I can only guess that the mid-air wobble is an example of why they use rifling to make bullets spin. Without the spin, all kinds of little forces have a much more noticeable impact on trajectory.

>> ^undefined:
I wonder how many landed in the lake?


According to the same law that governs the angular velocity and trajectory of buttered toast: all of them.

I'm calling fake.

No Highspeed, I sincerely doubt that there would be that much of a delay in firing and the watermelon exploding at that distance (being as a .50 travels approx. 2,800 feet per second.)

But there's one very large oversight by them.

..The bullet never hits the ground.

At the angle the shooter is at, if he hit the watermelon the bullet would maintain its downward trajectory and eventually hit the hills behind the stander, causing a "poof" effect.

Man, I totally thought this was posted as a comment on the trajectory of the US mid-term elections.

Some horrible camera work... probably a cell phone. But a very good experiment for high school science.

I remember doing an experiment for high-school physics, where our teacher challenged us to hit him with water balloons with one of those 2 person slingshots. He had figured out the trajectory equations so that he would be just out of reach.

The same professor did one where you stand on a chair and have a bowling ball hung from the ceiling held just up to your nose. Because of conservation of energy and the added friction of the rope, it wouldn't come back and hit you in the face.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an authority on the topic, I just thought I'd share my musings for any who may be interested

I'm extremely surprised that none of the physicist could give a remotely satisfactory answer to the beam-hand interaction question. I realise that the energies involved are extreme so weird things may happen and they obviously specialise in more fundamental aspects of the physics but I would have expected all of them to know at least a little bit about the physics of interactions between charged particle radiation beams with solid objects or water.

I only learnt a bit about proton beam therapy used in radiation oncology during my Masters in Medical Physics, and I'll admit I've forgotten a lot of it and can't remember all the calculations or parameters involved, but it seems to me like this would be a similar although perhaps more extreme case. Ultimately you would be receiving some dose of ionising radiation, the amount would depend on various things.

As solid as our hand appears to be it is still mostly empty space on an atomic scale, and there is a very high likelihood that protons in the beam will not collide with anything as they pass through. This is particularly true at very high energies, I forget exactly why... either due to momentum or the time spent in close enough proximity with atomic nuclei or something, but protons interact relatively weakly until they lose enough energy through the few interactions that do occur, at which point the likelihood of further interactions rises exponentially dumping all the remaining energy very rapidly. It is interesting to note here that at medically relevant energies 100-200Mev (17-35 thousand times lower than the LHC) this energy dump requires between 5 and 20cm tissue for the initial slow down to take place before the beams slow enough to dump the bulk of their energy. Your hand is at most a few centimetres thick and barely sufficient enough to do this at 100MeV let alone 3.5TeV. Graph which illustrates this.

Anyway, energy from the beam would be deposited due to some deflections and collisions and result in ionisation of some atoms either directly by collisions or indirectly by xray/gamma rays produced in the interactions. The few direct collisions between protons in the beam and atomic nuclei would also likely result in exotic particles and radiation further contributing to the dose you receive.

Other things to consider are whether the protons that shoot through your hand are still following sensible enough trajectories for the LHC to bend them around for another pass. At near light speeds they would be shooting around the LHC many thousands of times per second so even if the chances of interactions occuring in your hand are slim, each proton that manages to make another pass rather than shoot off on a random path that takes it out of the LHC, will have many opportunities to interact and deposit energy.

So depending on just how many protons are in the beam, and how much energy they dump into your hand, the effect could be anywhere from increased chance of cancer to a radiation burn of some sort if not a hole in your hand (although I suspect that most extreme scenario is unlikely).

All of this assumes my understanding isn't completely void at the energies involved which, if it is, may explain why the physicists didn't mention any of this.

>> ^cybrbeast:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters
_%282006_season%29#Episode_50_.E2.80.93_.22Bullets_Fired_Up.22


Love Mythbusters, but they screwed this one up. It's not the trajectory so much as the spin on the bullet. When the bullet is spin stabilized it will come down point first--no matter the trajectory.

Oh yeah, cybrbeast, I remember that episode! It all depends on whether or not the bullet retrains its trajectory. If it goes up then falls straight back down it's no different from a small rock. BUT if it's fired at an angle the bullet can continue traveling at deadly speeds and kill people a mile away.

He must have been hungry because he ate all of that metal detector... and I'ma call it his cheek, not his shoulder. If he had a headbox, that woulda been a headshot.>> ^notarobot:

>> ^blankfist:
Whatever you do don't run left or right, just keep in line with the van's trajectory.

Wouldn't have been half the video if he didn't take out the metal detector with his shoulder.

>> ^blankfist:

Whatever you do don't run left or right, just keep in line with the van's trajectory.


Well he was running in a different direction to the truck. And trajectory is used for rockets methinks

>> ^blankfist:

Whatever you do don't run left or right, just keep in line with the van's trajectory.


