Howdy Al.
I'm assuming that at this point, you and Bill are thinking I've hit my head pretty hard. I'll be honest and say I thought through all of this that Vibe was actually trying to trick me with some hidden misnomer and that he really knew all along I was right and he was wrong. Then he just skirted my questions to make me attempt to find a new way to ask the same thing.
Well, that wasn't the case. He genuinely was giving me all the info I needed, I just wasn't catching it. Kinda like trying to explain something that's beyond the understanding of a persons math, and they can't grasp what is being said. Yes, it's all there. No I could not see it.
Here's the mistakes I made that make this difficult to understand.
First. I tried to use simple numbers like 3k fps. Then used assumptions on that which were rough estimates good enough for our purpose. Things like, MV = 3000fps, and then bullet travels 3000'. These two assumptions were contradictory when considering real world physics.
YES, we HAVE to have acceleration (accurately) and time in barrel (accurately). Without these, the vast majority of the work number is lost or at least bogus.
Think like this. We cannot propel a bullet to 3000 fps, and then have it travel ONLY 3000' in one second. It would have to hit something at the 3000' point to stop it.
When we define work, it is timeless. It is only pounds over feet. The work is against gravity. Trouble is, if you do that work in such a time that gravity can't stop the bullet at the 3000' point, then the bullet still contains energy. That energy needs accounted for. I was ignoring that energy.
Vibe did somewhere tell a rough estimate of how far the bullet would travel straight up, in a lossless atmosphere and all that. It was 26.6 miles I think. Don't quote me there but 26.x for sure. So, if we take 26.6*5280=140448 feet. Now, we have 4213 ft lbs of energy (potential, if it falls back to earth) 140448*.03=4213. THIS is the total energy if we want to "cheat" as I did and use how far it will go to calculate ft/lbs. See, we have to remove the "per sec" from the results and that can't be done while the bullet is still moving or contains energy.
Think of it like this.
Kinetic energy is inside the bullet because it's moving at some velocity and has mass. Mass x V^2 = kinetic energy.
Potential energy is how far above the ground the bullet is times how much it weighs. Weight x distance = potential energy.
As the bullet travels skyward, it looses kinetic energy, and gains a potential energy. All of that muzzle energy needs accounted for if we expect to come up with a horsepower number.
Weight includes gravity. Mass does not. That's why mass needs V squared... What confused me is that he was separating the two calculations or doing it all as MV^2 and that threw me for a loop. (using the two methods depending upon my questions)
If we expect to use feet traveled to estimate how much energy is in a bullet as I was doing, then we have to WAIT longer than the 1 second for nature (gravity) to pull all that Kinetic energy out of the bullet, and replace it with Potential energy (height above the ground). When the bullet reaches 26.6 miles, then we can say pounds times feet = foot pounds. Until it stops, we still have seconds in there!
That is where I was making my mistake. I wasn't letting the bullet come to rest. Vibe and I were not on the same wavelength with why he was so damn interested in the residual energy. It was I who was wrong on that and was blind to not see the other energy was in there. Funny part was, I can remember thinking really early on about how the physics did not work on the 3000 feet lift, and blindly just accepting that as gravity is already in there and that's it.
So, when the bullet gets launched, and we decide to stop pulling energy out at 3000 feet high, we need to also consider how much higher that bullet is gonna go.
