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Bullet Spinning in Ice.. Real or Fake?

atmay said:
Winter's coming....there's a lake down the street from my house....
Click to expand...

Yah and Geme would be REAL please you were shooting into it! LMAO

Was talking about this video with a couple of guys at the range last night who's opinion I trust. They thought it was real.
 
I'd think it was plausible, except I think the bullet should be more deformed in the rear (from lead vaporization) and the nose (from the impact). I'm also not sure if I think they should be spinning quite that fast.

I could be wrong. Count me a somewhat skeptical, but not certain.
 
Bob P said:
Yah and Geme would be REAL please you were shooting into it! LMAO

Was talking about this video with a couple of guys at the range last night who's opinion I trust. They thought it was real.
Click to expand...

I could see it being real, all you have to do is compare it to similar phenomena like ice skates, ice skates don't actually touch the ice when moving, they're gliding on a thin sheen of water produced by the friction of sliding over the ice, same could apply here.

You have a metallic object heated due to the combustion created to propel it hitting solid ice and then melting it in much the same way as an ice skate to allow it to keep spinning.

My only issue is ricochet which could possibly be minimized but having a softer packed snow there to prevent that, but I'm not a physicist [wink]
 
TheRoland said:
I'd think it was plausible, except I think the bullet should be more deformed in the rear (from lead vaporization) and the nose (from the impact). I'm also not sure if I think they should be spinning quite that fast.

I could be wrong. Count me a somewhat skeptical, but not certain.
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I agree about the level of deformation -- if the ice was that successful at stopping the bullet, there should be a lot more. Plus it seems to spin for a suspiciously long time. [thinking]
 
Guys you are talking about a 9mm at like 1200+ fps ice is not that hard and he is point down at it, from less then 3 meters. It would have gone right throw the ice!
 
original.jpg


watch it slowly. It either "bounces" or something weird like disobeying the laws of physics, or it's a nice edit job.
 
that bullet looks a little too pristine for impacting ice - and the penetration looks a little shallow from what I would expect. Just a WAG.
 
TheRoland said:
I'd think it was plausible, except I think the bullet should be more deformed in the rear (from lead vaporization) and the nose (from the impact). I'm also not sure if I think they should be spinning quite that fast.

I could be wrong. Count me a somewhat skeptical, but not certain.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised. I've picked up 100s of bullets that were stopped by ice off the range at Shirley after the spring thaw and most of the jacketed bullets look like you could reload and fire them again.
 
flintoid said:
original.jpg


watch it slowly. It either "bounces" or something weird like disobeying the laws of physics, or it's a nice edit job.
Click to expand...

Look closely at the circle he draws, the bullet left a trail from the right of the screen
before it stopped moving and just spun.

EddieCoyle said:
You'd be surprised. I've picked up 100s of bullets that were stopped by ice off the range at Shirley after the spring thaw and most of the jacketed bullets look like you could reload and fire them again.
Click to expand...

+1

I find them all the time at my range, literally look like someone pulled them.
 
EddieCoyle said:
You'd be surprised. I've picked up 100s of bullets that were stopped by ice off the range at Shirley after the spring thaw and most of the jacketed bullets look like you could reload and fire them again.
Click to expand...

+1.... the fact that the bullet didn't deform doesn't mean much here. Hell, guys have handed me some of my bullets (Usually 230 gr CMJ/FMJ) out of wood bowling pins that had little to no damage, it all depends on how it is decelerated.

-Mike
 
I think it's real. If the angle was just right I'm guessing (as Derek's red line shows) that the hot, spinning bullet would slide over the ice like a skate until it comes to a rest. Since it could still have rotational energy the thing will continue to spin like a kid's spinning top.

I'm going to shoot a round into my freezer's ice maker tonight to see what happens.
 
I think it could be real.

Just for kicks someone submit it mythbusters and watch them screw it up. :)
 
It is real.
But we need to clarify what the bullet is doing.
It is not spinning like it would immediately out of the barrel. In other words, that is not spin on an central internal axis induced by the rifling.
What is happening is this:
The bullet is hot. if it was also a carry piece, it would be a little warmer due to body heat AND the explosion.
The ice is cold(duh). The hot bullet is causing some of the ice to go from solid to gas(ice to steam, or water vapor, for you bad science guys).
As the surface of the bullet touches various areas of the ice that is in a larger shape around it, it turns ice into water vapor.
The expansion of that water vapor gives the bullet a little push.
The bullet rests somewhere else and the cycle continues until the heat energy has been dissipated.

A simlar experiment would be to get a large piece of ice and drop a hot penny on it. When the ice is cold enough and the penny is hot enough, you can make it "dance" and squeak before it cools down and/or melts into the ice.
 
Last edited:
Why would it be fake? It's interesting, kind of a cool effect, but not amazing by any stretch of imagination. It's not like it's a video of a UFO or bigfoot, it's just a spinning bullet.
 

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