30 caliber bullet fired from a rifle pointed straight up would rise to an altitude of 9,000 feet (2,743.2 meters) in 18 seconds, and then would return to Earth in another 31 seconds, and during the last few thousand feet would attain a "nearly constant" speed of 300 feet (91.4 meters) per second.
When you fire a bullet into the air, it typically takes between 20 and 90 seconds for it to come down, depending on the angle it was fired at, its muzzle velocity and its caliber.
Even a bullet, fired straight up at the maximum speed a gunpowder blast can accelerate it to, will never leave the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere. A combination of gravity and air resistance will slow it down until it reaches a maximum height, whereupon it will fall back down to Earth's surface.
Air resistance also decreases at altitude, so falling bullets are more lethal in La Paz than in Amsterdam. Here's the good news: Bullets fired vertically spend at least 15 seconds in the air, and many hang for well over a minute.
30-06 cartridge will go 10,000 feet high and take 58 seconds to come back down. A 9 mm will go 4000 feet and take 37 seconds to come back down.
A bullet shot straight up into the sky will fly upwards until its initial kinetic energy is exhausted. It will then start falling and accelerate towards the ground under the influence of gravity until it reaches its terminal velocity, which is limited by air resistance.
Bullets often lodge in roofs, causing minor damage that requires repair in most cases. Normally, the bullet will penetrate the roof surface through to the roof deck, leaving a hole where water may run into the building and cause a leak.
The first thing to realise is that what goes up, usually comes down. The bullet will come down, but it will come down more slowly. A bullet is fired at a typical muzzle velocity of around 2,700 ft. per second, or around 3,000 kilometres per hour.
Bullet dodging, Scientific American reports, is one such make-believe ability invented by Hollywood. Regardless of your speed and finesse, no human can dodge a bullet at close range. The bullet is simply traveling too fast. Even the slowest handguns shoot a bullet at 760 miles per hour, SciAm explains.
Once shot, the bullet will keep going, quite literally, forever. "The bullet will never stop, because the universe is expanding faster than the bullet can catch up with any serious amount of mass" to slow it down, said Matija Cuk, an astronomer with joint appointments at Harvard University and the SETI Institute.
A non-expanding (or full-metal-jacket) bullet often enters the body in a straight line. Like a knife, it damages the organs and tissues directly in its path, and then it either exits the body or, if it is traveling at a slower velocity, is stopped by bone, tissue or skin.
Armadillo 'armour' – composed of bony plates known as osteoderms – has been seen to deflect bullets. In one incident, a Texan man was hit in the face when his own bullet bounced back from an armadillo that he tried to shoot. In another, a bullet ricocheting off an armadillo penetrated a house, injuring an elderly lady.
The y-component of air resistance for the fired bullet still depends on the fired speed of the bullet (since it is proportional to v2). A fired bullet (with air resistance) does not hit the ground at the same time as a dropped bullet.
The metal can make its way into the blood stream and impair the functioning of nerves. “Retained bullet fragments (RBFs) are an infrequently reported, but important, cause of lead toxicity,” the CDC team reports, noting that symptoms “can appear years after suffering a gunshot wound.”
A pointed bullet, depending on the caliber and rifle, will travel between half a meter to 4.5 meters, or about 5 yards. A bullet with a round tip may go further and have an effective range of up to 2.75 meters or 3 yards.
The theory suggests that about 3 and 1/2 inches of sand would be all that is required to stop a bullet since the standard distance between two pieces of drywall is about 3 and 1/2 inches.
Speed of light—faster than a speeding bullet.
Tissue in every one of these organs was damaged. Blood was leaking into his chest. When bullets enter a human body, they don't just pierce tissue, they shatter bones and dislocate limbs.
A gun may work one or two times when fired underwater, but in the long run, water will seep into the gun or wet the crucial parts of it, making it completely useless. And then there's the actual water pressure itself, which means the bullet won't go very far.
Gunshot wounds that pass through the body without hitting major organs, blood vessels, or bone tend to cause less damage.
At that point the much stronger steel of the firing chamber supports the cartridge metal. The cartridge metal is carefully designed so that it deforms to make a gas-tight seal. That is why the propellant gases don't blast back into your face.
The fastest bullets travel more than 2,600 feet per second. That's equivalent to over 1,800 miles per hour. To put that in perspective, it's amazing to realize that bullets travel over twice the speed of sound!
Bullets are more likely to ricochet off flat, hard surfaces such as concrete, rock or steel, but a ricochet can occur from irregular surfaces within heterogeneous materials including soil and vegetation. Uniformly soft, flexible materials like sand have a lower incidence of ricochet.
Bullets easily puncture most walls, doors, and floors. However, brick, concrete, and cinder blocks effectively stop most common calibers.