The Physics of Bullets: Why a Modern Gun Shoots 10 Times Farther Than its 19th Century Counterpart
Old smoothbore guns, which were loaded with bullets that looked more like balls than torpedoes, had an effective range of about sixty yards. A relatively small engineering change, which took its lead from physics, increased the range tenfold. What could make anything work that much better? Military guns in the Victorian era had long barrels,…
