Well.... the specifics of how to accomplish this have been in my head since 2017. I'm very excited to finally share it with you. I'm grateful to everyone who supports Smarter Every Day on Patreon. You make long-term planning things like this and the baseball cannon possible! Here's the link if you'd like to join our sticker team: www.patreon.com/smartereveryday Also, as promised, here's the link too the email list! www.smartereveryday.com/email-list I don't spam you. I just send out an email every time I upload. Thanks for your consideration!
"intellectual humility" is a term id never heard before. but as soon as I did I knew that if I have developed any of it, I only have your videos to thank for it.
I worked at NIAR crash test lab at Wichita State U. 2005 to 2007. Working with ultra high speed cameras and crash test dummies. I have to say this was exciting for me to see! From set up to safety I give you an A. I am very impressed with your overall presentation and would someday like to do a video with you! I have an idea that I started on in 2007 and didnt get to complete!
I commented years ago challenging you guys (collective youtube makers) try to make an anti sniper shield using high speed cameras, or however might be possible
that collision at 22:00 literally hurts my brain, the way it stops mid air and doesn't move for a moment looks so unreal I can't compute what I'm seeing
Seeing those two bullets frozen in time in the middle of the air at 21:39 (22:00) was so amazing... It's literally forces cancelling each others out perfectly. I'm so blown away by this.
The shot at 21:55 is arguably one of the coolest things that's ever been produced on the internet. I know you said you weren't trying to win the internet but that shot is in contention for it. I really appreciate you bringing all of us with you on this journey, Destin
I imagine this happening in a western-style duel. Both duellists shooting exactly at the same time and then wondering why apparently nothing happens :D
the smithsonian fused bullets were Minie Balls, which probably weighed at least 550 grains each. They did not have any metal jackets, but were pure lead. In addition, the muzzle velocity was relatively slow because of the weight of the bullet. Add the distance each muzzle was separated from the other, and
I work in OT&E and the safety procedure evaluation towards the beginning was an unexpected but absolutely crucial component of your process. Really incredible work Destin.
Yeah from the intro I was thinking how I would attempt this, and the details they went into with the safety planning demonstrated well why I shouldn't try this at home.
When you shot those 2 together at 22:02 and they just froze in the air on the high speed, my jaw literally hung open for the duration of the shot. One of the most stunning pieces of film I've seen in a long time. Congratulations for capturing that after all the effort you put in. It's truly amazing!
What a great video and narrative! As an 80 year old physicist with a lifelong interest in ballistics, I have a couple of comments; The muzzle loading rifles of civil war era used a much different rifling twist than modern ammunition. The use of hollow base or "mini Ball" bullets rammed down a bore require a much different idea for stabilization. The lead composition is very, very soft so that the hollow base can expand to fit the bore tightly and engage the rifling without causing so much loading drag. Many of the muskets used in civil war time were smooth bore, without any rifling. Stabilizing the bullets in a smooth bore required a round ball , or in later years a Mini Ball with a hollow base or skirt. Modern air rifles also achieve stabilization partly through the skirt stabilization. If you compute the total energy of a bullet, it is not just "1/2 mv squared" of linear energy, but has a rather large rotational energy due to the rifling twist. In a head on collision, this rotational energy is in opposition for the two bullets, To achieve true linear energy transfer, you would either have to have the two bullets rotating in opposite vector direction, or not rotating at all. For reference, a 45 colt is commonly rifled at a 1 turn every 16 inches, wheras the muzzle loading rifles ranged from smooth bore (no twist) to 1 turn every 5 to 10 feet. My suggestion is to change the rifling to very long twist, in opposition, and use a pure lead bullet if you really want to see a fused bullet. The other factor is velocity. Black powder muskets had a typical velocity of 900 to 1000 feet per second, with a low ballistic coefficient, so they would slow down rapidly. If there were something like 400 yards between the opposing battle lines, the bullets would have been traveling less than half the muzzle velocity at center path collision. You might try to fire a pure lead bullet at a steel plate and determine the amount of deformation of that bullet then take half the linear energy backed out to velocity as a starting point for your powder charge and velocity starting point. Modern large bore pneumatic or air rifles might be an easier and more controllable medium to base your configuration on. Again i want to emphasize what a marvelous presentation you have made!!!
This is awesome info. Lots of different factors that have to end up absolutely perfect. It is possible! Who knew I'd be getting an education on youtube comments!
I notice that both your barrels have right hand twist, so when they are facing each other, the bullets are spinning in opposite directions. If you had one barrel with a left hand twist, both bullets would spin in the same direction. With the rotational energy cancelled out, it seems that it would be much easier for the bullets to fuse on impact.
I think part way through the war they adopted rifled firearms. While smoothbore might make the shot possible, trying to get the bullets to collide in the first place would be much harder
That perfect collision where they just froze in the middle might be the single greatest piece of slow motion footage I have ever seen in my life... It was so still it didn't even look real, that was absolutely amazing... The one at the end with the aluminum wallet was pretty cool too...
The fact that you didn't just stop after the first time because it "worked" and you had viral footage and just kept doing it over and over to pin down all the variables and learn exactly what was going on is what puts this project on such a high level not to mention the many many hours of prep and planning that went into this. Really love what you do, your passion and excitement shine through and build upon the work you clearly take seriously, thank you.
Your comment is basically what I wanted to say… As a former Naval Officer (Suitland), they were not only diligent in their work, they refined their test for precision (while being as safe as possible…
Those bullets stopping mid air is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and definitely the most awesome demonstration of conservation of momentum I've ever seen. Wow.
The way it just seemed to freeze in midair made my jaw drop and exclaim "it stopped!" like I didn't just see Destin's same reaction just a few seconds earlier XD
If you're ever passing through Nebraska, stop by the Edgerton museum (for those who don't know, Doc Edgerton played a key role in developing the camera tech which made it possible to photograph bullets in flight). Congrats on getting two bullets to hit, though. Even Doc Edgerton didn't figure that one out!
When I completed my Master's Degree, Doctor Robert Frederick from UAH handed me an autographed book from Edgerton. One of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. Edgerton inspired me.
@@shitpostmalone5341 the hit at 22:20 is like 1 in a billion I'd say. The perfect transfer of equal kinetic energy head to head (perfectly colliding in a balanced manner with equal kinetic energy and exactly in a straight line) indeed produces phase cancelation. It is mind boggling to see this with guns. It's like balancing very powerful magnets ontop of each-other without locking them together, or balancing a camel on a🕯on a needle on a stainless steel ball bearing 🤔 on.... a match... on a fire 🔥... like, it's so hard that you'll always just burn the stuff on accident and make the camel angry unnecessarily. 😠 Ballanced forces produce stillness and static pressure fields.
Regarding the straight lead bullets, it may be worth trying to remove the oxide layer. When the original fusion occurred in the civil war the bullets may have been freshly cast and easier to fuse at lower temperatures. I see this akin to soldering PCBAs where older solder is resistant to melt initially from oxides and a touch of new solder/flux enables it to melt much easier.
I think the temperature and shape are the keys - the black powder burns a lot slower and the minie ball is hollow at the back. This means a LOT more time in the long barrel and a lot more surface area to heat. The bullets would have been VASTLY hotter. It also means very little mass at the back of the bullet to continue pushing them together after the initial impact.
Get the lead a pure as possible. And then anneal the bullets after casting them. That will make the bullets as soft and malleable as possible. Or maybe use gold.
I think you have a to small amount of led for them to fuse together. Bullets today is made to fly as fare and fast as possible. Thinkg they couldn do so much in the old days. So some more soft lead and a bit larger amount of it and you can do it.
I'd need to waste 22 minutes before seeing 2 bullets hitting each other. I understand the research and effort, but c'mon, this is just making it boring
Just wanna say how wonderful the subtitles are. Not only correctly subtitling but also adding information for tone or silences. It's always a pleasure to see them be as high-quality as they are here
Any other channel doing these kinds of videos, I normally just skip right to the money shot. But something about your editing style, the pacing, the information you share, the process of designing and building your experiments, it really is enthralling. Gotta watch the whole video!
same. i thought "35 minutes? thats too much, im not watching all of it." but then once i started, i just kept watching every second, and was like "its over already??" at the end.
Just wanna say how wonderful the subtitles are. Not only correctly subtitling but also adding information for tone or silences. It's always a pleasure to see them be as high-quality as they are here
-piggyback- Move them closer together. They get more velocity/faster they move out the barrel. Just put two barrels right up into each other and clamp them together, then fire both at the same time.
This should be shown in every physics, Dynamics, engineering class. That perfect stop shot is amazing. (Start around 21:30) Us fellow engineers are loving this stuff.
