Sunday, December 18, 2022

Does Glass Break Faster than a Bullet?



Whether glass breaking or a speeding bullet is faster may seem like a silly question, because it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges. They are both fast, like the others are both fruit, but that's about it. Gav and Dan, the Slow-Mo Guys, set up the experiment for our entertainment. What they plan to do is measure the speed at which a .45 caliber bullet fired from a gun compares to the speed a crack in a glass pane will travel in their first six feet. That required the use of their super slow motion cameras, and that's the entire rationale for performing this stunt. You might be surprised by the result, which you'll see in the first three minutes. The rest of the video is Gav and Dan having fun breaking the rest of the glass they bought. (via Digg)

5 comments:

xoxoxoBruce said...

About the only interesting thing was watching the glass cracking propagate over 6 feet. Comparing the two there's just too many variables to be valid except that particular combination. I have 9mm ammo that travels at 7 different speeds.

Anonymous said...

@bruce Can you even name an ammo that is faster than the 3132 FPS glass speed? I'm not a gun guy, but without professor Google, I would not be able to.

xoxoxoBruce said...

Anon, none of the 9mm are, but there's a lot of choices in rifle ammo faster than glass. I think the fastest, not including custom loads (which would be like comparing a showroom sedan to a AA fuel dragster) is over 30% faster than glass.

Anonymous said...

I thought the guy was shooting 45 'cause it was so slow.

newton said...

Yes, they talk about faster ammo. Maybe they'll do another video some day.