Fact ...Did you know ?

[Hedgehog]

bullet fired horizontally from a gun, and a second bullet dropped by hand from the same height as the gun, will both hit the ground at the same time. The forward motion of an object has no effect on the pull of gravity.



Guns are neat little things, aren't they? They can kill extraordinary people with very little effort. JOHN W HINCKLEY JR (who failed to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981)

 

[zaraza]

bullet fired horizontally from a gun, and a second bullet dropped by hand from the same height as the gun, will both hit the ground at the same time. The forward motion of an object has no effect on the pull of gravity.

Actually that depends how fast is horizontall bullet and how far it will go. If it go far enough we will have to calculate curvature of Earth, so that bullet will travel little bit longer

 

[Hedgehog]

Actually that depends how fast is horizontall bullet and how far it will go. If it go far enough we will have to calculate curvature of Earth, so that bullet will travel little bit longer

I think this was aimed at small fire arms, having said that I think your theory would only apply to long range arms

 

[PoorOldSpike]

Yes, the earth's curvature can be ignored for small-arms ballistic trajectory calculations.
There's a neat little physics animation program here that let's us play around with velocities and stuff-

http://www.ngsir.netfirms.com/englishhtm/ThrowABall.htm

Here's a couple of screenshots from tests I set up.
In this top pic i simply let the weight drop straight down (blue dotted line), and it took 4.55 seconds to hit the ground-

But in this second test I gave it some forward horizontal velocity (red dotted line), and it took exactly the same 4.55 seconds to hit the ground even though it travelled 225.88 metres, just as Hedgehog predicted..

 

[Bootie]

I didnt know that... excellent.