I love how he has a section about safety and to do everything step by step. Sure, it's a simple test, and every single threat is small on its own, but there are a lot of small potential things that can go wrong. So he does a checklist, so nobody misses anything. They made their own protocols to follow. Compare that to the handling of the ocean gate submersible. He cared more about the safety in this test than they did for ocean gate. And we have ocean gate ceo bragging about how they didn't need to use safety protocols.
Because of seeing all those safety procedures, this video is so educational. Normally you tend to make shortcuts and just skip them, but they are important.
It's pretty odd to me that they actually ignored safety by loading the guns in position where potential misfire (gun firing unexpectedly) could shoot through the open hole... Like yeah, noone should stand on the opposite side when it's being loaded, but that doesn't mean the shield should be off.
@@shinobuoshino5066 It's actually safer, if the firearm discharged while the shield was in place, the fragments would ricochet endangering the person loading/unloading the firearm.
This brought back so many memories from mythbusters. Those are the best high speed shots I've seen in ten years. Absolutely fantastic job from start to finish.
Haha definitely thought i was listening to Adam a couple times. Its more like what shot didn't I see ten years ago. Mythbusters did almost everything you could imagine on high speed camera.
I cannot express the moment I had/felt when watching the bullet stop at the 22:00 mark. Thank you so much for making this content. It's truly inspiring and I appreciate every second of it!
I'm also struggling to understand what I felt in that moment. It was as though time stopped, and I think I felt like I was witnessing a literal miracle.
I don't think I've ever gotten to say something was literally jaw dropping, but those bullets stopped in mid air was totally jaw dropping. Fantastic shot, and fantastic work!
Not sure if you thought about it, but the rotation due to rifling causes the 2 bullets to spin in opposite directions. Maybe the old bullets didn't have rifling, or rifling wasn't standardized and they both ended up spinning the same direction. This would be much more conducive to bonding.
Especially in the early civil war both sides did still issue some smoothbore (non-rifled) muskets, which would have been firing large spherical balls; for example the .69 caliber Springfield Model 1842, which saw service in the war, fired a solid lead ball of .675 inch diameter; weighing about 30 grams. Or about twice as much lead as the bullets Destin was using. More lead, without opposing rotations, might be enough to make them fuse, especially if it was also a slower collision than Destin's (and given how quickly smoothbore balls lose velocity compared to spin stabilized bullets it might well be a slower collision than even low powder close-range firing can provide).
You forgot to mention the speed of the projectiles… In my opinion, that is why some of the shots just essentially exploded… That is, the force of the projectiles was relevant to the experiment… Edit: At around 26:00 they made adjustments to the powder, thus the speed, to address exactly what I was speaking about… These guys are amazing! While I understand physics, machine a lot of my own parts, and design controls using various systems (ESP32, RP2040) I am don’t think I could recreate what they did without a team like they had!
This deserves an award. Science, cinematography, creativity… it’s so fun watching someone do something really well, and from the engineering to the safety, really seems like no corner was cut, and that is very commendable. 👏👏👏👏👏
The Safety procedures is great to see. We often get a lot of "don't try this at home" which is valid, but modelling good, conscientious development of safety procedures is something i don't think we get enough of. especially because it can go a long way to demonstrate why it's not something that can be tried at home.
@@TomVanWaeit's also unloaded, which he KNOWS for a fact, because he's holding the cartridge. Yes, you should always treat a firearm as if it's loaded, but not to an unreasonable degree, especially once you've personally verified that it is clear. And yeah, don't get in the habit of flagging people nearby, even with a verified unloaded firearm, but a camera isn't a person.
Like the Robin Hood contest, the second arrow 🏹 exactly hitting the first one and splitting it into two equal halves, incredible 👏, legendary! Crazy idea, but big fun to watch the slow motion of the successful shots. Respect for not giving up while probably countless fails. Absolutely right to pronounce the high injury risks of the dangerous experiment, strictly not recommended for unexperienced people to repeat.
I love that you have the forethought to film yourself doing things like reviewing the footage for the first time. Your giddy laughs when something impossible happens bring me immense joy and is half the reason I love watching your stuff. You're very smart, Destin! David also cracks me up.. "so is that the tip?" when it's quite obviously the tip lol. Most humble person ever. Protect him at all costs.
I love how humble Destin is when he's describing the video and his accomplishments. I also enjoy how he always takes the time to explain everything fully and simply. Truly appreciate everything that he does and can't wait to see where this goes next.
@@markdoyle9642 What does your claimed profession have to do with your idiotic comments? 1) Neither Rober nor Destin idolize guns. 2) School shootings do not kill kids, deranged lunatics kill kids. 3) Deranged lunatics also use knives, cars, fists, bats, etc. to kill others. Do you also comment on videos of knife sharpening, car reviews, MLB highlights, etc.?
@@markdoyle9642 saying Rober idolizes guns, then explaining a tennis ball launcher as equal to an actual gun is lunacy, next you will want to ban baseball pitching machines because they can cause head injuries to kids, any projectile object doesn't equate to guns, and school shootings could be stopped if stringent metal detectors installed, along with search of bags, like entering courthouses, instead of trying to ban guns at this point.
I mean, the hit around 22:19 is ... probably one of the most amazing things I've seen on YT. Bonkers how something so destructive can turn into something that beautiful. Stunning. Destin and team, you win.
22:03 the way they came to an absolute dead freeze for a moment is absolutely insane… possible since they have almost exactly the same energy… wow it’s like the middle pauses while the rest is still in play
That's what physics says should happen, but they actually did it, on video. Equal energy from opposite directions and the main pieces just froze in place with zero velocity. That moment is totally poster worthy.
My dad doesn't talk much. So when he sits straight up and yells "WOW" when the bullets perfectly hit each other and froze, you know something truly amazing just happened. Awesome job Destin & team. Keep up the good work! Love all your videos.
I owned an indoor paintball field for 20 years. Every couple of years, a referee, myself included, would witness two paintballs colliding in mid-air. Just a split second of a color cloud then gone. Very Rare but we saw it happen.
The shot at 22:00 is probably one of the moments in physics history where you can see something so rare that it looks as if it belongs in a Matrix movie.
I worked for some fine civil engineers when you say detail I know what you mean. I was good at cleaning my own mess up.....after it being caught by these very very detailed engineers. You gotta love a confident engineer.
If the creation of anything thru molecule to man evolution were true, nothing should evolve because organisms have ORGANS. and evolution could never get even 1 of them to function right, LET ALONE 4 OR 5!! AND THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM!! The sequence of DNA can be identical but produce different results based on the presence or absence of epigenetic markers. So if humans and chimps share a common ancestor and these chemical tags are heritable, they should have similar epigenetic markers, right? They should (if evolution were true), but they don’t. the bbt (bigbang theory) is a manmade construct. How insane the chances must be for mill's of plants and animals to magically mutate over ludicrous spans of time. We should find missing links. However we dont, we only find Fully Formed animals. If animals could evolve into totally new animals, there should be a chance we find missing links. ONLY THE SIMPLEST LIFE FORMS SHOULD BE ABLE TO EVOLVE INTO EXISTENCE. GENETIC ENTROPY WILL UNDO WHATEVER BENEFITS THE ORGANISM MUTATED, FASTER THAN THE ORGANISM WILL MUTATE BENEFICAL TRAITS. EVEN THEN, THE CHANCES OF ANY ORGANISM MUTATING A BENEFICIAL TRAIT ARE NEXT TO NONE. HOW MUCH MORE CRAZY IS EVOLUTION, WHEN APPLIED TO MILLIONS OF PLANTS N ANIMALS?? FOR THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.... DEBUNKING BIGBANG: if the bigbang was real the 2nd planet's orbit would be normal and sat turns ring particles should've moved too fast for ANY gravity to pull them towards the planet. And thats not even taking into account the bigbangs hot temprature which shoulda vaporized anything. also there is too little antimatter in universe. if bigbang was real 99.999999999999999999999% of our universe should Not exist because antimatter destroys matter when it make contact with matter. the bang wouldve made much of it touch matter. so we see far less stars n stuff bc the so called bigbang wouldve destroyed nearly all of it. . READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY!! ----> this should prove that Jesus is Real: JESUS CHRIST will Not make you take any mark, and He will punish the tyrannical ANTI Christ. The ANTI Christ will get a terrible wound, but cure himself to reinforce his deception to decieve the non-Christians and the lukewarm Christians. (look up lukewarm Christians on Christian websites and/or the Bible.) the AC will be world famous and very popular. he will make people take a mark on r hand or forhead. there will be a severe punishment for not taking it. The ANTI-Christ is a control freak, the opposite of Jesus Christ. However, this AC will act all nice and cool for 3 years and 6 months, and then he will make a tyrannical dystopia. for another 3 years 6 months. Jesus uses His power for GOOD, NOT EVIL. This is BIBLE PROPHECY. Dont trust the false god, his goal is to get people into the lake of fire. he will go there too, despite all the FALSE MIRACLES HE WILL DO! Repent of your sins to Jesus Christ before its too late, you could die today!
