Armor Penetration and Armor resistance.

[Sean Manning]

Actually, slings don't work in a linear fashion...lighter ammo doesn't necessarily go farther. I sling fairly regularly and I find that my best weight for range is about 70 grams...lighter ammo drops in range pretty fast, especially under about 40-45 grams. I sling lead, rocks, and cement balls I handroll (and that weigh ~70 grams :twisted: ) and this is true for all of them.

Archimedes

The same is true for bows, incidentally. There is an optimal weight of arrow for range, and another for kinetic energy, depending on the strength of the bow and the design of the arrow. Air resistance and the design of the bow give an upper limit to how fast the arrow can be accelerated between release and leaving the string, so a very light arrow will fly no faster than a light one (and it may even fly slower, due to the inefficiencies involved).

Thanks for the information, Dan. Where did you get your figures for the energy of spear thrusts (as opposed to knife thrusts)?