Well.... the specifics of how to accomplish this have been in my head since 2017. I'm very excited to finally share it with you. I'm grateful to everyone who supports Smarter Every Day on Patreon. You make long-term planning things like this and the baseball cannon possible! Here's the link if you'd like to join our sticker team: www.patreon.com/smartereveryday Also, as promised, here's the link too the email list! www.smartereveryday.com/email-list I don't spam you. I just send out an email every time I upload. Thanks for your consideration!

When the two bullets perfectly hit each other it looks like your shot a single bullet into the worlds strongest mirror. Insane.

16:24 first colision between them (not perfectly hit) 18:51 perfect shot 26:36 another great shot

A buddy of mine who used to go metal detecting for Civil War Artifacts, once dug up a perfect specimen of two mini-balls that had hit HEAD ON and fused together. The artifact itself was amazing, but even more amazing was to realize that because both bullets had hit each other perfectly, the two soldiers had LIVED!!! After that fateful shot, it was probably not a good outcome, but at least for that moment in time, they both lived to fight another day!

The fact that the sponsorship was the end of the story of this video is so great. That is such an amazing way to incorporate a sponsorship. Since I have UKposts premium it tried to automatically skip it and I feel like there should be some way for UKposts to make a distinction between actual content and just mindless sponsorships. If you have UKposts premium rewind it to the point till before the sponsorship started and to make sure to watch it. It is so cool and you don't want to miss it.

12:47 15:00 15:47 18:40 19:50 20:30 All of these are what you came for 21:54 24:32 part of bulket sticks together 26:44 Final good shots 27:41 Video ends

21:54 - The money shot... honestly this is a one in a million type capture. Amazing.

24:40 - I love that you puzzled the delaminated metal scraps back together!

I wonder if you could make two bullets hit inside a block of ballistic gel so it catches all the fragments and everything and you could see this little pause of time and see how it all expands outward, I think that'd be pretty cool if possible but maybe it wouldn't be able to catch it I'm not sure

Seeing those two bullets frozen in time in the middle of the air at 21:39 (22:00) was so amazing... It's literally forces cancelling each others out perfectly. I'm so blown away by this.

26:32 You're welcome!

Amazing content on all of your videos, and you are really breaking out the big guns with Mr. Fielding. The thing that makes you two great is your ability to not only teach people how to do things, you teach us how to think. Thank You!

I am a traffic accident reconstructionist, so I tend to think it terms of momentum, velocity, Vectors, etc. I never dreamed you'd get a complete mutual momentum transfer, particularly with the FMJ. Absolutely incredible work, gentlemen.

19:00 19:57 20:28 Bullet Hitting Bullet. 21:57 best one

The shot at 21:55 is arguably one of the coolest things that's ever been produced on the internet. I know you said you weren't trying to win the internet but that shot is in contention for it. I really appreciate you bringing all of us with you on this journey, Destin

you would think there would be some consistency in this! Thank you very day every day Steve!

This video has to be hands down one of the most well explain shown video, i have ever seen in a while...❤

Slow Motion of the Bullets Hitting starts at 21:54 Cheers!

I work in OT&E and the safety procedure evaluation towards the beginning was an unexpected but absolutely crucial component of your process. Really incredible work Destin.

Destin, as the safety specialist at work, I would be absolutely thrilled to see a video of some of the planning and safety procedures before during and after one of these experiments!

Every shot was amazing! It is magnificent to watch something so fast to hit in slow motion and see how it behaves. Such a cool video. Thank you!

22:00 is the most incredible slow motion footage i've ever seen and that is not an exaggeration

I notice that both your barrels have right hand twist, so when they are facing each other, the bullets are spinning in opposite directions. If you had one barrel with a left hand twist, both bullets would spin in the same direction. With the rotational energy cancelled out, it seems that it would be much easier for the bullets to fuse on impact.

As a BSME and a "gun nut" who reloads .45 LC (and other calibers) I was smashing the thumbs up icon wishing I could give 1000 thumbs up. Great job Destin.

Great planning, safety precautions and execution but excellent enthusiasm!

When you shot those 2 together at 22:02 and they just froze in the air on the high speed, my jaw literally hung open for the duration of the shot. One of the most stunning pieces of film I've seen in a long time. Congratulations for capturing that after all the effort you put in. It's truly amazing!

The collision at 20:31 is so perfect that words cannot describe it. Great job. For science!

Congratulations to Allan involved. Super nice video! Thank you!

Really enjoyed watching this, great job!! My mind however just cannot dismiss the thought that two young soldiers managed to do this using a couple rifles braced against their shoulders without any rests, without thousands of hours of preparation and planning, just raised their rifles and shot two bullets that perfectly met each other in the air melting into each other, and by the way saving two lives simultaneously! Oh the glorious synchronicity of it all! Did they survive the war? Are their descendants out there in the world living among us because of this one happening?

