Hurumph!

[Jay]

OK! I accept that the majority of the board lean towards the Pirate camp. However as a life long Ninja I feel that, in this world of equal opportunities that I should KILL ALL PIRATES IN THIER ALCO-MA-HOLIC SLEEP! Err... I mean have the option for Ninja stuff on the smilies.
:soap:

[Plunder Down-Under]

*gives Jay rum*

Arr?

[Ecchi_Kitty]

....what exactly makes you think Pirates sleep?

Sometimes we just lie still to lull you into a false sence of security..... :skull:


....but to be fair, some ninja icons wouldn't be bad.

[kitty!]

This ninja nonsense goes against my Pastafarian leanings.

[Ecchi_Kitty]

...wait, are you Orthodox Pastafinarian, or MidWestern UnOrthodox Pastafinarian?

As Fleet Admiral of the MWUOCP, I can assure you, we support the Pirate Ninja Alliance.

DOWN WITH THE MONKEY COWBOYS!!

http://www.splitreason.com/Product_Images/63949208ff49.jpg

[kitty!]

But I am allied with the Cowboys...the make awesome boots and hats...

[Big Otis Landfish]

Bah, you can have my city then, particularly during early July. :P


kitty!'s Pastafarian-ish?

[kitty!]

very ish; I'm only in it for the pirate-y goodness

[Ecchi_Kitty]

Regular cowboys are okay. After all, I live in the Mid-West, used to have my own horse....

It's just monkey cowboys.... and monkey cowboy presidents in particular, taht we must stand against...

[Big Otis Landfish]

very ish; I'm only in it for the pirate-y goodness

Oh ho... well, there are other options besides Pastafarianism for that, you know. I came 'round the other way, and took up being pirate-ish for the sake of the FSM, but didn't stick with that (heh, fun while it lasted - I was the False Prophet of Pastafarianism... there HAD to be a bad ending).

But I'm more piratey than ever via the Toadfish... more details as they develop.

[kitty!]

well, pirate-y goodness and overwhelming silly seriousness

[Big Otis Landfish]

You should swing by the Monastery some time, then. ;)


(yeah, I preach the Panties over there, too... many fans because of it, although not so much in the forum here).

[Jay]

...wait, are you Orthodox Pastafinarian, or MidWestern UnOrthodox Pastafinarian?

As Fleet Admiral of the MWUOCP, I can assure you, we support the Pirate Ninja Alliance.

DOWN WITH THE MONKEY COWBOYS!!

http://www.splitreason.com/Product_Images/63949208ff49.jpg

Hold on what about Flying Ninja Monkeys? for or against?

[Ecchi_Kitty]

Mmm, sorta neutral on that one.... tend to be an independant bunch, so depends on who they're working for.

[Farler]

I prefer my flying monkeys to be associated with witches, not with ninjas or pirates.

Now Ive been a ninja pirate from the get go, I even penned the paper "robin hood the worlds first ninja pirate" back when It was uncool to belong to either camp, you know back when kids were playing poor people and their opressors, or white guys in chaps and hats and innocent natives who will lose their lives and culture. My favourite was playing young idealists who do not fully understand what they are fighting for nor the geopolitical situations and ramifications of their actions... with nerf guns.

[Mike Taylor]

The only flying monkeys NOT in my crosshairs are Jennie's. I'd shoot my own, but he's so stone drunk that it wouldn't be a challenge.

[Farler]

The only flying monkeys NOT in my crosshairs are Jennie's. I'd shoot my own, but he's so stone drunk that it wouldn't be a challenge.

WOULDN'T be a challenge? Ever try to shoot a bird that's eaten rotten fruit? the fruit ferments and the birds that eat it get drunk and they don't fly straight so it's nearly impossible to hit 'em.

[Plunder Down-Under]

But drunk stoned flying monkeys forget they can fly, and walk

And occasionally(forget to) breathe

[Mike Taylor]

WOULDN'T be a challenge? Ever try to shoot a bird that's eaten rotten fruit? the fruit ferments and the birds that eat it get drunk and they don't fly straight so it's nearly impossible to hit 'em.

