Bullet Ceiling

[Cynge]

Originally Posted by Rockstone

When I stop getting lazy, I will try to figure out the speed of a bullet returning to the earth at different angles. I did similar stuff in Physics, but after getting a 1 on the AP Physics exam, I've retreated from it.

The aforementioned MythBuster's episode covered alot of what's being discussed here (including the velocity of an arrow fired straight up).

IIRC they concluded that a bullet fired straight out (parallel to the ground) and a bullet dropped, for all intents and purposes hit the ground at the same time (though there was minor variances).

As for the velocity of a bullet on it's way back down after being fired straight up...it wouldn't kill, it would just hurt. The average bullet doesn't have enough mass to do lethal damage from just the force of gravity, and if it's fired *straight* up the velocity of the bullet as fired from the gun is not factored into it's falling velocity. In this case, the gun just determines the height before gravity overcomes it...and then the bullet loses all aerodynamics as it falls back to the ground tumbling end over end or in some random fashion.

The problem they ran into is that firing a shot perfectly straight up is nearly impossible...and as long as there is a certain amount of angle on the shot (I can't recall how much) then the bullet maintains it's spin and aerodynamics and would have lethal velocity on it's way back down....which is why you have reports of deaths from guns being fired "straight up".