Re: [GZG] Slightly OT - Hypothetical weapon question

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Ryan Fisk <ryan.fisk@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 6:23 PM, Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
wrote:
>> At 4:01 PM -0600 10/28/08, Ryan Fisk wrote:
>
>>>In the Mythbusters episode that was mentioned they found that .50 cal
>>>round pretty much disintegrated into nothing when shot into the
water.
>>>  That .50 cal, based on that data, may not be able to put a hole in
>>>the boat very much below the water line (a few inches at most).
>>
>> What were they firing? AP is not going to
>> disintegrate. Don't base your ballistics
>> knowledge on Mythbusters. They're NOT very expert
>> on Ballistics.
>
> No argument there.  They don't have a clue, but the footage they shot
> was very convincing.	I would have NEVER expected the result as seen
> on camera.
>
> As for AP, I have no idea.
>

I guess I don't consider this a "ballistics" question, so I fail to
see how whether or not they're experts on ballistics is relevant.
They were testing weapons within the constraints of the myth and
testing parameters that were reasonable.  I've seen this implied
disdain of them (the Mythbusters) on a few occasions and I have to say
I don't "get" it.  They're not experts, they don't purport themselves
to be experts, but they take questions that have non-obvious answers,
and test them in a scientific and entertaining manner.	The whole
point of the show is to entertain while testing things based on the
scientific method.  It's on the DISCOVERY channel, and unlike a lot of
programming they actually work at discovering answers.	If science
class in school was half as interesting we'd have a lot more kids
interested in hard science.

They'll even say that the myths where they get an unexpected result
are the ones they like the best.

It would be interesting to see if a gun/bullet/charge combination
could be found that would penetrate water reliably.  Anyone have a
pond and a sheet of plywood to test on?

Bill

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