Minion just lays wherever he passed out until he sobers up.

[Farler]

That's not drunk though, that's passed out. It's easy to shoot anything that's passed out.

[Plunder Down-Under]

Not if its on the other side of the world

[Farler]

*fires off a few rounds* Im sure by the time they get there plunder will be asleep

[Plunder Down-Under]

Or moved far enough out of the way they kill someone else

Its common knowledge bullets never lose their momentum!

[Farler]

Or moved far enough out of the way they kill someone else

Its common knowledge bullets never lose their momentum!

EXACTLY! any phycisist with a php will tell you that.

[Crazeyal]

Or moved far enough out of the way they kill someone else

Its common knowledge bullets never lose their momentum!
EXACTLY! any phycisist with a php will tell you that.

Uh..

An object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force. An object in motion continues in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
This law is often called "the law of inertia".

Bullets lose momentum from the time they are fired. They are acted upon by gravity, air pressure and anything they move through. Shooting straight up is very stupid, because the pull of gravity is not enough to lower the force to non lethal by the time it returns to earth.

If they NEVER lost momentum, we'd be ducking musket balls!!!

AND IT'S PHD:lol:

[Big Otis Landfish]

Shooting straight up is very stupid, because the pull of gravity is not enough to lower the force to non lethal by the time it returns to earth.

If they NEVER lost momentum, we'd be ducking musket balls!!!

AND IT'S PHD:lol:


While we're getting picky... gravity is enough to bring a bullet shot straight up to a complete stop. And then drag it down again fast enough to be going close to muzzle velocity, minus energy losses due to air friction, when it returns to earth. Frictional losses aren't particularly large, being that bullets are meant to move through air without too much resistance.

This should be intuitive, but it's not. The concept was amazing to me the first time I took kinematics.

Bonus questions: Does a bullet shot straight up from a rifled barrel retain rotational momentum as it passes through the apex of its flight path? Will a pointed-tip bullet of uniform composition fall pointed-end or butt-end first after it reaches the apex?

[Crazeyal]

Two words

Myth BUSTERS.

[Leffy]

a bullet can't go completely straight up can it? wouldn't various levels of wind alter how "straight" that original path was?

[Big Otis Landfish]

a bullet can't go completely straight up can it? wouldn't various levels of wind alter how "straight" that original path was?

Physics works in funny little vacuum worlds. Not a problem. ;)

Ayuh, though, the likelihood of a shot-up bullet hitting the gunman are pretty low.


I knew Mythbusters did something on this, but did they cover the rotational and tumbling aspects?

[Leffy]

darn those vaccuum theories

[Mike Taylor]

darn those vaccuum theories

They suck!

[Plunder Down-Under]

Crazeyal roll todtect sarcasm, Sarcasm detection roll failed

:p

[Sehson]

Physics works in funny little vacuum worlds. Not a problem. ;)

Ayuh, though, the likelihood of a shot-up bullet hitting the gunman are pretty low.


I knew Mythbusters did something on this, but did they cover the rotational and tumbling aspects?


A bullet shot strait up will reach terminal velocity before it returns to earth and because of its low mass it is not lethal if hit by it.

However if the bullet is shot at an angle( ther is probly a minimum angle from verticle )for this to be true it will retain muzzle velocity its entire arc and maintain lethality as it descends. This has been proven by various mysterious gunshot reports over the years. One documented lethal case the gun man was 2 miles away trying to shoot squirells. The bullet struck a woman in the head killing her instantly.

*** this info is from mythbusters...

I want my own mythtern Carry

[Crazeyal]

Crazeyal roll todtect sarcasm, Sarcasm detection roll failed

:p
Nah.. I just like to throw some learnin in every now and then.. Throws you guys for a loop when I'm not acting like an Animainiac. :al:

[Big Otis Landfish]

However if the bullet is shot at an angle( ther is probly a minimum angle from verticle )for this to be true it will retain muzzle velocity its entire arc and maintain lethality as it descends. This has been proven by various mysterious gunshot reports over the years. One documented lethal case the gun man was 2 miles away trying to shoot squirells. The bullet struck a woman in the head killing her instantly.

