Naked Science - Bullets

you can run but you can't hide from these bullets of the futures it sounds like science fiction but we're getting close to making bullets smarter bullets that can lock on to their targets steer themselves and never ever miss have we created the ultimate bullet bullets come in all shapes and sizes designed to wound or kill the science of ballistics has transformed the humble musket-ball of over 400 years ago into the Ranger Talon a bullet that rips its target to pieces and the guns have also evolved from the musket to a 50 caliber sniper's rifle a bullet impact so powerful but a single shot can punch through an armored car in fact this electronic gun may be like nothing you've ever seen before it punches out a million bullets a minute over generations bullets have altered the face of history change the way we wage war and shape the world we live in today scientists are now working towards producing a bullet that never misses a bullet that steers itself in flight towards its target right now it's still a futuristic dream but it's getting close we have to ask could this be the ultimate bullet ballistics is the science of the motion flight and impact of a projectile or bullet to study a bullet in flight the images must be slowed down a specialist slow motion camera captures these incredible images of bullets traveling at the speed of sound this is a gun shot slowed down over 800 times a bullet leaving the barrel travels so fast that it squeezes the air directly in front of it and pushes it to the sides creating a circular shockwave the bullet is now on its way each round of ammunition has two main parts the case and the bullet the bullet is made of a soft lead core covered in a copper or steel coating the case holds the explosive charge firing the gun sets off an unstoppable chain of events the firing pin hits the casing the charge inside burns and explodes expanding gasses force the bullet out of the casing and down the barrel but it's taken over 400 years for the bullet to reach this level of sophistication to uncover the ultimate bullet you have to begin with the early ones the history of bullets is bound to the guns that fire them early bullets were simply balls of lead shot from primitive guns as late as 1776 guns were basically still small hand cannons the gunpowder and ball were loaded into the front of the barrel just like a cannon offered to load and difficult to use early muskets used massive lead balls that are huge by modern standards up to 3/4 of an inch in diameter a really big problem accuracy at more than 100 yards even the best marksman had trouble hitting a man-sized target with a bullet shot from a smooth barreled musket firearms instructor at Texas Police Academy Cullen Grissom explains the disadvantage of a smoothbore musket is the unpredictability it's not stabilized in flight to some extent it's the equivalent of throwing rocks no ball fits the smooth tube perfectly it bumps and bounces around as it hurtles through the barrel by the time it emerges its flight path is unstable and inaccurate gunsmiths discovered the key to making bullets fly straight hundreds of years ago residue from the explosions clogged up the guns so gun makers cut grooves inside the barrels to collect the soot and keep the guns from clogging and blowing up that had an unexpected side effect to their amazement gunsmiths found that the grooves hugely improved the accuracy of the guns these spiral grooves inside the barrel became known as rifling they forced the bullet to spin as it travels down the barrel and a spinning bullet flies straighter and hits more targets we need two players and the football to demonstrate how spin makes a projectile more stable when he doesn't spin the ball the quarterbacks throw is off target but using the laces to spin the ball in flight his throw accurately finds its receiver the force at work when a ball or a bullet spins is called gyroscopic stability think of the child's spinning top the gyroscopic effect forces it to remain stable as it spins on its axis the same is true for a bullet the faster it spins the more stable it becomes that's because a spinning bullet can better resist forces trying to knock it off its path with grooves in the barrel the rifle followed the musket firing accurately over much longer distances among the earliest was the Kentucky rifle accurate to 200 yards but still taking about a minute to reload at the end of the 19th century came the springfield breech-loading rifle with twice that rate of fire and accurate enough to slam six bullets into a two-foot Square target 100 yards away but its speed was still no match for the Native Americans who could shoot 12 arrows in a minute the US military gained some ground with Samuel Colt's invention of the Colt revolver a reliable handgun firing bullets at what was then a phenomenal rate as fast as six shots in just six seconds the Colt answered the rapid-fire question but only for close quarter combat as well as the Colt the Winchester Repeating rifle gradually introduced from 1860 finally gave the military the edge the Winchester rifle was accurate to 200 yards and could fire nine bullets without reloading a Colt and the Winchester were so effective but they were dubbed the guns that won the West guns were developing fast but bullet technology was changing too invented in 1883 a totally new type of bullet made of lead but now partially covered in a copper jacket they were known as full metal jackets the copper was much harder and so held