Is the Incredible Spinning Bullet on Ice Real?

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Yeah I'm skeptical, hopefully the MythBusters will get on it quick. If not I might just have to try this for myself which doesn't sound like the best of ideas.
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Me too. Shooting into ice like that just seems like a bad, bad idea.
 
My guess is that once the bullet hits the ice it wouldn't have any penetrating power even if it did hit someone. It's really interesting physics, it's hard to see how the bullet comes back out the entry hole and lands on the ice. The rifling twist must impart highly leveraged spin in the ice, forward energy is being stopped and being changed to spinning energy. One video shows the bullet spinning for half a minute. It's spinning so fast that as it slows down the stroboscopic effect goes back and forth which would support that it's spinning at several thousand RPM.

As weird as it seems it looks real to me, and there are several other videos posted that all show the same thing in different settings.

It's pretty cool, and my take is that shooting into ice there isn't much worry about getting hit or bullets going far (as long as you don't glance one off the top of the ice). Kind of like throwing a live bullet on a fire, seems suicidal but the bullet isn't actually going to hurt anything it hits. (ask me how I know :D)

I'd be more worried about shooting holes in the ice and breaking through into the water.
 
Am I the only one that thinks this is fake? I'm no genius so I won't even attempt to work out the math, but I highly doubt the bullet would carry enough energy, especially after impacting the ice to spin for that long.

And the bullet in the video just looks altered to me. I'm gonna vote fake.

I do hope it is fake, and that no real ammo was even used due to the very UNSAFE gun handling seen here. Let this video at least be a "Here's what NOT to do" example.
 
Well I vote you are wrong! :D

Hopefully you use more sense with how you really vote, but you seem to be a man of beliefs. ;)

Now the question is what you do when you are in the minority that thinks this is fake, do you stick to your beliefs or bow to the wisdom of the majority?

Agreed on the handling though.
 
When I was younger (and pretty stupid) I shot pellets from an air rifle into icy snow and had a couple of them do this sort of thing so I suspect it's a real phenomenon.

However, given some of the weird and unpredictable things I've seen bullets do I am most certainly NOT going to give this a try myself!
 
FrankenMauser said:
Need to get some high-speed footage, to see if the rotation speed would be appropriate for the approximate rate of twist of a barrel in that pistol (with minor compensation for the impact, of course).
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scorpion_tyr said:
Am I the only one that thinks this is fake? I'm no genius so I won't even attempt to work out the math, but I highly doubt the bullet would carry enough energy, especially after impacting the ice to spin for that long.

And the bullet in the video just looks altered to me. I'm gonna vote fake.

I do hope it is fake, and that no real ammo was even used due to the very UNSAFE gun handling seen here. Let this video at least be a "Here's what NOT to do" example.
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Before we go for a million frames per second video, lets do a thumbnail calculation.

Example. A bullet at 1,000 fps leaving a barrel with a 1:12 twist rate is spinning at 1,000 rps or 60,000 rpm, right?

The impact with the ice would slow that rotational speed somewhat, but there is precious little for the ice to grab onto to slow the rotational momentum, but a lot to grab onto to slow the forward momentum.

The fact the bullet was found spinning and still nose down (and in my other hearsay evidence, the bullets in the roofing, base down) is what I would expect from my knowledge of the gyroscopic stability of spinning objects.

The second bullet, whose rotational axis was precessing around a vertical axis as it spun also lends credibility to the notion that this is a real video and not doctored.

I think "Mythbusters" will confirm it.

Lost Sheep
 
Let's see, they were intentionally trying to induce a ricochet, and to spice things up they used neither eye nor ear protection. Are they auditioning for the next Darwin Awards or the next Jackass movie?
 
I've seen a few fired bullets in my day. I can't recall ever seeing one with a shiny and perfectly clean base.
 
woodguru said:
Hopefully you use more sense with how you really vote, but you seem to be a man of beliefs.

Now the question is what you do when you are in the minority that thinks this is fake, do you stick to your beliefs or bow to the wisdom of the majority?
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Were you aware when you posted this that the actual count (up to your post) was 4 votes for real to 3 votes for fake? That's hardly an overwhelming mandate for demonstrating "the wisdom of the majority."
 
I've seen a few fired bullets in my day. I can't recall ever seeing one with a shiny and perfectly clean base.
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That's really the only thing that seemed iffy to me. I'm no physicist, so I can't comment on the crazy math involved, but that squeaky clean bullet was a but questionable. Otherwise, it seems pretty plausible.
 
Actually what I was noticing was the way the rifling was blackened, that is realistic, the powder residue gets burnished into the lands. Jacketed bullets come out pretty clean on the back, blackened in the rifling.

Aguila,
what I noticed was that the people thinking it's not real had no credibility so it was easy to ignore them as they sound sort of unbased and hand wavy, the ones who figure it's real sounded like much more well grounded individuals. When do you ever listen to flakes? :D

I guess I should qualify a bit where I come from, with a heavy graphic arts and film experience background fake sets and photography is pretty easy to discern. The variety of videos are all amateur in nature, and show guys scrambling and bumbling around which is hard to fake. There are many subtle little side cues like the sound they make spinning that has them searching for the bullet etc. The physics of all the forward motion being transferred to spin from the rifling is actually solidly based.

You can say you think it's fake but you'd be wrong. If I went out and said it's real because I did it myself you would still stick to your opinion so what difference does it make?

Look at the other videos on youtube, they are all amateur and very hard to fake. Looking at five or six different ones it's pretty hard to think they are not real.
 
Before we go for a million frames per second video, lets do a thumbnail calculation.

Example. A bullet at 1,000 fps leaving a barrel with a 1:12 twist rate is spinning at 1,000 rps or 60,000 rpm, right?

The impact with the ice would slow that rotational speed somewhat, but there is precious little for the ice to grab onto to slow the rotational momentum, but a lot to grab onto to slow the forward momentum.

The fact the bullet was found spinning and still nose down (and in my other hearsay evidence, the bullets in the roofing, base down) is what I would expect from my knowledge of the gyroscopic stability of spinning objects.

The second bullet, whose rotational axis was precessing around a vertical axis as it spun also lends credibility to the notion that this is a real video and not doctored.

I think "Mythbusters" will confirm it.
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I posted the same think on TacomaWorld but used 1/16 twist=45000rpm.
That's a lot of rotational energy that doesn't just go away.
I'm interested to see MB do this.
 
Now you know why lightly jacketed bullets that are fired at excessive speed can come apart in flight.

Hornady used to even have notes in some boxes of bullets about this.

Their old 'Blitz' bullet could come apart if fired at high speed from a fast twist barrel.
 
I think they pulled bullets and pushed em through the barrel. Then spun them on the ice.

Why do I think that?

The bases are too shiney and they always find the bullets outside the cameras view never on camera.
 
If the bullet were hot, wouldn't it burrow down in the snow as it spun? It seemed more like it was floating on the snow, obviously moving up and down as well as spinning. The bullet didn't seem to destabilize as it slowed, either. I agree that it's ridiculously stupid to take part in the stunt (if there even really was a bullet or bullets fired into the ice).
 
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