This suggests rifling is a factor, and that vertically shot bullets tumble on the way down. For a similar length of flight path, air resistance will actually be greater for the low-altitude flight path (probably a negligible difference, though).

Ach... damnit... now I'm going to have to figure out from muzzle velocity and grain weight how long/how far a vertically shot bullet will go... If a bullet is shot at greater than its terminal velocity in air, won't that slow it down FAST? I understand that AR-modified gravitational effects might not be able to accelerate the thing downwards enough to be lethal at terminal velocity, but I'd like to know how long a bullet shot horizontally in a gravity-free air environment would take to decelerate to the same speed as the falling bullet's terminal velocity. I do know that bullets shot at the horizontal fall out of the air well before they stop moving, but.....

[Sehson]

I believe bullets fall out of the air well before they stop moving because gravity/ the grounds tendancey to not be level is greater the air friction. :dp:

[Big Otis Landfish]

I believe bullets fall out of the air well before they stop moving because gravity/ the grounds tendancey to not be level is greater the air friction. :dp:

Yah, that 9.80665 is a bitch.... and takes a pretty big cliff to keep a horizontal shot going for very long. Might be neat to see how much energy one could add to a bullet by shooting off a cliff and having it hit the target as its vertical velocity hits terminal (while maintaining most of it's MV).

[Sehson]

which way is the target? Below the shooter?

If so the bullet is already accelerated beyond the natural terminal velocity and would not reach it for an extremely long distance for air resistance to impede the travel.... (near bottom less pit anyone)

now if your talking horizontal and letting gravity pull the bullet towards a verticle decent.... Yea also a long ways... Have fun with the math on that one....

[Big Otis Landfish]

now if your talking horizontal and letting gravity pull the bullet towards a verticle decent.... Yea also a long ways... Have fun with the math on that one....

Well.... like this... the math should be simple except I don't have the foggiest on how to correct for air friction anymore (actually, could figure it out prolly, but where to find the proper coefficients for a bullet?).


Shooter ----> .
--------------------------.
--------------------------------
---------------------------------------- .
---------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------- .
-------------------------------------------------------- .
------------------------------------------------------------.
--------------------------------------------------------------- .
------------------------------------------------------------------ Target
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The dz would be equal to the distance needed for the bullet to hit terminal velocity in a freefall, and the dx would be however far a bullet could travel horizontally in the time needed for the drop.

The question is, as you point out, that the bullet is already going faster than terminal velocity when it leaves the muzzle, so would the vertical acceleration experienced by the bullet dropping actually add to the bullet's total momentum? If it does, then the bullet is accelerating even though it's going faster than freefall terminal velocity.... and if it's not adding to the total momentum, then WTF?

Breaking it into vectors makes it seem pretty straightforward.... vz increases until terminal velocity is hit, and vx is only reduced by the effects of air friction, so not much... It's got to increase the momentum of the bullet.

[Plunder Down-Under]

And they said pirates were dumb!

[Big Otis Landfish]

Hah... pirates need to know ballistics. Now, if we can figure out how to keep the recoil from snapping the mast when we shoot the cannons from the crow's nest, we'll have better ship-smashing power because of our ol' buddy 9.8....



(meh, this is high school physics; buddies and I spent most of physic sketching designs for pyrotechnic devices while the teacher explained things to the rest of the class.... again....)

[Farler]

see now I was trying to think up something clever to say when someone asked what a php stood for. Thankfully Al completely shredded the spirit of the joke, and while it was lying on the floor bleeding to death trying to crawl away he shot it in the head.

Also there is no way to calibrate a canon to allow it to fire from the crows nest since the canon would always be too powerful. Not to mention how you would get it up there in the first place. You would have to shrink the canon considerably and still maintain a good sized cannonball to create a hole big enough that the opposing ship would take on the desired amount of water to sink it.

However if you COULD do it your ship would pretty much fuck over everything on the water since you would easily be able to fire down through the hull of the opposing ship. Hell it would be the equivalent of air support.

