I need help to decide

[OverWilliam]

This question has been driving me up a wall recently because I cannot decide the answer, or even begin to figure out how to think about it straight. It's a little... weird, by which I mean it makes absolutely no sense. I completely expect to be ridiculed for even bothering to write up something so patently ridiculous, but I must vent this somewhere before it makes me insane from the inside. By the way, don't even bother to ask where or why I came up with this, I have no clue.


If you got a tube of toothpaste and stuck a BB pellet in the cap, pointed it in the right direction and then got the Hulk to stomp on it, could it kill somebody?



There, I feel better. :smallsmile: Now let the floggings commence. :smallredface:

[Jayngfet]

Depends, how mad is he?

[OverWilliam]

He's the Hulk. If he wasn't pretty mad, he would just be regular old Bruce... I guess. :smallconfused:

[Innis Cabal]

No, because he wouldn't stomp on it, he'd smash

[OverWilliam]

You can't smash something by stomping on it? :smallconfused:

[kpenguin]

Hulk's foot would be big enough that it would smash both the tube and the BB pellet.

So, no.

[Semidi]

Hulk's foot would be big enough that it would smash both the tube and the BB pellet.

So, no.

Not if he hit it with only part of his foot.


edit: typo

[Occasional Sage]

Whatever velocity that BB manages, it's still just a BB. It'd have to hit something pretty vital to do enough damage to kill. Even if it hit a major organ it wouldn't do more than punch a small hole, which would give the target a chance to get to the hospital. Most of the time.

[Sholos]

How fast can you really get a BB going before running into massive air resistance that slows it way back down again?

P.S. - I'm aware that's not exactly the right way to phrase the question from a physics standpoint, but I think the gist of the question is understandable.

[Hawriel]

Yes it would

[warty goblin]

Well, let's think this through:

1) The toothpast is reasonably imcompressible, being liquid based.

2) I'm also going to assume that Hulk stomps on this thing very hard, hard enough that the structural strength of the tube is pretty negligable, it's just gonna rupture.

3) I'll assume that the tube is on a reasonably solid surface, solid enough that the tube will in fact rupture and not simply indent into the surface.

4) Given this, I'd conclude that yes, it is possible, although it is hard to say just how hard Hulk would have to stomp.

Warning: Super nerdy guestimation to follow. If discussions of kinetic energy and terminal ballistics offend you, I suggest you ignore it.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB_gun#Safety) a BB can pierce the skin if it is traveling over 350 feet per second, which is approx. 110 meters/second. The same article also lists a BB as weighing about .3 grams, or .0003 kilograms, which gives it a kinetic energy of 1.7 joules.

This is, to put it mildly, tiny. In order to get the same kinetic energy as a .50 cal machine gun (approx. 1000 joules at muzzle) it would require the BB to be going 25 times as fast, give or take. That's a whopping 2,670 meters/second, or about twice as fast as an Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot tank round, which are capable of shooting through two tanks at once, and tend to ignite at impact.

Now obviously a projectile going that fast would make a nice hole in somebody, but it's probably not going to be a large on, since BBs have crappy terminal ballistics, and are very small. Run one through somebody's head and you'd kill them, but it's not likely to sever limbs or similar. Break bones maybe (I can easily imagine it just going through the bone), but there's just not going to be enough energy transfered. The other problem is that Hulk will have to stomp incrediably hard to accelerate the BB to this sort of speed (he needs to accelerate the entire tube of toothpaste after all. Assuming .1kg of toothpaste, that's 356,445 joules, which is pretty far out there), and, as previously stated, the toothpaste tube itself is gonna be completely irrelevant. That BB is going to go somewhere, but it's not gonna be possible to aim.

[Fri]

Yes, but the point is.

IF there is someone in the line of the BB bullet, will it kill them?

And you can pierce someone's body with far lower kinetic energy compared to .50 cal bullet.

I think, if it hit an important part, like eye, or mouth, or basically, head, it might do the job.

But at most it'll just break some bones/make a painful puncture in an organ. Won't make a hole in the heart thoguh. BB gun is just a plastic ball, it just can't pierce bone (ribcage) without breaking itself.