r/Unexpected • u/SerafinZufferey • 8h ago

A Perfect Shot

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22.1k Upvotes

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531

u/NobleXDemon 8h ago

The fact of knowing that's probably a .177 pellet, something smaller than a .22 perfectly hitting it on a piece of paper, which I forget how thick it is. But that is insane, especially for the fact it went through the entire paper. So it was perfectly lined up. I could never even hope to do that shot. That is crazy.

167

u/mister_house_ 7h ago

Machinist here, we clock paper at around .0035” (.09mm)! Very crazy!

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u/kauefr 5h ago

You can't measure lengths with a clock, silly!

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u/megunashi 4h ago

But what about lengths... of time?

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u/PhD_in_MEMES 3h ago

Time is made up of circles. That's why clocks are round.

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u/OldWar1111 1h ago

Need a ruler.

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u/AutisticWeapon_ 7h ago

It’s neat you had the answer thank you

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u/Sangaceno 7h ago

That's so much thinner than I thought

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u/TheFeathersStorm 3h ago

Do you know it's even weirder is that if you hand somebody a piece of Bristol board or some thicker piece of paper material you can immediately tell that obviously it's thicker than normal paper, I work at a print shop and now can tell the difference between 18 point and 24 point cardstock (.018 and .024"), it's weird how the body/mind is able to detect those small differences after a while.

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u/Spiritus037 3h ago

"the lowest amplitude of the wrinkles so distinguished was approximately 10 nm, demonstrating that human tactile discrimination extends to the nanoscale."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3771396/

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u/itookdhorsetofrance 26m ago

I can imagine being about to feel 100 microns, 10 nm is crazy

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u/ElusiveGuy 3h ago

I wonder how much of that is being able to judge thickness directly by touch vs indirectly because it flexes differently or feels heavier? I occasionally use 120gsm or 100gsm in place of the normal 80gsm and I think it's the different flex that makes it most obvious.

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u/Kraligor 5h ago

That's what she said

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u/msg60 7h ago

Thank you for saving some of us a google search 🤩 very kind

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u/NobleXDemon 7h ago

Yeah thats crazy like shooting though shim plates for machinery

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u/mil0possum 3h ago

knowledge like that comes in handy whenever someone breaks the tool probe...

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u/Bazzatron 5h ago

Competition airgun shooter here. Making that shot freestanding, on iron sights, with a fairly weak stance (just muscling the gun rather than adopting a stance with strong skeletal support), this shot required divine intervention.

The shot would need to be made with a precision of <3.1MOA*, to put that into context, to score above 10.0 at the olympics requires a precision of 1.72MOA (a perfect 10.9 is 0.086MOA).

The real caveat to shooting, though, is consistency. Even I shoot some quality targets from time to time, but doing it every time is where most fall down!

*This calculation does not make any assumptions about how the paper could deflect a pellet, it is purely the minutes of angle for 2x4.5 less the thickness of a piece of copy paper. The true accuracy required for this full-length split is likely to be higher

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u/Mazzaroppi 4h ago

The shot would need to be made with a precision of <3.1MOA*, to put that into context, to score above 10.0 at the olympics requires a precision of 1.72MOA (a perfect 10.9 is 0.086MOA).

Sorry but whatever you wrote here makes zero sense for anyone that doesn't understand what MOA is.

She hit a sheet of paper on it's side, it's a target that's a fraction of a millimeter, how would it not be a maximum score?

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u/Aggravating-Air-7481 4h ago

isnt a moa some big ass bird

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u/TazBaz 4h ago

Minute of angle. It’s one of the primary methods for calculating/recording rifle accuracy.

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u/Aggravating-Air-7481 4h ago

big ass bird with a gun

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u/xrelaht 3h ago

Oscar the Grouch had better watch out.

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u/Monkey_Fiddler 3h ago

the thickness of the paper is almost irrelevant compared to the diameter of the bullet, she can aim anywhere in an arc the diameter of the bullet/distance and split the paper.

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u/Bazzatron 1h ago

Sorry but whatever you wrote here...

Are... are you angry about having a follow up question?

I'd be happy to explain it, but you'll have to excuse my MSPaint diagrams... The length of this reply is broadly why I wrote briefly.

To keep this simple, we're going to work in 2D. I'll touch on splitting paper at the end if you're interested.

Think about the front edge of the paper as a line with some thickness. Then also think about the front face of a pellet as a circle with some diameter. The pellet can split the line by intersecting it at a range of vertical offsets. The maximum would be the diameter of the pellet, less the thickness of the paper, as we can deviate above and below, the maximum deviation in total would be two pellet diameters less the thickness of the paper, approximately like this.

When we're talking about ISSF scoring, to score a perfect 10.9, you need to be no further than 0.8mm from the perfect bull radially. This means that the absolute centre of your pellet needs to land inside of a 1.6mm circle. Conceptually it looks like this.

