How far can a gun bullet travel?

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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 !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

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.

_________________
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 !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

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.

If one has a HARP gun and one uses HAARP to push up the outer atmosphere of the earth, one can shoot a gun a very long range. For example, a distance of from somewhere like the UK to the Middle East is more then possible with quite some precision as well.
So it all depends on what sort of gum one is using and what equipment one has to assist the bullet to travel further. The gun itself... The more powerful the gun te further the bullet will go, as long as the bullet is fired in such a way that it remains stable in the air. (Hence the reason why gun barrels are made to rotate the bullets as a rotating bullet will stabilize itself while travelling. Old guns used round ball like bullets because the early guns barrels dis not do this. (Think cannon and you get the idea).
In theory, the longer the gun barrel, the greater the accuracy of the gun over a long distance, but the longer the barrel, the more friction imposed on the bullet before the bullet gets to leave the barrel. So, the longer the barrel, the more force that is needed to set the bullet in motion in the first place.

Now all of what I have written above is in regards to guns which shoot unpowered bullets. When we shoot a bullet that has its own source of propulsion we open up a whole new world of capeability.... But, powered projectiles (Think rocket and you get the idea) are far easier to detect on enemy radar systems, which goes back to the start of what I have written in how conventional long range guns like the HARP gun have a real "Stealth like" advantage in that one can shoot a bullet to hit a target over incredible distances (Hence why they need to use HAARP alongside the HARP) and one can start a war where a fragile situation between two opposing groups and each group thought that the other started the conflict... While all the time it was done to cause a situation of conflict by an outside source... I am not saying this has happened, but the potential to cause conflicts in this way is certainly a possibility.

Now going back to ordinary guns a soldier or anyone else may carry... It can be quite surprizing how far a bullet may travel. Years ago in the UK soldiers were involved in target practice much in the same way that soldiers would do in any other country around the world. The targets were set up so that the sea was behind them for safety reasons, so any stray bullets will go out to sea.
One day a sailor was found dead on his boat which happened to be sailing a great distance from the shore. I believe it was ten or twelve miles away. An investigation was launched as they thought a murder had taken place. The bullet was discovered and traced back to it being a stray that had come from the target. No one could believe how far that bullet had travelled as it had previously thought that bullets only travelled about two miles for such a gun. Since those days onwards, the safety zone for sea going vessels was massively expanded so such an unfortunate event should not happen again. This event really took everyone by surprize, especially as the sailor had died with a shot to the head.

What do you mean? An African or European bulliet?

Sorry Ezra. I can only watch YouTube in link form. The embedded things don't work for me.

Ezra's just messing with you

There are no ethnic-racial-specific bullets out there.