The reason I said that is that someone who uses the wrong terminology like you do means you have no expertise. There actually is a International society of ballistic engineers that have advanced degrees and spend their working life doing studies and tests and are peer reviewed. The science is very well established but there are boatloads of people with no actual training, no scientific reviewed studies, making up stuff on their own or in groups with pet ideas. And many post on here and make statements at length that demonstrate lack of basic knowledge in the field of ballistics, engineering or physics.. Your remark about energy transfer and Energy being meaningless show you have no knowledge of a scientific nature and have no knowledge of physics or ballistics at any formal level. Opinion is one thing, knowledge is very different.
The whole idea of energy transfer is a basic law of physics. it hasn't gone anywhere. Read your own signature and think about it.
It's almost comical that you would take my statements out of context and use it to discredit me and make yourself look smarter.
Of course kinetic energy is at work. If your reading comprehension was up to snuff, you'd read what I actually wrote. I didn't say that kinetic energy was not a factor or that it didn't exist. I said it was a meaningless number. Which is to say that the quantity of kinetic energy generated has no meaning in a discussion of terminal ballistics. The number used to quantify it has no bearing on the terminal effect of any cartridge. It tells us nothing useful. Why? As I've said a million times, on this forum and others, including conversations with YOU, it places far too much importance on velocity, too little on mass, zero on diameter and zero on bullet construction. Guys like you who think they know something about physics and come in here quoting the basic laws of physics and acting like a college professor are always the most fun. You think something you read in a book tells you everything about ballistics and for the most part it's true........from the composition of the cartridge's primer, powder and bullet, the detonation of the primer, the burning of the powder, the expansion of hot gases, the propulsion of the bullet and its flight through the atmosphere. However, when that bullet reaches a target made of flesh, blood, tissue, water and bone, all that crap goes out the window. It's a lot more abstract as things get a whole lot more complicated and variables come into play that cannot be accounted for. Further, it changes for every shot fired. If "basic physics" provided a way to quantify terminal effect on a living critter, we wouldn't be having this argument. If you think it can, then it's YOU whose knowledge is deficient. Yep, there are folks who spend their whole lives studying this very subject but if they had reached a consensus on how to quantify terminal effect, we wouldn't be having this argument. We also wouldn't be using energy to do it. Those who have the most to add to this conversation arre those who have actually done it. Rather than relying on physics we
ALL learned in high school.
The energy argument is an easy one to defeat, using basic examples.
A .22 centerfire varmint cartridge propelling a 55gr bullet at 3000fps produces 1099ft-lbs of energy.
A .45 handgun propelling a 250gr bullet at 900fps produces 450ft-lbs of energy.
Is the .22 more than twice as effective as the .45? No.
Can the .22 take animals more than twice the size as those taken with the .45? No, the reverse is true.
On deer-sized game, the .22 is going to leave a very large, yet very shallow and possibly superficial wound but it will transfer all of its energy to the target. The .45, on the other hand, will pass completely through the animal, punching through bone, vital organs and causing massive blood loss before it exits, expending the rest of its energy after it exits. If there is no way to measure or predict HOW the energy is used, how much contributes to wounding, how much is absorbed and how much is wasted, then the quantify we start with is irrelevant. Much of it does not contribute to wounding but is simply absorbed by the target. So again, how is it a useful number?
Same with the topic of this discussion, the .44 and .454. A 250gr .454 at 2000fps produces twice the energy of a 250gr .44 at 1400fps. The .454 is a lot faster but is it capable of taking larger game? No. Does it have twice the effect? No. So how is energy a useful number? It isn't. It's a tired old method useful only for marketing, originally used in the rifle market to sell faster cartridges and serves no useful purpose. It's an oversimplified answer to a very complicated question.
Once we take energy out of the discussion, we can have a more productive discussion and ask more important questions. With non-expanding bullets, we know that the meplat is what creates the wound channel. The larger the meplat, the larger the wound channel. However, you also lose penetration. So how do you quantify the difference between a .300" meplat that penetrates 10% further than a .345" meplat?
More on the subject of this thread, how much effect does velocity have on wound channel with non-expanding bullets? I can easily test for penetration and plan on doing so this spring. Wound channel is tougher to do. Is it worth the associated recoil, pressure and blast? We don't know. We don't have a formula for that and probably never will. The only useful formula is TKO and its only useful for comparing one big bore solid to another.
