Does Newtons 3rd law mean that half of the energy is wasted?

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This may sound dumb to some folks, but lets say I fire a gun. 1000N of force goes into the bullet, and another 1000N of force goes into my body. Even if i strap the gun to the ground, it will just apply 1000N of force to move the earth by a tiny amount. Because of this, does it mean that it isn’t possible to have 2000N of force going to the bullet with the same parameters as before?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Every action has an equal but opposite reaction, so when a gun propels a bullet forward, the bullet exerts an equal amount of force on the gun. You can direct that force to some extent (such as where you vent the gas that’s released), but no, you won’t be able to put it into the bullet.

If you could magically redirect all that opposite force into the bullet, not only would you be able to fire the bullet twice as fast, you’d have a gun with zero recoil — something that every gun manufacturer would be very interested in, to put it mildly.

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