(orchestral music)
- Hey I'm Josh Clark and this
is Brain Stuff and this is
the Brain Stuff where I explain to you
how gun silencers work.
If you've ever seen a cloak
and dagger type spy movie or
a movie with a hit man or
something, you might have seen
them put the little barrel
extender onto the gun, and then
sneak up behind someone and
it made a cool sound like
(simulated gun silencer noises),
which is a pretty great
silencer impression if I do say
so myself.
If you wondered what was going
on, or if you're a hit man
looking to keep your arms
quieter, I'm going to explain to
you how a silencer works.
We should probably start off
by pointing out that they're
not actually called silencers.
That's what people who don't
know what they're talking about
call them.
They're called suppressors,
and for good reason.
It's virtually impossible to
fully silence a gun, because
guns are loud, and they're
loud three different ways.
The whole loudness starts when
the hammer hits the firing
pin, makes a nice metallic
sound, which isn't too loud, but
it's still a sound nonetheless.
And it's one of three.
When that firing pin hits,
it ignites the gunpowder
located in the shell which explodes.
It explodes into gas,
pressurized gas, at about 3000
pounds per square inch.
That forcefully pushes the
bullet out the end of the barrel
and makes quite a bit of
sound, like kind of a deadly
champagne cork popping
as the bullet comes out.
That's sound number two, and
that's what silencers, I mean
suppressors seek to keep down.
They do it by extending the barrel,
and fattening the barrel.
What this does is it takes
those gasses that are coming out
of the gun at 3000 pounds
per square inch, and it gives
them room to expand inside
the silencer, suppressor, or
as some people who you probably
don't want to associate with
call cans, right?
Now when this gas expands, it
looses some of that pressure,
and it decreases from 3000
pounds per square inch to about
60 when it comes out
the end of the silencer.
Now without a silencer, those
explosive gasses produce a
sound at about 160 decibels.
Which, by the way, is about
the point where your hearing
tissue dies, and once it
dies it doesn't come back.
So 160 decibels is loud,
ear-crushingly loud.
When you have suppressor on the
end, it drops those decibels
down to about 20, which is
about the sound of a very quiet
whisper, in a quiet library,
heard from six feet away.
Also known as (simulated silencer noises).
Yeah, there's a third sound
though that a silencer can't do
anything about.
You know when an airplane
flies overhead and it reaches
the supersonic threshold,
and it creates a sonic boom?
Bullets do that too.
Except instead of a sonic boom,
it's called a ballistic crack.
But at any rate, it reaches
the sonic threshold when the
bullet reaches a velocity of
1100 feet per second, which
is fast.
So, to prevent this ballistic
crack from taking place,
some manufacturers produce
ammunition that have bullets that
travel at less than 1100 feet per second.
They still move pretty fast,
but not fast enough to create
that little sonic boom.
Hence that third sound is then dampened.
So, if you have a pretty
good silencer, and ammunition
that shoots bullets out at
less than 1100 feet per second,
what you're left with is a 20
decibel explosion, and just
a little hammer clicking.
Believe it or not there are
some downsides to all this.
While you will look cooler,
like Javier Bardem in No
Country for Old Men, who had
a silencer on the end of his
shotgun, and which made his
character like 80 times scarier,
you're going to be giving up
a little bit of power, and a
little bit of accuracy.
Plus, you can still hear a
bullet no matter how silent you
make a gun, if you're the
one being shot at, because it
makes a horrible terrifying,
unnerving zipping sound while
it's coming at you.
Believe me I've been in a ton
of fire fights, and I know
what I'm talking about.
- [Josh Voiceover] Man this is boring.
I am such a windbag.
All I want to do these days is shave.
Ever since I went to Harrys.com
and got a handle, three
blades and shaving cream
shipped to my door for 15 bucks,
I just want to shave all the time.
And now, with this promo
code of BRAINSTUFF, anybody
can get five dollars off
of their first purchase at
Harrys.com.
You really can shave all the
time for that kind of money,
that's like nothing.
I gotta get back to this
video, I gotta concentrate.
- So that's gun silencers.
If you're one of those people
who likes to talk about guns
and silencers and that kind
of thing, leave some comments
in the comments section
below, and maybe subscribe.
It won't kill you.
Someone with a silencer
might, but subscribing to our
YouTube channel definitely will not.
As a matter of fact, it
will improve your life.
