The bullet spinning in ice
Mentioned it yesterday but Geekologie has a look. Could be faked since the spinning bullet looks to be in real good shape for something just launched from a barrel.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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October 15th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Yeah, it could be faked although the round does look like many rounds I’ve recovered using bundles of wet newspaper. I”ve never observed it but suspect the phenomena is dependent on temperature and ice thickness. BTW, it is a really bad idea to shoot into ice you’re standing on.
October 15th, 2010 at 9:24 am
Too many flaws to mention in this video. I suppose something like this could be done with a *very* light load but it would not cycle the gun.
The angle of the shot would have have to be perpendicular to the surface of the ice for the bullet to spin and not just skip away.
Not to mention the bullet would likely be hotter than the ice and snow and there’s no evidence of any melting.
It would be interesting to see the Mythbuster guys work through this though.
October 15th, 2010 at 9:30 am
I don’t know. I was out shooting last weekend and we found a completely non-deformed 9mm bullet that had traveled a foot and a half into the ground. So I think that that part at least is feasible.
October 15th, 2010 at 10:33 am
I find it very hard to imagine how the bullet could have come to rest on the ice like that, but still be spinning that fast.
Also no burnt powder on the base of the bullet, I have no idea how you’d do that.
I say fake.
October 15th, 2010 at 11:11 am
If you load the long video you’ll notice that they’ve cleared the snow off of a section of ice. They basically ricochet a bullet off somewhere in this cleared section and hope the bullet lands, still spinning, somewhere else in their cleared space.
This is an incredibly stupid thing to do for a number of reasons.
October 15th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Re: bullet temperature – it’s not outside the realm of possibiliy, to my mind, that the ice directly beneath the point of the bullet would react in a fashion similar to ice skating, in that the pressure(or just heat in this case) melts a small layer of ice and the bullet just spins on the surface of it.
That being said, I’m using my phone, so I can’t even watch the damned video.
October 15th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Don’t know if it’s fake, but I’ve recovered 45ACP hardball that was shot into wood that was barely deformed. Also, since it’s a Glock (polygonal rifling) the bullet won’t be deeply scored as it would out of conventional rifling.
October 15th, 2010 at 11:31 am
I want to see this done using a bullet trap of liquid nitrogen atop solid CO2, and either a Sig 210 or a HighPoint with a laser sight to fire the 9mm bullet. Just because.
October 15th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I did this quite by accident many years ago with a SAA in .45 Colt. We had an old, junked stock trough that had partially filled with rain and frozen, creating a large block of ice in one corner. I fired a couple of rounds into the ice just to observe the effects. One round struck the ice and remained on the shattered surface spinning much like a top, including gyroscopic destabilization as it wound down.
I saved the bullet for a number of years. IIRC, it was a hard cast LSWC. I don’t recall it being badly deformed.
I never thought much of the incident, assuming it was one of those odd events we all encounter from time to time. I cannot imagine that it would be difficult to recreate the conditions to allow the phenomenon to occur.
October 15th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Figuring out all the dynamics of getting the bullet to pop back out of the crater it makes in the ice would be quite an exercise. Instantaneous presures and temperatures might get quite high, but the bullet would be enough stronger structurally than the ice that most deformation happens in the ice instead of the bullet. Apparently the angular momentum of the bullet doesn’t really interact with the ice during the crater process, so the bullet is still spinning when it lands.
I’m guessing this is real not fake, but a complete explanation of the phenomenon might be worth a PhD for someone. And hoping that the bullet ricochets out of the hole without hurting anyone, sounds like poor planning, and very dangerous.
October 15th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Saw this once while ice fishing. One of us fired a .22LR into the ice. The bullet did not deform. It sat there in the cavity that it made spinning (very fast)for quite a long time.
October 15th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Looks real to me! Does this remind anyone else of Inception?
