How Gun Silencers Work

The sound of gunfire is incredibly loud, and it is amazing that anything is able to silence a firearm. However, the principle behind a gun silencer is surprisingly simple. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more about silencers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Brainstuff from house Stuff Works dot com, where
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(00:22):
Brain with today's question. How does a gun silencer work?
It's amazing that anything is able to silence a gun,
but gun silencers actually work on a very simple principle.
Imagine a balloon. If you pop a balloon with a pin,
it will make a loud noise, But if you were
to untie the end of the balloon and let the
air out slowly, it makes very little noise. This is

(00:45):
the basic idea behind a gun silencer. To fire a
bullet from a gun, gunpowder is ignited behind the bullet.
The gunpowder creates a high pressure pulse of hot gas.
The pressure of the gas forces the bullet down the
barrel of the gun. When the bullet exits the end
of the barrel, it is like uncorking a bottle. The

(01:06):
pressure behind the bullet is immense, however, on the order
of three thousand pounds per square inch, so the pop
that a gun makes as it's uncorked is extremely loud.
A silencer screws onto the end of the barrel and
has a huge volume compared to the barrel, twenty or
thirty times greater. With the silencer in place, the pressure

(01:27):
rise gas behind the bullet has a big space to
expand into, so the pressure of the hot gas falls significantly.
When the bullet finally exits through the hole in the silencer,
The pressure being uncorked is much much lower, perhaps sixty
p s i. Therefore, the sound of the gun firing
is much softer. Do you have any ideas or suggestions

(01:49):
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