon penetrating armor occurred in The round shot are clearly of different sizes and some are stone while others are cast iron.

The development of the hand culverin and matchlock arquebus brought about the use of cast lead balls as projectiles. The original round musket ball was smaller than the bore of the barrel. It was loaded into the barrel first, just resting upon the powder, and later using some sort of material as a wadding, between the ball and the powder as well as over the ball to keep it in place.

Bullets not firmly on the powder risked exploding the barrel, with the condition known as a "short start". The loading of muskets was, therefore, easy with the old smooth-bore Brown Bess and similar military muskets. The original muzzle-loading rifle , however, was loaded with a piece of leather or cloth wrapped around the ball, to allow the ball to engage the grooves in the barrel.

Loading was a bit more difficult, particularly when the bore of the barrel was fouled from previous firings. For this reason, and because rifles were not often fitted for a bayonet, early rifles were not generally used for military purposes. The first half of the nineteenth century saw a distinct change in the shape and function of the bullet. In , Henri-Gustave Delvigne , a French infantry officer, invented a breech with abrupt shoulders on which a spherical bullet was rammed down until it caught the rifling grooves.

Delvigne's method, however, deformed the bullet and was inaccurate. Square bullets have origins that almost pre-date civilization and were used by slingers in slings. They were typically made out of copper or lead.

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The most notable use of square bullet designs was done by, James Puckle and Kyle Tunis who patented them, where they were briefly used in one version of the Puckle gun. The early use of these in the black-powder era was soon discontinued due to irregular and unpredictable flight patterns. Delvigne continued to develop bullet design and by had started to develop cylindro-conical bullets. His bullet designs were improved by Francois Tamisier with the addition of "ball grooves" which are known as " cannelures ", these moved the resistance of air behind the center of gravity of the bullet.

Tamisier also developed progressive rifling. The rifle grooves were deeper toward the breech, becoming shallower as they progressed toward the muzzle. This causes the bullet to be progressively molded into the grooves which increased range and accuracy. The Thouvenin rifle barrel had a forcing plug in the breech of the barrel to mold the bullet into the rifling with the use of a special ramrod.

While successful in increasing accuracy it was extremely hard to clean. Among the first pointed or "conical" bullets were those designed by Captain John Norton of the British Army in Norton's bullet had a hollow base made of lotus pith that, on firing, expanded under pressure to engage with a barrel's rifling.

Renowned English gunsmith William Greener invented the Greener bullet in Greener fitted the hollow base of an oval bullet with a wooden plug that more reliably forced the base of the bullet to expand and catch the rifling. Tests proved that Greener's bullet was extremely effective, but the military rejected it too because, being two parts, they judged it as too complicated to produce. It was another improvement of the work done by Delvigne.

When fired, the iron cap would force itself into the hollow cavity at the rear of the bullet, thus expanding the sides of the bullet to grip and engage the rifling.

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A similar bullet called the Nessler ball was also developed for smoothbore muskets. Between and , Sir Joseph Whitworth conducted a long series of rifle experiments, and proved, among other points, the advantages of a smaller bore and, in particular, of an elongated bullet. The Whitworth bullet was made to fit the grooves of the rifle mechanically. The Whitworth rifle was never adopted by the government, although it was used extensively for match purposes and target practice between and , when it was gradually superseded by Metford's. Chace approached President Abraham Lincoln with an improved ball design for muskets.

In firing over the Potomac river where the Chace ball and the round ball were alternated Lincoln observed that the Chace design carried a third or more farther fired at the same elevation. Although Lincoln recommended testing it never took place. About and later, W. Metford carried out an exhaustive series of experiments on bullets and rifling, and invented the important system of light rifling with increasing spiral, and a hardened bullet.

The combined result was that in December the Lee—Metford small-bore 0. The Lee—Metford was the predecessor of the Lee—Enfield.

How Bullets Work | Range

The next important change in the history of the rifle bullet occurred in , when Lt. Colonel Eduard Rubin , director of the Swiss Army Laboratory at Thun, invented the copper-jacketed bullet — an elongated bullet with a lead core in a copper jacket. It was also small bore 7. The surface of lead bullets fired at high velocity may melt due to hot gases behind and friction with the bore. Because copper has a higher melting point, and greater specific heat capacity and hardness, copper-jacketed bullets allow greater muzzle velocities.

European advances in aerodynamics led to the pointed spitzer bullet. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most world armies had begun to transition to spitzer bullets. These bullets flew for greater distances more accurately and carried more energy with them. Spitzer bullets combined with machine guns greatly increased the lethality of the battlefield.

The latest advancement in bullet shape was the boat tail , a streamlined base for spitzer bullets. The vacuum created as air moving at high speed passes over the end of a bullet slows the projectile. The streamlined boat tail design reduces this form drag by allowing the air to flow along the surface of the tapering end.

The resulting aerodynamic advantage is currently seen as the optimum shape for rifle technology. The first combination spitzer and boat-tail bullet, named Balle "D" from its inventor a lieutenant-colonel Desaleux , was introduced as standard military ammunition in , for the French Lebel Model rifle.

A ballistic tip bullet is a hollow-point rifle bullet that has a plastic tip on the end of the bullet itself. This improves external ballistics by streamlining the bullet, allowing it to cut through the air more easily, and improves terminal ballistics by allowing the bullet to act as a JHP on impact. As a side effect, it also feeds better in weapons that have trouble feeding rounds that are not FMJ rounds. Bullet designs have to solve two primary problems. In the barrel, they must first form a seal with the gun's bore. If a strong seal is not achieved, gas from the propellant charge leaks past the bullet, thus reducing efficiency and possibly accuracy.