[ExI] scienceblind question

[Dave Sill]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 3:21 PM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Example in the book:  drop a bullet at the same instant that you shoot a
> bullet with the barrel parallel to the ground, and the bullets will hit the
> ground at the same time.
>
> I had trouble with this:  it would seem that if you used more gunpowder in
> the bullet it would go farther, but the time it takes for a bullet to drop
> remains the same.
>

More powder and it does go farther, generally. But a bullet is a
projectile, and the charge only propels it down the barrel. Once it leaves
the barrel, the most significant forces acting on it are gravity and
aerodynamic drag. Drag slows the bullet horizontally, but has no affect
vertically. Gravity applies the same to a dropped bullet as it does to a
fired one: 32 ft/s^2 vertically.

That's assuming wind isn't a factor and there's no aerodynamic lift or
Magnus effect, which is lift generated by an object spinning in an axis
different than its path.

-Dave
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