Not too many people understand exactly how destructive paintball bullets are.
They think that the liquid contained inside the bullet cannot create too much force and damage the surrounding objects, including the low shatter resistance surface like glass.
So, actually, can paintballs break glass? Join to find out right in today’s article!
Can Paintballs Break Glass?
Paintball bullets can shatter a piece of glass if you shoot at close enough distances.
We all have to admit that Paintballs are more dangerous than a non-lethal weapon. Even if it’s just liquid paint, with additional factors such as firing force, speed, and contact surface size, a bullet can quickly destroy the glass.
The most durable ones, such as car glasses, windows, and even eye protection glasses, cannot avoid this success. Therefore, using paint guns and shooting Paintballs requires great care to avoid unfortunate incidents.
Factors Affecting The Impact Force Of Paintballs
We can easily show the relationship between force and distance and weight, speed, and distance traveled by the projectile with basic physics knowledge.
From there, you can analyze the causes of increased damage, thereby damaging the glass surface of the paintball.
However, some factors also significantly influence our analysis and evaluation. You can learn about all the most critical factors in the article below.
Weight
Heavier paintballs will do minor damage to mirror surfaces than smaller sizes. The larger the bullet, the safer it is for both you and the glass surfaces.
As implausible as it sounds, size is directly proportional to mass, and both of these quantities are inversely proportional to velocity. The slower the speed, the smaller the force created when the impact will be.
Air resistance and other factors will have a more significant impact on large-sized bullets, thereby reducing the damage when breaking these products.
Real gun bullets are tiny, even as small as marbles, while large shells have to be filled with more explosives and need a large igniter to shoot far.
It is also a clear demonstration of the impact of weight on the destructive ability of any bullet.
Length of the Barrel
The barrel length of the paint gun is practically the same as the barrel length of many conventional models.
This part has an important impact on the bullet’s velocity when fired. The longer the barrel, the more acceleration of the bullet inside will increase in detail.
Here we know that the faster the acceleration, the faster the speed of a moving object will also become correspondingly.
The bullet will increase its speed rapidly. If accurate, firing a high-acceleration shot into the glass corner can cause instant glass-shattering effects.
Length
The length of the barrel is proportional to the speed and destructive power of the bullet. Meanwhile, the distance between the gun and the target glass is a barrier, so the paint solution does not break the glass into many small pieces.
Paintballs will have maximum acceleration and increase their speed with distance when coming out of the barrel.
Until external factors such as friction with the air or wind are large enough, this velocity will gradually slow down and eventually free fall to the ground.
Therefore, increasing the distance from the gun to the glass will reduce the bullet’s velocity upon contact and thereby eliminate the force generated when impacting at high speed.
The projectile fired horizontally rather than vertically from above. When the bullet falls in the direction from above, the acceleration will increase due to the action of gravity. And then increasing the distance will only increase the speed.
Speed of the Wind
The faster the speed, the faster the bullets fly, and the force generated will also increase significantly. You can draw from the analysis that I have provided to you above the article.
The speed of the bullet depends a lot on acceleration, distance, and even weight.
However, another factor that also dramatically influences the average rate of paintballs is wind speed.
You might forget about the issue of wind when considering movement in experimental environments, but in practical use, this factor is quite essential.
When discussing wind power, we will need to analyze three factors: headwind, crosswind, and side winds.
- Headwind: A headwind is a wind that moves in the opposite direction of the bullet’s path. During the movement, both will constantly rub against each other, reducing the speed and destructive power of this weapon.
- Crosswind: Crosswind wind blows diagonally from left to right and vice versa. This type of wind causes the bullet to deviate from the standard trajectory, so the crosswind can reduce the speed of the bullet.
- Sidewinders: Side winds is a type of wind that helps propel bullets through the air and is the opponent of Headwind.
Some Tips To Protect Eyes With Paintballs
The power of paintballs can break glass as thick as car glass. Protective glass models also have a high probability of not being able to stand up to the significant impact of paintball bullets.
You need to consider some essential tips to protect your eyes against the effects of Paintballs and broken glass from your lenses.
Choosing the correct type of glass
Glasses used in paintball battles must be specialized goggles such as ballistic eyewear to withstand the impact of bullets flying at high speed.
Standard goggles can only resist objects moving at a speed of 90 m/s. This number is much lower than the speed that paintballs can achieve in both theory and practice.
Of course, you are not allowed to use sunglasses because the nature of these glasses is only sun protection and has an uncertain structure.
If it collides with bullets at high speed, the debris can damage our eyes.
In addition, you can consider using thermal glasses as a temporary alternative if specialized glasses are not available.
Wear it properly
You should wear glasses according to the instructions so that this tool can fully protect your eyes from parts of the paint solution full of chemicals.
At the same time, a properly positioned glass will also have more fulcrum to cancel the bullet’s force upon impact.
FAQs
What happens if you put marbles in a paintball gun?
Paintball guns are not to shoot bullets, so if you try to use the wrong type of ammunition, the weapon will not work, but it will also damage the tool.
Can I shoot pepper balls from a paintball gun?
You can use pepper balls to make bullets for paintball guns because both types of ammunition are not too different in terms of structure.
However, the two’ weight, price, and damage are different. Pepper is not as safe as the standard version, but they are much cheaper.
Think carefully before choosing!
What’s the FPS of a paintball gun?
90 m/s (300 ft/s) is the average speed of a paintball fired from a gun. The rate can be increased or decreased as it does not exceed the limit of 280–300 ft/s.
What hurts more with a BB gun or airsoft?
BB guns will deal with much more severe injuries than airsoft.
The BB version usually has a longer barrel and an enormous bullet weight. Thus, their firing force will be much stronger.
You must wear maximum safety gear when using BB as a weapon.
Where do paintballs hurt the most?
The neck, thighs, back of the neck, biceps, hands, and soft tissue or parts with many nerves will be the areas you feel the most pain if hit by a bullet.
Conclusion
We have learned together about today’s article: “Can paintballs break glass?” Hopefully, this knowledge will help you use paint guns more safely.