I can remember as a kid.....we would stand in a field and shoot our BB guns repeatedly straight up in the air - then stand with our hands over our heads and listen for the BB's to hit the ground around us.  (My hearing was better back then).

Oldfeller, did you find the bullet?

Because I highly doubt that was the cause.

A normal 22 round launches a 40 grain bullet at 1200 feet per second. Now, if fired straight up, it will attain an altitude of almost a mile before air friction slows it to zero feet per second and gravity can start to drag it back to Mother Earth. Now, this is where it gets fun.

Gravity is pulling the bullet back, but the air is still interfering with the fall. It can only achieve what is called "terminal velocity" which is the point where the air resistance matches the pull from gravity.

For a 22 caliber, 40 grain bullet, that's about 300 feet per second, or another way, that's the speed they limit paintball guns to on a professionally run paintball field. Why? Because at that speed, a paintball can't do more than bruise you. With the 22 bullet, that results in 8 foot pounds of energy... the equivalent of dropping eight pounds 12 inches. You'll have more energy launching the bullet from a good wrist-rocket style slingshot.  

That might put a dent in a steel roof, but a hole... not a chance.

stewmills wrote on 05/01/17 at 07:32:42:


I launched an album from the front yard. It wound up stuck about five inches in the flower bed across the alley, and the houses on that side of the block, and across the road. The wind in west Texas is helpful. An album could do real damage, I think.

In high school some friends and me would play capture the flag with fireworks. We knew a guy who sold fireworks out of the back of his shop, $50 would get you a 100 piece air or ground assortment. These were big items - the air assortment was 3 dozen 12 - 16 oz rockets and a gross of bottle rockets and screamers. We'd light up punks and go assault each others bases with fireworks until one team or the other got a flag. One time I got a full pack of spinners to land in the other team's arsenal (the dummys kept it all in one box) and boy did it go up. It set the abandoned building that was their base and the surrounding woods on fire. What a time putting that out too. Those 16 oz rockets have a heck of a wallop when they hit you - ouch!  :'(

One time we emptied the powder out of a dozen or so larger rockets and dumped it into a capped aluminum pipe with a small hole in the cap. A fuse was threaded through the hole. then we gently packed the powder down with an empty CO2 cartridge that snugly fit into the pipe. We stood it upright on the park bench lit it and ran.
It went off with a deafening boom. Dust rose up out of yards all across the neighborhood. We inspected the park bench and it had a clean hole in the top the same size as the pipe and a jagged hole about 6 inches across on the bottom. We found the pipe about two and a half feet underground. The CO2 cartridge was never found. I often wondered how far up the thing went and where it finally did come down.

Isn't that just something. Imagine, people accepting as normal and reasonable that which may well Be Normal, but is Not Reasonable at all. Gee, Wally, I wonder where else people just accept STUPID as reasonable, because it's ubiquitous, it must therefore be good and reasonable, you know, like the Fed..

engineer wrote on 05/01/17 at 09:53:06:


I think mine are 250 grains vs 40 for a 22LR

using an energy calculation on the net, assuming they have the same terminal velocity.

107 vs 17 foot-pounds of energy.

It take 277 foot-pounds to break a bone.
They didn't elaborate which bone, but there are a lot of critical fleshy bits in the skull too.

koehlerrk wrote on 05/01/17 at 12:20:21:


My planet is full of rocks, shooting down at such a short distance I would worry about ricochets.