Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "SmarterEveryDay" channel.

@tde1964 you can avoid them shooting each other by a longer flight distance, allowing drop to handle the matter for you, but also increasing the precision of the build to allow much greater precision in adjusting the aim to cover the greater range. That said, one wouldn't have to clean the barrel after each shot, but they'd need much more frequent cleaning. One can offset the higher velocity and fouling issue by using a slightly larger bore. Lower friction and cutting by the rifling, gas leakage lowering pressure and hence, velocity, downside is lower accuracy. Chroming the barrel also would lower fouling.
7
@unclesteve42 no, when the crystals fracture, the light is emitted. Wintergreen has been documented to give the most reliable triboluminescence effect. It's also theorized to be behind some earthquake light phenomena.
7
He could've also set up a schlieren system, he'd definitely get the shock wave captured. With the jug of jimmies, there was a shock wave going through the jimmies, likely what fractured them and what looked like a triboluminescent flash on impact as electron bonds got ripped apart.
6
High speed thermal cameras are specialty cameras, no adapters to turn a regular high speed camera into one. But, they'd be a worthy lab investment. At high velocities, there are quite a few interesting thermal phenomenon that can be observed!
6
@5678sothourn indeed it is! For me, greyout and tunnel vision was my first symptom, then a feeling of panic, then I realized that I was suffocating due to a mask failure. The NBC NCO was profuse with apologies and I angrily reminded him that checking the valves is an operator task and it was my own stupid fault for not checking the mask upon receipt.
4
@ralanham76 I doubt it. The ball was already beginning to fail. Maybe with a discarding sabot...
2
When someone is in a space where harm could occur, things get locked down and tagged out. That prevents activation of things that could kill a worker. So, even joking like that is an egregious safety violation.
2
@benjiro8793 well, once pressure equalization occurs at depth, there'd be no complaint from someone inside of the tube. One atmosphere state human to typical submarine operating depths pressure within seconds well exceeds human crush depth. Other than the lungs, spongy bone would still have the air spaces at one atmosphere, which would swiftly collapse under that pressure. What'd come out most certainly wouldn't be pretty!
2
@BubbaYoga for Maintenance and Inspection. Remember the locking units that were greased?
2
In one video, you can see a wave traveling backwards, likely rebound from the shock front collapse.
1
Yep, even magazines have a lock to hold them in the weapon. Load is what's done after locking the magazine in place.
1
One problem with fusion of the rounds is, civil war bullets were soft lead. Modern bullets use lead-tin-antimony for lead bullets to lower lead fouling of the barrel and also hardens the bullets. I'd doubt the propellant difference of modern smokeless powder vs black powder would make a realistic difference, as that'd be more an acceleration curve while inside the barrel and be irrelevant to the rounds impacting one another. Velocity, as in range the civil war rounds traveled likely was much lower though, as most battles weren't fought at point blank range. So, emulating that, one could use a lower propellant charge and slightly larger bore barrels, while going with pure lead projectiles, as finding non-alloy rounds is beyond unlikely today.
1
That could run afoul of some state laws on destructive devices. If they were muzzle loading black powder cannon replicas, incapable of firing fixed ammunition, the BATFE doesn't consider them destructive devices, but some states still do. Just looked it up, Pennsylvania prohibits such, which makes sense, as muzzle loading cannon were used against churches during the religious warfare in Philadelphia during the Nativist Riots. 50 states, 50 entirely different criminal codes to contend with. Not to mention that the bullet shields would have to be upgraded to armor plates of significant thickness.
1
@BLINDCABBY true, they're watching kitten videos.
1
Try that alone near a nuke. ;)
1