Wouldn't have been half the video if he didn't take out the metal detector with his shoulder.

Whatever you do don't run left or right, just keep in line with the van's trajectory.

I think you hit a lot of nails on their heads. I'm thinking follow the money and power. That's the endpoint that can't be hidden easily...because the purpose of power is influence. Where and how is that coming from. Who's benefiting. In the US I'm sure you'll see that easily. Just look at who's gotten money and what policies have been pushed and who benefits from them. For Obama for the most part it's investment banks and insurance companys so far(so far). Actually the same constituency as Bush but by other means and words.
The major foreign policy push under Bush 2 was supposed to be an adrenalin like shot to your countries dominance in the world but it didn't work easily. But empires can't change their trajectory on a dime. Countries investments are set and wars are in play. So Obama, carries out the same basic policies under a new PR campaign, with well worded adjustments but in the same trajectory. >> ^enoch:

i had some people ask me about "seeing the farm" concerning this video.
while i will not attribute a draconian "they" to these ephemeral owners nor will i ascribe a universal intent to dominate but i also will not close my eyes to the indoctrination and subversion of my fellow citizens.
i really feel this is a worthy conversation and one where a better vehicle than comments should be used but that is all i have at the moment.that being said i shall attempt..feebly most likely..to convey how i see things in the most simplest of terms:
financiers,corporations and governments are in the business of expansion.over the centuries these names were different but with the same goal.over the past two hundred years these systems have increasingly grown....cozy.
how and what tools do these institutions employ to gain their objective?
people,workers and their ability to produce and in the past 50 years here in america..consume.
how do they get these people to throw themselves into huge debt?
or think that working three jobs is normal?
how do they get a country to stop producing its own food and import?
how do they get an entire country to agree that mass slaughter is in the best interest of the nation?
an over-simplified answer:
control the media and control the message.
control the education and indoctrinate children to not only hear that message but find it reasonable as they join the workforce.
keep the citizenry barely cognizent of current events and distract them with cheap and tawdry entertainment.
over the past 4000 years wars were fought over religion but in the last 100 they have mainly been fought over nationalism but BOTH forms had the same goal in mind....expansion and the aquisition of resources.
the vehicle may have changed but the goal was the same.
and WHO do YOU think fight these wars?not those who wish to prosper from the spoils but rather the most poor and ill-educated from that society.
does this mean there is some secret cabal of bildebergers planning the future of their utopian society?
i dont know..but i dont think so.things are just as they were centuries ago..those few who wield power wield it for their own interests..not yours.
they throw scraps and larder in the general publics direction to keep things relatively stable and keep production going.
they need you to buy the product.
they need you to find it good.
they need you to go fight and die in their war campaigns so they can aquire more resources.
they need you to not think too hard or look too closely.
because if you did think and look closely you may find that there is a hand in your back pocket and it has been stealing not only your future but your childrens.
that you are free is only an illusion.
and if you realized that..well.."they" would become very anxious.
because "they" need you.
WHO are "they"?
goldman sachs,the fed,walmart,the federal government...the list is not too long and all the players know each other but are they all in cahoots?
meh../shrugs..maybe i am being naive but i dont think so.i think they all have the same agenda which is the accumulation of wealth and power.
it is a small club..
and you and i ain't in it.

Sorry about that. That was an asshole comment on my part. I apologize.>> ^honkeytonk73:

>> ^geo321:
So you've got no love for the Big Bang that is propelling us, our planet, and our solar system into an unknown trajectory. Extroverting towards the future open minded to enriching you're ideology with new ideas, or keeping a frame on your belief system and viewing the world within an old passed down cultural ideology from reinterpreted myths of our past. >> ^honkey
tonk73:
Jesus created all 14.5 billion lights years of it in ONE day. It took the rest of the 7 day week to make the Earth. Absa-freakin-lutely amazing isn't it?



I should have added sarcasm to my statement LOL.
I still don't get how there are individuals who believe a 14.5 billion light year expanse was created a few thousand years ago over the time span of a single 'day' (whatever a DAY is defined as).. including all the photons 'in-transit' over that expanse such that it appears it is that old. Simply for human visual amusement? To keep us on our toes? Ah I know. The 'mysterious ways' argument!

>> ^IronDwarf:

>> ^NordlichReiter:
I had a college professor, for game design, one of many problems involved the trajectory of artillery.
At what angle would you need to raise the barrel of a 150MM Howitzer in order to crest the top of a hill that is 150 meters high, and hit a target that is 5 miles away?
Here's the real question. What would be done if the geometry teacher had said, where would someone stand if they intended to kill say, Osama Bin Laden? Probably nothing.

I'm not even sure how to respond to you if you don't see the difference in using a hated enemy of the country and the President in a hypothetical math problem.


I'm saying it's not OK to use anyone.