I'm baffled by the number of people who still believe...

[jtvang125]

Not that I would want anybody to be hit by a bullet unless they're some scumbag criminal. But Hollywood has really brainwashed the minds of their audiences. Despite many attempts to prove that this common misconception is false many people still insist that it's still possible.

One example that had me laughing was someone who was explaining why a lady in a movie flew back almost 5 feet and hit a wall with a force as if she was pushed into it when shot in the torso region with a high caliber revolver. He said that since she was shot in the stomach area her stomach and other internal organs slowed down the bullet to a stop and thus transferring all the force in the bullet onto her body.:laugh:

So when people go flying back in movies when shot please remember that it's only for dramatic effect.

 

[spaceghost21]

Uh.... what? What drove you write up this semi rant?

 

[cessna152]

Movies lie?!

 

[Heisenberg]

Conservation of momentum > Hollywood

 

[BigJ]

Depends if by bullet, you mean battering ram 😉

 

[jtvang125]

Originally posted by: spaceghost21
Uh.... what? What drove you write up this semi rant?

Reading discussions about movies on IMDB.🙂

 

[Howard]

I bet if you got hit with a 120mm AP shell you'd go flying back.

 

[SSP]

Originally posted by: Howard
I bet if you got hit with a 120mm AP shell you'd go flying back.

nuh uh! i bet i could take it.

 

[mundane]

There's one scene in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, where Banderas is wielding a sawed-off shotgun. Someone it either leaping or falling towards him, helped along by gravity. Antonio fires his gun, and the attacker's downward momentum is stopped and he actually flies _up_ and away. It looked great.

 

[Ika]

a 12-gauge would probably send you flying. not sure if you can call that a bullet, though...

 

[dullard]

The momentum you stop when you are hit with the bullet is the same magnitude of the momentum the person firing the bullet felt.

So if the person firing the bullet didn't fly back 5 feet from the momentum, then the person being hit won't fly back 5 feet form the momentum. This of course assumes roughly equal body mass. If you are the size of a pixie, disregard this post.

 

[IAteYourMother]

This is why I hate CS.

 

[Thraxen]

Mythbusters had an episode about this subject.

 

[jonessoda]

Originally posted by: Aflac
a 12-gauge would probably send you flying. not sure if you can call that a bullet, though...

Nope.

Ever seen a duck hit with one? They pretty much just drop. Or, to be fair, let's say deer, since birdshot's not too effective against people (doesn't have the momentum to do much damage at anything but close range; yes, Cheney's hunting partner was at real close range) but buckshot and slugs are. They get hit, they either drop or, if they're still alive, run away and you have to track them until they die.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: dullard
The momentum you stop when you are hit with the bullet is the same magnitude of the momentum the person firing the bullet felt.

So if the person firing the bullet didn't fly back 5 feet from the momentum, then the person being hit won't fly back 5 feet form the momentum. This of course assumes roughly equal body mass. If you are the size of a pixie, disregard this post.

Also depends on balance, etc. The person firing the gun should be in a proper stance and is expecting the recoil. The person getting hit likely isn't. So for the person getting hit to be knocked over by the force of the bullet is believable. I've seen people nearly knocked on their ass firing a gun 😛

But picked up and thrown across the room hollywood style? Nope.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Well, duh. Of course it doesn't work in real life - they're not doing the proper Hollywood Gangsta sideways-shooting-over-the-head-while-pushing-the-gun-forwards-each-shot motion!

- M4H

 

[Czar]

Originally posted by: Aflac
a 12-gauge would probably send you flying. not sure if you can call that a bullet, though...

if that were true then tha shooter would have to withstand the same amount of force the one getting shot does

 

[jtvang125]

Originally posted by: Thraxen
Mythbusters had an episode about this subject.

Wasn't it the one where they hung a dead pig on a rope and shot it multiple pistols and rifles to see if it move? The outcome clearly showed that the pig did not even move an inch.

 

[cessna152]

http://www.theboxotruth.com/

 

[Queasy]

The Bruce Willis film, Last Man Standing, is a perfect example of this.

I was rolling over laughing when I saw guys flyback from shotgun blasts fired 20 yards from their target.

 

[BigJ]

Whenever someone is about to get shot, they are granted temporary superhuman animalistic reflexes. This allows them to change direction and try to run away. This happens so fast it appears to the naked eye that you're actually thrown backwards. I've been killed over 10,000 times and this has always been what happened to me.

 

[DrPizza]

<--- physics teacher

It's fun to play clips from movies toward the end of the year and have students point out what's wrong in them. It serves as a fun review of concepts. When the students notice right away what's wrong, I realize two things:
1. they really understand the correct physics concepts.
2. I just ruined movies for them. Rather than being entertained by many sequences, they'll now have their enjoyment interupted with constant realizations of how wrong they got the physics.

For what it's worth, the first few episodes of the original Star Trek actually went to great lengths to get some of the physics correct. Unfortunately, people didn't like it that spaceships didn't make noise as they traveled through space. If your worst complaint is people flying backwards, then maybe you should take a closer look at movies like the Core or The Day After Tomorrow... those pieces of crap probably set back science education in this country by a decade.

And Hollywood's not only bad at science... they screw up people's other perceptions of reality.

Question: What's it called when a stranger stops a pretty female from committing suicide, then within a day or so, is screwing her brains out in the back of a car? Answer: it's called taking advantage of an emotionally distraught person; aka sexual predator.
What does Hollywood call it? Titanic.

It's weird to think of it this way, but I wonder how many divorces have actually been caused by unrealistic expectations of what marriage should be like - expectations formed from Hollywood images?

 

[Thraxen]

Originally posted by: jtvang125

Originally posted by: Thraxen
Mythbusters had an episode about this subject.

Wasn't it the one where they hung a dead pig on a rope and shot it multiple pistols and rifles to see if it move? The outcome clearly showed that the pig did not even move an inch.

Yeah, even firing some full auto rifles at the pig didn't do anything. The pig was actually hung on a hook that was set so that it could easily fall off. They did knock it off with a deer slug fired from a shotgun, but the pig just fell straight down.

 

[Doboji]

Originally posted by: Howard
I bet if you got hit with a 120mm AP shell you'd go flying back.

That would only be only one of the many directions in which you would fly

 

[mundane]

Originally posted by: BigJ
Whenever someone is about to get shot, they are granted temporary superhuman animalistic reflexes. This allows them to change direction and try to run away. This happens so fast it appears to the naked eye that you're actually thrown backwards. I've been killed over 10,000 times and this has always been what happened to me.

Or they've borrowed some intertial dampening field generators from the USS Enterprise.