AK 47 vs M16 (ZT)

	转自文学城美语世界，原编辑者：两个老外 ，感谢原编者的辛勤工作！
	(All credits goes to our great ZOE teacher) Slow down fourteen thousand times, it’s clear that the kick or recoil of the high precision M16 moves it very little, not the AK47, it’s throwing itself around. Look at the end of the barrel, it’s clearly flexing up and down. One reason for this vibratory performance is the way it works. What’s happening when this is fired? It’s, of course, cycle rates truly high. And you got a really big hunk of metal coming back, and it’s slightly off-center, not much, but slightly off-center. So, this thing is coming back, and then coming back forward. So you got really two violent acts going on. And then if you have the round going off, you’ll have a third violent act. We set up targets at about 200 yards; it’s an easy distance for a decent rifle. First up is the M16. What we are looking for is grouping: how close the shots are to each other. Every shot strikes close to the heart in the kill zone. Now the AK47. Only one of the five shots even tags the lower left edge of the paper. Not one strikes the kill zone. And it’s clear from the design of the sights that the American weapon was designed to be more accurate from the very start. “Sights are very good! We have a little peep sight here in the back, okay, which you can use for short range. And what you can do, you can actually flip it forward, and if you look on the back, you can actually see an L. That’s for long distance. In the front, you have just a post, with what we call bunny ears, which flare out. And what you do just send your post in the center of your rear sight. And you put it front on target, and you fire, and you should hit target.” The AK sight is very crude. “It’s not as good as the peep sights that the Americans have been using since WWII. You take your front post and you line it up with the little notch right here, and the top at the front post and the top at this bar will be leveled. And you set your target right on top of those three points. This weapon…” The Soviet solution was brutally simple. Take the heavy old rifle bullet and make it shorter and therefore lighter. The M16 uses a smaller slimmer bullet with far less recoil than the AK the M16 gun can weight barely two thirds as much as the AK47. The AK47’s heavier bullet may be slower and less accurate, but its sheer power is indisputable. We’ve set up these cinder blocks to simulate the wall of a building in a combat zone. First the M16. Quite impressive. And now the AK47. We’ve also simulated a jungle environment with this 8-inch block of dense pine. At 28 yards, the M16 bullet, fails to penetrate. And the AK47. To be better as rifles or as machine guns, there’ll always be a designed trade-off. The M16 is closer to a rifle; the AK47 a machine gun. And you can see it clearly in the fire selector switch. The AK47, when you start on the upper position, you are in the safe position. It also works as a dust cover. You drop down one notch, you are on fully automatic. Next notch is semi-automatic. This is primarily a machine gun. It’s be used on fully automatic. Whereof M16, the selector lever goes to the safe position, the semi position, the automatic position. 本群成立的背景和学习方式（英文版） You watched an interesting video at YouTube, liked it, but not sure you completely understood it. Well, copy the URL of that video clip, download it, and transcribe what you’ve heard. Other users can watch it, give you feedback, or offer their tran to the same video. Then you will know exactly what’s being said in the video. Transcribing something is an excellent way to improve your listening comprehension. It does a magic to your ears. Try one and you will see what I mean. And you won’t be guilty anymore for spending too much time at YouTube. Let us know how you like it and what we can improve further. 美国kantalk给予本群和本群学习方式的积极评价： Nothing makes us more happy than our users telling us they like the features we developed at Kantalk. The latest example is the video transcribing. We firmly believe that transcribing a video clip is an excellent way to improve one's listening comprehension. That's why we added YouTube video feature a few weeks ago. Since then, one of our users, Sting, quickly became a top contributor. He submitted many YouTube clips and did a wonderful job in transcribing them. It turned out Sting is a leader of a fascinating group in China of the dedicated English learners. He started the group last year to take advantage of YouTube's rich video offerings, and its members have since grown to over 200 from all over the world. Each day they select one YouTube clip and assign it as the homework. Using QQ, a popular IM tool in Asia, they help one other to transcribe the video clips. So far, they have done over 200 tranions. Apparently, they have a lot of fun for doing it. And learning too. If anyone wants to join Sting's study group and eager to take on his homework, feel free to contact him. His QQ ID is 287033838. his QQ group is 32149507.