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Originally Posted by ETD
Sorry, to be a wee bit slow, but...
Big Z, in your photo's, the magnums were NOT "bigger" but longer and all but the .22 had the metallic cap so that to a novice, those were the differences NOT the overwhelming size difference as in your photo's of the drinking containers. Or was that because of the loss of perspective in the photo's of the bullets and there IS really that much difference in size.
Paragon, that's what I was wondering. That is, the difference in projectile effectiveness has to do with the fact that there is that much more explosive material in the magnum bullets and not that they are longer and capped with some other metal (i.e. they needed to be longer to be able to hold more explosive force).
BTW, I figured that if shape was of primary importance, wouldn't bullets still be spherical? Doesn't a sphere going forward in air have the least drag coefficient or is my physics too rusty?
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Your physics is a bit rusty. A long pointy projectile with a tapered base tends to have the lowest drag (balistic coefficient). Otherwise, spherical airplanes would be a lot more common. Higher density also yields a higher ballistic coeficient. Strictly speaking, the bullet has no explosive material. The cartridge does. The cartrige essentially consists of the casing, the bullet, the primer, and the gunpowder inside the casing. The bullet is the (generally lead covered by a thin copper jacket) metal thingy that goes flying through and out of the barrel at a fairly high velocity. The term "Magnum" is just a name given to some fairly hot cartridges. For example, a .44 Magnum cartridge holds a lot more charge than a .44 S&W Special. A typical 180 grain .44 Special flies out of the muzzle at about 1,000 fps; a 180 grain .44 Magnum comes out at 1,610 fps. And remember, it's the energy, which is proportional to the square of the velocity, that hurts, stops, and kills something. Thus, the 180 gr .44 Magnum delivers 1,036 ft-lbs of energy, while the 180 gr .44 Special delivers only 400 fpe. Similarly, a 125 gr .38 special puts out about 250 fpe, while the .357 Mag. (same caliber) puts out 583 fpe.
That being said, a "non-magnum" Cor-Bon 135 gr .40 S&W semi-auto round puts out 526 fpe and you can stuff anywhere from 11 to 18 of them in various semi-auto pistols as opposed to the six .357 "Magnums" you can load in a revolver.
IMHO, if I was going to encounter anything that weighed more than 400 lbs, I would want a revolver loaded with at least a .44 Mag. If I was going to encounter any carnivorous mammal wieghing more than 1,000 lbs (and I couldn't/didn't want to bring a rifle), I'd probably want to move up to something more powerfull, like a .454 Casull, a .480 Ruger, one of the .50 cal magnums, etc... And, on the smaller side, I'd like to have my .44 Ruger Redhawk when facing a Black Bear, but when backpacking in the Colorado Wilderness Areas I feel perfectly prepared carrying one of my much lighter .40 S&W handguns as a Black Bear repellant.