Of course we're pirates though, and sinking the ship is not ussually the intention, rather we would want to dammage the ship enough that the crew would stop fighting but not so much that the ship would sink and rob us of that sweet european gold. Alternatively you could dammage the crew enough that they no longer fight, either because they are disheartened or dead.

With the second option in mind placing a man with a composite bow in the crows nest would work rather well as sniper support as a musket would not have the desired range (nor could it be shot pointing down) also a longbow would probably be too awkward to fire from the crows nest although it would give better range and a crossbow would be too slow on the reload.



(also Im still working from the robin hood was a ninja pirate and my hero angle so Im all for bows being used whenever possible)

[Seolta]

(meh, this is high school physics; buddies and I spent most of physic sketching designs for pyrotechnic devices while the teacher explained things to the rest of the class.... again....)

I spent much of highschool physics in the back corner quoting Monty Python with a friend and working out the Theory of How Good Magician Humphrey is Related to Damn Near Everyone. And occasionally trying to remember which acceleration formulae were for calculus, and which for physics(guess what's a bad combo to have as your first- and second-period classes). Oh, and every now and then making plans to take over the world...we even announced our intent on the whiteboard one day before anyone(including the teacher) came in, used pseudonyms, and the teacher took one look at it and said, "You two wrote this, didn't you?"

(also Im still working from the robin hood was a ninja pirate and my hero angle so Im all for bows being used whenever possible)

If you're headed to Dragon*Con, stop by the British Media Track around lunchtime on Friday...there's a panel on Robin Hood(mostly the new BBC Series, but we may discuss other versions as well).

[Ecchi_Kitty]

(meh, this is high school physics; buddies and I spent most of physic sketching designs for pyrotechnic devices while the teacher explained things to the rest of the class.... again....)

My friend and I sat in the back of the class and read. Occasionally we'd glance up, look over the formula's on the board, and usually tell the professor what he was doing wrong. Smart guy, wonderful chemist, not so hot with physics.

As to terminal velocity, if you look really close, you'll find that an object never reaches a velocity V. Rather, it approaches V, then enters an approaching sine wave function around V. Velocity increases, thus air friction increases, velocity slows, air friction decreases, velocity increases, etc etc. Toss in that air density is non constant, nor is it likely the air is still. Then add extra fun of altering your gravitational effect as a function of distance to the center of the Earth's mass, a distance which is also changeing....

[Sehson]

Well.... like this... the math should be simple except I don't have the foggiest on how to correct for air friction anymore (actually, could figure it out prolly, but where to find the proper coefficients for a bullet?).



well the simplest way would be to find the drop for distance.

IE a drop of 1"/500' That would give you a base starting point but as we both know the drop is going to increase exponentially over time creating an arc. so the hard part will be finding the exponential ratio for the increasing drop versus distance. Being that the object is initiallmy moving at greater then terminal velocity and you are looking for the distance point where the arc has a verticle ratio of 100 and horizontal ratio of 0 Air friction would be only a minor factor in the initial equations. Once the base equation is found for an optimal frictionless arc. Then it can be modified by the air resistance equations seeing as caliber and wind velocity would all come into play in a real world experiment down the line.

And yea this would be highschool if you dealt with everything in the frictionless environs... once you start getting into the air densities and that you start into the more advance physics and calc stuff. Me I hate physics cause its all boring math... which is why I really hated nuclear physics and chem.

Is anyones brain hurty yet.... :dp:

[Big Otis Landfish]

Hmm... dx is easy enough.... dx=-4.9t^2

Terminal velocity...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/6/e/3/6e306f943fc864e7ee41a1b3a7f16172.png

One thing I forgot was that for objects of a similar shape and composition, terminal velocity will be greater for a large object than a small one, since volume and mass go up much quicker than the cross-sectional area.

So short of running all the math (was going to attempt for a cannonball), the quick answer is that shooting flat off a cliff would make a relatively insignificant difference to impact momentum for a bullet, but would be quite significant for a cannonball, and the bigger the better.


