Momentum?

[kh86]

Trying to figure this out and determine whether or not its relevant.



(Mass divided by 7000 then multiplied by velocity)

"A handgun bullet in the 20-30 range is best"



I believe its been poo poo'ed here but please help if you can.

[tpd223]

"Is best for what?" is the question.

For stopping bad people from doing bad things? Meaningless

For tipping over pepper-poppers? Might be important.

[ZRH]

By momentum you probably mean kinetic energy and it's not practically applicable to GSWs except as a "yay numbers" kinda thing. It's relevant, but not as much as you'd think.

[kh86]

Whats the difference between this and ft/lb equation (weight multiplied by velocity squared then divided by 450240)? Whats all this stuff used for?

[Palmguy]

Whats the difference between this and ft/lb equation (weight multiplied by velocity squared then divided by 450240)? Whats all this stuff used for?

A little light reading on the physical concepts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy

Momentum and KE are not the same.

If you are looking at different ammunition products and trying to figure out what to buy, I'd direct you not to the numbers on the label but instead to the stickied threads in this forum from DocGKR....which are orders of magnitude more relevant than the difference in momentum or kinetic energy between any given loads.

[skyugo]

really the physics of terminal ballistics are a bit too complicated to boil down to just KE or momentum. Certainly these properties have an effect, but i think ballistic gelatin testing gives much better data. Momentum is generally used in physics models when you have highly elastic collisions, think pool balls or those things with all the balls on strings that smart guys have on their desks at work.
KE tends to be useful in analyzing a situation in which some of the energy goes into moving the object your bullet has collided with and some goes into heat or deformation.