(orchestral music)
- Hey I'm Josh Clark and this is Brain Stuff and this is
the Brain Stuff where I explain to you
how gun silencers work.
If you've ever seen a cloak and dagger type spy movie or
a movie with a hit man or something, you might have seen
them put the little barrel extender onto the gun, and then
sneak up behind someone and it made a cool sound like
(simulated gun silencer noises),
which is a pretty great silencer impression if I do say
so myself.
If you wondered what was going on, or if you're a hit man
looking to keep your arms quieter, I'm going to explain to
you how a silencer works.
We should probably start off by pointing out that they're
not actually called silencers.
That's what people who don't know what they're talking about
call them.
They're called suppressors, and for good reason.
It's virtually impossible to fully silence a gun, because
guns are loud, and they're loud three different ways.
The whole loudness starts when the hammer hits the firing
pin, makes a nice metallic sound, which isn't too loud, but
it's still a sound nonetheless.
And it's one of three.
When that firing pin hits, it ignites the gunpowder
located in the shell which explodes.
It explodes into gas, pressurized gas, at about 3000
pounds per square inch.
That forcefully pushes the bullet out the end of the barrel
and makes quite a bit of sound, like kind of a deadly
champagne cork popping as the bullet comes out.
That's sound number two, and that's what silencers, I mean
suppressors seek to keep down.
They do it by extending the barrel,
and fattening the barrel.
What this does is it takes those gasses that are coming out
of the gun at 3000 pounds per square inch, and it gives
them room to expand inside the silencer, suppressor, or
as some people who you probably don't want to associate with
call cans, right?
Now when this gas expands, it looses some of that pressure,
and it decreases from 3000 pounds per square inch to about
60 when it comes out the end of the silencer.
Now without a silencer, those explosive gasses produce a
sound at about 160 decibels.
Which, by the way, is about the point where your hearing
tissue dies, and once it dies it doesn't come back.
So 160 decibels is loud, ear-crushingly loud.
When you have suppressor on the end, it drops those decibels
down to about 20, which is about the sound of a very quiet
whisper, in a quiet library, heard from six feet away.
Also known as (simulated silencer noises).
Yeah, there's a third sound though that a silencer can't do
anything about.
You know when an airplane flies overhead and it reaches
the supersonic threshold, and it creates a sonic boom?
Bullets do that too.
Except instead of a sonic boom,
it's called a ballistic crack.
But at any rate, it reaches the sonic threshold when the
bullet reaches a velocity of 1100 feet per second, which
is fast.
So, to prevent this ballistic crack from taking place,
some manufacturers produce ammunition that have bullets that
travel at less than 1100 feet per second.
They still move pretty fast, but not fast enough to create
that little sonic boom.
Hence that third sound is then dampened.
So, if you have a pretty good silencer, and ammunition
that shoots bullets out at less than 1100 feet per second,
what you're left with is a 20 decibel explosion, and just
a little hammer clicking.
Believe it or not there are some downsides to all this.
While you will look cooler, like Javier Bardem in No
Country for Old Men, who had a silencer on the end of his
shotgun, and which made his character like 80 times scarier,
you're going to be giving up a little bit of power, and a
little bit of accuracy.
Plus, you can still hear a bullet no matter how silent you
make a gun, if you're the one being shot at, because it
makes a horrible terrifying, unnerving zipping sound while
it's coming at you.
Believe me I've been in a ton of fire fights, and I know
what I'm talking about.
- [Josh Voiceover] Man this is boring.
I am such a windbag.
All I want to do these days is shave.
Ever since I went to Harrys.com and got a handle, three
blades and shaving cream shipped to my door for 15 bucks,
I just want to shave all the time.
And now, with this promo code of BRAINSTUFF, anybody
can get five dollars off of their first purchase at
Harrys.com.
You really can shave all the time for that kind of money,
that's like nothing.
I gotta get back to this video, I gotta concentrate.
- So that's gun silencers.
If you're one of those people who likes to talk about guns
and silencers and that kind of thing, leave some comments
in the comments section below, and maybe subscribe.
It won't kill you.
Someone with a silencer might, but subscribing to our
YouTube channel definitely will not.
As a matter of fact, it will improve your life.