Don't think I did so bad

MattinWA said:

Nice! I found an old bullet ingot in my backyard the other day, thought it was pretty cool

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

I've been debating this. I've been doing some research, and what I've read, the zinc round is good for 30-40 yards before it runs out of steam. This is acceptable to me, for a personal defense round. Just trying to find hard data for it.

So...
Light'em Up!

Click to expand...

Primus said:

Did the sources you read state why zinc would lose steam any more or less then lead or steel core? It'd be the same grain bullet correct? I'm not a physicist, i just figured if it was the same mass then it should fly the same as long as all else is the same.

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

Awesome. I'll be spending lunch tomorrow sorting the bucket. My co-worker, help me sort the other bucket Friday, though it wasn't full. I normally give him the zinc or steel weights.

So...
Light'em Up!

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

From my understanding, zinc weighs less than lead of the same size. Using the same load data as lead, zinc will scream out of the barrel, because it's lighter. Due to having less mass, it won't hold the speed like lead, as it travels down range.

Click to expand...

HPmatt said:

You're dealing with density of the bullet - lead is denser that steel than tin. For the same volume, lead weighs more than steel than tin - more weight/unit of volume. Steel is 7.8 grams/cm3 and lead is 11.3 gm/cm3 - or about 50% heavier. From the explosion of the same amount of gunpowder - the momentum of the bullet is mass x speed - a heavier bullet will go slower, and a lighter bullet will go faster. The other factor is wind friction, or drag. The faster the bullet speed, the greater the drag - drag for the same object size would be the square of the bullet speed. By varying bullet metal density, size of bullet, load of powder - or by doing calculus on the various combinations, you'd come up with alternative 'combinations' that you could use to obtain similar results if you say - wanted to have maximum impact at 27 feet.

As was suggested on another thread, it w/b optimal to use depleted uranium if lead was getting hard to find - 19 gm/cm3.

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

Depleted uranium don't sound safe..

So...
Light'em Up!

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

Depleted uranium don't sound safe..

So...
Light'em Up!

Click to expand...

jt59 said:

Well..... wouldn't they be easier to find at night?

Click to expand...

Metallic uranium occurs naturally in tiny quantities. In its native state it is a mixture of highly radioactive uranium-235 and less active U-238. U-235 is used in reactors and atomic weapons; once it is extracted, the rest is depleted uranium (DU). It is a poisonous heavy metal like lead or mercury, but only slightly radioactive.

To understand why DU makes a good anti-tank weapon you have to enter the Alice In Wonderland world of high-energy collisions. When metal meets metal at five times the speed of sound, hardened steel shatters like glass. Metal flows like putty, or simply vaporises. A faster shell does not necessarily go through more armour, but, like a pebble thrown into a pond, it makes a bigger splash.

Armour penetration is increased by concentrating the force of a shell into as small an area as possible, so the projectiles tend to look like giant darts. The denser the projectile, the harder the impact for a given size. DU is almost twice as dense as lead, making it highly suitable. The other metal used for anti-tank rounds is tungsten, which is also very hard and dense. When a tungsten rod strikes armour, it deforms and mushrooms, making it progressively blunter. Uranium is "pyrophoric": at the point of impact it burns away into vapour, so the projectile stays sharp. When it breaks through, the burning DU turns the inside of a vehicle into an inferno of white-hot gas and sparks.

Normal uranium is not as hard as tungsten. But a classified technique allows it to be hardened. This is believed to involve alloying it with titanium and cooling it so that it forms a single large metallic crystal rather than a chaotic mass of tiny crystals. This structure is very strong and produces an improvement similar to the difference between a brittle pencil lead and a carbon-fibre tennis racquet. The final advantage of uranium is cost. Machined tungsten is expensive, but governments supply DU more or less free.

Click to expand...

skidmark said:

Tell the .mil that DU is unsafe - they use it for all sorts of rounds just because it is denser per volume than lead.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/18/armstrade.kosovo



And the claims that DU is "radioactive waste" that causes birth defects? It's not radioactivity that is the problem, and you pretty much need to give it a few decades to leach into the ground water and be picked up by crops, animals or drink the disolved stuff.

stay safe.

Click to expand...

MattinWA said:

From the article :

*It is a poisonous heavy metal like lead or mercury, but only slightly radioactive

--everywhere you go, no matter what, you are exposed to detectable levels of radiation.

Click to expand...

mpguy said:

C'mon now! Didn't you know the sun doesn't output radiation anymore??

So...
Light'em Up!

Click to expand...

MattinWA said:

there is no scientific proof that radiation doses to pregnant mothers correlate to higher birth defects. Or that radiation is a factor in post exposure procreation.

Click to expand...