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Old 09-16-2005 | 10:20 AM
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zrexpilot
Nontypical Buck
 
Joined: Nov 2003
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From: Texas
Default RE: 223 for daughter

ORIGINAL: missed_another

zrexpilot i hope this is not the same writer that said my mini 14 was a great shooting rifle. over the years i have found out that most writers only have to know a little bit more about the subject than the people reading it to be a writer. for every writer that says one thing there are ussually twice that many that dissagree. just something to think about. see yaaaaaa
Not on this subject
heres another one.
copied and pasted.

III.c. Thresholds of Wounding Potential Based on Kinetic Energy

I think it was the sage and revered (and great favorite of mine) Col. Townsend Whelen who first proposed the idea that modern sporting arms ought to deliver at least 1000 ft-lbs of kinetic energy on the target for quick dispatch of deer and 2000 ft-lbs for larger species such as elk (Craig Boddington, American Hunting Rifles, Safari Press, 1995, pg. 20). This guidance has been reiterated for probably half a century or more now, but the world of smallbore ballistics today is very different than in the days when the esteemed Colonel was at the forefront of modern military small arms development with the U. S. Army Ordnance Department. Moreover, here is what he had to say in his own treatise on the subject of "Killing Power" over sixty years ago:


"The killing power of a bullet in flight depends entirely upon the average size of the wound it makes in the animal, and upon nothing else. The size of the wound in turn depends upon the size, weight, construction, and shape of the bullet, and the velocity with which it strikes, and upon no other details. ... We frequently see it stated that the killing power of a cartridge depends upon its energy, and tables of the properties of cartridges often give the energy of each. Now energy depends upon the weight of the bullet times its velocity, and on nothing else, and thus can have only a very distant bearing on our subject." (Townsend Whelen, The Hunting Rifle, Stackpole Sons, 1940, pg. 236)

An important fact to remember is that not all energy is "created equal". What this ultimately means is that a kinetic energy value used as a measure or threshold for lethality is practically meaningless. The character of the work done by a certain quantity of kinetic energy will be dependent upon the mass, construction and velocity of the projectile. In other words, 1000 ft-lbs of kinetic energy generated by a slow-moving rock is not as lethal as that of a bullet. Furthermore, the damage actually caused by a lesser amount of kinetic energy may easily exceed that caused by a greater quantity of kinetic energy! Expressed differently, kinetic energy has "quality" as well as "quantity". This is easier to understand in terms of heat energy, which has temperature (degrees F or C) as well as quantity (BTUs or Joules). Kinetic energy is governed by similar laws.

As further evidence of this fact, observe that when terminal ballistic experiments are scaled the velocity is held constant. Kinetic energy, mass and the dimensions are scaled, but velocity is not. In like manner pure water at standard pressure boils at 100° C, regardless of quantity. A small amount of water does not boil at a lower temperature than a larger amount. The heat required to bring a quantity of water to a boil is directly proportional to the mass of the water (just as the kinetic energy is proportional to the volume of displacement by a bullet), but the character of the work done on the water by that heat energy is determined by the temperature it produces. It is velocity, not kinetic energy, which is the quantity of greatest interest in the terminal ballistics of small arms.

Since a knowledge of the velocity and projectile construction is essential to evaluating the character of the kinetic energy and its wounding potential, simply relying on a quantity of energy can be quite misleading. The way in which a sporting bullet (say, a 7 mm 140 gr spitzer boat-tail at an impact velocity of 3000 fps) expends its first 1000 ft-lbs of kinetic energy on a target (from 2797 ft-lbs to 1797 ft-lbs) will little resemble the way in which it expends its last 1000 ft-lbs (at an impact velocity of 1794 fps, where it will most likely fail to deform and simply drill straight through causing a neat little hole with negligible cavitation). In the former case, a lung shot would result in a wide wound track and a gaping exit wound as it exits the body at 2405 fps, but cause rapid collapse; in the latter case even a lengthwise shot which fully absorbed the energy of the projectile would probably mean a lost game animal because of the low probability of causing rapid hemorrhage. Interestingly, in the former case probably 20% or more of that kinetic energy would be lost to deformation of the bullet, whereas in the latter case all of it would be delivered to the target. However, that same 1000 ft-lbs of energy delivered by a .41 caliber 280 gr LBT-WFN flatnosed hard-cast bullet at 1268 fps would quickly drop a bull elk with the same lung or lengthwise shot because its larger diameter and strong flat nose would create a large diameter and deep wound even after smashing through heavy shoulder bones. [Incidentally, this misunderstanding is not confined to the ballistics of sporting arms. I have encountered the notion in the last of year or so of a tank killing threshold of 10 MJ.]

A popular term among some gun buffs is the "foot-ton", a magical quanta of kinetic energy that is supposed to translate into all sorts of killing authority. Aside from the problem described above in assigning an arbitrary kinetic energy level for lethality against a type of game, there is the matter of unit definitions. If you like to think of it as the energy required to raise a one ton block a distance of one foot, that would be correct (again, not necessarily the same as being crushed by that falling block!). Forget the comparison to automobile impacts.

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