How does a gun shoot a bullet?

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How can something so small create such a high speed?

In: Physics

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

When you fire a gun gunpowder is ignited. When that burns a lot of gas is created. This gas is hot. Hot gas has a lot of volume. Iirc 1 mole of gas 298K is 24.x L. This expansion pushes the bullet with a lot of speed out of the gun.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Actually the bullet kind of shoots itself. Bullets contain gunpowder. When you fire a gun, it starts a primer charge, which ignites the gunpowder. The gunpowder burns and creates a large volume of gas. That gas expands the only way it can by pushing the slug, the part of the bullet that leaves the gun, out of the way.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Physics. The gunpowder in the bullet ignites and pushes the projectile through the barrel and out of the gun.

Bullet cartridges are designed to be (relatively) safe until the moment when you fire them. When you pull the trigger of a gun, a spring mechanism hammers a metal firing pin into the back end of the cartridge, igniting the small explosive charge in the primer. The primer then ignites the propellant—the main explosive that occupies about two thirds of a typical cartridge’s volume. As the propellant chemicals burn, they generate lots of gas very quickly. The sudden, high pressure of the gas splits the bullet from the end of the cartridge, forcing it down the gun barrel at extremely high speed (300 m/s or 1000 ft/s is typical in a handgun). It’s only the bullet that fires from the gun; the rest of the cartridge stays where it is. It has to be ejected after firing (sometimes manually, sometimes automatically) to make way for the next cartridge—and the next shot.

Source: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bullets.html

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you’re asking why the bullet actually goes out of the gun, the explosive expansion of the fired gunpowder has only one way to go, out the front so it pushes the bullet out.