No matter how many times you’ve seen the movies and the TV shows that have a protagonist leaping in the path of a bullet, physics forbids such sacrifice. Because of a bullet’s radical speed, you can’t jump in front of it, but you could get in its way. It’s not as dramatic, but it does save lives. The Secret Service saved a president that way.
Bullets are fast—even a 9-millimeter handgun launches lead at Mach 1. And the bigger the bullet gets, the more grains of gunpowder it carries, the faster it goes. Modern rifles can fling the small pieces of metal at half the velocity needed to escape the gravitational pull of the Moon. Our weapons are so fast, in fact, that you couldn’t get in front of a bullet even if you saw it coming. Thanks to due diligence done by the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters, we already have ...
