A heavier paintball

[mr_cool2588]

I don't know if this should be here or in the tech forum, so if I am wrong please move it for me.

Anyway I have been thinking and I think that a heavier paintball would have more momentum and travel farther. If you know anything about this let me know.


BTW I have set up a test that I am going to run tommarow

[eric]

Well I would think it might go as far, but It'd go slower, and be much less likely to break. And the reason that 300 fps was chosen was because of the ammount of force it puts out, any faster or heavier and it can damage skin and joints permenantly.

[pbguy888]

Not sure if you have thought of this... But it will also take more energy to get it up to speed. So hurt consistency.

[Evil Bob]

In the 80's we had heavier paint, the fill was oil based and much denser and more painful then today's paint and near impossible to wash out of anything.

I for one do not wish to return to the days of pain.

-Evil Bob

[sniper1rfa]

sure, common knowledge. in fact, there is a legal wieght limit for paintballs (3-something grams, i think). somebody used to market their paint as the heaviest in the industry, back in the day.

[HoppysMag]

Originally posted by eric
Well I would think it might go as far, but It'd go slower, and be much less likely to break. And the reason that 300 fps was chosen was because of the ammount of force it puts out, any faster or heavier and it can damage skin and joints permenantly.

the ball is going to stay in the air X amount of time time it takes for gravity to pull it down... IE shot from a hieght of 9.8m's the ball will stay in the air for 1 second , so then when you add foreward speed to it then you get range so at 300fps and the balls in the air for one second, how far will it go? thats right 300feet. range will change with any change in firing hieght... (neglecting resistance and firing at 0 degree angle across a level plane)

a 30.06 and a .22 stay in the air the same length of time but the 30.06 covers more distance by going faster. same thing with a paintball ( yet again neglecting resistance and firing at 0 degree angle across a level plane)

the only way a heavyer paintball would affect anything is A) it would hurt more traveling at 300fps, and B) it would take more gas to get it to said speed.

[billmi]

Momentum is velocity times mass. Thus a heavier paintball at 300 fps will have more momentum (more energy of motion) than a lighter paintball. That means that it will take more time for air resistance to slow it down. Thus, it will be traveling at a faster speed at any given distance from the muzzle, and since d=rt, it's going to go further in the time it takes before it hits the ground than the slower lighter ball.

It is also going to hit "harder" at any given distance, having the higher momentum.

There are no laws governing the design or weight of a paintball, but the ASTM has published guidelines for a .68 cal paintball, and most manufacturers attempt to adhere to those guidelines, which include a mass limit for the paintball. If they don't already, expect the main companies insuring paintball fields to require that only paintballs complying to the ASTM standard are used.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills

[Mossman]

Originally posted by HoppysMag


the ball is going to stay in the air X amount of time time it takes for gravity to pull it down... IE shot from a hieght of 9.8m's the ball will stay in the air for 1 second , so then when you add foreward speed to it then you get range so at 300fps and the balls in the air for one second, how far will it go? thats right 300feet. range will change with any change in firing hieght... (neglecting resistance and firing at 0 degree angle across a level plane)

a 30.06 and a .22 stay in the air the same length of time but the 30.06 covers more distance by going faster. same thing with a paintball ( yet again neglecting resistance and firing at 0 degree angle across a level plane)

the only way a heavyer paintball would affect anything is A) it would hurt more traveling at 300fps, and B) it would take more gas to get it to said speed.

You said "neglecting resistance" but there is air resistance. A heavier object has more momentum and will cut the air better.

they will both fall at the same time, but it won't be at 300 feet. Just cause its going 300FPS over the chrono doesnt mean its still going 300fps 100 feet down field.

A heavier ball will fly farther. BTW i think it was nitroduck that marketted their paint as the heaviest possible?
not sure....

[ghideon]

I think Tom went over this once. It all boils down to momentum (mass * velocity). It's not neccesarily the mass that hurts, it's the momentum (it's not the volts, but the amps, etc). So, in order to meet safety regs, you can have a heavier paintball, but it needs to move slower. Likewise, you can have a lighter paintball that moves faster. I think I remember reading somewhere (it was Tom, I think) that the lighter paintballs didn't fly so well, and didn't always break.

[mr_cool2588]

If what hoppy said is true, about it going the same distance why don't we make paintballs lighter so they use less gas. Also contrary to what eric said if a heavier paintball was going at the same speed with the same shell it would have more energy and be more likely to break.

A law of physics states that the more mass an object has the more enegy it takes to accelerate it, but the more time it takes to deccelerate it. So the ball would stay at 300fps longer, carring more force, so I belive it would be far more likely to break.(and hurt more)

you would have to hit a heavy paintball pretty hard though and the shell would probly break in your gun a lot. So in essence the shell would have to be harder, meaning that the break easy theory is invalid.

[Mossman]

Not necessarily on the thicker shell thing.

