stevebaby said:
I think I'll believe the word of Dr.Kruzelnicki,who is a doctor,physicist and engineer.I believe he knows more about the physics of falling objects than you.
The second link proves you wrong,since you stated that such an injury is unlikely and the article shows that it is.
It is virtually impossible to fire a bullet absolutely vertically.If it were possible,the bullet would fall back into the muzzle of the gun or very close to it.The bullets fired from guns pointed upwards will always travel in a parabolic arc.
Please explain how Dr. Kruzelnicki's explanation "flys in the face of science"?
You can't,can you?
For being a "physicist" he utterly and completely ignores the fact that the bullet will likely tumble on its descent, and not fall back to earth in the same manner in which it launched. I dont say that, physics does. The earth isnt a vacuum.
Going from your second link (which proves my point, again)
"
Datum 1. At first I thought being struck by a bullet falling straight down would be no worse than getting hit over the head with a two-by-four--not the average guy's idea of fun, but not fatal either. What goes up must come down, but it needn't do so at the same speed. You run up against what's known as "terminal velocity." A bullet fired straight up will slow down, stop, then fall to earth again, accelerating until it reaches a point where its weight equals the resistance of the air. That's its terminal velocity.
For further insight, we turn to
Hatcher's Notebook (1962) by Major General Julian S. Hatcher, a U.S. Army ordnance expert. Hatcher described military tests with, among other things, a .30 caliber bullet weighing .021 pounds. Using a special rig, the testers shot the bullet straight into the air. It came down bottom (not point) first at what was later computed to be about 300 feet per second. "With the [.021 pound] bullet, this corresponds to an energy of 30 foot pounds," Hatcher wrote. "Previously, the army had decided that on the average an energy of 60 foot pounds is required to produce a disabling wound. Thus, service bullets returning from extreme heights cannot be considered lethal by this standard."
If 30 foot pounds doesn't mean much to you, the bullet made a mark about one-sixteenth of an inch deep in a soft pine board. About what you'd get giving it a good whack with a hammer. Note that we're talking about bullets shot straight up here. If the bullet is fired more or less horizontally, it may not lose much speed before returning to earth and could easily kill someone."
You should really stick to things you know about, because you dont know anything about this subject.
And, just for further discussion, dont post links without first reading them, so as to prove your point. It really makes you look bad when they start proving my point.
