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The inside of a gun barrel has spiraling grooves, known as rifling, cut into it. Over longer distances, though, a bullet's path is much more complicated due to several forces. In fact, over very short distances, bullets do more or less follow a straight path. If you shoot a gun at a target several yards away, it's easy to think of bullets traveling in a straight line. To put that in perspective, it's amazing to realize that bullets travel over twice the speed of sound! That's equivalent to over 1,800 miles per hour. The fastest bullets travel more than 2,600 feet per second. When bullets fly through the air, they do so at amazing speeds. When the bullet leaves the end of the barrel, all the pressure of the explosions is released suddenly, resulting in the loud sound you know as gunfire. These explosions that power the bullet occur inside the small gun barrel. The propellant chemicals burn at a steady rate, building up lots of gas pressure very quickly in order to push the bullet metal down the gun barrel and through the air to the target. This, in turn, ignites the propellant, which is the main explosive that takes up about two thirds of a typical bullet's volume. When a gun's trigger is pulled, a spring mechanism pushes the firing pin into the back of the bullet, where it ignites a small explosive in the primer. The primer, sometimes called the percussion cap, is like the fuse. Did you realize that they're designed a bit like fireworks? Most bullets consist of three basic parts: the primer, the propellant, and the bullet metal itself. And, of course, you would get to places quickly, since you would be faster than a speeding bullet!īut exactly how fast is that? If you've ever seen a bullet shot from a gun, either in real life or in the movies, you know that bullets move so fast that they can't really be seen with the naked eye.īefore we get to the numbers, let's first take a look at what's inside a bullet. Have you ever wished you were Superman? Wouldn't it be cool to be more powerful than a locomotive? It would be so easy to travel if you could leap tall buildings in a single bound.