its shape better when exposed to the ferocious heat inside the barrel you could use a more powerful charge giving faster speed ease and better accuracy the bullets had come of age essentially the same basic design as exists today things were moving fast in just over 300 years ballistics developed from a musket firing three shots a minute with a range of 100 yards - the Maxim machine gun 600 bullets a minute with an effective range of half a mile in the 20th century this technology proved itself in the deadliest conflicts of our time but rate of fire is only part of the story there are a bewildering number of different types and sizes of bullets and when you're face-to-face with a dangerous enemy what really matters is making sure that they can't shoot back your choice of ammunition might mean the difference between life and death so what is the best bullet to stop the target dead in their tracks a most effective bullet is a bullet that stops the target in just one shot but there are circumstances when it's better to warm the enemy rather than kill them that's the view of wound ballistics expert dr. Martin Fackler from a military environment one of the theories is that wounding is better than killing the enemy because if you wound the enemy then he must be hauled off the battlefield and a person who's got his hands full of stretcher can't be shooting back at you but in urban law enforcement things are very different the ultimate bullet should allow you to shoot an assailant ideally without them shooting back they call it the one shot stop but this is a last resort police only shoot to save the life of an officer or innocent bystanders and that usually happens at short range the average police shooting in the United States occurs at 10 feet or less at that range wounding is not enough the officer must instantly stop a perpetrator from firing back they'll break into a room and people there will have arms and they'll be facing them at 10 or 15 feet and they'll be shooting back at the policeman the most effective shot if the it could be made would be a shot in the head this would be most likely to incapacitate but in the heat of close combat a head may be moving and hard to hit so police training says aim for the body's center of mass though sometimes even that is not enough even the best shot and that goes right in the middle of a center of mass and and goes through the heart cannot be counted upon to stop that person immediately a person who has his heart penetrated by a bullet could well keep shooting for 20 seconds because severely injuring a person's heart does not stop his brain from thinking until it's finally starved of oxygen so what bullet is the best for a one-shot stop that depends on the type of gun or police work the handgun is the weapon of choice and guns and bullets come in different sizes measured by the caliber the diameter of the bullet this is measured in either American inches or in the European metric system the nine-millimeter a German caliber is 0.35 of an inch in diameter the 45 is American and point 4/5 of an inch in diameter in law enforcement both types of weapons are popular when it comes to the stopping power of handguns size really does matter the difference between the 9-millimeter and the 45 of course is diameter of the bullet so the 45 is double the mass of the 9-millimeter bullet the bigger the bullets the bigger the impact the bigger the hole but the bullet design is also crucial most handgun bullets are either round nose or hollow-point the round nose is a traditional Full Metal Jacket bullet made to create a bigger hole in the target the hollow-point has a concave depression cut into the tip designed to fragment into pieces but which has the greater stopping power the most effective bullet doesn't just punch right through the target it creates serious internal damage let's take to the shooting range to see how each bullet performs first the round nose bullet the round nose penetrates the target and goes right through leaving a clean exit hole this was a bad guy he'd probably still be firing at the police officer next a hollow-point bullet watch the container on the left the bullet totally destroys the target on the streets a hollow-point gives the officer more chance of stopping the criminal with one shot the hollow point expands on impact to almost three times its size the expanding effect means that the bullet dumps its power inside the body damaging more tissue than a normal round nose bullet the hollow-point is commonly used as an anti-personnel round it's designed to damage more tissue by opening up similar to a flower so it has a larger wound channel a larger wound means a greater chance of hitting an organ cutting nerves or severing an artery and so stopping the target this is state of the art in hollow-point bullet technology the Ranger Talon when it hits flesh it expands exposing razor-sharp edges that slice through soft tissue its efficiency can make it the safest option fewer shots need to be fired to stop a target and less shots fired mean less chance of hitting a bystander that stopping power makes the hollow-point the best handgun bullet but in close quarter combat it can't compete with the brute force of a weapon that guarantees the bad guy is unlikely to be firing back that weapons the shotgun it's certainly not the perfect weapon it's smooth barrel like a musket makes it inaccurate overall but the shortest distances but in close range it can blow the bad guys away the shotgun is the weapon commonly