You are absolutely correct about the inconsistent pressure which you showed at 17:30. When you are hand loading for a reduced charge, a proven way to keep overall bullet length to standard, yet keep the powder from moving , is to drop a consistant quantity of Cream of Wheat or corn meal on top of each powder charge. Then seat the bullet. Your video has been out for a year. I hope that I'm not the first to tip you off to Cream of Wheat for low power handloads.
Great job showing the importance of safety measures and guidances! So many field tests you get people who think they're "too much" and "holding us back". When people's lives and safety are at risk, a slow safety check is infinitely faster than an ER visit!
For as simple, looking, image as that bullet fragment hanging motionless in air for those few thousandths of a second, it was, unbelievably, satisfying. Especially, realizing how, insanely, precise that shot had to be to have a perfect transfer of force like that. It was fun seeing that one in a million (or more) shot like that. Thank you for all the work and effort you went through to bring us this. It is appreciated very much.
Sometimes I see the 30+ minute video length and doubt I’ll make it through, but then the next thing I know it’s over and I want more, every time. Great stuff Destin!
i can't believe i watched the whole 35 mins video without skipping a single second. and i didn't even realise the video was so long. it is beautiful to see!
The image that I have always found incredible is that of the two rifle bullets from the Battle of Gallipoli. One hit the other at 90 degrees: if the probability of two bullets hitting each other face to face is infinitesimal, hitting each other with perpendicular trajectories is really bordering on nothing. PS: maybe the next project for SmarterEveryDay?
I had to find that pic once I saw your comment. I can't post links because youtube is run by the guys Orwell warned us about. So google "Reddit Two collided bullets from the Battle of Gallipoli, 1915-1916" to find the pic. But then I saw it wasn't actually real. Google: "lead stories Fact Check: Viral Image Does NOT Show Two Bullets That 'Collided' During Battle Of Gallipoli"
I haven't seen any analysis on it but everytime I saw a photo of those bullets, I assumed it was far more likely one bullet hit a clip/box of bullets and got stuck in one. But, considering the timing involved, I do think you're right about the odds of two bullets hitting with perpendicular paths being extremely low. Though, I think the odds of them fusing would be increased, as far less momentum will be transferred (assuming lower is better).
If you look closely at that picture. One bullet had rifling marks, the other does not, indicating that one was never shot. Still pretty cool non the less.
Destin, have you thought about contacting a material specialist to figure out the conditions needed to get the bullets to mushroom and fuse instead of crystalizing and shattering?
Need old lead, no alloying additives like antimony and calcium, all added to make the lead a harder alloy. Old lead has a lot of silver in it, along with zinc, which makes for a soft alloy that will readily bond with cold welding.
The safety design stuff for this was nice to see, I'd honestly like a breakdown of everything that goes into a project like this to make sure there aren't any surprises.
"Get smart people in your life who love you enough to smile and tell you you're wrong." Great comment! Great video! Thanks, Destin. You do a great job of educating in an engaging and delightful way.
I audibly "Wow!"ed at 22:02. Getting to see how physics works through slow motion is awe inspiring. Thank you for your incredible work in getting this footage and sharing it with us!
If you watched Mythbusters, they did the conservation of momentum trick where the truck moves one way while a ball is shot in the opposite direction at an equal but opposite velocity to the truck, and managed to get a shot where the ball literally did not move horizontally at all before dropping vertically. This is literally on the same level of physics demonstration awesomeness.
I love that you all took such a meticulous approach to safety. Getting multiple folks to review and make corrections even though you already know so much.
I immediately love the term "intellectual humility". I usually think of it as being dispassionate about knowledge, but I think your term describes it better.
Modern cast lead projectiles typically have antimony in them, which increases the "hardness" of the bullet (this makes for a better hunting bullet). You can make 100% lead projectiles using a bullet casting tool, check with some of your reloading buddies and find out who is rolling their own (so to speak). They can probably easily hook you up.
Pure lead bullets will require to clean the barrel after each shot as they will fill the rifling and lead to inconsistent ballistics. I also wonder if the bullets would fuse better with a bigger caliber. Last but not least, the offset of the barrels is making the fusing more difficult, but the only option to protect the guns would be for each one to shoot through the hole of a rotating disk. It’s quite difficult to synch, but a good challenge for perfectionists!
@@tde1964 you can avoid them shooting each other by a longer flight distance, allowing drop to handle the matter for you, but also increasing the precision of the build to allow much greater precision in adjusting the aim to cover the greater range. That said, one wouldn't have to clean the barrel after each shot, but they'd need much more frequent cleaning. One can offset the higher velocity and fouling issue by using a slightly larger bore. Lower friction and cutting by the rifling, gas leakage lowering pressure and hence, velocity, downside is lower accuracy. Chroming the barrel also would lower fouling.
Other youtube channels tend to skip the safety and usually sum it up for the viewer, rightfully so as the attention span of humans would not want to continue watching. Although I can't say quite what you did, I can say that you managed to show a lot of key elements and points about your safety. I think its amazing that you're able to not only make for a great entertaining video, but also teach us about the process
As an engineering student, your videos are right up my alley. But as a playful person, the enthusiasm you exude throughout the scientific process is everything! Thank you for sharing as always, Destin.
Your videos are truly a special sort. I love the details about proper methodology and safety, I love that juvenile excitement and enthusiasm you bring, and I love the way you communicate all of it. Also, nice shoes!
Between the frames of 22:00 and 22:03 right before the bullets meet, the forward momentum force causes a dent on the round. You can see it slowly forming right as they get close to each other.
You did Missile Flight test on the Javelin Missile system?? That is awesome! I am an Electro Optical Ordnance Repairer in the Marine Corps and have been doing it for 10years. I personally would love to see a video of you talking and explaining all the Missile flight experiences you have had!
i know this is over a year old, and things are constantly improving,... but filming the screen outdoors with the live footage, or well, just recorded in super slo mo "live"i meant,.... its not like youre in the frame for us to see your reaction, its literally just a really bad bootleg style version of whats awesome raw footage. that aside, thank you for so many awesome and informative AND entertaining videos Desty. Cheers cobber ;-)
Could you try and catch the bullets in a medium just as they meet. You could try to use a slab of ballistic gel that you can cut down to vary the length, therefore controlling how much the bullets slow down before impact. It could have an added bonus of catching the fragments mid explosion like what you did with the prince ruperts drops.
@@aserta Very true! although from other videos I've seen bullets don't seem to deviate from their course too much, especially since the gel won't need to be too thick just a couple of centimetres - enough to just slow the bullets, not stop them.
I'm thinking of the fusion of the bullets that caused this project, is it possible they collided in a medium of some sort? A wooden wall, a tree, something like that? The fusion in the wallet suggests that quite loudly to me. I KNOW someone knows more than I do on this matter. Is it known where/how the original fused bullets were found?
@@MicahScottPnD pretty sure they used softer (more pure?) led back in the day and those muzzle loaders shot a lot slower than modern guns (they didn't have the tolerances to have a good seal and the black powder wwas pretty course and unrefined.). Add to that some distance and you'd have two pretty slow soft things that could merge. The odds of that happening are insanely small though... Your theory is also a possibility but I would expect them to still be stuck inside that medium if that happened.
Destin, the first thing I thought was that civil war era bullets were almost pure lead, which has a brinell hardness of around 5. Most bullet manufacturers are producing rounds with a brinell hardness of around 18-22. This makes them much more brittle. I have some pure lead laying around and could cast you some bullets with varying hardness if you would like to test that out.
2 things to consider. Modern lead bullets have other metals added to make them harder then normal lead. May try getting pure lead and casting your own bullets. Also try using actual black powder or black powder substitute instead of smokeless powder. Black powder has a significantly slower burner time which will reduce velocity while still having enough gas expansion to get the projectile to clear the barrel. These are 2 things worth considering and experimenting with
Also, the civil war mini balls that fused were fired at each other across a much longer distance To get the same effect at test range, the propellant load has to be far lighter than a standard round
black powder or black powder substitute instead of smokeless powder. Black powder has a significantly slower burner time which will reduce velocity OKAY you got me i thought this was the other way around whit black powder being the faster burning a simple tert i did sort of proves this one unless you get different powder over there compared to over here Cheers
@@wallbawden5511maybe i worded that wrong. What I'm trying to say is that its well known that smokeless powder pushes a bullet way faster, but the burn rate out in the open is black powder burns faster, a lot faster.
loved the part about the safety measures! obviously because they keep you alive! but also because of the way you approach it! great role model for stuff like this!
