Penetrating Power of BBs

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis is that the BB gun will be the best because of it's small heavy projectiles that will keep its momentum all the way through the apple. The paintballs from the paintball gun will just splat because of it's soft inside. The plastic BB’s from the airsoft gun are too light and wont go all the way into the apple.

QUESTION/PROBLEM

During this test I wanted to figure out which projectile and “gun” would do the best at penetrating an apple and why. My three are a cheap paintball gun from walmart, a G&G arp9 airsoft gun that shoots small 20g plastic BB’s, or a BB gun that shoots brass bbs. I also want to know why i got my end results so I can figure out how to better my experiment if I were to do it again.

PROCEDURE

1. I will first get all of my supplies and setup the apple 15 ft away.

2. Next i will start testing by shooting each apple 3 times with different projectiles.

3. Next, when i am all finished with the firing test i will cut the apple and measure how much i cut off once i get to the projectile.

4. When i have all the measurements i will average them out.

5. Based on the results i will make a bar graph to show how well each has done.

6. After that i will measure the volume of the hole in the apple.

7. Based on that i will make a graph.

8. I will average both results and determine which is better.

ABSTRACT

In this project i wanted to figure out which projectile and “gun” does the most damage to an apple and why, the data I have measures the depth of the holes. The three that i tested were, a g&g arp9 airsoft gun with .20 gram plastic bb’s, a cheap co2 paintball gun from walmart that shoots normal paintballs, and a Daisy model 10 bb gun, that shoots copper bb’s. My hypothesis is that the bb gun will do the best because it has small heavy more dense projectiles that will keep their momentum and go completely through the apple.

My procedure was mostly simple. First i went to Shoprite to get all of the apples and took them into my backyard. I put one apple on the wooden stool and i shot with the airsoft gun two times, but, it jammed because it was freezing out and the mag froze a little. This was fixed by just simply by warming it back up. I proceeded to shoot but this time with the bb gun. This had no problems. Then i shot with the paintball gun and this was the interesting part. It exploded the apple because of its weight. The diameter of the hole was 2in wide.

But at the end, my hypothesis was incorrect. Airsoft shot, 1 ¼ in, 1 ¼ in, 1 ¾ in, into the apple, the bb gun shot, 2 ¼ in, 2 ½ in, 2 ¾ in, into the apple, and my paintball gun shot a hole all the way through the apple with a diameter of 2 in. So in conclusion the paintball gun was wayyyyy better.

I can improve this experiment by making all the guns have similar fps rates so one does not have an advantage over the other. The paintball gun shoots at around 250 fps, the airsoft around 380 fps, and the bb gun somewhere in the low 400’s. So if all of them shot at 300 i would get better results.