A Physicist Shot A Gun At Himself In A Pool To Test A Bullet's Trajectory Underwater

IFLscience – Standing in a swimming pool, [physicist Andreas Wahl] fires at himself with an assault rifle less than 3 meters (9.8 feet) away using a string attached to the gun’s trigger. He still wears goggles, though – safety first.

The video is a snippet from a Norwegian science show on channel NRK Viten. As they explain in the YouTube description, “It’s harder to create movement in water than in air, because water molecules are closer together than air molecules. To show the difference in resistance, physicist Andreas Wahl puts himself in front of a weapon submerged in water and fires it – on himself.”

Their film crew used slow-motion cameras to capture the effect of the bullet’s force on the rippling water.

I’m not a science guy and have never been one; from when I was little getting the only mediocre grade in whatever bullshit 3rd grade science class we had to practically failing chemistry because moles and chemical compounds make my brain bleed out of my ears (even Breaking Bad was a challenge at times tbh). But I respect the hell out of scientists mainly because it’s such a thin line between madness and genius for them. I’m positive with guys like the Mythbusters or this guy do every possible permutation of all the imaginable calculations and he yet he still breathes a deep sigh of relief when the bullet falls to the ground because he literally shot a fucking gun at himself just to prove he could. Sure sometimes scientists end up screwing up and maybe some other physicist actually did shoot himself and/or somehow end up terrorizing a village with Frankenstein’s monster, but the fact that they can bend the concepts of time and space to their will, I don’t know man, pretty bad ass to me.

Also it’s genuinely hilarious that this guy wore safety goggles for this experiment. Yeah there’s at least a small chance the bullet might fly through your heart but let’s make sure our eyes are covered first. Scientists fucking LOVE goggles. Ruins the badassery a bit but I’m not going to split hairs today.