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Long Range Hunting & Shooting
Cold temp affecting terminal performance of plastic tipped bullets
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<blockquote data-quote="BallisticsGuy" data-source="post: 1364367" data-attributes="member: 96226"><p>I'm just not seeing how a few 10's of degrees of air temperature is going to materially affect the mechanical properties of copper and lead under those conditions when it takes a few hundred degrees to have substantive effect in non-ballistic situations.</p><p></p><p>If this effect is something that really happens reliably then I think what we have here is new experimental territory crying out to be explored that might just illuminate something that should seem terribly obvious in hind-sight. Any new experiment physical sciences tends to end up with something unexpected climbing out of it so this is likely to be no different.</p><p></p><p>The amount of heat input into a bullet during its ride down the bore is substantial that heat doesn't just bleed off suddenly. They're still burnin' hot after leaving the muzzle whatever the air temperature is and a couple seconds (tops) of flight time is not a lot of time to bleed that heat off. I don't see how air temperature is going to be relevant or at least significant in any way. The bullet starts stupid hot and then is heated additionally from aerodynamic drag so the bullet is not experiencing the air as being cold (think SR-71 fuel tanks expanding and sealing up from Mach 3 temps). At best the bullet perhaps sees it as a little tiny bit less hot than it otherwise would. Then when the bullet actually strikes something it gets ridiculously hot (pound in a nail with a hammer and then touch the nail head to feel this effect) particularly when striking targets at speeds which cause expansion/deformation.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BallisticsGuy, post: 1364367, member: 96226"] I'm just not seeing how a few 10's of degrees of air temperature is going to materially affect the mechanical properties of copper and lead under those conditions when it takes a few hundred degrees to have substantive effect in non-ballistic situations. If this effect is something that really happens reliably then I think what we have here is new experimental territory crying out to be explored that might just illuminate something that should seem terribly obvious in hind-sight. Any new experiment physical sciences tends to end up with something unexpected climbing out of it so this is likely to be no different. The amount of heat input into a bullet during its ride down the bore is substantial that heat doesn't just bleed off suddenly. They're still burnin' hot after leaving the muzzle whatever the air temperature is and a couple seconds (tops) of flight time is not a lot of time to bleed that heat off. I don't see how air temperature is going to be relevant or at least significant in any way. The bullet starts stupid hot and then is heated additionally from aerodynamic drag so the bullet is not experiencing the air as being cold (think SR-71 fuel tanks expanding and sealing up from Mach 3 temps). At best the bullet perhaps sees it as a little tiny bit less hot than it otherwise would. Then when the bullet actually strikes something it gets ridiculously hot (pound in a nail with a hammer and then touch the nail head to feel this effect) particularly when striking targets at speeds which cause expansion/deformation. [/QUOTE]
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Cold temp affecting terminal performance of plastic tipped bullets
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