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Ballistic coefficient

woodhogwoodhog Member Posts: 13,115 ✭✭
edited January 2016 in Ask the Experts
what exactly is the ballistic coefficient of a bullet? What does this number actually measure. I thought I posted this yesterday, but can't find post now. Thanks
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    woodhogwoodhog Member Posts: 13,115 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    what exactly is ballistic coefficient??? is higher better or lower?
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    woodhogwoodhog Member Posts: 13,115 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    never mind. It was moved to GD forum, where I got a really good explanation and some reading to do. Thanks all.
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    sandwarriorsandwarrior Member Posts: 5,453 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I never did find this on the GD forum. Which BTW is NEVER a good place to find information. Mostly the mis-informed lamenting how the world isn't perfect there.

    So, Ballistic Coefficient, is a number assigned to a particular bullet that mathematically compares it's progress through it's parabolic trajectory to either a standard bullet (G1) or a specialized long range bullet (G7), or any other special purpose bullet (G-something).

    Just so you know, no Ballistic Coefficient (BC) is perfect in all given applications. It's as close of a mathematical approximation as we can get. Sierra actually publishes multiple BC's for a given bullet depending on it's speed.

    BC's are used to estimate trajectory. And as the formula and variances are added mathematically, they can be very close out to given ranges. Provided you give correct input, i.e. true velocity, atmospherics, etc.
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    Tailgunner1954Tailgunner1954 Member Posts: 7,734 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    http://forums.GunBroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=667043

    There are a few informed answers on that thread, along with some reference links.
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    beantownshootahbeantownshootah Member Posts: 12,776 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    quote:Originally posted by woodhog
    what exactly is the ballistic coefficient of a bullet? What does this number actually measure. I thought I posted this yesterday, but can't find post now. Thanks


    Oversimplifying, its the inverse of measured drag (air resistance) on the bullet.

    IE, the higher the number, the more "aerodynamic" the bullet, and the less it tends to slow down in flight.

    The actual mathematics/physics of how this is calculated may put you in a coma, but you can read more than you'd ever want to know about them here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_coefficient
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