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Posted: 2/25/2004 4:38:39 PM EDT
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I have heard a few people say that after the bullet leaves the muzzle, it will start to tumble, and that is what causes it to stream through a persons body instead of going in and out. Can someone please give me some accurate information on how the bullets react after they have left the muzzle? It would seem to me they spiral, and when they hit the target, then they have the option of streaming through a person (what i mean by stream is, could enter your torso, change course and travel down your leg and fragmentate or exit.) I just feel like i am completely misled on this topic, could someone clarify for me? Thanks |
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[url=www.ammo-oracle.com]The AR15.com Ammo Oracle[/url] is a good place to start. It's pretty detailed on exactly this subject. In short, the people talking to you don't understand what they are talking about. Only poorly stabilized bullets with not enough "twist" will behave this way. It is not a desireable quality and doesn't happen often. Pretty hard to hit what you are aiming at if bullets aren't stable. |
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Bullet tumbling is not very difficult to understand conceptually. Let me see if I can explain it well enough. Bullets need to spin in order to stabilize their flight in the medium required. The minimum spin rate is dictated by the bullet's shape, the ambient temperature, the density of the medium and a couple of other factors. Based on these, and typically speaking in air, you come up with a barrel twist rate which works with the majority of bullets used in that rifle. So the bullet in flight is traveling with its pointed end forward only due to the stabilizing influence of the spin. If that were not the case, the bullet would be traveling with its heaviest portion foward, which is actually its base. When the bullet strikes tissue, which is hundreds of times denser than air, it does not have sufficient spin to stabilize it,and hence it will rotate 180 degrees to travel base first. That's about it. Due to density variations, random processes, what have you, the path could take some weird deflections. It's very difficult to predict the exact path in a non-homogenous medium like the human body, so you get some of the crazy paths you described. If the bullet has insufficient spin in air, it will also tumble,and continue to be blown about by the varying wind resistance which is always changing due to the wildily varying angle of attack of the bullet as it tumbles. |
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