How far can a gun bullet travel?

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Yeah using the guns to hunt with would be a better idea. Then you have food, and possibly can sell some of the meat to markets or at a market yourself.

Also, there's always the business of a shooting range. In states where it is illegal to carry a gun in public or to enter a building with one, a range would be popular.

And, if the proprietor of the range so wishes, a percentage of the profits could go to helping third world countries and other people who are having bad times.

Just to add some more info (shotguns):

Birdshot will only travel about 100 to 400 meters depending on shot size, and buckshot from about 500 to 700 meters depending on the size of the shot again. The smallest birdshot will be bouncing off your skin at 100 meters or so.

Whilst they're often very destructive up close (<50 m.), both of these above are very short ranged (it's why trap shooting ranges can be found close to suburbs). There was one just down the road from where I last lived.

I suggested that someone should do the calculation for the range of a rifle with air resistance, if we treat the bullet as a sphere it should make the calculation a little more easy. I might try in the near future, I think I will use Stockes's law to work out the force due to friction on the bullet.

F = 6 pi viscosity velocity radius of sphere

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Does anyone have the viscosity of air in SI units ?

I was thinking of a brute force attack on the problem, take a very short slice of time (maybe 1 ms) and then calculate the distance moved by the bullet based on the speed at the start of the time slice during the time slice. Also calculate the new velocity of the bullet at the end of the time slice based on the effect of wind resistance.

The problem I see is that the stokes equation does not work perfectly when the Reynolds number is high. I would like to know how turbulent the wake behind a bullet will be.

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

a hunting rifle, and the sixteen inch sixty seven foot long guns of the battle ship missouri both have the same muzzle velocity (around half a mile a second).

If the earth had no atmosphere they would both have the same range.

If you shot them both straight up both projectiles would gradually decelerate at the same rate an object falls (32 feet per seond squared).

Both projectiles would finally stop at the same point ( about fifteen miles up) then they would both start to fall- at the rate an object on Earth falls at 32 feet per second....

They would both hit the ground at the same speed they left the muzzle. Both would be as lethal as when they left the muzzle.

Since there IS air both projectiltes are subject to drag as they go up. Both slow down faster than stated above. But the 2700 pound battle ship shell is less effected by drag because it has less surface area relative to its mass than does the rifle bullet. So the rifel bullet stops at a lower altitude.

On the way down both projectlles also reach a terminal velocity long before they hit the grond (also because of the air)- but again- that speed limit is much higher for the big shell also because of greater mass relative to surface area.

So the hunting rifle bullet has less range for that reason. When you aim the guns at angles you get a more complicated versions of the same story.