lmao - can we just say that lead bullets come down damn fast and hurt a lot.

Bill Skinner wrote on Aug 18^th, 2016 at 8:30pm:


correction:
air resistance robs some of the kinetic energy as the projectile goes up(and then down), when it comes down gravity does not accelerate the projectile as fast as the initial velocity.  It does give back the amount that air resistance didn't took.

in vaccum where there is no air resistance it would come down in the same velocity
the real energy (or velocity)stealer is not gravity it is air resistance.

another explanation:
it's like going uphill then downhill , with no friction you will have the same velocities at the same heights, but when friction comes into play all changes that means energy leaks through friction not gravity

The terminal velocity of a lead ball is greater than the speed at which it can be launched from a sling.


Whenever I have launched lead glandes on high arc distance shots, they almost seemed to accelerate on the way down.

If you can keep track of it that long.


Those balls are pretty small. The whistling grapeshot theory makes the most sense to me, if indeed they were used as projectiles...

Then, you'd think there would be a lot of them in one area.

why have balls in a bag ?  (um, yeah lol)

Just have a ballista with a cup.
Or launch from a trebuchet.

Guys, I did work some more on the issue. In fact two young physicists calculated the effect, but I was skeptical. So I put this to a test, by building a proper test device.

Turns out the boys had a big error in their calcs and in reality things are different. The air resistance on a 22mm lead ball weighing 60 grams is quite substantial. When shot at 45 m/s (ancient sources named this as the average speed of the slingers), then the ball will fly about 160 meters far. Its end speed will be around 36 m/s, so it has lost 20% of its initial speed.

The Burnswark scenario was such that the slingers had to hit a target 120 meters away, but 40 meters up. The only way they would have hit is to shoot at an angle of around 2 degrees.

The clever Romans set their launch position exactly far enough for their average slingers to hit the target. Even five more meters and the Caledonians on the hilltop would have been out of reach.

actually the balls don't need to spin to whistle.
It's just fast air moving over the surface and going into the hole that produces the sound.
Like a set of panpipes.  That's one reason the size and depth of the holes is so consistent in the found ammunition.

Quote:

No they would not have been.  The slinger would just have slung harder.
Seriously, next time you;'re doing this let me know - you need a proper slinger up there.
That distance with a lead ball is pretty much point blank range for me. Even at that low a trajectory, it's not an issue.
I've slung those distances and angles with 60gram clayballs - all day long for two days. Lead goes further with less effort.
Credit your slingers with more ability.

What historians almost never seem to understand is that our ancestors were extremely competent with their everyday tools and weapons. Far more so that most people alive today.
A sling is a tool, even the roman soldiers would have used regularly them for hunting.
So even your bog standard sling conscripts would have been a lot better than most contemporary slingers. They would also have trained regularly to keep up a long bombardment. They also would have been usign slings from childhood.

A decent slinger with a lead bullet/glande could expect to exceed 250 metres fairly easily.
Initial sling engagement of the enemy, with lead bullets would most likely have been at the 300-350 metre range.

Even with spherical ammunition you are looking at an average of 200-250 metres range. 

The 120 metre mark is most likely to avoid the larger stones that the defenders would have been slinging back. Hillfort caches do show that the defenders favoured big rocks. 120metres would put the romans out of the range of the largest rocks and shields could have deflected most of the rest.

That's the most likely explanation of the range used - absolutely nothing to do with the sling range of the attackers using small dense missiles and everythign to do with the defenders using large not so dense missiles.

What filaments are you making the solid glande from ?

Also to properly hear the sound you need to be at the impact end

I've had a lead glande slung directly at me, and just one glande sounds like a swarm of bees !
But makes no real noise at the slingers end