NERF guns are great because they offer a relatively safe way to shoot stuff. As we’re prone to do with anything we come across, though, humanity has long strived to push the limits of that which our toys are capable. Take, for example, YouTuber Giaco Whatever. He saw a NERF gun and presumably thought, “This is neat, but those darts aren’t even close to being as fast as bullets.” So, he built his own NERF gun that propels those little foam darts at a rate that’s actually faster than your average bullet (via Sploid).
The math checks out: In the video above, Giaco demonstrates that his compressed air-powered device shoots a NERF dart at 800 meters, or about 2,625 feet, per second. Meanwhile, the typical bullet will reach a maximum velocity of 2,500 feet per second. We’re absolutely buying that: In the clip, you can’t even see the dart in the air, just the hole it creates in the cardboard box it quickly blasts through. This means that this gun is capable of shooting a foam dart at Mach 2.351, meaning it’s traveling at 2.351 times the speed of sound. The video presents another interesting way of thinking just how fast this dart is going. Most movies are shot at 24 frames per second. The slow-motion footage that Giaco shot was filmed at 1,000 frames per second. Even at that filming speed, the dart is still barely visible in the shot. For reference, and just because it looks cool, here’s a slowed down 1,000 FPS video of a cymbal being hit:
As an Instagram commenter noted, this dart could go even faster if Giaco took all the air out of the chamber and created a vacuum (like a bore vacuum cannon) so the dart doesn’t have to contend with air pressure. Giaco responded, “that’s going to be version two…,” so stay tuned.
Featured Image: Steven Depolo
