Quote:They re not saying the same energy.
Isn't the trouble that it is never clear what they are saying? Stopping power is at best some presumed measure of effectiveness for a weapon. We're being told to believe it because someone has apparently some calculation with some formula that tells us so, but they won't give us the formula, so we are left going around in circles wondering whether maybe they meant kinetic energy, momentum, or whatever.
If you do a Google search on 'sling stopping power', see what you find.
As I remember now, Malcolm Gladwell repeated this notion in his book and TED talk, of which there is a transcript
here, but since he reckons a sling throws rocks at about 35m/s and does not indicate how he is calculating ‘stopping power’, we are back where we started.
The relavent bit is at 6:30.
Threads on this were going strong on this forum long before his book, and I think there’s a good chance the claim actually originated in this forum. One of the previous threads
here, but there were earlier ones with similar comparisons.
Quote:The whistling bullets experiments were done by Joerg.
Yes. Apologies for Anglicizing his name. But according to the Daily Mail - so it must be true - the comparisons are down to Joerg.
Quote:And German researcher and slingshot enthusiast Jörg Sprave has since analysed their kinetic energy to make the startling discovery.
He believes they would have had the same stopping power as a modern .44 Magnum handgun, which fires bullets at speeds of around 1,475 feet per second (450 metres per second) and imparts 1,160 foot-pound force (1,570 joules) of energy.
Daily Mail