Posted 11 October 2008 - 03:21 PM
Okay, everyone should understand by now that everyone got carried away. No one STARTED OUT by being a douche, but responses to the initial topic caused anger levels to rise, and things continued to spiral downhill, if you'll pardon the pun.
No one can be pissed at him for not searching to see if rifling works in nerf or not because whether or not it works wasn't the purpose of his post. His post is a write-up for a concept, not asking if it would work. We have found in the past that it does not work appropriately, and as such, is unnecessary. However, he posted an IDEA, complete with instructions. Why would that give ANYONE reason to be angry, initially?
Please, everyone, think before you...well...think. And then think again. THEN, try thinking about typing up a post. Everyone'll go home a lot happier.
To address the situation in a more civilized manner:
Rifling has been found in the past to be more of a hindrance than a help in nerf applications. In short, darts are stable because the weighted front is pulled on by the nearly weightless back end, the foam. A single-line kite without a tail will spin out of control because it has nothing pulling on the bottom corner to hold it aligned. Similarly, a bullet is evenly weighted, and as such requires gyroscopic stabilization to remain on track. But darts DO have that back end applying drag, which keeps the heavier weighted end on front. In a higher powered gun, darts will fishtail if there is not enough weight because the drag isn't balanced by enough mass in the front end. If there is enough weight, the random flailing that the tip on its own would perform in flight is balanced by the drag of the foam pulling behind it.
Spin applied to nerf darts ends very quickly because the foam is affected so drastically by friction. When spinning down a barrel, even a BULLET is slowed slightly because some of its forward motion is being transfered into rotational motion. The differences are slight because of the sheer speed and mass of said projectiles. Nerf darts move at far lesser speeds, and as such, rifling not only (typically) dramatically reduces speed, but it actually encourages fishtailing.
So in short, the idea was nice, but this isn't the application for it. Nerf darts with built-in spirals, concave OR convex, have a greater surface area which will increase drag, and you'll wind up with reduced overall performance. We could easily label your idea as stupid, but we've all had dumb ideas. You live and learn.
That said, keep on learning! See you around.
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