Now I'm really scared for our future ...

I had the opportunity to spend some time over the holiday weekend with a 16-year old male of American descent, who is enrolled in one of STL County's public schools. He had evinced some interest in scientific progress and professed to have some math and physics knowledge. His parents are both very smart sorts.

I brought up the US Navy's railgun experiments, firing objects at Mach6 using electro-mechanical propulsion and wondered if existing ordnance might be just as good.  I defined an experiment, using explosive propulsion.  I wondered if the railgun, at Mach6, was as effective an offensive weapon as a handgun firing a round, say, 1900fps, about the same as a 9mm bullet from a handgun with the same terminal velocity. I suggested that the HS kid, who had an interest in firearms, work out the speed of the 9mm bullet in terms of the speed of sound.

That's a simple equation.  Feet per second eventually = miles per hour.  Multiply and divide to get the rest of the results, then figure out how it all works into the speed of sound, which is 768 mph.  What's the fastest exit speed from the barrell?  Yes, it depends on what the shot fired is,  whether or not it's a 22LR or a tungsten rod.

Works about to Mach2, give or take.  Some serious hunting bullets can make it faster and more powerful than that, big game killing rounds.  Stand back.

Raw numbers, for sure, but the bad news is that the local HS kid had no idea what to do with the math.  He had no idea that each mile = 1760 yards and 5280 feet.  He tried to answer in meters and, of course, that number made no sense.  He just did not know the basic American numbers. And when I pressed him, he had no idea of the simplest multiplication tables.

I'm saddened by all this.  My copybooks all had the times tables on the back cover printed on them for me to memorize, but no longer.

Discuss on the STL Media Message Board. (Registration Required)