Difference between revisions of "Ballistics"
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Revision as of 21:55, 3 September 2009
A gun requires a sighting mechanism if it is to be able to hit its target, but you cannot construct such a device before you have a complete understanding of how the weapon will function when firing under different conditions.
Contents
Ballistics
Ballistics is the physical science that governs how a projectile is fired and how it flies.[1] Ballistics for a powerful gun are very involved due to the number of variables that effect where the projectile goes:
- changing the gun's elevation will affect the range and also the shell's time-of-flight
- the shell's spin as it leaves the rifled barrel induces a lateral wander called ballistic drift
- variations in powder temperature will affect the muzzle velocity
- the ambient temperature and humidity will affect the amount of drag the shell experiences
- the gun's muzzle velocity drops with successive firings, as the bore wears out
The number of variables and the range each might vary over are considerable, and the expense of conducting test shots is such that not enough can be executed to provide the full understanding needed to make the required gunsight apparatus. Ballistic science was used to help fatten the data obtained in a limited series of test firings into a voluminous description of how the weapon would perform under the many conditions never actually tested. This synthetic dataset was called the weapon's "range table", and it served as the basis for the design of gunsights and fire control equipment that would help it hit home.
See Also
Footnotes
- ↑ To be more precise, ballistics is treated as two separate realms: "Internal Ballistics" focuses on how the charge propels a projectile within the bore of a gun and "External Ballistics" focuses on how the projectile flies once it has left the gun. External ballistics is so vastly predominant in its import that one can generally assume when reading mention of "ballistics" that the writer means to refer to "external ballistics".
Bibliography
