Great Moments in Physics
Lito Lapid became a movie star in the late 70s by playing daredevil heroes in local westerns. Audiences looked forward to his dangerous, death-defying stunts. According to a friend who’d seen these movies, one trademark stunt involved a bullet and a bolo (big-ass knife). Lapid’s character has only one bullet left in his gun, but there two villains coming towards him. How can he shoot two men with just one bullet? Simple. He takes the bolo and holds it in front of him, the blade’s edge out. Then he aims the gun at the edge of the bolo and fires. The bullet hits the edge and splits in two, and each half puts out its intended target. Wow. If anyone else had tried that trick it might’ve been ruled a suicide. Then again, if the bullet had a velocity of X meters per second and it was made of pudding. . .
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
January 29th, 2007 at 11:00
i think the movie he’s referring to was Ang Pagbabalik ni Leon Guerrero. My friend and I also used to discuss alot about how that seemingly impossible feat was made. But of course, it’s Lito Lapid. Our local version of Chuck Norris meets Steven Seagal.
January 29th, 2007 at 13:47
The error in assuming its impossibility comes from the assumption that the knife clove the bullet in 2 equal parts. What the knife did, as most ballistics experts will tell you, is to shatter the bullet into numerous fragments all traveling at velocities (assuming the normal .44 caliber bullet that Leon Guerrero uses) in excess of twice the speed of sound. Seen in this light, it would be easy to believe that said Mr. Guerrero was able to hit the enemies’ vitals. It’s like shooting them with a shotgun. The only literary license in the movie is the stopping power of said bullet fragments. In reality, the fragments’ momentum will not be able to stop the bad guys after being hit. In fact, when the famous outlaw Jesse James tried this feat (no doubt inspiring the Leon Guerrero stunt) against the Pinkertons sent by railroad company to kill him, one Mr. Sullivan, after being hit by a bullet fragment in the throat, was able to continue his forward motion and grab Mr. James’s leg and pull on it with vigor, just as Im doing with yours.
(The ‘leg’ bit was stolen from Mr. Waits. ;-) )