carried by the average uniformed patrol officer in their car one buckshot cartridge fires nine pellets at one time which is roughly the equivalent of being struck by nine nine-millimeter bullets all at the same time unlike a solid bullet each shotgun cartridge holds multiple lead pellets which spread out as they leave the barrel it's kind of the equivalent of picking up a handful of rocks and throwing them shotgun cartridges can carry many different types of shot from around with dozens of lead balls designed to bring down a bird to a cartridge whose one solid slug can stop the target dead in its tracks the most common law enforcement cartridge holds buckshot nine separate balls the range demonstrates the shotguns impact first the buckshot into a 2-inch hunk of wood the woods no obstacle at all and the buckshot peppers the water tank behind it but if you think that's devastating wait for the slug straight through the wood and the water container is history a shotgun slug literally turns the shotgun into a rifle proper sighting system on a shotgun the slug is effective out to a hundred hundred and fifty yards it's a very large projectile in a 12-gauge you're looking at an ounce and a half of lead traveling at about twelve hundred and fifty feet per second it hits like a sledgehammer if the police shoot a shotgun at short range and hit the heart this person will most likely go down right away but it'll get the job done and you know the gunfight will be over within fifteen seconds the shotgun and the handgun are the weapons of choice for short-range fighting but sometimes law enforcement officials need long-range firepower and that means the rifle the rifle is a very precise weapon it allows us distance in law enforcement we want to create time distance and cover we want to put something between us and the threat the rifle allows us to do that the spiraled grooves in the barrel give a rifle bullet long-range accuracy in the right hands it can hit a target that the human eye only sees through the cross hatches of a high-powered telescopic sight some rifle bullets are deceptively small just half the size and a quarter of the weight of a 45 caliber bullet but three times more powerful because of their speed the faster the bullet the more energy it has and more energy means devastating damage very effective far more effective than handgun a long-range rifle bullet is as streamlined as possible to cut wind resistance and increase speed the rifle barrel can withstand greater pressure than a handgun so bullets contain more powder for a bigger explosion take a look the handgun powder burns away quickly but the rifle powder burns a lot longer this longer lasting explosion gives much more energy to the rifle bullet the final factor is the length of the barrel the bullet spends more time inside a longer barrel and picks up more energy more energy more speed or speed much greater power power is the rifles great asset but that long barrel is a great disadvantage especially when lawmen need surprise on their side dan7 of the College Station SWAT team in Texas the length of the weapon makes a little difficult when we're searching a house we don't want to give the bad guy notice that we're coming because 16 inches of rifle barrel is sticking around the corner before we can see the bad guy so the shorter weapon gives us the ability to put our eyes on the target at the same time the weapon comes on the target a short-barrel is the best tactical choice in close serve in combat but in a war zone it's very different for 40 years the US military has used the 556 cartridge with the m16 rifle as its weapon platform it has proved itself a winning combination of speed and power with an effective range of 900 to 3,000 feet but even it can't stop a truck with one shot this weapon can this is the 50 caliber rifle the bullet size and its explosive charge twice as big as a bullet from the m16 makes this one of the most powerful rifles today it's handheld artillery and so powerful that from one and a half miles away it hits with 9 times more energy than the wallop of a 44 Magnum fired at point-blank range so what can these monster bullets do from 50 yards away to the 50 caliber bullet smashes through three tanks this round will penetrate one inch of armored plating from a distance of 200 yards if the 50 caliber hits your torso or head you'd be dead we have bullets of nearly every size and design but how do bullets perform their deadly task what's the science of a bullets impact on a human body so far we've seen the tremendous stopping power of the hollow-point bullet the devastating short-range brute force of the shotgun and the astounding capabilities of the high-powered rifle round most bullets are designed to stop a human creating the most devastating wound so what kind of ammo does what kind of damage to the human body to see how bullets injure bodies we employ the science of wound ballistics a bullet striking the human body causes two main types of damage handgun bullets traveling at lower speeds will create what is called crushing injury the bullet punctures the skin crushing the tissue and creating a wound channel as the bullet tunnels through the body if you took a small cube of a piece of steak put it on an anvil and pounded it with a heavy hammer you would you would have a a mushy liquid tissue that's what tissue becomes from the crush mechanism by projecting pictures of actual wound paths onto a human body dr. Fackler pinpoints exactly what damage bullets caused a 45 round