October 15th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
This doesn’t mean that it isn’t fake, but I have recovered near perfect bullets(just marked by rifling) from logs behind my targets.
October 15th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Can someone tell me how a bullet looks after being shot directly into sand? I’m thinking that shooting into the ice (doubt it was ice over a lake, was probably thick ice over a parking lot or something) would put equal pressure on all sides around the ice. Where would it mushroom to or deform to if it’s got equal pressure coming in from the sides as it’s got coming head on?
Weer’d, I can see a bullet landing like that. Gyroscopic forces I think could easily do it. The part that I wouldn’t understand is why it didn’t land 30 feet down the road from where they did it, but I figure that could be explained with wind.
October 16th, 2010 at 12:02 am
I would think the physics behind the bullet still spinning yet stopping are similar to those behind why a baseball thrown level to the ground hits the ground at the same time as one dropped from the same height at the same time (or a bullet fired down range hits the ground at the same time as a dropped bullet from the same height)–the impetus to stop the bullet (from the ice) works in the opposite direction of the bullet’s travel, but there’s no force other than friction (not much) from the ice to slow the spinning.
October 16th, 2010 at 12:59 am
I don’t buy it. Major flaw #1: the camera is pointed away from the target area for waaaaay too long before that last shot is taken. Also, check out the chunk of ice at about 7 o’clock and a few inches from the spinner they “found”. Go back and note its location relative to where his shot hits, and tell me there’s a realistic chance that the bullet from his gun is the same one spinning in that crater.
October 16th, 2010 at 1:09 am
but there’s no force other than friction (not much) from the ice to slow the spinning.
And the aforementioned heat from the bullet would melt a thin layer of ice creating a cushion of water that I would think would reduce friction even more.
As far as bullet deformation: As others have mentioned, I’ve seen bullets go through quite a lot and not be badly deformed.
I had a 165 grain .45acp federal hydrashok discharged in my house (not by me…long, sordid story) several years ago.
It went through two layers of plastered sheetrock, a thin, interior wooden door (at an angle, gouging out about a 3 inch groove in either side of the door), a palm IIIc (completely destroyed it), another layer of plastered sheetrock and a layer of unplastered sheetrock and chipped the brick fireplace on the other end of the house before coming to rest.
The first layer of plaster and sheetrock jammed up the hollow point and the bullet went through the rest of the trauma with very little obvious damage. I’ve still got the bullet and, other than having had to pick the plaster and sheetrock out of the hollow point, it appears almost pristine.
That proved to me beyond doubt that, even when using hollow points in a handgun, shot placement is extremely important because if you miss, that bullet is going to go a long way before it loses enough energy to no longer be a hazard to innocent bystanders.
In summary, based on my experience, I would never discount this story just because the bullets (FMJ in this case) didn’t deform sufficiently. I’ve seen stranger things.
October 16th, 2010 at 2:08 am
I’ve shot 200 grain hard cast .45 ACP major loads at steel plates and VERY occasionally seen the bullet bounce off on to the ground spinning. Try shooting a .22 into sandy ground, the bullet pops back out fairly often.
Ice, because of its low friction, would seem to be ideal to get what was shown in the video.
October 16th, 2010 at 10:05 am
I was reading the Geekologie article in the early day yesterday and was discussing how funny it was to read the difference in comments from your general internet person versus educated gun owners.
October 16th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Not exactly the same thing, but in the April 2010 issue of “Shooting Times” magazine, in the “Going Ballistic” Article, they address recovering spent bullets shot into ice.
A .22 LR lead bullet was fired from a handgun into a half-gallon milk jug that had been filled with water and frozen overnight. According to the author, the bullet was recovered after penetrating the ice. The bullet was pristine and the ice had refrozen around the bullet.
October 19th, 2010 at 3:07 am
For all the blathering about flaws, and the video being a fake, there are multiple videos on YouTube reproducing the same effect.
I suppose of them have access to the same FX & video-editing facility….