Absolutely brilliant Destin! I don't think most people can understand what it took to get these results. You and your team have done what seemed to be impossible until now. Congratulations!
It’s amazing to think that those soldiers were probably shooting at each other at the EXACT same time, and likely saved each other’s lives! I’ve always wanted to re-create this phenomenon, thanks for doing it!!
I find it more interesting that because the loads for each shot would be inconsistent, they didn't shoot at the exact same time, but at just the right time for it to happen. Like doing two things at the same time is cool, but having the exact right amount of delay is cooler.
@lukesfxwhen you have hundreds of dudes standing in an open field facing off in a firing line, you'll get this happening eventually for sure. The crazy part is they were able to find the lead balls after it happened.
Yeah except on a civil war battlefield soldiers were usually ordered to fire in volleys. With large units of men trading volleys this probably happened more than a few times. It may have stopped those particular bullets but I doubt it kept them out of danger for long.
I greatly appreciate that you spent so much time showing the safety measures in this. Used to see people injured every month or so in R&D, even doing things that weren't "inherently" dangerous. I love the work here, but I must admit to a great enjoyment seeing the safety measures feature so prominently here.
I really only came here for the safety measures too. I was prepared to flag this video, but seeing those measures satisfied me... only just barely though.
The safety measures are necessitated by an absurdly over-engineered setup. This is a one-month basement or garage project. I like Destin's vids, but what the heck is really going on here? Is he doing a didactic presentation on how an engineering work-group should be realized? He should save that for the genuinely big projects, like supersonic colliding baseballs with schlieren imaging, etc.
@@-danR A one-month garage project for someone not doing other projects full-time, maybe; yet, a garage project wouldn't have the precision necessary for doing this with a high speed camera either. Higher FPS requires a smaller frame, so more precise work required. More precise work, more precise safety. What he's done here can't quite be used as R&D work at a professional level, but it's quite close. Had he wanted a simple project, I suspect he could have done it, but it wouldn't have turned into something useful, or a video like this.
Well.... the specifics of how to accomplish this have been in my head since 2017. I'm very excited to finally share it with you. I'm grateful to everyone who supports Smarter Every Day on Patreon. You make long-term planning things like this and the baseball cannon possible! Here's the link if you'd like to join our sticker team: www.patreon.com/smartereveryday
Also, as promised, here's the link too the email list! www.smartereveryday.com/email-list
I don't spam you. I just send out an email every time I upload. Thanks for your consideration!
@Don't Read My Profile Picture bot 🤖
"intellectual humility" is a term id never heard before. but as soon as I did I knew that if I have developed any of it, I only have your videos to thank for it.
AFFORDABLE particle accelerator
THANK YOU for addressing the safety in an interesting way!
I worked at NIAR crash test lab at Wichita State U. 2005 to 2007. Working with ultra high speed cameras and crash test dummies. I have to say this was exciting for me to see! From set up to safety I give you an A. I am very impressed with your overall presentation and would someday like to do a video with you! I have an idea that I started on in 2007 and didnt get to complete!
When the two bullets perfectly hit each other it looks like your shot a single bullet into the worlds strongest mirror. Insane.
when an unstoppable force meets an unstoppable force.
now we also need an immovable object to meet an immovable object.
or like having an impenetrable piece of glass seperating both.
It just levitated and rethought it's place in space and time
I commented years ago challenging you guys (collective youtube makers) try to make an anti sniper shield using high speed cameras, or however might be possible
Now make a robot do it.
16:24 first colision between them (not perfectly hit)
18:51 perfect shot
26:36 another great shot
22:00 perfect shot.
also,thanks for all the likes!
Thank you for that.
Thank you! I came to the comments looking for the timestamp 👍🏻
21:52 perfect shot, stopping both bullets at point of impact. Truly impressive!
20:24 is so awesome, too, and 20:46 as well
The destroyer of lengthily documentaries! We salute you 😂
12:47 15:00 15:47 18:40 19:50 20:30 All of these are what you came for
21:54 24:32 part of bulket sticks together
26:44 Final good shots
27:41 Video ends
you're a life saver, thank you
Bro sacrificed himself for us
@@Yildirim.Bayezid truly
Thank you. Hate pointless filler stuff.
May god bless you for saving us time
that collision at 22:00 literally hurts my brain, the way it stops mid air and doesn't move for a moment looks so unreal I can't compute what I'm seeing
The brain tells us it's a visual effect because we never saw it before so we think it cant be real.
looked like a glitch in the matrix tbh ... wow
Seeing those two bullets frozen in time in the middle of the air at 21:39 (22:00) was so amazing... It's literally forces cancelling each others out perfectly. I'm so blown away by this.
@@inoxx1151 idk but I know I wasn’t expecting two identical pieces to just be frozen there
Thank you for time stamping
thanks on the stamp
22:00
Yeah! It looked so... unnatural!
21:54 - The money shot... honestly this is a one in a million type capture. Amazing.
Came to the comments specifically for this, thanks mate
Ads playing im searching comments. His teaser hits. This comment made perfect climax.
Destin took from a one in a million shot to a one in ten shot.
Thank you
69 like
The shot at 21:55 is arguably one of the coolest things that's ever been produced on the internet. I know you said you weren't trying to win the internet but that shot is in contention for it. I really appreciate you bringing all of us with you on this journey, Destin
Looked like a creation moment. Glad you put the time stamp
Thank you for this comment, saved me a bunch of time
Mvp
@@2ScoopsPlz Watch the whole video. It's worth it. It's how you get smarter every day.
I imagine this happening in a western-style duel. Both duellists shooting exactly at the same time and then wondering why apparently nothing happens :D
the smithsonian fused bullets were Minie Balls, which probably weighed at least 550 grains each. They did not have any metal jackets, but were pure lead. In addition, the muzzle velocity was relatively slow because of the weight of the bullet. Add the distance each muzzle was separated from the other, and
ah yeah no cut it off i had enough reading
@@nawt9529lmao he left it on a cliffhanger
I work in OT&E and the safety procedure evaluation towards the beginning was an unexpected but absolutely crucial component of your process. Really incredible work Destin.
Yeah from the intro I was thinking how I would attempt this, and the details they went into with the safety planning demonstrated well why I shouldn't try this at home.
Only thing missing is environmental safety. All that lead going into the ground
…whence it came.
@@nussiskate3 where do you suppose it came from to begin with?
22:00 is the most incredible slow motion footage i've ever seen and that is not an exaggeration
Thanks for that timestamp
I knew that there would be one hero for a timestamp
Thank you brother
thanks bro
Thank you, godspeed! o7
I appreciate all the dedication to safety. That's what made this crazy experiment exciting instead of terrifying.
When you shot those 2 together at 22:02 and they just froze in the air on the high speed, my jaw literally hung open for the duration of the shot. One of the most stunning pieces of film I've seen in a long time. Congratulations for capturing that after all the effort you put in. It's truly amazing!
Thanks for the timestamp 👌
I noticed the same thing... like the world of physics just got hacked when they just froze suspended in air like that.
Your a freaking lifesaver for the time stamp! Nobody wants to sit through a freaking 35 min video just to see 10 seconds 😒
bro is a legend
I came here to say the same exact thing!!!
What a great video and narrative! As an 80 year old physicist with a lifelong interest in ballistics, I have a couple of comments; The muzzle loading rifles of civil war era used a much different rifling twist than modern ammunition. The use of hollow base or "mini Ball" bullets rammed down a bore require a much different idea for stabilization. The lead composition is very, very soft so that the hollow base can expand to fit the bore tightly and engage the rifling without causing so much loading drag. Many of the muskets used in civil war time were smooth bore, without any rifling. Stabilizing the bullets in a smooth bore required a round ball , or in later years a Mini Ball with a hollow base or skirt. Modern air rifles also achieve stabilization partly through the skirt stabilization. If you compute the total energy of a bullet, it is not just "1/2 mv squared" of linear energy, but has a rather large rotational energy due to the rifling twist. In a head on collision, this rotational energy is in opposition for the two bullets, To achieve true linear energy transfer, you would either have to have the two bullets rotating in opposite vector direction, or not rotating at all. For reference, a 45 colt is commonly rifled at a 1 turn every 16 inches, wheras the muzzle loading rifles ranged from smooth bore (no twist) to 1 turn every 5 to 10 feet. My suggestion is to change the rifling to very long twist, in opposition, and use a pure lead bullet if you really want to see a fused bullet. The other factor is velocity. Black powder muskets had a typical velocity of 900 to 1000 feet per second, with a low ballistic coefficient, so they would slow down rapidly. If there were something like 400 yards between the opposing battle lines, the bullets would have been traveling less than half the muzzle velocity at center path collision. You might try to fire a pure lead bullet at a steel plate and determine the amount of deformation of that bullet then take half the linear energy backed out to velocity as a starting point for your powder charge and velocity starting point. Modern large bore pneumatic or air rifles might be an easier and more controllable medium to base your configuration on.
