To: rudy45
The gauge of a shotgun is the reciprocal of the weight (in ounces) of the shot used in that gun (?)Not quite. We're talking about a single lead ball. Even the largest shot, 0 buck, has more than one pellet per shell. Slug shells aren't spherical projectiles.
The density of lead, I just looked up in the Alfa Aesar catalogue, is 11.34 g/cm3. The volume of a sphere is (4/3)*pi*(d/2)3. And, um, a pound is 0.454 kg. So, a 12 gauge shotgun will fit a ball which is 1/12th of a pound or 37.8 g, which based on the density given above has a volume of 3.34 cm3, or a diameter of 1.85 cm. (If I did the calculations right, it's only 8:30 AM here.)
75 posted on
02/17/2003 5:35:15 AM PST by
Chemist_Geek
("Drill, R&D, and conserve" should be our watchwords! Energy independence for America!)
To: Chemist_Geek
The math looks good, but you didn't convert to inches -- divide by 2.54 and you get .755 inches, which is spot on, even with two unit conversions.
This is true for all guages except the .410, which is not a guage, but a caliber. Given the way this thread is going, I'm sure someone can fill us in on the historical reasons for this -- I've heard plenty of lore, but not much in the way of fact on this point.
What a bunch of geeks!
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