Pellet (air gun)

Common card · No. 219290

A pellet is a non-spherical projectile designed to be fired from an air gun, and an airgun that fires such pellets is commonly known as a pellet gun. Air gun pellets differ from bullets, shells and shot used in firearms and artillery in terms of the pressures encountered; airguns operate at pressures as low as 50 atmospheres, while firearms and artillery operate at thousands of atmospheres. Airguns generally use a slightly undersized projectile that is designed to obturate upon shooting so as to seal the bore, and engage the rifling; firearms have sufficient pressure to force a slightly oversized bullet to fit the bore in order to form a tight seal. Since pellets may be shot through a smoothbore barrel, they are often designed to be inherently stable, much like the Foster slugs used in smoothbore shotguns.

Read on Wikipedia · Image User Ari x on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0