How do silencers on handguns work?
In: Engineering
First off, they’re not “silencers”, that implies that they take the sound to 0. They are “suppressors” because they take the sound to a non-damaging level.
The noise of a gun shot has nothing to do with the bullet. It’s a sonic boom caused by the hot expanding gas caused by burning powder. Basically a thunder clap. A suppressor forces the hot gases into a series of chambers that gives them a sealed environment to slowly expanded, where they can’t cause a lot of noise.
Side note, they only work on sub-sonic rounds because “faster than sound” projectiles cause their own sonic boom based on speed, which occurs outside of the suppressor.
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