Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
Speaker 1: it's Christian Seger. What if I take this imaginary gun
Speaker 1: that's in my hand and I fired it straight up
Speaker 1: into the air? Bang bang bang? Wow? What is going
Speaker 1: to happen to all these imaginary bullets? Well, the old
Speaker 1: saying what goes up must come down is an appropriate
Speaker 1: way to start off this conversation, because that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happens to straight bullets when they're fired up in the air.
Speaker 1: You know how crazy guns can be. If you shoot
Speaker 1: a gun up in the air, bullets are going to
Speaker 1: travel up to a mile high to bring on the
Speaker 1: angle of the shot and the power of the gun.
Speaker 1: And once it reaches a climax in the air, that
Speaker 1: bullet it's gonna fall. Now, air resistance limits its speed,
Speaker 1: but bullets are designed to be fairly aerodynamic, so the
Speaker 1: speed is still quite lethal if the bullet happens to
Speaker 1: hit someone. Now, if you're in rural areas and you're
Speaker 1: shooting guns out in the field, the chances of hitting
Speaker 1: someone they're pretty low because the number of people are
Speaker 1: also pretty low. But if you go to a crowded
Speaker 1: city someplace like I don't know, times square and you
Speaker 1: start shooting off a gun, well, hey, you're gonna get
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble and your chances of hitting
Speaker 1: someone is going to go up dramatically because well, the
Speaker 1: number of people around you have gone up as well.
Speaker 1: And the fact of the matter is that people do
Speaker 1: get killed quite often by stray bullets. Therefore, most major
Speaker 1: cities have laws in place to try to keep people
Speaker 1: from shooting guns in the air in celebration. So if
Speaker 1: you want to celebrate, I don't know, think of an
Speaker 1: alternative like high fiving or eating ice cream that's a
Speaker 1: safe thing to do. You can throw your spoon up
Speaker 1: in the air and it might hit someone in the head,
Speaker 1: but you know what, it won't kill them. Check out
Speaker 1: the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com.