“When a rifle shoots a bullet, Newton’s Third Law says that the force that the rifle exerts on the bullet is exactly the same size as the force that the bullet exerts on the rifle – yet the bullet gets a much greater acceleration than the rifle.

3rd class levers are the most common levers, why? Although we use 3rd class levers more than any others in the human body, they in fact offer no mechanical advantage thus, regardless of where you apply the force, the force you apply must always be greater than the force of the load.

The momentum imparted to the bullet by the gun is what makes a gun able to do so much damage. The momentum of an object equals its mass times its velocity. The momentum of an object, and therefore its ability to cause destruction, can be increased by making the object more massive or by making it go faster.

Well, as mentioned earlier, a bullet is powered by a tremendous amount of pressure at its back, which propels it forward. Therefore, after the bullet exits the barrel, the pressure of the explosion (that occurred in the back) is suddenly released. This is the reason there’s such a loud BANG when you fire.

Bullets touch the inside of the gun’s barrel during normal operation. There’s rifling inside the barrel that’s supposed to impart spin on the bullet. So the barrel rubs grooves in the bullet (this is how CSI can match a bullet to a gun) but the softer bullet does little damage to the gun.

In addition to there being no sound in space, there is also no oxygen, which is required to create and sustain any kind of fire. Modern guns, however, have their own internal oxidizers, chemicals that ignite the gunpowder and fire the bullet.

Recorded gunshot signals consist of two major waveforms of interests, the muzzle blast, originated from the rapid combustion of gunpowder, and the ballistic shock wave produced by the bullet if traveling at supersonic speed (Maher, 2013).