nose bullet fired from a handgun creates this wound it penetrates deeply but leaves minimal crushed tissue in its wake switch to a hollow-point from the same handgun and the wound is very different it hasn't penetrated as far but has dumped all its energy in the body there's far more tissue destruction you can see a marked contrast in the size of the hole because the bullet has mushroomed and doubled its diameter handgun bullets travel at about the speed of sound rifle bullets up to three times faster and that means more damage on the receiving end and more work for trauma surgeons like dr. Wang a single shot to the arm by a high philosophy bullet who means the bone will be broken to the point where often require amputation to salvage the arm I solve it's a life of the the victim itself handgun it just passes through and usually just a little bit of muscle tear a rifle bullet packs so much force that it can kill without piercing flesh even with the correct protective headgear just a glancing blow by - ah Sofia bullet can lead to coma and death the rifle bullet creates a devastating type of wound this is called a temporary cavity it's the same thing as a dropping a stone into a pool of water you see a temporary splash we have what we call the temporary cavity which is nothing more than a splash and tissue on impact the splash creates a hollow space 30 times the size of the bullet the m16 rifle bullet diameter about like this 30 caliber 7.62 rifle bullet and diameter about like that more like Sipho basketball and the pressure around that hollow space wreaks havoc humans are mostly water encased in skin when a bullet hits a body the pressure increase around the wound can burst internal organs like a balloon filled with water the liver the spleen the kidneys are pretty in some sense they're like tofu so it fractures quite easily when major organs hemorrhage survival chances plummet each rifle round wounds in a different way the Russian ak-47 is the most common assault rifle in the world it fires the 7.62 millimeter bullet when this bullet enters into the body it tumbles over or yaws as it tumbles it travels sideways crushing or tearing even more tissue a 5.56 millimeter round fired from the m16 rifle is the standard US military cartridge used from Vietnam to the present day it wounds very differently here we have a wound profile of the m16 of the kind that we used in the in Vietnam and as you can see the bullet comes in and doesn't yawl until it gets about four inches and but when it does y'all the bullet fragments the fragments spread causing multiple wounds as the pieces ripped through the body take it up another level a close-up blast from a shotgun loaded with buckshot it tears the body apart what this shows is that they would almost all be contained in the chest each one of these buckshot makes a separate path through tissue and all the paths are very close to one another and they just sort of make hamburger of the tissue I don't think wound of this type would be survivable soldiers and police officers regularly face these weapons so how do they protect themselves the answer is body armor there are two types of modern body armor hard and soft designers developed hard body armor to deflect the enormous power of a rifle round it consists of thick ceramic or metal plates and works like a medieval suit of armor the armor absorbs the energy of most bullets in law enforcement soft body armor is designed mainly to stop a handgun bullet it's flexible protection worn like a jacket that allows more movement than hard armor armored clothing stops a bullet by working like a very strong net think of a soccer goal the net is made up of interlinking lengths of string when a player kicks the soccer ball towards the goal it carries energy like a bullet round when the ball hits the net it pushes into the strings each string pulls others within the web spreading the impact over a wide area making the entire net absorb the ball's energy a soft bulletproof vest absorbs energy the same way the vests are woven from Kevlar Kevlar is lightweight but pound for pound is five times stronger than steel weave it into a dense net and you get massive energy absorbing results an officer wearing soft body armor who is shot generally suffers some kind of bruising or some contusion behind the vest because the amount of energy generated but it's dissipated here's how it works in the real world first the soft armor from short-range grissom fires a nine-millimeter a 45 caliber bullet then a shotgun loaded with buckshot the vests outer layer stops both the 45 and the 9-millimeter bullets and one of the shotgun pellets the other 8 shotgun pellets lodged in the inner layers of the vest the soft armor stopped everything that was thrown at it but it wouldn't stop a rifle round for that we need the hard ceramic plate armor Grissom fires a 7.62 millimeter sniper's round at short range this bullet is five times more powerful than the 45 round you'll see the rifle round strike and you'll see the ceramic separated the outer ceramic has taken the brunt of the force the bullet lodging in the metal backplate you see the pieces with ceramic this is what's left of the bullet but the bullet has not penetrated the armor soft armor works for handguns and shotguns and hard armor for rifles it's all part of understanding the behavior of bullets and that can help solve crimes and even put a killer on death row a bar in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania a crime was committed here and this