Any other channel doing these kinds of videos, I normally just skip right to the money shot. But something about your editing style, the pacing, the information you share, the process of designing and building your experiments, it really is enthralling. Gotta watch the whole video!

That perfect collision where they just froze in the middle might be the single greatest piece of slow motion footage I have ever seen in my life... It was so still it didn't even look real, that was absolutely amazing... The one at the end with the aluminum wallet was pretty cool too...

I’m so happy with the end result of everything you did to show us how 2 bullets crash against each other, I’m saving this video for later watch again

I'm impressed with the amount of detailed work you guys did in advance. That is a lot of detailed work!

I mean, the hit around 22:19 is ... probably one of the most amazing things I've seen on YT. Bonkers how something so destructive can turn into something that beautiful. Stunning. Destin and team, you win.

If you're ever passing through Nebraska, stop by the Edgerton museum (for those who don't know, Doc Edgerton played a key role in developing the camera tech which made it possible to photograph bullets in flight). Congrats on getting two bullets to hit, though. Even Doc Edgerton didn't figure that one out!

Love the engineering that went into this! The fact that so much thought went into replicating what happened in real life speaks to the massive improbability of it happening at all. I imagine each of the soldiers would have been astounded that neither got hit after quite literally shooting the barrel of their gun directly down the barrel of the other. I wonder if the temperature of the bullets at contact have anything to do with it. I can imagine the two soldiers who fired at each other may have been firing a lot already by the time they engaged each other. Perhaps their barrels were already hot, adding some heat to the rounds before they were fired, and maybe that helped them fuse together easier?

The distance between the ogee(the spot on the projectile that touches the lands) and the Lands( the very beginning of the rifling) effects the accuracy greatly.

What a great video and narrative! As an 80 year old physicist with a lifelong interest in ballistics, I have a couple of comments; The muzzle loading rifles of civil war era used a much different rifling twist than modern ammunition. The use of hollow base or "mini Ball" bullets rammed down a bore require a much different idea for stabilization. The lead composition is very, very soft so that the hollow base can expand to fit the bore tightly and engage the rifling without causing so much loading drag. Many of the muskets used in civil war time were smooth bore, without any rifling. Stabilizing the bullets in a smooth bore required a round ball , or in later years a Mini Ball with a hollow base or skirt. Modern air rifles also achieve stabilization partly through the skirt stabilization. If you compute the total energy of a bullet, it is not just "1/2 mv squared" of linear energy, but has a rather large rotational energy due to the rifling twist. In a head on collision, this rotational energy is in opposition for the two bullets, To achieve true linear energy transfer, you would either have to have the two bullets rotating in opposite vector direction, or not rotating at all. For reference, a 45 colt is commonly rifled at a 1 turn every 16 inches, wheras the muzzle loading rifles ranged from smooth bore (no twist) to 1 turn every 5 to 10 feet. My suggestion is to change the rifling to very long twist, in opposition, and use a pure lead bullet if you really want to see a fused bullet. The other factor is velocity. Black powder muskets had a typical velocity of 900 to 1000 feet per second, with a low ballistic coefficient, so they would slow down rapidly. If there were something like 400 yards between the opposing battle lines, the bullets would have been traveling less than half the muzzle velocity at center path collision. You might try to fire a pure lead bullet at a steel plate and determine the amount of deformation of that bullet then take half the linear energy backed out to velocity as a starting point for your powder charge and velocity starting point. Modern large bore pneumatic or air rifles might be an easier and more controllable medium to base your configuration on. Again i want to emphasize what a marvelous presentation you have made!!!

Those bullets stopping mid air is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and definitely the most awesome demonstration of conservation of momentum I've ever seen. Wow.

I really didn't think i was going to watch this entire video but man you kept me intrigued...great job, fantastic video.

Hey destin just dropping some love. Thanks for your videos, your exitement upon creating them, and also, the great music! Keep up the great learning experiences!

This brought back so many memories from mythbusters. Those are the best high speed shots I've seen in ten years. Absolutely fantastic job from start to finish.

I cannot express the moment I had/felt when watching the bullet stop at the 22:00 mark. Thank you so much for making this content. It's truly inspiring and I appreciate every second of it!

This is the first video of yours that I have watched, and I absolutely loved it! I wish you had fully played out your hypotheses about metal composition and speed, though, to see if you could actually replicate the fusion.

One of the most interesting videos I have seen

Because of seeing all those safety procedures, this video is so educational. Normally you tend to make shortcuts and just skip them, but they are important.

