A Proposition to Tom

[nippinout]

Hello all,

From the AO chat, I have come up with a test that I would like Tom Kaye and company to perform.

I hypothesize that a heated paintball will have a flatter trajectory and travel further than a cooled paintball.

A heated paintball will warm the air surrounding it, so as it is traveling through the air, it will make the air less dense. Less density will lessen air resistance on the paintball.

Less air resistance = flatter trajectory, and greater distance.

By how much this will affect range I don't know, it may even be negligible.

I propose that Tom tests heated nylon balls and nylon balls cooled in a bath of liquid nitrogen (Or any other gas he thinks is cool. AHAHHAHAHA :) ) Both balls should exit an unported barrel at 300fps at the muzzle.

The balls should be placed in the breech and fired immediately with time between shots to allow for the gun to reach ambient temperature.

(I don't know the properties of the nylon AGD is using, so maybe another medium will be required.)

Well? Whadayathink? (Please no flames... I'm familiar with physics and this is not sayint whether or not a heated ball travels further. It is merely a hypothesis and test proposal.)

Let's go hunting for elves!

***Flame suit on*** No pun intended :)

[mykroft]

It will be negligible. There is not nearly enough time for the heat to transfer to the surrounding air before the paint passes though it. Remember that the paint is traveling at roughly 200mph.

[JanStah]

Yeah. What he said.

If you think about it, people use airflow to cool things down, generally not to heat things up... (ie a fan is used to cool CPUs by blowing air over them, whereas a hot oven is usually a static mass of air with very little movement.) Air is generally a very bad conductor of heat.

A better test would be to get an indoor shooting range and some industrial space heaters and then conduct paintball range tests while gradually raising the temperature of the air.

That'll tell you if warmer air increases range or not.

Jan.

[314159]

from the title of the thread, i thought it would contain something totally different. ;)

most of the stuff you freeze with liquid nitrogen, and wack real good, shatters real nice. i wouldn't want to be anywhere near what the marker is hitting.

most things when you heat/cool will contract/expand. well i suppose that you could make em different diamaters so that they will be the same size after the heat is applied, but then you are stuck with a different problem. they will have different masses, and the heavier one will without a doubt go farther. so in addition to making the projectiles different sizes, the would need to be different densities so that they would weigh the same, and be the same size after the temperature change was applied.

on the other hand, you could view the expieriment as an approximation, and say that the size and density won't play a major role, and look for a significant difference between the two. after all, if the difference isn't substantial, no one will care for a liquid nitrogen cooled hopper/ or heated hopper.

personally, i would have been happy with just asking tom to bring some candy to his booth at iao ;)

[Pand0ra]

That this should go in deep blue.

I'm not sure it's a very good idea to shoot a nylon paintball when it's near the fusion. I don't want to be on the other side... :rolleyes:

Moreover as someone said, you won't heat enough the air. And even if you do it, I doubt it'll be of any help to travel further.
The surface of the ball will very quickly reach the temperature of the air. It's not a good heat conductor.

@++

[Thordic]

Originally posted by 314159
most things when you heat/cool will contract/expand. they will have different masses, and the heavier one will without a doubt go farther. so in addition to making the projectiles different sizes, the would need to be different densities so that they would weigh the same, and be the same size after the temperature change was applied.

Uhm, if you are trying to say what I think you are saying, I think we should refer you back to Physics 101.

Applying heat or cold will change the volume slightly, yes. The density will change slightly as well. So you are correct there. But the mass is the same. You can't change the mass unless you are adding or subtracting mass, and heat and cold don't do that.

Thats like saying that 8 cubic feet of air is lighter/heavier depending on how much size it takes up. I use 8 cubic feet because thats the volume of a 68/3K paintball tank :) The air in your paintball tank weighs the same whether its compressed or not.


But as for the temperature thing, first off, the projectile would cool down rapidly due to the fact that nylon won't hold a high temperature, and even if you brought it near the point where it softened, it wouldn't hold that temperature long enough to make a difference.

Maybe if you were shooting balls of molten iron you'd see a difference, but even then the speed at which you are moving doesn't give you much of a chance to affect the air around the ball.

A heated room test would be much better. Everyone, lets head out to the crematorium! ;)

[Butterfingers]

At 300 FPS there is no time for heat exchange. Even with heat exchange the effects will be negligable. The results will be the same given a standard deviation.

[314159]

Originally posted by Thordic
Applying heat or cold will change the volume slightly, yes. The density will change slightly as well. So you are correct there. But the mass is the same. You can't change the mass unless you are adding or subtracting mass, and heat and cold don't do that.


you missed part of it, you have 2 identical balls, if you heat something so it expands, and you cool something it contracts...

so if you have 2 balls of different sizes, of the same weight, going the same speed, the smaller one will go further because it has less wind resistance.

so you need to have 2 materials, with different densities, so they are the same mass,density and size after they have been heated or cooled. this leaves the only varabile the tempature of the ball




Originally posted by Thordic
Uhm, if you are trying to say what I think you are saying, I think we should refer you back to Physics 101.


yay, physics for dummies =P

[314159]

after getting 2 and a half hours of sleep....

i said mass, meant density.....

things sometimes come out wrong when you are tired/dislexic....

(it was right in my head, even though i might not be right in my head) ;)

[nippinout]

How about we change the velocity to something where the ball would stay aloft alonger.

Pyrex paintballs. Wouldn't change size with application of heat. (I boiled some water in lab once and thought it was a pyrex beaker. I poured out the water and dunked it in cold water. Oops, it was glass.)

We don't necessarily have to fire in the same conditions as real paintball. We're simply testing to see if heated paintballs travel further. Or we could just play more mind games. :)

I'm with the candy. Tom, I won't be there, but bring some candy to IAO. :)

[TransMan]

Well i say we pu small lasers in the nylon balls so the can heat up the air around them and also melt things. :D

Wasnt trying to be a smart *** or anything .... umm ok so maybe i was what you gonna do about it.

[marc]

For an indoor place to try it out at we could go to country club paintball its in glenwood IL.

[kemikos]

Hah, yes, I can see it now...

Marc: "Hi, we're trying to test out some theories about paintball ballistics. Can we use your target range?"
CCP Manager: "Uh, sure..."
Marc: "OK, we'll need to raise the ambient temperature by about a hundred degrees. How high does your thermostat go?"
CCP Manager: "... Umm..."

;)

[AGD]

SOrry but this is not Deep Blue material, thread closed.

AGD