The 475 Linebaugh with a 420 grain bullet at 1400 fps has 11.6 Newtons forces. The 300 win mag with a 180 grain bullet at 3000 fps has 10.665 Newtons force.
When converting to force the handgun does not take a back seat to 300 win mag rifle in fact the handgun takes the front seat.
Force is indeed a factor in producing the wound channel.
JWP, this concept is alien to me. Can you explain? Forgetting whether relevant or not, one can calculate the momentum (MxV) of a moving bullet or the kinetic energy of a moving bullet (1/2xMxV^2) at any point along its flight path up to (and even after impact if you can measure that). Those two physical concepts involve only mass and velocity of the bullet.
Force, however, is mass times acceleration. The flying bullet after it leaves the barrel, does not have force. It does not accelerate after it leaves the barrel. So, there is no A in the MxA calculation. When it hits something of a certain mass, it may cause it, as a whole, to accelerate in one direction, but usually not very much. It can cause numerous particles (like an exploding water jug, watermelon, or tissue inside of an animal) to collectively accelerate with the individual masses of each particle in countless directions. But I have never heard how that can be calculated.
A cartridge's powder charge does exert force on a bullet in a barrel, but that can't be what you mean. In the end, it results in a given velocity muzzle velocity, which, for a given bullet, is (whether high or low, good or bad) what matters. For example, if you have a cartridge in a gun with a 10" barrel that can accelerate a 300gr bullet to a given velocity (say 2,000fps) it must exert twice the average force on the bullet than a load in a 20" barrel that achieves the same velocity must exert (in the shorter barrel, it accelerates from 0fps to 2,000fps twice as fast). But it can't matter how quickly a bullet accelerates to its muzzle velocity in terms of its effect on game after it exits the barrel. And you can't calculate the force a bullet will impart on an animal.
So, forgive me if I a misunderstanding, but how are you getting the Newtons-of-force results above?
I think you might be referring to momentum, which favors slower, heavier bullets (because the velocity is not squared as in the KE calculation), but I'm not sure.
EDIT: I think you are talking about momentum, not force. And the units are Newton-seconds (Newtons times seconds).
