The Slow Mo Guys are at it again using high-speed cameras to observe firearms. This time they are bouncing bullets across a fish tank and filming it with a high-speed Phantom TMX7510 to watch what happens to the bullets when they skip across the water.
Slow Mo Guys @ TFB:
- Slow Mo Guys Use Pinfire To Shoot 9mm And .22LR
- Slow Mo Guys 1 Million FPS – 9mm vs Egg and Newton’s Cradle
- Slow Motion Bullet Race by The Slow Mo Guys
The Slow Mo Guys start off by shooting a .22LR bullet into the fish tank.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
The bouncing bullets on the water only interact with the water’s surface for the briefest of moments. You can see the bullet gets so disturbed that it tubes sideways after bouncing off the water.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
What is really interesting is what happens just in front of the displaced water from the bouncing bullets. There are these subtle disturbances that are not apparently caused by the splashing of the water. I think it is the supersonic mach angles
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
Next, they use a .22LR tracer round for bouncing bullets on water.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
There is a shot of the bullet flying out of a threaded barrel. The tip of the bullet looks odd to me. Like it got pushed in? See the dark ring just behind the tip and the bullet? The diameter of the bullet is wider than the tip. Maybe the bullet compressed and that is the actual diameter of the bore while the tip is narrower?
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
You can see the bullet impact in the berm while the water from the bouncing bullets is still in the air.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
The tracer round looks like a miniature rocket.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
The Slow Mo Guys use a mirror to film safely underneath the water tank.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
In some instances, the phosphorus is still burning even when the bouncing bullets are in the water.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
Next, they stepped up to a 9mm bullet and what happens in the water . . . stays in the water. LOL. To their and my own surprise, the bullet did not bounce off the water. It dove into the water, hit the far glass pane and bounced off the glass! According to their calculation, the bullet was traveling at 240 feet per second. And yet it had enough inertia and speed to continue to cavitate the water and bounce back to the front of the fish tank!
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
The 9mm bullet had enough force to dent off the glass. See the image below.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
They tried repeating this with a .22LR bullet and it does not bounce off the glass with the same amount of energy.
Screenshot from Slow Mo Guys
I love watching the Slow Mo Guys content using slow motion to observe firearms. I actually thought about trying to film bouncing bullets on the water myself but my camera is not fast enough. The best I can achieve is 40k frames per second and the resolution is very poor. The Slow Mo Guys were filming at 82k frames per second and even almost a quarter million frames per second!
With regards to the subtle disturbances of the water just before the bullet enters the water, I think if the Slow Mo Guys got a Schlieren setup, they could possibly observe the shockwaves interacting with the water.