Considering how hard this is to recreate, it is literally miraculous that these civil war bullets not only melted together perfectly, but that they ever lined up in the first place..then, to add to the miracle, some guy like me with a metal detector found it 150 years later!!

I didn't stay around to watch the whole 35 minutes, but jumped forward to the exact moment. Well done to make this!

This should be shown in every physics, Dynamics, engineering class. That perfect stop shot is amazing. (Start around 21:30) Us fellow engineers are loving this stuff.

amazing video, i love destin's excitment and daves dry combacks lol

Loved your colliding bullet video. A roommate and I were at his home while in college in the mid 1960 s shooting apples out of a tree with over a mile of open field behind it on a solid overcast day with a 22 rimfire rifle and I could see the bullet as it was going up. Of course in those days my eyes were like telescopes and microscopes.

Dance of the bullets - Beautiful and Deadly

The fact that you didn't just stop after the first time because it "worked" and you had viral footage and just kept doing it over and over to pin down all the variables and learn exactly what was going on is what puts this project on such a high level not to mention the many many hours of prep and planning that went into this. Really love what you do, your passion and excitement shine through and build upon the work you clearly take seriously, thank you.

This was awesome! I’ve always wanted to see this!

Brilliant. Thourgherly absorbing. Thank you.

Great job to all involved! And to your education and work ethic!!

The shot at 22:00 is probably one of the moments in physics history where you can see something so rare that it looks as if it belongs in a Matrix movie.

Just wanna say how wonderful the subtitles are. Not only correctly subtitling but also adding information for tone or silences. It's always a pleasure to see them be as high-quality as they are here

Wow that is bloody amazing.

Stopping/pausing in mid-air, that was amazing!

22:03 the way they came to an absolute dead freeze for a moment is absolutely insane… possible since they have almost exactly the same energy… wow it’s like the middle pauses while the rest is still in play

My dad doesn't talk much. So when he sits straight up and yells "WOW" when the bullets perfectly hit each other and froze, you know something truly amazing just happened. Awesome job Destin & team. Keep up the good work! Love all your videos.

It is beautiful. It is like Particle and Anti-Particle collision and resulting in all sizes of energy...

I never thought I would watch this video all the way upto the end. But, wow. I experienced sheer joy seeing you so happy at acheiving every next milestone in this process. It was beautiful. I could feel your happiness.

I don't think I've ever gotten to say something was literally jaw dropping, but those bullets stopped in mid air was totally jaw dropping. Fantastic shot, and fantastic work!

The Safety procedures is great to see. We often get a lot of "don't try this at home" which is valid, but modelling good, conscientious development of safety procedures is something i don't think we get enough of. especially because it can go a long way to demonstrate why it's not something that can be tried at home.

Um, I'm really surprised you didn't speak about this: The reason the Civil War bullets fused was because they were undoubtedly farther away from each other, but more importantly, they used black powder, which has a much slower burn and lower velocity than the gunpowder used today in cartridges. Good job! Thanks for showing everything involved.

I think the issue is the fact that the bullets are spinning in opposite directions. The war shot fusion bullets were from muskets without rifled barrels, so not spinning. Now if the opposing barrels are rifled, they would need to be rifled opposite...one clockwise, the other counter clockwise to have them spinning the same way when they meet. If they are both rifled clockwise, and shot from opposing sides, then they spin in opposing directions in relation to each other.

I would like to see infrared footage of this to see the heat generation and dissipation of the collision. Very cool stuff guys, keep it up.

All the safety procedures were just as interesting almost. Great vid

Amazing!! Very thorough job. You can negate the slumping powder in the longer cartridge by putting some dacron stuffing in front of the powder. A small amount gets consumed in the firing. If you can find hollow base wadcutters they are usually very soft because like Minie Ball, they expand to fit the barrel tightly. And I'm SURE somebody in Alabama does bullet casting.

I audibly "Wow!"ed at 22:02. Getting to see how physics works through slow motion is awe inspiring. Thank you for your incredible work in getting this footage and sharing it with us!

Destin, the equal momentum transfer shot was absolutely beautiful. Thank you for making such interesting content!

Just amazing, good work guys, the bullet fusion counts in my book...

Its always fun to listen to your amazing analysis ! Thank you It would have looked visually more pleasing if the two bullets were painted in Red and Blue, and as the 2 lead merges we could see some interesting pattern and confluence of those 2 lead

"Get smart people in your life who love you enough to smile and tell you you're wrong." Great comment! Great video! Thanks, Destin. You do a great job of educating in an engaging and delightful way.