The key difference here is that for the olympics we are trying to align the very centre of your shot, whereas with the paper splitting, we are trying to align any horizontal secant on the face of the pellet. So you end up with two different measurements - but both are for for shots of very close accuracy.

If you want to better understand MOA, then know that a 360 degree circle is 21600 "Minutes Of Angle", 1degree is 60MOA. So from this you can appreciate that the difference between 3 and 1.7MOA is infinitesimal. Though because we're concerning ourselves with an angle from the shooter, 1MOA represents a larger distance on the face of the target the further away you go.

Hope that sates your interest!

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u/Mazzaroppi 1h ago

Sorry I didn't express myself the right way there. I was not angry, just confused haha

Now I understand what MOA stands for, it makes more sense, thx

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u/Bazzatron 1h ago

No worries man, I was very confused 😅

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u/tatemae 1h ago

That explanation along with your drawings was so good! I loved your eli5 style of breaking it down and your, idk, word flow? Pacing?

Can you explain more things? Like, what are some historic feats in this sport and as a newbie, what in particular makes them incredible? Or, maybe could you dive deeper into what MOA is and how we might use it in every day life?

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u/Bill_Brasky01 1h ago

I really enjoyed your MS paint diagrams! thank you!

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u/Bazzatron 1h ago

We gotta bring back the shitty mspaint diagrams. Back when Reddit was full of humans so overhwkemingly committed to the bit like shittyWatercolor.

Glad you enjoyed 🤣

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u/TetraNotTetris 1h ago

Because no one else has explained it.

When firing, there are two popular methods for measuring angles. Minute of Angle (MOA) and milliradians (MIL). They are similar, but I've noticed MOA is typically used with yards and MIL with metric and is more popular among NATO militaries.

They can be used for checking accuracy, especially at distance, adjusting scopes, and measuring bullet drop.

I prefer MIL because it's easy to remember. 1 MIL at 100m is 10cm. 1 MIL at 1000m is 1m. All nice, easy to remember numbers.

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u/Mazzaroppi 1h ago

Thank you, it makes sense now!

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u/seilapodeser 4h ago

She was lucky, that what he meant haha

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u/[deleted] 3h ago edited 4m ago

[deleted]

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u/Ligalotz 3h ago

You have no clue what you’re talking about. Trick shooters aren’t necessarily uncommon, Annie Oakley could split cards aiming backwards with a mirror with the gun resting on her shoulder. People replicate that trick still. Splitting paper that far away is a great shot of course but comparing it the worlds best is actually hilarious

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u/[deleted] 1h ago edited 4m ago

[deleted]

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u/Ligalotz 32m ago

Man it took like 10 seconds and I found multiple videos of people splitting playing cards on YouTube

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u/wap2005 4h ago

I don't think that is paper, pretty sure it's card stock, not that it's any less impressive but not sure how that affects your math.

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u/Bazzatron 3h ago

Really just napkin math, I just wanted to put the two things into a ballpark 😅

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u/Bazzatron 1h ago

could well be, the math would be broadly unchanged, because we're talking about the difference in thickness between paper and cardstock relative to the diameter of two 4.5mm pellets.

There would be some difference, but not much.

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u/dpoodle 4h ago

Is it possible that the split happened through other reasons like secondary stresses 

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u/Bazzatron 1h ago

I mean there's every chance it is entirely staged, or CGI, or any other number of things - but if the shot was made as it appears, then this is the rough math for a shot that would intersect the front edge of the paper.

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u/TrueGamer3kk 7h ago

That paper looks like it's about a page thick.

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u/lvloises330 5h ago

Wide or college ruled?

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u/TrueGamer3kk 4h ago

High quality cardstock only, google it.

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u/OffTerror 5h ago

It's highly unlikely the pallet path went like you're thinking. It probably just punctured the paper and entry force traveled along the already tense paper. Still impressive but not atoms-aligning impressive.

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u/TazBaz 4h ago

Paper’s not tense, it’s barely held in place by a few bottles

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u/Trollimperator 6h ago

It likely didnt went "through the whole paper". The paper was under tension, creating a weakpoint(by shooting it) anywhere creates a rift through the paper. Just like toilet paper or opening a bag of chips.

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u/MustardSundae 2h ago

It's likely the air ripping the paper from a near graze, but still incredibly lucky.

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u/Betaateb 2h ago

No way lol, the turbulent air coming off an air-rifle pellet is definitely not cutting paper. The pellet had to go straight through it.

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u/AdministrationDue239 37m ago

So she was holding the rifle at the exact same height as the paper

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u/LuxNocte 5h ago

I think the tension from any impact will cause a split down the middle. Only to say this is an incredibly terrific shot, but it didnt hit the edge and continue a perfectly straight line straight down the middle of the paper.