keep the change you filthy animals today we're gonna be shooting one again
Japanese coins out of a shotgun and we want to thank Matt B 2099 for sending
these coins to us typically coins are terrible projectiles because they're
flat and they flutter all over the place so chances are most of them are gonna
miss what you're aiming at the other problem is most coins don't even fit a
12-gauge shotgun in fact the only u.s. coin that fits is a dime so the first
challenge is just getting the yen coins to fit a 12-gauge without removing any
material by using a socket a steel ball from a ball bearing and a drill press
will actually shrink the yen coin down to about the size of a dime but will
also change the shape so we're killing two birds with one stone here as you can
see we're just using the drill press as a makeshift Arbor press to do this
operation and what we end up with is this dome or hemispheric shape that's
kind of reminiscent of a British World War one army helmet and just like coins
or Dixie Cups or whatever these can be stacked we used eight of them just
because we had a limited number of them and we were able to load six shells
another challenge is just the weight of these these are made out of aluminum and
they weigh about as much as a 22 caliber air rifle pellet a penny which is mostly
zinc weighs about 2.5 grams but let's talk a little bit about this new shape
this is no accident that we made him this shape this shape is called the
blunt body concept in the early 1950s scientists were tasked to come up with a
design to allow ballistic missiles the warhead to reenter the atmosphere
without burning up the blunt body concept had high drag but it also had a
unique feature where the bow shock or bow shock I'm not sure which it is was
so far forward it acted as a thermal insulator in other words most of the
heat generated during reentry would just go completely around the re-entry
vehicle by contrast the personick shock wave on a pointed
warhead actually follows the contours of the warhead much more and offers very
little thermal protection especially at the tip now of course we're not
concerned with our yen coins burning up on re-entry but the shock wave and the
low-pressure area behind the projectile will definitely play a very important
role in how our yen coins fly through the air another important aspect of this
shape is when dropped into a fluid they are self stabilizing though the very
light coin does oscillate back and forth it does drop down straight and it
remains nose-first for the most part well we don't know and what complicates
matters even more is that we're gonna have a column of eight of these coins
all flying together all sharing the same shock wave and writing in that
supersonic wake so whether you're an aerospace nerd like me or you're just
interested in external ballistics or stuff like that I think you'll find this
absolutely fascinating because I sure did
all right now flutter folks here we are back again Danni and Jeff on a hot
overcast YZ California afternoon whoa looking at 102 today at 10 yards against
a silhouette target we're gonna see if we can punch some holes downrange
they'll be interesting to see how they pattern if they'll scatter because we've
shot coins before and they tend to scatter all over the place these you
know if they actually have good aerodynamics at supersonic speeds and
subsonic speeds they may be a good shape for some kind of Defense round using
discs instead of buckshot or something like that that's the whole concept here
so any manufacturers out there want to use this idea your guesses have to call
them at al fledermaus shape or whatever though haha tell fleeter youn yeah
all right let's see what these will do out of little my little Tony shotgun
there we go blunt body concept take one I'm ready
when you are
yeah we'll have to find out on the slo-mo my pointy end was right in here
we got two nice clean holes here we're not sure yet if they stacked up and went
through or if only two of them hit we'll find that out this looks like the the
wadding went through sideways here okay let's try another piece of cardboard
that doesn't have you know it's it's just cardboard colored you know no black
no see if it shows up better no store trick yeah yeah now what's really
interesting here is our column of eight coins stayed group together almost all
the way to the target and then it's split into two small stacks and each
stack was ballistically stable now let's see what nine pellets of double-aught
buckshot looks like at ten yards the buckshot begins to spread immediately
after leaving the barrel and we have a larger pattern about twelve yards now
we'll see if we'll start seeing any spread and I am ready whenever you're
ready to shoot those Japanese yen's aluminum coins oh yeah
one hole now twelve yards we were expecting to see these things start to
spread out now it isn't possible the velocity of this shot was a little
higher but we can't see the very back one kind of dancing around and rotting
in the supersonic wake shot three see if we get any separation let that settle
even further I don't know okay I'm ready when you are
yeah nice clean holes very close to each other - that's not bad for 12 yards
thick cardboard I do know that Danny was aiming at the other hole on this shot
got very close to it now as we could see the entire column of eight coins is
flying together they're not fused together in any way other than writing
in that supersonic shock wave it's kind of a vacuum and they're kind of drafting
each other that's probably the best way to explain that okay now we're gonna
shoot one add a water jug I think you Daniel have no problem hitting that
using the Turkish hunt group shotgun SS 12 we're ready
and of course no test is complete without something wonky and weird
happening but this is all good information too because we learn from
stuff like this now for some reason the column of coins is actually writing
backwards here got flipped around and then it just kind of came apart but we
were able to see that at several of the coins going through clean air at least
were able to restabilized themselves in that short amount of space well this was
inside okay it's a little deformed now when there's no hiccups these things
function like a solid slug while they're flying at a supersonic speed and the
most surprising thing was these were relatively accurate and what's really
interesting about this shot is we can actually see when it's starting to go
transonic in our shockwave is degrading to the coins actually fall off just
inches before hitting the target and surprisingly those hardly did any damage
to the gel but the other six had enough energy to go right through it
that's a prettier background anyway whole green with trees back there makes
it look like we're in Indiana
okay last one is it the last one okay about a 14 by 14 inch piece of drywall
see if these are the perfect home defense round because drywall stops
everything right if you live in a Japanese paper house this one's got two
pennies in it no it doesn't discs to zinc discs okay we're ready
there's simulated pennies it costs $2 each okay go ahead
good well we saw
okay I'll admit it there's two pennies in this along with six of the aluminum
yen coins now this shot was taken at twenty yards
this gives the column of coins plenty of time to become subsonic and at that
point there's nothing to hold the coins together anymore now you can see that
the heavier penny is a lot more stable than the light aluminum coins which are
oscillating around just like when they were falling through there our column of
water one of the yen coins had enough energy to blow through the end of the
table the penny had no problem going through the drywall but the yen coin
that hit the drywall just put a big dent in it now oddly there's a lot of people
that believe that drywall can actually stop bullets if you miss a bad guy for
example or they believe that it's possible that there's some kind of magic
bullet out there that can take out a bad guy but also to come to a complete stop
in drywall I don't know but this is a rare instance where the drywall actually
stopped - a projectile that we shot at it
but what it really shows you is how little energy that aluminum disk had
when it did impact and really if that it hit you it probably just would have left
a bruise now it's very possible that we just invented a new type of ammunition
here and instead of using aluminum discs we could be using copper or brass
something with a little more density I think lead would be a little too soft
but I could be wrong there but the premise behind this type of ammunition
would be for close self-defense purposes and normally that is something within 10
yards the ammunition would be lethal at 10 yards or so and then beyond that the
thing just kind of neutralizes itself as the individual coins have very high drag
and kind of resemble inverted parachutes so as always tell us what you think
about the viability of these and maybe you saw a bird in the background you got
a letter one know or think our fingers look funny anyway thanks for watching
and thanks to all these new patreon supporters