As I said in the beginning- Dorky engineers and math obsessed people are the ones that wax on and on about "energy". Not that there aren't some great engineers, there are, and I definitely need the math nerds because I'm not figuring out external ballistics without them....
However, it's ALWAYS those two groups that wax on and on about energy, and math, and equations and try non stop to justify their bs. In the end, we still have to shoot the bullets at different impact velocities into tissue simulate and correlate that with live tissue results to know what the bullet will do.
None of their equations give us any info, and is a huge waste of time, money, and resources.
Shoot bullets into properly calibrated tissue simulate. Measure. Done.
So if someone wanted a projectile for hunting elk it would be a "waste of time" to calculate a 40g bullet at 1200fps has 128 ft-lbs energy and reject it out-of-hand accordingly?
In other words, it would not be a "waste of time" to shoot that bullet into " into tissue simulate and correlate that with live tissue results to know what the bullet will do"?
I don't need to do any such thing to know I'd prefer that same bullet at 4000fps and 1471 ft-lbs, regardless of its construction.
As I've stated all along, a bullet's energy provides information on the MAXIMUM amount of work (destruction) it can do, not what it will ACTUALLY do.
The ACTUAL damage caused (work performed) by a bullet depends on many other factors including types and amounts of target material, bullet construction, and so on. Are you going to shoot bullets into different "properly calibrated tissue simulate" corresponding to every different possible combination of target material and amounts thereof? I think not.
Instead you are going to come to some general conclusions about a particular bullet (which has a particular mass), its construction and a range of velocities over which it is effective. In other words, for each bullet you are in effect determining the range of energy required for that bullet to be effective.
I use 14.3g lead pellets in my air rifle, with a velocity somewhere around 1,000fps and 32 ft-lbs. I would never consider using them on elk but I would have much less of a problem using a 460g hardcast launched from my .45-70 at 1,000fps for that task. The 45-70 load carries 1022 ft-lbs. Instead I launch that bullet at 1812fps for 3354ft-lbs. While I've killed elk with my .45-70, I've never done so with that particular load - but I have no doubts it would be very effective. In fact, I think pretty much any bullet with 3354 ft-lbs would be fairly effective if it was efficient in transferring that energy (i.e. doing work by destroying tissue). Velocity alone is a meaningless quantity.
Knowledge of bullet construction, target material and energy (which requires information about mass) tells you quite a lot.
Knowledge of bullet construction, target material and velocity (which is the same information without the knowledge of mass and thus energy) tells you nothing. Even smokinrope now agrees on that when he agrees a 60g .22 caliber Partition and a 500g .458 caliber Partition, both at 1800fps, have vastly different destructive capability.