Again i want to emphasize what a marvelous presentation you have made!!!
This is awesome info. Lots of different factors that have to end up absolutely perfect. It is possible! Who knew I'd be getting an education on youtube comments!
Ok chat GPT.
Terrific comment, love the detailed info.
Thank you ❤
Awesome!
I notice that both your barrels have right hand twist, so when they are facing each other, the bullets are spinning in opposite directions. If you had one barrel with a left hand twist, both bullets would spin in the same direction. With the rotational energy cancelled out, it seems that it would be much easier for the bullets to fuse on impact.
Exactly this!!! I was looking for this comment.
that being said, if trying to recreate what battlefield example then they are doing so.
Your example wouldn’t be historically accurate.
GREAT POINT. Were the civil war rifles smoothbore?
I think part way through the war they adopted rifled firearms. While smoothbore might make the shot possible, trying to get the bullets to collide in the first place would be much harder
@@smartereveryday Most were rifles so not smoothbore.
watching this episode for a second time after 11 months of airing. still one of the coolest episodes!
That perfect collision where they just froze in the middle might be the single greatest piece of slow motion footage I have ever seen in my life... It was so still it didn't even look real, that was absolutely amazing... The one at the end with the aluminum wallet was pretty cool too...
It was done 60 years ago. This isn't new.
@@bigguy7353 so?
@@bigguy7353 and? Doesn't cahnge the fact that that it's cool to watch and its in color on better recording equipment.
@@bigguy7353 did your mom 60 years ago
@@bigguy7353 The footage from 60 years ago isn't as good as this footage tho...
The fact that you didn't just stop after the first time because it "worked" and you had viral footage and just kept doing it over and over to pin down all the variables and learn exactly what was going on is what puts this project on such a high level not to mention the many many hours of prep and planning that went into this.
Really love what you do, your passion and excitement shine through and build upon the work you clearly take seriously, thank you.
Your comment is basically what I wanted to say… As a former Naval Officer (Suitland), they were not only diligent in their work, they refined their test for precision (while being as safe as possible…
Those bullets stopping mid air is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and definitely the most awesome demonstration of conservation of momentum I've ever seen. Wow.
The same phenomenon was captured on super high speed film 60 years ago, just fyi.
The way it just seemed to freeze in midair made my jaw drop and exclaim "it stopped!" like I didn't just see Destin's same reaction just a few seconds earlier XD
@@bigguy7353 gimme link
@@bigguy7353 with what? do you have a link? thanks
This video has to be hands down one of the most well explain shown video, i have ever seen in a while...❤
If you're ever passing through Nebraska, stop by the Edgerton museum (for those who don't know, Doc Edgerton played a key role in developing the camera tech which made it possible to photograph bullets in flight). Congrats on getting two bullets to hit, though. Even Doc Edgerton didn't figure that one out!
When I completed my Master's Degree, Doctor Robert Frederick from UAH handed me an autographed book from Edgerton. One of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. Edgerton inspired me.
Where in Nebraska?
@@DasGanon It is in the middle of the U.S.A
@@TalonJustice The worst part of this "hur hur hur I'm technically correct" answer is that it's not, the geographic center of the US is in Kansas. :V
@@DasGanon It's in Aurora, just off I-80 between York and Grand Island. Forgot I went there as a kid, it's actually a really neat little museum!
The collision at 20:31 is so perfect that words cannot describe it. Great job. For science!
👍
Thank you 🍻
@@shitpostmalone5341 the hit at 22:20 is like 1 in a billion I'd say. The perfect transfer of equal kinetic energy head to head (perfectly colliding in a balanced manner with equal kinetic energy and exactly in a straight line) indeed produces phase cancelation. It is mind boggling to see this with guns. It's like balancing very powerful magnets ontop of each-other without locking them together, or balancing a camel on a🕯on a needle on a stainless steel ball bearing 🤔 on.... a match... on a fire 🔥... like, it's so hard that you'll always just burn the stuff on accident and make the camel angry unnecessarily. 😠 Ballanced forces produce stillness and static pressure fields.
Thank you so annoying lookin through long video for 5 sec clip
THANK YOU SO MUCH
Regarding the straight lead bullets, it may be worth trying to remove the oxide layer. When the original fusion occurred in the civil war the bullets may have been freshly cast and easier to fuse at lower temperatures. I see this akin to soldering PCBAs where older solder is resistant to melt initially from oxides and a touch of new solder/flux enables it to melt much easier.
I think the temperature and shape are the keys - the black powder burns a lot slower and the minie ball is hollow at the back. This means a LOT more time in the long barrel and a lot more surface area to heat. The bullets would have been VASTLY hotter.
It also means very little mass at the back of the bullet to continue pushing them together after the initial impact.
Was thinking the same thing. I bet polishing and then stripping off any polishing compound with solvents would help significantly
Get the lead a pure as possible.
And then anneal the bullets after casting them.
That will make the bullets as soft and malleable as possible.
Or maybe use gold.
Maybe paint a little bit of liquid flux on the tips of both bullets. The heat of impact might be enough to activate the dried flux on impact.
I think you have a to small amount of led for them to fuse together. Bullets today is made to fly as fare and fast as possible. Thinkg they couldn do so much in the old days. So some more soft lead and a bit larger amount of it and you can do it.
The stopping two bullets is one of the most mind blowing slow motions I ever saw, that's insane!
great video, thank you
Slow Motion of the Bullets Hitting starts at 21:54
Cheers!
I cant believe they made a short clip into 35 minutes... like i care that much!
Thanks for saving my time
I'd need to waste 22 minutes before seeing 2 bullets hitting each other. I understand the research and effort, but c'mon, this is just making it boring
Thanks man you’re a gentleman and a scholar
big L for this channel doing this prolonging
Just wanna say how wonderful the subtitles are.
Not only correctly subtitling but also adding information for tone or silences.
It's always a pleasure to see them be as high-quality as they are here
The subtitles added to the enjoyment, tysm!!
"Deep throbbing crushing sounds, you can feel it"
Any other channel doing these kinds of videos, I normally just skip right to the money shot. But something about your editing style, the pacing, the information you share, the process of designing and building your experiments, it really is enthralling. Gotta watch the whole video!
same. i thought "35 minutes? thats too much, im not watching all of it." but then once i started, i just kept watching every second, and was like "its over already??" at the end.
@@502deth didn't even notice 35 minutes
Came close to skipping forward, but.... as you say its always watching the whole thing, glad I did.
100%
I’m thankful you made this more than a click bait “we shot a bullet at another bullet in slow motion” I learned so much!
Just wanna say how wonderful the subtitles are.
Not only correctly subtitling but also adding information for tone or silences.
It's always a pleasure to see them be as high-quality as they are here
Troof. One of the best things about Primitive Technology's (otherwise un-narrated) videos.
Yes!! I was just about to comment that, it’s so impressive just how detailed they are!
It’s great for us hard of hearing folks.
-piggyback-
Move them closer together. They get more velocity/faster they move out the barrel.
Just put two barrels right up into each other and clamp them together, then fire both at the same time.
This was awesome! I’ve always wanted to see this!
Scott! When's the collab with Destin?
Same!
Collab with Smarter Every Day! The KenFolk will love it!
Me too
Definitely would want to see a collaboration between Kentucky ballistics and smarter everyday.
This should be shown in every physics, Dynamics, engineering class. That perfect stop shot is amazing. (Start around 21:30)
Us fellow engineers are loving this stuff.
Thanks man
This is how our ideal physics conditions are meant to play out in highschool...
I love how he has a section about safety and to do everything step by step. Sure, it's a simple test, and every single threat is small on its own, but there are a lot of small potential things that can go wrong. So he does a checklist, so nobody misses anything. They made their own protocols to follow. Compare that to the handling of the ocean gate submersible. He cared more about the safety in this test than they did for ocean gate. And we have ocean gate ceo bragging about how they didn't need to use safety protocols.
Well they really didn't stop, just slowed down enough for us to perceive it as stopping. Ok ok they stopped.
Thank you for this bookmark
I just love the fact that some of the high speed shots look like if I would've been recorded on a VHS tape and played on a old box tv.
Because of seeing all those safety procedures, this video is so educational. Normally you tend to make shortcuts and just skip them, but they are important.
yep
@snowflake_46 shush bro u have no life
It's pretty odd to me that they actually ignored safety by loading the guns in position where potential misfire (gun firing unexpectedly) could shoot through the open hole...
Like yeah, noone should stand on the opposite side when it's being loaded, but that doesn't mean the shield should be off.