As to terminal velocity, if you look really close, you'll find that an object never reaches a velocity V. Rather, it approaches V, then enters an approaching sine wave function around V. Velocity increases, thus air friction increases, velocity slows, air friction decreases, velocity increases, etc etc. Toss in that air density is non constant, nor is it likely the air is still. Then add extra fun of altering your gravitational effect as a function of distance to the center of the Earth's mass, a distance which is also changeing....

Not really concerned with hitting exact terminal velocity... I guess the short version of this question is:
"If a cannon is shot horizontally off a cliff of infinite height, at what position (x and z) is the maximum kinetic energy reached?"

So you may not even be looking for terminal velocity, although I suspect it'd be somewhere close.


@Farler: Battery-towers for cannon have been built on land, so it's reasonable to think that one could be placed on a ship. It'd probably require so many ship modifications that it'd be impractical, though. Might work if all cannons were pointed fore and aft, because you'd likely capsize if you tried a broadside with that much leverage. The tower would be vulnerable to cannon-fire as well, so you'd better be good enough to subdue your foe from a distance.

[Farler]

@Farler: Battery-towers for cannon have been built on land, so it's reasonable to think that one could be placed on a ship. It'd probably require so many ship modifications that it'd be impractical, though. Might work if all cannons were pointed fore and aft, because you'd likely capsize if you tried a broadside with that much leverage. The tower would be vulnerable to cannon-fire as well, so you'd better be good enough to subdue your foe from a distance.

Well see we're working on land based Ideas on a ship from all fronts here, even my Archer in the crow's nest is based on the time honoured strategy of archer's firing from the crenelations of a castle. Not to mention that you'd have to be good enough with a bow to hit specific moving targets, such as the captain, the first mate, the helmsman, all while your ship is being rocked by the ocean and canonfire.

[Leffy]

i can't even remember basic algebra. my brain has crumbled into dust. thank you for pointing out my lack of mental capability.

[Big Otis Landfish]

Not to mention that you'd have to be good enough with a bow to hit specific moving targets, such as the captain, the first mate, the helmsman, all while your ship is being rocked by the ocean and canonfire.

Yeah, I've been at the top of the mast on a sailing ship (and not a pirate-size ship either), and you go through some serious swings up there. Presumably you wouldn't be sailing while in battle, but it'd still be a tough shot.

A big slingshot and molotovs might work though... but again, it's CAPTURE, not BURN TO A SHELL. You'd need some pumps to put the blaze out again.

Hmmm... maybe some chlorine-gas jars. Probably within the grasp of alchemy at the time, and could be done up safe enough to slingshot.

[Crazeyal]

... thank you for pointing out my lack of mental capability.

That's just close proximity to a toddler!

[Crazeyal]

Hmmm... maybe some chlorine-gas jars. Probably within the grasp of alchemy at the time, and could be done up safe enough to slingshot.Pfft

You have to think like a GAMER. Use what's around. Set up a free Bratwurst and Chilli stand and then launch garfalk onto the ship!:lol:

[Ecchi_Kitty]

I'm pretty sure there's a law against that in the Pirate code, after The Bratwurst Incident of '94...

....poor little Johnny.... he never stood a chance... :d(:

[Sehson]

i can't even remember basic algebra. my brain has crumbled into dust. thank you for pointing out my lack of mental capability.

the secret to math is its all just algebra, they just call it different things to make it more confusing

[Plunder Down-Under]

That's just close proximity to a toddler!
And it'll all come back when she's in highschool asking for help with homework

[Big Otis Landfish]

OK! I accept that the majority of the board lean towards the Pirate camp. However as a life long Ninja I feel that, in this world of equal opportunities that I should KILL ALL PIRATES IN THIER ALCO-MA-HOLIC SLEEP! Err... I mean have the option for Ninja stuff on the smilies.
:soap:

YO JAY..... BRING THE NINJA MATH! ALCO-MA-HOL SHARPENS UP THE BRAIN BONE!

http://coloreddiamond.info/Smileys/classic/pirate-capin.gif

:dgrin: