How is it that a bullet that is 12.7 mm in diameter can kill somebody with so much more bodily damage than a 20mm rebar rod that is impaled through the body? I see stories of people surviving impalement all the time, but a shot with a .50 cal to the same area almost always results in instant death. Shouldnt the bullet just go through its target because it travels so fast?
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Things that impact at high speeds exert energy onto objects they impact.
As an example.. an asteroid that impacts makes a crater… a bullet hitting a sheet of metal does a similar crater.
Well.. the sheet of metal and the floor generally are solid enough that the energy can only crater like this.. in the case of a human body however…well that energy doesn’t “bounce back” like on a bulletproof vest or a sheet of metal.. it carries through ripping a bigger exit wound than the entry wound.
In addition a bullet hitting an object will change its trajectory, maybe explode, break apart and whatnot.. that causes damage too “overpenetrations” like you expect can and will happen.. practical examples..a tank hitting a wooden building.. that shell won’t explode….but they still make Exit wound bigger than the entry wound, possibly ripping half the wall apart due to said energy transfer on it’s way out. it is still less damage than the bullet exploding in the body / object however.
A rather weird example for this: we had a case of an accident with a particle accelerator back in 1978 a man named Bugorski was supposed to fix something on a particle accelerator.. it hit him through the head… this particle was going so fast it literally phased through him without visible damage however you can still somewhat get an exit wound in terms of radiation. The back where the particle exited is still much more affected than the entry was.. which goes to show even at ultra high speeds this energy transfer happens… just the faster and smaller a projectile the less chance it has to interact with stuff.
So yes if an object is fast enough it can practically just punch a tiny tiny hole.. but the effect of a bigger exit wound still happens… fun fact it is why gamma radiation is so mean.. gamma radiation is just piercing so much and it still exerts enough energy to cause bits of dna damage…in a way we are looking at a very similar phenomenon as getting shot by a fast bullet.. just gamma radiation is incredibly small so the damage is proportionally small scale..as it is just a really really really small bullet in that sense.
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