.38 Special vs Prince Ruperts Drop at 170,000 FPS - Smarter Every Day 169

Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. In one of the previous episodes, we shot a .22 caliber bullet against various Prince Rupert's Drops, and you saw it splatter against the glass. It was fascinating.

Now, a lot of people had comments on that, and they said that the problem was the lead would just splash against the glass; it didn't hold itself together. Instead of doing what we did last time, which was a .22 long rifle bullet, which was about 36 grains, going about 1,200 feet per second, this time we're going to do this. It's a .22 Magnum bullet. I am bad at this; it is a 40 grain bullet, but it's going 1,875 feet per second, which is much, much faster.

In my mind, the most important thing about this is that it's a full metal jacket, meaning it shouldn't splatter like the .22 lead bullet did. It should hold itself together and impart more of that momentum to the Prince Rupert's drop. Anyway, if that doesn't work, then the other pistol that I have handy is this: my .38 special. The .38 special is a much, much larger bullet.

I know everybody wants me to do the .50 BMG, but I want to step this up incrementally because I want to find out where the point of breaking a Prince Rupert's drop is. So, I don't know if this is going to work, but I have a .22 Magnum. The last time I did the shot was with a .22 with just the lead bullet. Now we have a full metal jacket, so I'm going to shoot the Prince Rupert's drop if I can get it in the right spot and see if the Prince Rupert's drop will beat that.

Here we go! What!? What? All right, that was a full metal; that was a .22 Magnum. What on earth? Okay, look at that! They're tougher than I thought! Okay, we used a .22 Magnum last time; now we're going to do a .38 special. That was a Full Metal Jacket. This is going to be a full metal jacket.

You can see that this particular Prince Rupert's drop doesn't have a bubble in it, and that's atypical. So I'm wondering if that makes it stronger. This is definitely going to break because it's got a long tail. The question is if it breaks at impact or if it breaks because of the tail moving like we've seen before.

Yes! Oh no way! No way! Oh shut up, please say you triggered! Oh God, okay, okay! Dude, it just took a .38 special! All right, we just lost light, so we can't do another one today. That's absolutely ridiculous! That might be the best slow motion I've ever captured.

I think it's stronger because there's not an air bubble in it at all, and that's atypical. We can see instead of an air bubble, it pulled in the outer edge there. Pulled in the outside. This is a special one! You know the only place to go here is higher caliber, so we'll do a .223 and AK-47 in the next video.

This video, and I hope it earned your subscription because next time I'm doing the AK and my mini-14. I don't have an AR. I'm a cheap gun kind of guy. Anyway, I hope you love this video because I really want to find the point at which a bullet beats the Prince Rupert's drop. I know everybody wants me to do a BMG .50 Cal, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to walk up slowly and find the point at which a bullet beats a Prince Rupert's drop because I really want to know.

Drop it! Good girl. All right, you ready? In the water? Yeah, do it! Could do it! Oh man, what do you do? All right, so please feel free to subscribe because I would really like to see you on that next video. If not, no big deal.

Thank you to everyone who supports on Patreon. It makes this kind of goofy stuff possible. Really appreciate it. Bye! Throw it! Yeah, do it. I should say thank you for helping; I really appreciate it. You didn't expect to get roped into this, I don't think. Or flossed into it. Haha! Flossed into this.

Oh, that's neat! It's a fiber optic. I can remove my hand. Oh, that's cool! You can see my hand when I move my hand. It's gone. That's neat!