@@shinobuoshino5066 It's actually safer, if the firearm discharged while the shield was in place, the fragments would ricochet endangering the person loading/unloading the firearm.
@@yzzcat7824 common sense is not common at all these days.
This brought back so many memories from mythbusters. Those are the best high speed shots I've seen in ten years. Absolutely fantastic job from start to finish.
I was thinking exactly the same thing, bullet fired v bullet dropped came to mind first.
I heard his whole explanation of the problems on Adams voice...
what high speed shot did you see ten years ago
@peterheinzo515 look up high-speed shots from mythbusters, and you'll know they are really good
Haha definitely thought i was listening to Adam a couple times. Its more like what shot didn't I see ten years ago. Mythbusters did almost everything you could imagine on high speed camera.
One of the most interesting videos I have seen
Nice
Nice to see you again
Good 👍
Nice
I like this dude’s content so much more than Adam Savage because Adam Savage raped his sister.
I’m so happy with the end result of everything you did to show us how 2 bullets crash against each other, I’m saving this video for later watch again
I cannot express the moment I had/felt when watching the bullet stop at the 22:00 mark. Thank you so much for making this content. It's truly inspiring and I appreciate every second of it!
I'm also struggling to understand what I felt in that moment. It was as though time stopped, and I think I felt like I was witnessing a literal miracle.
Seriously.
@@michu3536 same
Time got disrupted
My hero dude 🎉
I don't think I've ever gotten to say something was literally jaw dropping, but those bullets stopped in mid air was totally jaw dropping. Fantastic shot, and fantastic work!
Many jaws have dropped around the world with that one.
My jaw stayed in place perfectly fine but it was def an interesting watch
Not sure if you thought about it, but the rotation due to rifling causes the 2 bullets to spin in opposite directions. Maybe the old bullets didn't have rifling, or rifling wasn't standardized and they both ended up spinning the same direction. This would be much more conducive to bonding.
They had rifling back then, but it wasn’t omnipresent. I don’t know if it was consistent. Good observation
This. Great observation!
Especially in the early civil war both sides did still issue some smoothbore (non-rifled) muskets, which would have been firing large spherical balls; for example the .69 caliber Springfield Model 1842, which saw service in the war, fired a solid lead ball of .675 inch diameter; weighing about 30 grams. Or about twice as much lead as the bullets Destin was using.
More lead, without opposing rotations, might be enough to make them fuse, especially if it was also a slower collision than Destin's (and given how quickly smoothbore balls lose velocity compared to spin stabilized bullets it might well be a slower collision than even low powder close-range firing can provide).
^^^this.
I came to the comments to post this. See if you can get a mirror identical barrel with a left hand twist, or two smooth bores.
You forgot to mention the speed of the projectiles… In my opinion, that is why some of the shots just essentially exploded… That is, the force of the projectiles was relevant to the experiment…
Edit: At around 26:00 they made adjustments to the powder, thus the speed, to address exactly what I was speaking about… These guys are amazing! While I understand physics, machine a lot of my own parts, and design controls using various systems (ESP32, RP2040) I am don’t think I could recreate what they did without a team like they had!
Congratulations to Allan involved. Super nice video! Thank you!
This deserves an award. Science, cinematography, creativity… it’s so fun watching someone do something really well, and from the engineering to the safety, really seems like no corner was cut, and that is very commendable. 👏👏👏👏👏
The Safety procedures is great to see. We often get a lot of "don't try this at home" which is valid, but modelling good, conscientious development of safety procedures is something i don't think we get enough of. especially because it can go a long way to demonstrate why it's not something that can be tried at home.
At 5:20 he is pointing the gun directly at the camera man. Not good
@@TomVanWae It's a camera mounted on a tripod.
EDIT: You can even see him set it up just 10 seconds earlier 5:10
@@TomVanWaeit's also unloaded, which he KNOWS for a fact, because he's holding the cartridge. Yes, you should always treat a firearm as if it's loaded, but not to an unreasonable degree, especially once you've personally verified that it is clear. And yeah, don't get in the habit of flagging people nearby, even with a verified unloaded firearm, but a camera isn't a person.
I would like to see infrared footage of this to see the heat generation and dissipation of the collision. Very cool stuff guys, keep it up.
Like the Robin Hood contest, the second arrow 🏹 exactly hitting the first one and splitting it into two equal halves, incredible 👏, legendary!
Crazy idea, but big fun to watch the slow motion of the successful shots.
Respect for not giving up while probably countless fails.
Absolutely right to pronounce the high injury risks of the dangerous experiment, strictly not recommended for unexperienced people to repeat.
I love that you have the forethought to film yourself doing things like reviewing the footage for the first time. Your giddy laughs when something impossible happens bring me immense joy and is half the reason I love watching your stuff. You're very smart, Destin! David also cracks me up.. "so is that the tip?" when it's quite obviously the tip lol. Most humble person ever. Protect him at all costs.
I love how humble Destin is when he's describing the video and his accomplishments. I also enjoy how he always takes the time to explain everything fully and simply. Truly appreciate everything that he does and can't wait to see where this goes next.
@@markdoyle9642What?
@@markdoyle9642 Huh? What do you mean 😅
@@markdoyle9642 What does your claimed profession have to do with your idiotic comments?
1) Neither Rober nor Destin idolize guns.
2) School shootings do not kill kids, deranged lunatics kill kids.
3) Deranged lunatics also use knives, cars, fists, bats, etc. to kill others. Do you also comment on videos of knife sharpening, car reviews, MLB highlights, etc.?
@@markdoyle9642 How have mark and destin idolized guns.
@@markdoyle9642 saying Rober idolizes guns, then explaining a tennis ball launcher as equal to an actual gun is lunacy, next you will want to ban baseball pitching machines because they can cause head injuries to kids, any projectile object doesn't equate to guns, and school shootings could be stopped if stringent metal detectors installed, along with search of bags, like entering courthouses, instead of trying to ban guns at this point.
I mean, the hit around 22:19 is ... probably one of the most amazing things I've seen on YT. Bonkers how something so destructive can turn into something that beautiful. Stunning. Destin and team, you win.
Thanks 🙇🏾
Thanks for your service. It was really annoying of him to cut the collision out at the start
thank you
That's what I call perfection
@@waldolemmerbecause you’re supposed to watch the entire video 😂
Every shot was amazing! It is magnificent to watch something so fast to hit in slow motion and see how it behaves. Such a cool video. Thank you!
22:03 the way they came to an absolute dead freeze for a moment is absolutely insane… possible since they have almost exactly the same energy… wow it’s like the middle pauses while the rest is still in play
It straight up looks CGI. I'm not saying it was at all, it's just so uncanny to see it actually happen that it feels "off."
They needed to have almost the exact same velocity and weight!!
That's what physics says should happen, but they actually did it, on video. Equal energy from opposite directions and the main pieces just froze in place with zero velocity. That moment is totally poster worthy.
yeah its underrated. better than fusing them IMO.
My dad doesn't talk much. So when he sits straight up and yells "WOW" when the bullets perfectly hit each other and froze, you know something truly amazing just happened.
Awesome job Destin & team. Keep up the good work! Love all your videos.
That made me smile :D
lol
Destin, the equal momentum transfer shot was absolutely beautiful. Thank you for making such interesting content!
I owned an indoor paintball field for 20 years. Every couple of years, a referee, myself included, would witness two paintballs colliding in mid-air. Just a split second of a color cloud then gone. Very Rare but we saw it happen.
amazing video, i love destin's excitment and daves dry combacks lol
Miss your *"subscribers milestone fireworks"* videos. Would love if you do another one for good ol' times!
Look forward to your next tunnel video Colin!
Ahh colin, you are the most amaing person in England, we all know you
You know you made a good video when Mr Furze comments
CGI
The shot at 22:00 is probably one of the moments in physics history where you can see something so rare that it looks as if it belongs in a Matrix movie.
شكرا لك وفرت لي وقت ❤
That was very cool. I've never been detail oriented enough to be an engineer so I can really appreciate the effort here.
I worked for some fine civil engineers when you say detail I know what you mean. I was good at cleaning my own mess up.....after it being caught by these very very detailed engineers. You gotta love a confident engineer.
21:54 Is insane
If the creation of anything thru molecule to man evolution were true, nothing should evolve because organisms have ORGANS. and evolution could never get even 1 of them to function right, LET ALONE 4 OR 5!! AND THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM!!
The sequence of DNA can be identical but produce different results based on the presence or absence of epigenetic markers. So if humans and chimps share a common ancestor and these chemical tags are heritable, they should have similar epigenetic markers, right?
