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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com, where

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Speaker 1: smart happens brought to you by Pisa. We all have

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Speaker 1: things we like to think about. Online fraud shouldn't be

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Speaker 1: one of them, because with every purchase, Pisa prevents, detects,

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Speaker 1: and resolves online fraud safe Secure Pisa. Hi, Am Marshall,

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Speaker 1: Brain with today's question. How does a gun silencer work?

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Speaker 1: It's amazing that anything is able to silence a gun,

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Speaker 1: but gun silencers actually work on a very simple principle.

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Speaker 1: Imagine a balloon. If you pop a balloon with a pin,

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Speaker 1: it will make a loud noise, But if you were

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Speaker 1: to untie the end of the balloon and let the

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Speaker 1: air out slowly, it makes very little noise. This is

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Speaker 1: the basic idea behind a gun silencer. To fire a

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Speaker 1: bullet from a gun, gunpowder is ignited behind the bullet.

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Speaker 1: The gunpowder creates a high pressure pulse of hot gas.

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Speaker 1: The pressure of the gas forces the bullet down the

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Speaker 1: barrel of the gun. When the bullet exits the end

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Speaker 1: of the barrel, it is like uncorking a bottle. The

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Speaker 1: pressure behind the bullet is immense, however, on the order

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Speaker 1: of three thousand pounds per square inch, so the pop

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Speaker 1: that a gun makes as it's uncorked is extremely loud.

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Speaker 1: A silencer screws onto the end of the barrel and

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Speaker 1: has a huge volume compared to the barrel, twenty or

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Speaker 1: thirty times greater. With the silencer in place, the pressure

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Speaker 1: rise gas behind the bullet has a big space to

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Speaker 1: expand into, so the pressure of the hot gas falls significantly.

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Speaker 1: When the bullet finally exits through the hole in the silencer,

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Speaker 1: The pressure being uncorked is much much lower, perhaps sixty

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Speaker 1: p s i. Therefore, the sound of the gun firing

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Speaker 1: is much softer. Do you have any ideas or suggestions

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Speaker 1: for this podcast? If so, please send me an email

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Speaker 1: at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, go to how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.