Do you have a setting on your mag for how hard the bolt slams into the ball? The bolt cycles the same way regardless of what's in the breech, and I dont see why heavier paint with a similar shell would be more likely to break in the gun than lighter stuff.

Maybe if we were talking about paint 2x as heavy as standard paint now, but from "Light" to "heavy" paint is probably a variation of like 30% max.

[athomas]

The air friction has a big effect on the ability of a ball to maintain a straight tragectory in the air. The air friction essentially pushes against the ball forcing it to slow down. The amount of air friction encountered is directly related to the size, shape and speed of the object.

Now take a paintball. It is 68 cal in size. It starts from the barrel of the gun at 300 fps. A heavier paintball takes more energy to achieve that 300 fps than a lighter paintball. That energy is contained within the moving paintball in the form of kinetic energy. Therefore the heavier paintball will have more energy than the lighter ball and the energy is directly related to (mass X velocity).

As soon as a paintball exits the barrel, it begins its deceleration because of air friction and such. Due to the size of the paintball and its surface characteristics the force applied to the paintball is directly proportional to the square of the velocity. The resulting force on the paintball is the kinetic energy minus the frictional forces. When these forces are equal, the painball stops going forward. The frictional forces are consistent no matter what the mass of the paintball as long as the paintballs are the same size and material. That being said, if a paintball is heavier, it will take more time for the frictional forces to bring it to a stop and the trajectory will be slightly flatter because of the maintained velocity.

People are concerned about the increased impact of a heavier ball. Every foot away from the gun, the ball slows and loses some of its energy. Even a heavier ball hitting a target at 20 ft will have much less energy remaining than a lighter ball hitting at 15 feet. The shell of the ball still requires a certainamount of energy to break. There is a better chance of the ball breaking if the fill inside is heavier because the energy of the ball is maintained longer.

This is a hard subject to explain and I hope I haven't left out any important information that may make it even harder to understand.

[HoppysMag]

Originally posted by Mossman


You said "neglecting resistance" but there is air resistance. A heavier object has more momentum and will cut the air better.

they will both fall at the same time, but it won't be at 300 feet. Just cause its going 300FPS over the chrono doesnt mean its still going 300fps 100 feet down field.

A heavier ball will fly farther. BTW i think it was nitroduck that marketted their paint as the heaviest possible?
not sure....

um yes they will both fall at 300 feet NEGLECTING RESISTANCE. in case you cant tell i chose to leave out real world variables in an attempt to make it all simple... i know base physics, so dont try to tell me other wise...but once you start introducing resistance and forces you loose people...

and if you did make a heavyer ball all you are going to do is cause the speed to drop to a point where a normal ball at 300fps has X number of joules and the new heavyer ball flys at <300fps to meet X joules

[billmi]

um yes they will both fall at 300 feet NEGLECTING RESISTANCE. in case you cant tell i chose to leave out real world variables in an attempt to make it all simple...


Which is why your statement does not realistically reflect what paintballs do in the real world.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills

[mr_cool2588]

the ball is going to stay in the air X amount of time time it takes for gravity to pull it down... IE shot from a hieght of 9.8m's the ball will stay in the air for 1 second , so then when you add foreward speed to it then you get range so at 300fps and the balls in the air for one second, how far will it go? thats right 300feet.

The gravity point is very valid, but a law of physics says that an object with more mass requires more force (Air) to accelerate, and takes more time (distance) to decellerate. Basically what it is saying is that if two balls have been fired at the same speed(300 fps), one weighing more than the other. The lighter of the two paintballs will decellerate faster. So, say half a second after the balls were fired the heavier ball will still be moving closer to 300 fps because it did not decellerate as fast. So it will be ahead of the lighter ball. Like hoppy said both balls will decend at 9.8meters per second (Squared), so both will hit the ground at the same time but since the heavier ball held its speed longer it has traveled farther, and will land ahead of the other ball.

Then again I was never really great at applying physics so please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.

[joeyjoe367]

If you read the "Spinning Paintballs" thread, then you'd also know that heavier paintballs would most likely be more accurate too.

Vortex-Shredding would have less effect on an object that has more momentum/weight.

[Bront]

In addition to wind resistance issues, a hevier ball will aslo not be effected as much by wind so it will be more accurate under those circumstances as well.

I've writen an article on the range of paintballs, and yes, a hevier paintball will go further. However, there isn't a lot of play in the weight they are manufactured any more, and with good reason. So it's a pretty dead issue anyway.

[joeyjoe367]

IF the entire industry switched gears (doubt it) and went to a heavy 5 gram ball, as opposed to our current 1g ball i belive, and fields lowered chronograph speeds accordingly, we would all be able to maintain range, but with more accuracy, I believe.

of course, with the industry geared the way it is, it'd be VERY difficult, if not impossible for this to happen.