Regarding the straight lead bullets, it may be worth trying to remove the oxide layer. When the original fusion occurred in the civil war the bullets may have been freshly cast and easier to fuse at lower temperatures. I see this akin to soldering PCBAs where older solder is resistant to melt initially from oxides and a touch of new solder/flux enables it to melt much easier.

It would be interesting to see how much ballistic gel could capture in an experiment like this. I'd love to see you do this with old mini-ball and black-powder as well. Great Channel, btw.

1:05 "Let's give it a shot" - good one ;)

I love how humble Destin is when he's describing the video and his accomplishments. I also enjoy how he always takes the time to explain everything fully and simply. Truly appreciate everything that he does and can't wait to see where this goes next.

This was so cool. Thank you for making this happen

The alignment of the flight paths is so amazing. I can’t believe the view. The explosion was a bit of a surprise since I was expecting glancing shots and I know what not. The. The several shots like two ships passing in the late afternoon. All the footage is exciting to watch for anyone interested in flight paths and contact, marksmanship, reloading used brass for accuracy, even barrel fouling. So many things that we consider when we want to make accurate shots repeatable. Oh, yeah, seeing the shock wave ripple through the bullet as they impact was one of the coolest things Calculate the joules expended. Now scale it up to larger objects like the idea of asteroid interception or when the smaller moon struck the earth ejecting our moon. This leads to so many thoughts.

I love that you have the forethought to film yourself doing things like reviewing the footage for the first time. Your giddy laughs when something impossible happens bring me immense joy and is half the reason I love watching your stuff. You're very smart, Destin! David also cracks me up.. "so is that the tip?" when it's quite obviously the tip lol. Most humble person ever. Protect him at all costs.

This deserves an award. Science, cinematography, creativity… it’s so fun watching someone do something really well, and from the engineering to the safety, really seems like no corner was cut, and that is very commendable. 👏👏👏👏👏

There is, or was, some 40 odd years ago a WW1 British Army rifle in the Imperial War Museum on London, England which had had a bullet enter the barrel and fuse with the bullet fired by the rifle in the bore. Alongside the gun was an X Ray photograph showing the barrel with the bullets clearly visible. Loved the experiment and the thought that went into it. It did occur to me through the yid that, perhaps, setting a bullet on a plate in front of one gun and firing the other at it, you may effectively double the distance of the travel and halving the velocity, rather like the distance travelled by the original bullets. It may even be possible to increase the effective distance travelled because the variables are reduced,

For someone who doesn't like guns, I love guns. This video is great because it shows interest & safety. Whenever I watch a movie, I end up screaming "muzzle control!" at my screen, but this here is so good. Communicating "clear" & having the safety in place is really important to me.

When the two bullets hit and froze in the air, I immediately got chills. This is incredible! Love your videos! Thank you for all the amazing content!

ok so that's a great video, but my biggest takeaway is Destin's genuine & passionate excitement glowing throughout the entire video. this is just plain fun to watch

Just discovered this channel. I love it.

You did Missile Flight test on the Javelin Missile system?? That is awesome! I am an Electro Optical Ordnance Repairer in the Marine Corps and have been doing it for 10years. I personally would love to see a video of you talking and explaining all the Missile flight experiences you have had!

I immediately love the term "intellectual humility". I usually think of it as being dispassionate about knowledge, but I think your term describes it better.

just an idea, in times of the civil war not all longarms where actual rifles. it's probably the spinn of the bullets that hinder the fusion, while one bullet turns clockwise, the other turns counterclockwise, have you ever testet it with a "smothbore" (not nativ to english so i'm not sure if it's the correct word) like a musket has had it?

20:46 is so good, and I like how it was sort of like a liquid a bit before looking more solid.

Not sure if you thought about it, but the rotation due to rifling causes the 2 bullets to spin in opposite directions. Maybe the old bullets didn't have rifling, or rifling wasn't standardized and they both ended up spinning the same direction. This would be much more conducive to bonding.

The image that I have always found incredible is that of the two rifle bullets from the Battle of Gallipoli. One hit the other at 90 degrees: if the probability of two bullets hitting each other face to face is infinitesimal, hitting each other with perpendicular trajectories is really bordering on nothing. PS: maybe the next project for SmarterEveryDay?

This is a cool video. Much appreciated for the time and hard work put in.

The fact that millions of bullets were fired to achieve this back in the day both saddens and amazes me

The safety design stuff for this was nice to see, I'd honestly like a breakdown of everything that goes into a project like this to make sure there aren't any surprises.

Man, the sound production is excellent. Really adds to the slow-motion shots in particular.

Personally I get more excited about pretzels and bier put together, but I do accept that the pull-off of such a challenge was monumental for these guys and definitely interesting.