is the man who used the science of bullets to put a killer in jail blazed career is a detective with the mobile crime unit of Pittsburgh City police we respond to homicides robberies burglaries and our main function is to respond to felony incidents in to the physical or forensic portion of the investigation the following story is based on the police records of the actual crime it's June 2004 at a neighborhood bar an argument between a man and a young woman is spiraling out of control furious she leaves and calls her boyfriend minutes later the boyfriend speeds up in his car and fires shots into the bar killing the man by the time Detective career arrives police have caught the boyfriend he's admitted firing several shots into the bar in anger from a moving car that would make it a drive-by crime not intentional murder third-degree murder with at most a 20-year sentence but detectives suspect he's lying if they can prove he stopped his car he faces murder one and a possible death sentence only ballistics can prove what really happened firing a gun from a moving car creates bullet flight paths from several different angles the forensic evidence may lead career to the truth but first he has to find the bullets we determined that four shots been fired at the bar two were lodged in the front door area of the bar one round lodged into the far wall of the kitchen and the fourth round had shot our victim in the head using ballistic rods and lasers Korea recreates the bullet trajectories and determines where they were fired we had three holes that we could work with to run our rods this really gave us a good accurate depiction of where the bullets came from as he works on tracing the bullet paths backwards the truth emerges the bullet trajectories all originated from the same place all indications where the shots were fired from a stopped location this was not a drive-by shooting careers investigations proved that the perpetrator was lying he had stopped his car and aimed at the victim this was a premeditated killing murder one that showed that he fired at our victim and it was an intended incident he was convicted of first-degree murder which is the death penalty in the state of Pennsylvania in America today there are nearly 200 million guns worldwide that figure rises to more than 630 million it's not just the police who have the best firepower the bad guys have big guns too every day we're seeing more and more firepower on the other side bigger weapons are out there but they're easy to get they often change hands that will be traded for drugs we trade your other weapons and that means a constant arms race between criminals and the police with casualties on both sides unfortunately we do have fatalities the best defenses we have her to get them off the streets but a large weapon is out there and we know and it's being used in multiple incidents we're tracking that gun as hard as we can to try and get to it as quickly as we can studying bullets gives the police another method of solving crime the firearms lab examines every gun seized at a crime scene tests determine if it's been used in any previous crime because as anyone who has ever watched a TV crime show knows the act of firing a bullet makes that bullet unique British police officer Henry Goddard discovered the phenomenon in 1835 the science is now known as bullet forensics or bullet matching the techniques are simple but effective they can match any bullet or even a bullet fragment to the gun that fired it dents from the firing pin and scratches caused by the guns rifling are as distinctive and individual as a person's signature or fingerprint Rochelle Connor is an experienced examiner at the Pittsburgh firearms unit her team fires every gun seized by the police into a water tank it examines the bullets she places two bullets onto a special microscope called a comparison microscope for close-up inspection these are actually two microscopes two lenses so that allows us to look at two images and manipulate them separately but look at them side-by-side the technology hasn't changed much since the 1920s when firearms examiner's started using comparison microscopes here you see one bullet under the microscope increasing the magnification reveals the striations or scratches the individual marks that idea bullet by moving the dividing line coroner can examine both bullets this is not a match but when she rotates the bullet the two patterns fall into place now it's a match but sometimes police only recover a small bullet fragment at the scene or from the victim's body even then she can still make a match you can have as small as you know the width of a pinhead there's a potential that you can make identification from that in the past decade technology has created automated bullet matching workstations that meld traditional comparison microscopes with high-powered computers the result is Ibis a system that can help solve crimes by choosing potential matches not in days but in seconds but so far technology hasn't been able to completely replace the experienced eye of a forensic examiner still it takes the examiner to make the final call but takes lots of practice lots of looking at things that don't match and just sitting there in hours at the microscope and sore eyes looking to the future we find guns that shoot around corners and a system that can fire a staggering 1 million rounds per minute and a smart bullet that can steer itself in flight and hit its target every time this is the next generation infantry