revolver energy simulated on the human body

[linardskinard]

Hello i am wondering what would happen to a persons body if they were suddenly hit with 847.39 and 1118.55 joule's of energy across the entire body can you please help me.

sincerely,
Linardskinard

[bfinio]

Hi Linardskinard,

Can you explain the context for your question a little more? Is this for a science project? 847.39 and 1118.55 are very specific numbers - where did you get those?

[linardskinard]

hello I'm linardskinard and yes this is a science project on instantaneous force/pressure for my 12 grade physics class on the human body and we were allowed to pick the topic we wanted and my original question was what would happen to the human body is the forces form a .357 mag and a .44 mag would do to the entire human body in one blow with these forces. and how i got the 2 numbers 847.39 and 1118.55 was a little tricky but i the foot pounds of energy and converted it over to joules of energy so i can see it better and get a better estiment of what i was working with because i joule of energy is nearly equal to one calorie and how i fond 847.39 was is that i had to find the median of the shell of the .357 mag with was 625 and that was the foot ponds of energy then converted into 847.39 joules and the same way for the .44 mag with the median was 825 foot pounds and the converted to 1118.55 joules. how i found the median of the shells was i took the lowest foot pounds and the highest foot ponds wich for the 357 was 402-and 802 and the median was 625 foot pounds then converted to 847.39 and for the 44 mag was 619- and 1445 and the median was 825 foot ponds then converted to 1118.55 joules. but that wasent the corest numbers i need i looked again and took the median and found the closest shell to that foot pond for the 357 and the 44 mag and for the 357 was the 624 foot pound converted to 846.03 joules round the hornday ammunition ballistics tyep hp xtp and for the 44 mag and that was the 818 foot pond conveted to 1109.06 joules round the federal ammunition ballistics type barn-exp. so back to your quenstion was to explain my question more in detail is that,i want to know what will happen to the human body if i took 1109.0g joules of energy from a 44 mag shell and 846.03 joules of energy form a 357 mag shell and force that onto the entire human body and see what happens.

[bfinio]

linkardskinard,

OK - can you clarify what you mean by "force that onto the entire human body"? Do you mean having the energy hit over the entire surface of the body all at once, as opposed to in a single, small location (like a bullet)? Or are you asking what the bullet will do to the entire body?

Either way, the answer is probably "it's complicated." The type of damage to the human body from a bullet can depend on a lot of other factors besides just kinetic energy. I spent some time googling this and it looks like the phrase you want to look into is "ballistics trauma", or damage to the human body from gunshot wounds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_trauma

I think the abstract of this paper gives a very good summary of what I mean about how there are factors other than kinetic energy you need to consider:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 891460041X

So, you will have to clarify what assumptions you are making about the type of bullet (e.g. does it tumble, fragment, or pass straight through?) as those can all affect tissue damage.

If you are asking about what that amount of energy would do to the WHOLE body, then you might need to look into the type of damage caused by explosions or impacts - for example, when the whole body is hit by the shockwave from an explosion, or if you are in a car crash not wearing a seat belt. Then, you would have to ask questions like "what energy is absorbed by the human body standing 10 feet from a grenade?" or "what is the kinetic energy of a human body moving at 55mph?", and you could compare those energies in joules to the energies of the bullets.

Also, just to check, did your physics teacher approve this project? The whole topic of "projectile motion" is very intertwined with the history of weapons (e.g. artillery: http://nigelef.tripod.com/fc_ballistics.htm), and ballistics trauma/forensics (figuring out what happened at a crime scene or what happened to a victim of a violent crime) are perfectly valid scientific topics - we even have a page about this on our site: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... technician. However, I know anything involving firearms or violence can be a touchy topic at a school, so if you haven't already, it can't hurt to double-check with your physics teacher to make sure it's OK.

[linardskinard]

hi its linardskinard,

thanks for the help guys but what i was wanting to originally know is what would happen over the entire body if we took a ballistics dummy and a wall on a sled that goes 1280 and 1500 feet per second and hit the dummy against a wall one time and see the damage it caused, and the feet per second i got from the 2 bullets form a 357 and a 44 mag and yes i did double check and my physics teacher said it would be ok but thats what i wanted to know.

[bfinio]

Hi linkardskinard,

OK - then I would follow the advice from my previous post about trying to find out what happens when the whole body is hit by a surface or a shockwave all at once (as opposed to hit by something very small like a bullet or shrapnel). You could, for example, calculate the potential energy of a human body at a certain height and figure out "this is the equivalent of falling from an X story building" (you have to figure out what X is) and then look into what usually happens to people who fall from that height (do they just get bruises? Broken bones? Damage to internal organs? Probably not survive)?