Bullets hitting ground at same time?

I used to do this experiment in my lab with the O level/GCSE kids.

I called it the "Monkey and the Hunter" problem.

A hunter fires a gun horizontally at an intelligent monkey in a tree. The clever monkey lets go of the branch when it sees the gun has fired. Does it get hit?

Well I rigged up the demonstration firing a marble through a light gate - which released a "monkey" from an electromagnet - and you've guessed it - the monkey gets hit every time!

Why? Horizontal and vertical velocities are independent. No matter how fast the bullet is fired horizontally - it still falls at the same rate with the pull of gravity. Both bullets fall the same distance vertically so they both have the same air resistance. So the answer is = both bullets hit the ground at the same time ( but not in the same place of course. )

Honestly, f42 answer is spot on. You have to split the motion of every single object into horizontal and vertical. So, a bullet fired forwards, and one dropped straight down will both have different horizontal motions. The bullet fired will have a large horizontal fator, as it's moving fast. The one dropped straight down will have 0 horizontal motion (well, unless the person dropping it knocks it orward slightly). However, both have IDENTICAL vertical motions. Both are being pulled down at exactly the same rate by gravity. So yes, theoretically, both will hit the ground at the same time. Yes, it seems counter-intuitive, as the fired bulletis flying forwards, and it's easy to think that thissomehow "slows" down how quickly it drops, but of course it doesn't.

The answer to your question - ignoring any local effects of climate, bullet shape etc etc - is yes.

If the fired bullet travels only a short distance then both bullets hit the ground at the same time. However, if the fired bullet travels far enough, because the earth is round, it curves away from it. (Remember Newton's first law of motion: moving objects tend to travel in a straight line.) Since the fired bullet has farther to fall, it takes longer to hit the earth, so the dropped bullet hits the ground first.

What's more, if the fired bullet travels fast enough (roughly five miles per second — a practical impossibility given atmospheric friction, but never mind), it goes into orbit around the earth and never hits the ground at all.

The time it takes them to hit the ground is the time it takes each to drop h metres, where h is the bullet's height above the ground.

Assuming both bullets start at the same height, the bullets hit the ground at the same time because at every moment while they are falling, they have the exact same "falling" speed.

If we analyse just the vertical motion of each bullet, we can tell that they are identical. Though the horizontal speeds are different, horizontal speed does not affect the time to hit the ground. If there were no gravity, both bullets would never hit the ground. The bullets hit the ground because gravity increases their downward velocity.

On Earth, gravity causes all objects to accelerate downward at 9.8 m/s² meaning after every second of falling (in the absence of air resistance), the object's speed will increase by 9.8 m/s in the downward direction.

Throughout the "race", both bullets speed up at the exact same rate, so at every moment in the race, they have the same vertical speed. If two runners have the same speed at every moment throughout a race, they will finish at the same time. So the bullets will hit the ground at the same time.

I don't know physics, but I would guess that a bullet shot horizontally would travel for a second or two before dropping. If you knew the distance that the horizontal bullet would travel, and dropped the other bullet from the same height, you might find that they drop in the same moment. But if you stood on a long flat space, say a runway, and shot a bullet horizontally from your shoulder height, and at the same moment dropped a bullet from shoulder height, the one you dropped would hit the ground far faster than the shot bullet.

In vaccum and straight land yes. But because earth is curved and the prescence of air can rig that. The turbulence can keep the bullet in the air for a long time before the acceleration of free fall sets in. So the dropped one should touch the ground first.

Regardless of the many *expert* theories, in practice it will depend on the weight of the bullet, the shape of the bullet, the rate of twist in the rifling, and the muzzle velocity. Aerodynamics come into play.

The bullet being dropped has little resistance, but the bullet that has been fired and spinning, has both gravitational resistance (if it didn't here would be no such thing as escape velocity) and aerodynamic lift. Mass would not normally be involved in gravitational pull, but it has to do with the rate at which the projectile's spin rate decays. While that spinning projectile maintains high velocity it has a degree of lift, like an aircraft wing (if it is a full jacket - a wadcutter or other non-aerodynamic shape doesn't have that advantage).

I am a keen photographer, and some years ago became involved in a project to photograph bullets in flight. We were in a remote area and were firing across the length of a lake toward a cliff. The process, very much experimental, took quite a lot of time and a good number of test firings. We were using two rifles, fired by electronic controlled solenoid. One thing that was immediately obvious was the fact that there was a notable difference in the rate of drop, they impacted with the water surface at different times, one splash followed by a second.

No, they do not hit the ground together.

Yes. This is what determines the range of a gun.....how far it can fire a bullet in the time it would take for a bullet to drop to the ground from the same height.

Actually they should hit the ground both at the same time, if the bullet was shot exactly parallel to the ground. This is because the vertical component never changes, if we ignore air resistance.

Theoretically yes, but there are many factors to consider in reality.

Air resistance will obviously have an effect, as it will be difference for the 2 bullets. Secondly, the Earth is curved, which means if the fired bullet travels a significant distance it will take longer to hit the ground.