"nestork" wrote in message
...

There's been a lot of talk about guns in here lately, and there's
something I've always wondered about...
It just strikes me as odd. I'm thinking that the ratio of lengths
between a bullet in a rifle barrel and a shell in a cannon barrel would
probably be pretty similar. So, what accounts for the cannon having 20
times the range? Is it just that the gunpowder used in the cannon is 20
times as powerful as than that used in bullets, or is it that the shell
stays in it's barrel 20 times longer than a bullet and therefore
receives 20 times as much of a push?

It all has to do with the mass (weight) of the bullet. The battle ship guns
and rifles shoot the bullets at about the same speed. Simple example is to
take a ping pong ball and throw it. Then take a pool ball and throw it.
You can throw each one about the same speed. Because the pool ball is
heavier, it travels the most. You can also take a grain of sand and the
pool ball. This may be more of the relationship of the cannon and rifle.
The sand grain will not travel as far. It is too light. It is small enough
the air resistance is very much less than the pool ball so that takes the
air resistance out of the picture.

Hand gun bullets have about 1/3 the speed of the other bullets. This is
mainly because of the barrel length. Gunpowder can only burn so fast and
the gun can only take so much pressure. Even if the handgun could be made
strong enough to handle the pressusre, it would be so heavy that no one
would want to carry it around. It would also have so much recoil that it
would hirt too much to shoot it.