Product: Weapon: Bounce
Ballammo   (+3, -2)  [vote for, against]
You're down to your last bullet...

...there is still a control room full of bad guys to dispatch and double oh six is nowhere to be seen, luckily Q has given you his latest gadget to try out if you get the chance.
Well here it is.
Loading the single round you've had cunningly concealed as a cuff link, you aim for the half inch gap beneath the closed door.

After discharging the weapon you walk calmly towards your escape route, a momentary backward glance reveals the mayhem ensuing as Q's super ball slug ricochetes seemingly ad infinitum off of walls, control panels, and bad guys alike.
You estimate that you've got about twenty minutes before you can safely re-enter the room. More than enough time to deal with Miss Tress.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 29 2005

SuperBallGun SBG SuperBallGun_20SBG
[xaviergisz, Mar 29 2005]

Silly Putty Cannon Ball http://www.sunbelt-...ware.com/stu/putty/
Video for [2 fries] [Guncrazy, Mar 29 2005]

Although the image is amusing, the science is bad. Sorry.
-- 5th Earth, Mar 29 2005


How come 5th Earth?

I missed SuperBallGun, where'd it go?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 29 2005


[2 fries] The science is bad because the ball will impart momentum, and therefore lose energy, every time it bounces off something (leaving aside the materials science for the time being) so will reduce in velocity very rapidly - statistically it will lose 25% of its energy per contact, so the series will go 100% energy, 75% energy, 56% , 42% etc. Of course, you could have a couple of right angle collisions in the first few impacts which would take off almost half the energy each time (100%, 51%, 26% ). Pretty quickly your bullet will reach an energy state where brownian motion of the surrounding atmosphere will exceed the ball's momentum and it will stop.

Suggest 006 pratices knee trembling.
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Mar 29 2005


Ah, I see. If it doesn't hit an immovable object it loses bounce. Hmmm, Quick question then if you don't mind?
Would a slug made of a dilatant, like silly putty, bonce once, then shatter into fragments which would each then bounce once before shattering etc.?
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 29 2005


Assuming a dilatant slug could be successfully made, stored and fired - such a slug would pulverise itself at the first impact, tiny droplets then flying away from the impact and rapidly slowing.

Suggested improvement to the ballammo - the OrangeSegment Flechetteballammo - a thousand tiny wedges of super rubber, shaped into a ball. The inner edges are exceedingly sharp. Watch the mayhem unfold when this baby breaks up into a thousand supersonic bouncy flechettes after the first impact.
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Mar 29 2005


Why not do what those suicidal terrists do? You know, glue a bunch of nails, fragments of metal, or sharp objects to a bomb, and blow yourself (and others) up with it? Only just a bomb and not people.
-- EvilPickels, Mar 29 2005


The only way I can see of doing something like this is to have something akin to the reactive armour the old Russian tanks used (actually, I might have made it up, not sure): a ball coated in lots of little explosive caps, which detonate on impact. Every time it hits a wall, one of these explodes, giving it extra impetus .

Since there is no science here, even bad science, fishbone for you.
-- moomintroll, Mar 29 2005


The projectile bounces only twice.
Once from the floor under the door, once off of the far wall where it smashes through the glass cover protecting the auto self destruct button. Having saved the world yet again the scene flashes ahead to our intrepid hero's kitchen where Connie Lingus and her best friend Mona Jetwah anxiously await the steaming bowls of vishiswa he is carrying.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 29 2005


[moomintroll] you're not making it up. How 'bout a bouncy hand grenade? Would be a whole lot harder to catch and throw back one of these babies, given that it won't stop bouncing.
-- david_scothern, Mar 29 2005


Cool link. Thanks.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 29 2005


I disagree with the //bad science// call here: assuming Bond-tech, we can surely have a rubber ball with several thousand micro-pellets of explosive that detonate one at a time every time the ball bounces, or with some other power input source, to keep the momentum going.
-- sninctown, Sep 29 2009


//I disagree with the //bad science// call here: assuming Bond-tech,[...]//

[marked-for-tagline]
-- loonquawl, Sep 30 2009



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