They should (if evolution were true), but they don’t.
the bbt (bigbang theory) is a manmade construct. How insane the chances must be for mill's of plants and animals to magically mutate over ludicrous spans of time. We should find missing links. However we dont, we only find Fully Formed animals. If animals could evolve into totally new animals, there should be a chance we find missing links. ONLY THE SIMPLEST LIFE FORMS SHOULD BE ABLE TO EVOLVE INTO EXISTENCE. GENETIC ENTROPY WILL UNDO WHATEVER BENEFITS THE ORGANISM MUTATED, FASTER THAN THE ORGANISM WILL MUTATE BENEFICAL TRAITS. EVEN THEN, THE CHANCES OF ANY ORGANISM MUTATING A BENEFICIAL TRAIT ARE NEXT TO NONE. HOW MUCH MORE CRAZY IS EVOLUTION, WHEN APPLIED TO MILLIONS OF PLANTS N ANIMALS?? FOR THEY ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.... DEBUNKING BIGBANG: if the bigbang was real the 2nd planet's orbit would be normal and sat turns ring particles should've moved too fast for ANY gravity to pull them towards the planet. And thats not even taking into account the bigbangs hot temprature which shoulda vaporized anything. also there is too little antimatter in universe. if bigbang was real 99.999999999999999999999% of our universe should Not exist because antimatter destroys matter when it make contact with matter. the bang wouldve made much of it touch matter. so we see far less stars n stuff bc the so called bigbang wouldve destroyed nearly all of it. . READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY!! ----> this should prove that Jesus is Real: JESUS CHRIST will Not make you take any mark, and He will punish the tyrannical ANTI Christ. The ANTI Christ will get a terrible wound, but cure himself to reinforce his deception to decieve the non-Christians and the lukewarm Christians. (look up lukewarm Christians on Christian websites and/or the Bible.) the AC will be world famous and very popular. he will make people take a mark on r hand or forhead. there will be a severe punishment for not taking it. The ANTI-Christ is a control freak, the opposite of Jesus Christ. However, this AC will act all nice and cool for 3 years and 6 months, and then he will make a tyrannical dystopia. for another 3 years 6 months. Jesus uses His power for GOOD, NOT EVIL. This is BIBLE PROPHECY. Dont trust the false god, his goal is to get people into the lake of fire. he will go there too, despite all the FALSE MIRACLES HE WILL DO! Repent of your sins to Jesus Christ before its too late, you could die today!
You are absolutely correct about the inconsistent pressure which you showed at 17:30. When you are hand loading for a reduced charge, a proven way to keep overall bullet length to standard, yet keep the powder from moving , is to drop a consistant quantity of Cream of Wheat or corn meal on top of each powder charge. Then seat the bullet.
Your video has been out for a year. I hope that I'm not the first to tip you off to Cream of Wheat for low power handloads.
Great job showing the importance of safety measures and guidances! So many field tests you get people who think they're "too much" and "holding us back". When people's lives and safety are at risk, a slow safety check is infinitely faster than an ER visit!
Interesting to see this. Thanks for taking the time to figure this out and share it.
He needs to take some time to figure out declining EROEI.
Americans and their gun fetish.
Really appreciate how you name the people involved and describe how they contributed to making this crazy thing happen!
I like your content
most people dont care.
@@darkshadowsx5949 Yeah but he does!
@@darkshadowsx5949 yea but we all do but you and plus we didn’t ask +ratio + l bozo + durk better + this is you 🤓
@@darkshadowsx5949🤓
Great planning, safety precautions and execution but excellent enthusiasm!
shocked how perfect the energy transfer was. really shows how centered and perfect the shot must have been!
For as simple, looking, image as that bullet fragment hanging motionless in air for those few thousandths of a second, it was, unbelievably, satisfying. Especially, realizing how, insanely, precise that shot had to be to have a perfect transfer of force like that. It was fun seeing that one in a million (or more) shot like that. Thank you for all the work and effort you went through to bring us this. It is appreciated very much.
Fr, they managed to make those highschool physics conditions in real life.
Sometimes I see the 30+ minute video length and doubt I’ll make it through, but then the next thing I know it’s over and I want more, every time. Great stuff Destin!
Didn't even realise it was that long, felt like 10 minutes.
exactly... what??? it is over? hey... was 30 min... lol.
Same, I expected to skip through like 90% of the video but I watched the whole way through.
i need 3 hour vids!!!!!
Yes!
i can't believe i watched the whole 35 mins video without skipping a single second. and i didn't even realise the video was so long. it is beautiful to see!
The image that I have always found incredible is that of the two rifle bullets from the Battle of Gallipoli.
One hit the other at 90 degrees: if the probability of two bullets hitting each other face to face is infinitesimal, hitting each other with perpendicular trajectories is really bordering on nothing.
PS: maybe the next project for SmarterEveryDay?
I had to find that pic once I saw your comment.
I can't post links because youtube is run by the guys Orwell warned us about.
So google "Reddit Two collided bullets from the Battle of Gallipoli, 1915-1916" to find the pic.
But then I saw it wasn't actually real.
Google: "lead stories Fact Check: Viral Image Does NOT Show Two Bullets That 'Collided' During Battle Of Gallipoli"
first I thought he is taking about that bullet scene only...
I haven't seen any analysis on it but everytime I saw a photo of those bullets, I assumed it was far more likely one bullet hit a clip/box of bullets and got stuck in one.
But, considering the timing involved, I do think you're right about the odds of two bullets hitting with perpendicular paths being extremely low. Though, I think the odds of them fusing would be increased, as far less momentum will be transferred (assuming lower is better).
If you look closely at that picture. One bullet had rifling marks, the other does not, indicating that one was never shot. Still pretty cool non the less.
it would be easier to try and hit two arrows perpendicular.
19:00 19:57 20:28 Bullet Hitting Bullet.
21:57 best one
Thanks for saving time.
Thank you
@@EmSki45 imagine not watching the whole video XD
Destin, have you thought about contacting a material specialist to figure out the conditions needed to get the bullets to mushroom and fuse instead of crystalizing and shattering?
Need old lead, no alloying additives like antimony and calcium, all added to make the lead a harder alloy. Old lead has a lot of silver in it, along with zinc, which makes for a soft alloy that will readily bond with cold welding.
@@SeanBZA that's so cool! Any source I can learn more about this?
@@SeanBZA In addition the older bullets will definitely be going slower
Much softer lead would be a much better choice.
No you just need old bullets…. The new bullets are made with a different type of alloy you don’t need a specialist to figure that out…
22:02 The one where the bullet actually STOPS! 😮
The safety design stuff for this was nice to see, I'd honestly like a breakdown of everything that goes into a project like this to make sure there aren't any surprises.
"Get smart people in your life who love you enough to smile and tell you you're wrong." Great comment! Great video! Thanks, Destin. You do a great job of educating in an engaging and delightful way.
That's much harder to accomplish than Destin makes it sound.
I audibly "Wow!"ed at 22:02. Getting to see how physics works through slow motion is awe inspiring. Thank you for your incredible work in getting this footage and sharing it with us!
thanks for the timestamp
It was like time stopped for that tiny part of the universe where those bullets met.
If you watched Mythbusters, they did the conservation of momentum trick where the truck moves one way while a ball is shot in the opposite direction at an equal but opposite velocity to the truck, and managed to get a shot where the ball literally did not move horizontally at all before dropping vertically.
This is literally on the same level of physics demonstration awesomeness.
thank you for not having to watch that whole 20 minutes
Energy in that shot is insane.
I've started watching this channel because of the fun and enthusiasm you bring. Great job.
I love that you all took such a meticulous approach to safety. Getting multiple folks to review and make corrections even though you already know so much.
When the two bullets hit and froze in the air, I immediately got chills. This is incredible! Love your videos! Thank you for all the amazing content!
That was a Loony Toon moment. It didn’t know what hit em
They actually defeated gravity for a ms, that's crazy
@@karlbee7836 I was thinking the mass was shifting from forward motion into a spin motion so that's probably why?
Bullets HITTING Bullets in Slow Motion - THE IMPOSSIBLE SHOT - Smarter Every Day 287
Extremely difficult to achieve. So many variables to overcome, from gun precision to mass of bullet.
I immediately love the term "intellectual humility".
I usually think of it as being dispassionate about knowledge, but I think your term describes it better.
Definitely using that term in the future.
True Engineers love it when people find problems to help improve. If only everyone had this mentality.
Modern cast lead projectiles typically have antimony in them, which increases the "hardness" of the bullet (this makes for a better hunting bullet). You can make 100% lead projectiles using a bullet casting tool, check with some of your reloading buddies and find out who is rolling their own (so to speak). They can probably easily hook you up.
Pure lead bullets will require to clean the barrel after each shot as they will fill the rifling and lead to inconsistent ballistics.
I also wonder if the bullets would fuse better with a bigger caliber.
