MythBusters Bullet Fired Dropped
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange answerers and commenters link it as a real-world demonstration that a fired bullet falls just as fast as a dropped one, in questions about bullet trajectories and floating bullets.
Recommended by 3 people across 3 different months, 2011 to 2017.
What it is
A short MythBusters clip, reposted with a Portuguese description, in which Adam and Jamie test whether a bullet fired horizontally and a bullet dropped from the same height hit the ground at the same time. They run it with a real gun for what the description says was the first time, and the two land together.
What people said
Strong rec Topper Harley · 2012-11 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to have a floating bullet in the air?”
That is a f.. awesome video! Found it here: [this video] Thanks a LOT David! I've been wondering this for ages :) (@dmckee maybe you could add it to your answer?)
Recommends Mark Eichenlaub · 2011-04 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Is the speed of a person falling down different if doing a forward somersault during the fall?”
The person hits the ground at the same speed in both scenarios. Once you're in the air, you fall towards the ground with a constant acceleration of about 10 m/s^2. Everything falls the same way - rocks, cannonballs, people - regardless of size or somersaulting. There may be some small effects from air resistance, but not enough to be noticeable. The sommersaulter may also land with a different orientation so that his center of mass falls a further distance. Then he could hit the ground with slightly higher speed. But basically, everything falls the same way. Check out this Youtube video [LINK] of a feather and hammer falling simultaneously on the moon, which shows that heavy and light object
Recommends Floris · 2017-07 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “How does gravity affect bullets?”
I ran into this problem on Quora recently [LINK] , and decided I would post an expanded version of the answer I gave there, here. It is a common misconception that the vertical drag force only depends on the vertical velocity: but in the case of quadratic drag, this is not so. A simple diagram explains this: [LINK] I sketch here two objects, with same vertical velocity but different horizontal velocities - such that their total velocity is $v$ and $2v$ respectively. The drag force in both cases points along the direction of the velocity vector, but in one case it is 4x larger than in the other case. As a result, the vertical component of the drag force is different - even though the vertical
Cites dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten · 2012-11 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to have a floating bullet in the air?”
"You'll agree that if you shoot in an open field, the bullet will stay at the same altitude for several seconds No, we wouldn't. In fact we do a demo (often called 'shoot the monkey') [LINK] in introductory classes that shows unambiguously that it falls very much as if you had held it at arms length and dropped it. As noted in the comments the Mythbusters guys actually ran the experiment with a bullet [this video] .