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Physics From American Sniper

csoup88

Entry posted by csoup88

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Having read the book, American Sniper, I was excited as anyone when the movie came out and many people have now become interested in the story of the most deadly American Sniper ever.

I thought about some of what he does in the book and realized how much his shooting has to do with physics as he accounts for the different changes in elevation, wind and even temperature to where his bullet lands. In the book he goes to a special school where they teach him much of the science behind landing the shot perfectly.

SO why not apply just some simple physics to one of the most ridiculous shots Chris Kyle ever took, that was one that was about 1.3 miles away from his target or around 1920 meters for us physics nerds. How far exactly then would the bullet just drop from such a distance?

Well at the time he was firing a .338 Lapua Magnum slug which weighs about 200 grams and has a muzzle velocity of 1,005 meters per second. By some simple calculations we can see that over the distance of 1920 meters just from the force of gravity the bullet would have fallen 17.9 meters!!!!

Lets take a look,

The bullet would have taken 1.91 seconds to reach the distance of 1,920 meters,

1920/1005 = 1.91

Then plugging into y = vt + (1/2)at^2 we get y to be 17.9 meters.

SO before compensating for any other factors, Chris Kyle would have had to shoot about 17.9 meters high just for the bullet to land somewhere around the target, which is quite crazy to me. Guess it's a good thing he knew his physics though!

Picture from toprightnews.com

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