weapon the xm8 it's the new assault rifle for the US Army it fires the 556 caliber bullet the same as the m16 assault rifle it replaced but it has been designed for many different roles it fires 10 30 or 100 round magazines fit it with a grenade launcher and it upgrades to 40 millimeter rounds the rifle milton polymer is 20% lighter than existing weapons it's extremely reliable bury it in sand or drop it in water and you can still fire it it's the weapon of war for the 21st century one thing it can't do is fire around corners but this gun does exactly that this is the only weapon allowing the shooter to stay safe around a corner and out of sight of a target the gun swivels in the middle enabling the gun to see and fire with no risk to the shooter the pistol and a video camera are at the front while a screen at the back of the gun lets the users see what's lurking around the corner the gun barrel camera can focus on targets up to 400 yards away and can be used with any military pistol m16 rifle or teargas launcher the round the corner gun will keep you out of the line of fire but sometimes you need the shock and awe that only comes from overwhelming firepower the fastest weapon today gives you just that the mechanical Gatling guns fires six thousand rounds per minute that's ten times the rate of infantry rifles on full automatic but the future offers far faster rates of fire a new ballistic technology capable of firing 1 million rounds per minute the Australian company metal storm has developed the world's first electronic gun that can fire an astonishing 16,000 rounds a second it has the firepower to shred a truck in a blink of an eye or throw up a defensive wall of lead against an incoming missile unlike a normal weapons firing system the firing mechanism has no moving parts and no cartridges instead it fires the bullets with electrical impulses the firing pod consists of multiple barrels preloaded with bullets that can be of small caliber it fires bullets either one by one in simultaneous waves or in one instantaneous burst it's a system designed for multi use on land or in the air it can be programmed to attack one target or multiple targets the onboard computer using radar and GPS tracks the landscape for the target with pinpoint accuracy if this is the weapons system of the future what's the next generation bullet since its early days the bullet has been a hunk of lead relying on the skill of the shooter to hit its target but this mo could change everything it's a smart bullet and could make all other bullets obsolete although still at the research stage it will steer itself in flight like a miniature cruise missile hitting its target every time the basic philosophy behind the guided munitions is to save human lives aerospace engineer Ron Barrett has spent 15 years developing the smart bullet smart bullet technology is intended to hit targets and typically extended ranges with a great deal of accuracy one shot one kill a laser guides the bullet towards the target if the target moves as the bullet is being fired then the laser beam can track the target even over short range the bullet can adjust its flight to hit a moving target this type of bullet has moveable fins in the back and these types of fins guide the bullet the fins work like an airplanes rudder constantly correcting the trajectory smart bullets can even shoot down other bullets this bullet is an anti bullet bullet designed to shoot down incoming enemy rounds in the nose of the bullet there's a small charge and this charge is so powerful that it can actually stop the entire bullet in flight radar spots and tracks incoming hostile rounds the computer sends a signal to the launcher pod firing smart bullets to intercept the speeding target the counter munition is fired and as the counter munition gets very close to the hostile munition it is detonated and it causes the hostile munition to tumble out of control it's very much a david-and-goliath type of scene most of the targets that this type of round is intended to engage are other types of bullets coming from machine guns an ak-47 or rocket-propelled grenades or mortars this system can protect a Humvee or even a town the basic concept of this type of counter munition system is to create sort of an umbrella of safety and the umbrella of safety could protect civilian populations it could protect a law enforcement agents peacekeepers or friendly soldiers for centuries bullets have been designed to kill people from simple lead balls to the Full Metal Jacket to the deadly stopping power of the Ranger Talon but now comes a bullet designed to kill bullets a bullet designed to save lives if smart bullet technology is proved to work it could be the answer to our question this could be the ultimate bullet

Channel: Naked Science

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Keywords: naked, science, bullets, perfect, gun, history, evolution, weapon, research, ammunition, ballistics, deadly, development, smoothbore, rifled, muskets, shot, colt, revolver, winchester, repeating, rifle, best, size, stopping, power, shooting, range, destructive, test, fire, explosive, world, caliber, penetration, damage, military, devastating, rounds, body, armor, forensics, csi, assault, talon, hollow, point, sniper, impact, rate, projectile, rifling, gyroscopic, stability, full, metal, jacket, accuracy, hand, shotgun, tactical, design, m16, kalashnikov, xm8

Id: 7llfUFbYnYQ

Length: 50min 9sec (3009 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2015