Last but not least, the offset of the barrels is making the fusing more difficult, but the only option to protect the guns would be for each one to shoot through the hole of a rotating disk. It’s quite difficult to synch, but a good challenge for perfectionists!
@@tde1964 you can avoid them shooting each other by a longer flight distance, allowing drop to handle the matter for you, but also increasing the precision of the build to allow much greater precision in adjusting the aim to cover the greater range.
That said, one wouldn't have to clean the barrel after each shot, but they'd need much more frequent cleaning. One can offset the higher velocity and fouling issue by using a slightly larger bore. Lower friction and cutting by the rifling, gas leakage lowering pressure and hence, velocity, downside is lower accuracy. Chroming the barrel also would lower fouling.
This exactly! Need 100 percent lead bullets for any chance of fusion. And if velocities are low enough, leading in the barrel won’t be an issue.
What is the "hardness"?
@@georgegordonbrown9522Think of it like the "brittleness" during impact. Softer bullets would be less brittle so less prone to shattering.
Other youtube channels tend to skip the safety and usually sum it up for the viewer, rightfully so as the attention span of humans would not want to continue watching. Although I can't say quite what you did, I can say that you managed to show a lot of key elements and points about your safety. I think its amazing that you're able to not only make for a great entertaining video, but also teach us about the process
As an engineering student, your videos are right up my alley. But as a playful person, the enthusiasm you exude throughout the scientific process is everything! Thank you for sharing as always, Destin.
Engineering classes need to be presented like this haha, not redoing pages and pages of multivariable calculus by hand.
Incredible photography guys. Thanks so much for posting.
Your videos are truly a special sort. I love the details about proper methodology and safety, I love that juvenile excitement and enthusiasm you bring, and I love the way you communicate all of it.
Also, nice shoes!
Between the frames of 22:00 and 22:03 right before the bullets meet, the forward momentum force causes a dent on the round. You can see it slowly forming right as they get close to each other.
Thanks for helping me not have to watch a 35 minute long video just to see it
That's insane
Thanks for the timestamp, I don't need half an hour of buildup for that
The "forward momentum force"? It's a shadow that changes as the light angle changes.
I think is just a reflexion
You did Missile Flight test on the Javelin Missile system?? That is awesome! I am an Electro Optical Ordnance Repairer in the Marine Corps and have been doing it for 10years. I personally would love to see a video of you talking and explaining all the Missile flight experiences you have had!
Well..... Classified, hah
@@ryanj610 *cool official voice* "thats classified" lmao
i know this is over a year old, and things are constantly improving,... but filming the screen outdoors with the live footage, or well, just recorded in super slo mo "live"i meant,.... its not like youre in the frame for us to see your reaction, its literally just a really bad bootleg style version of whats awesome raw footage.
that aside, thank you for so many awesome and informative AND entertaining videos Desty.
Cheers cobber ;-)
Man, the sound production is excellent. Really adds to the slow-motion shots in particular.
Yeah, it is quite a craft to create/simulate sound to fit with existing video
It is really more an art form
@@gewuerzgurkeev "Rad cello playing, making you feel things" in the subtitles really got me :)
I feel like I was smiling the entire video...the joy that you get from your work is contagious!
Could you try and catch the bullets in a medium just as they meet. You could try to use a slab of ballistic gel that you can cut down to vary the length, therefore controlling how much the bullets slow down before impact. It could have an added bonus of catching the fragments mid explosion like what you did with the prince ruperts drops.
BG does affect the path of the bullet. That's adding yet another level of complication on top of the existing ones. Not the right way.
@@aserta Very true! although from other videos I've seen bullets don't seem to deviate from their course too much, especially since the gel won't need to be too thick just a couple of centimetres - enough to just slow the bullets, not stop them.
I'm thinking of the fusion of the bullets that caused this project, is it possible they collided in a medium of some sort? A wooden wall, a tree, something like that? The fusion in the wallet suggests that quite loudly to me. I KNOW someone knows more than I do on this matter. Is it known where/how the original fused bullets were found?
@@MicahScottPnD pretty sure they used softer (more pure?) led back in the day and those muzzle loaders shot a lot slower than modern guns (they didn't have the tolerances to have a good seal and the black powder wwas pretty course and unrefined.). Add to that some distance and you'd have two pretty slow soft things that could merge. The odds of that happening are insanely small though...
Your theory is also a possibility but I would expect them to still be stuck inside that medium if that happened.
I want to see them hit a block of epoxy that's about 95% cured... I want to see the shockwave captured.
I'm glad there are crazy people like you, doing crazy experiments to inform and entertain crazy people like me.
This has been the first video to literally make my jaw drop in years, the bullets hitting and stopping midair looked like real magic
That was AMAZING
Destin, the first thing I thought was that civil war era bullets were almost pure lead, which has a brinell hardness of around 5.
Most bullet manufacturers are producing rounds with a brinell hardness of around 18-22. This makes them much more brittle.
I have some pure lead laying around and could cast you some bullets with varying hardness if you would like to test that out.
2 things to consider. Modern lead bullets have other metals added to make them harder then normal lead. May try getting pure lead and casting your own bullets. Also try using actual black powder or black powder substitute instead of smokeless powder. Black powder has a significantly slower burner time which will reduce velocity while still having enough gas expansion to get the projectile to clear the barrel. These are 2 things worth considering and experimenting with
Also, the civil war mini balls that fused were fired at each other across a much longer distance
To get the same effect at test range, the propellant load has to be far lighter than a standard round
“May try getting pure lead and casting your own bullets.”
????????????????????????????????????????????????????
black powder or black powder substitute instead of smokeless powder. Black powder has a significantly slower burner time which will reduce velocity
OKAY you got me i thought this was the other way around whit black powder being the faster burning a simple tert i did sort of proves this one unless you get different powder over there compared to over here Cheers
@@wallbawden5511well, unconfined, black powder burns way faster. But that of course, doesn't apply here.
@@wallbawden5511maybe i worded that wrong. What I'm trying to say is that its well known that smokeless powder pushes a bullet way faster, but the burn rate out in the open is black powder burns faster, a lot faster.
loved the part about the safety measures! obviously because they keep you alive! but also because of the way you approach it! great role model for stuff like this!
26:32
You're welcome!
well... "thanks", but it's actually 21:55... :P
make this pinned!
Absolutely brilliant Destin! I don't think most people can understand what it took to get these results. You and your team have done what seemed to be impossible until now. Congratulations!
It’s amazing to think that those soldiers were probably shooting at each other at the EXACT same time, and likely saved each other’s lives!
I’ve always wanted to re-create this phenomenon, thanks for doing it!!
Except.....
There probably was a follow up shot...
I find it more interesting that because the loads for each shot would be inconsistent, they didn't shoot at the exact same time, but at just the right time for it to happen. Like doing two things at the same time is cool, but having the exact right amount of delay is cooler.
It's very likely they didn't save each other's life. They likely shot each other on the follow up shot or by someone else
@lukesfxwhen you have hundreds of dudes standing in an open field facing off in a firing line, you'll get this happening eventually for sure. The crazy part is they were able to find the lead balls after it happened.
Yeah except on a civil war battlefield soldiers were usually ordered to fire in volleys. With large units of men trading volleys this probably happened more than a few times. It may have stopped those particular bullets but I doubt it kept them out of danger for long.
21:55 I think about this shot a lot. One of the coolest visuals of physics I’ve ever seen
22:25 is so clean that it looks like its going into a mirror, amazing
I greatly appreciate that you spent so much time showing the safety measures in this. Used to see people injured every month or so in R&D, even doing things that weren't "inherently" dangerous. I love the work here, but I must admit to a great enjoyment seeing the safety measures feature so prominently here.
Love that 2 of your buddies helped build rig and establish safety procedures and left for safety. Those guys are keepers.
I really only came here for the safety measures too. I was prepared to flag this video, but seeing those measures satisfied me... only just barely though.
The safety measures are necessitated by an absurdly over-engineered setup.
This is a one-month basement or garage project.
I like Destin's vids, but what the heck is really going on here? Is he doing a didactic presentation on how an engineering work-group should be realized? He should save that for the genuinely big projects, like supersonic colliding baseballs with schlieren imaging, etc.
@@-danR A one-month garage project for someone not doing other projects full-time, maybe; yet, a garage project wouldn't have the precision necessary for doing this with a high speed camera either. Higher FPS requires a smaller frame, so more precise work required. More precise work, more precise safety. What he's done here can't quite be used as R&D work at a professional level, but it's quite close.
Had he wanted a simple project, I suspect he could have done it, but it wouldn't have turned into something useful, or a video like this.
Glad you included all the misses and near misses, they were fascinating in their own right. Reminded me of those renderings of planets colliding.
I thought the same thing! The only thing missing is gravity pulling some of it back together
Excellent research in ballistics and high speed photography