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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,

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Speaker 1: can you explain the diameter measurements used in bullets? Bullets

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Speaker 1: come in a variety of different calibers. The caliber indicates

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Speaker 1: the diameter of the bullet. Some common calibers include two caliber,

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Speaker 1: thirty eight caliber, forty four caliber. For example, you've probably

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Speaker 1: heard of a twenty two caliber rifle. In all these cases,

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Speaker 1: the caliber number indicates the diameter of the bullet in inches,

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Speaker 1: So a caliber bullet is a quarter of an inch

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Speaker 1: in diameter. Words like magnum like a forty four magnum,

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Speaker 1: or special like a thirty eight special imply that a

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Speaker 1: higher energy powder is used with that bullet. Then there's

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Speaker 1: shotgun shells. The gauge numbers for a shotgun, for example

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Speaker 1: of gauge or fourteen gauge indicate the size of the shells.

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Speaker 1: If you were to make lead balls, the diameter of

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Speaker 1: the gun barrel. How many balls would it take to

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Speaker 1: make a pound of lead. If it's twelve balls, it's

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Speaker 1: a twelve gage shotgun. If it's fourteen balls in a

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Speaker 1: pound of lead, then that's a fourteen gage shotgun that's

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Speaker 1: about as weird as units get. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, because it how stuff works.

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Speaker 1: Dot com