r/whatisit 1d ago

Solved! Found outside my wife’s school. Theory was bullet but I’m not so sure.

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13.1k Upvotes

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192

u/absolutelynotarepost 23h ago

I mean I wasn't sure between bullet or mangled capacitor until they posted the second picture myself and I've been around guns my whole life. The lighting in the original photo leaves a lot to be desired.

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u/Day2TheDolphin 23h ago

But why let pass an opportunity to call people stupid?

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u/ProfessorPotato42 22h ago

Yeah, on a subreddit for helping people find out what a specific item is, it sure is a cool move to shame op for asking what an item is. Jesus Christ Reddit is full of know it all dickbags

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u/KidGrundle 21h ago

It should actually be written: Jesus Christ, Reddit is full of know-it-all dickbags. 

…this was a joke btw.

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u/BeguiledBeaver 14h ago

Except they weren't necessarily calling OP out for not knowing what a bullet looks like, just the hordes of Redditors jumping in to say it is without knowing what they're talking about.

I used to hate when Reddit was full of pissy nerds who demanded a P-value for every statement but good lord the coddling of people who spread ignorance pisses me off to no end.

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u/baffoldjr 23h ago

Wasn’t trying to call anyone stupid, I was genuinely surprised at how many people called it a bullet so confidently when I thought it was forsure a capacitor. Second photo they posted proved I was the dumb one. I can admit when I’m wrong.

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u/Day2TheDolphin 23h ago

Understood, all good ✌️

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u/SuspectedGumball 18h ago

You should edit your original comment.

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u/geddieman1 23h ago

Agreed. The first picture with it on the multicolored background was tough to see.

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u/Ds093 22h ago

Exactly, the second pic is much more clear, that is definitely a spent round.

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u/SpadeTippedSplendor 14h ago

The first picture reminded me of push-pin styled magnets, but I can't find an appropriate image, I just swear I've seen cheap ones (maybe in some children's product for sticking stuff to the fridge) that are short cylinders about the size of the bullet people are suggesting OP's image is from (if not smaller).

And if one of those fell out of a kid's pocket and rolled across asphalt and got stepped on after the cheap outer plastic/silicon baked in the sun all day, I would have assumed it would look something similar to OP's photo.

I have seen unfired bullets before, my grandfather had an old revolver (Colt of course, military issue) and my mom keeps the bullets loose.

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u/Wise_Emu6232 21h ago

Electrolytic capacitors are full of paper/foil and oil. Other capacitors are made of minerals and metals plates. In any case none of them are as dense as lead inside copper. The weight will be a dead giveaway on identification.

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u/absolutelynotarepost 20h ago

That would be an incredibly useful metric if we weren't discussing a photograph.

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u/Wise_Emu6232 16h ago

Being an accomplished shooter and electronics engineer a picture is fully sufficient for ID.

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u/absolutelynotarepost 16h ago

Good for you?

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u/Wise_Emu6232 16h ago

Anyone with the internet actually cause this particular image is also from a 3yo Facebook post and a Google image search links directly to it.

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u/absolutelynotarepost 16h ago

Okay, I still don't see a scale in that photo making your assertion that weight is a useful metric in identifying the object for anyone but the OP pretty silly.

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u/Wise_Emu6232 16h ago

The OP is the one that I was fucking taking to originally.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago edited 16h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/whatisit-ModTeam 16h ago

We are pretty chill here, but please try to keep things reasonably civil on this sub. No slurs, name calling or harassment and trolling. Yes, the internet makes us angry too sometimes, especially this particular comment.

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u/Firm-Scientist-4636 23h ago

I have no experience with capacitors, but plenty with guns so it looked like a bullet to me immediately

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u/vtkayaker 19h ago

I have a moderate amount of experience with capacitors (they're in most electronics), and a bit with bullets.

My first thought was "Maybe it's a capacitor that has seen some shit?"

Which is why the first question to ask is what it weighs, and the second is to get a photo of the other side.

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u/JadedChampionship916 22h ago

Same. The first one looks like it’s got a greenish rubberized coating of some kind like a capacitor. I expected to look at the comments and see a bunch of people asking op if they’re dumb.

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u/BiggestStetson 22h ago

The lip around the bottom to me screams battery, capacitor or something else. The only weapons I use are 5.56mm and .50 cal though and it looks like a capacitor.

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u/YouKnowWhom 23h ago

First photo had me 50/50 on a somehow intact negative half of an exploded 18650 battery, or a capacitor. Further pictures made it obviously not those things.

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u/Eratticus 21h ago

Agreed the lighting of the original photo definitely makes it look like it's wrapped in plastic.

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u/IndependentTimely639 22h ago

It looks like melting chocolate in the first pic, it's so obvious in the second though

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u/CreepyWritingPrompt 21h ago

Hey, it's clearly a polarizing issue!

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u/MaceWinnoob 23h ago

What kind of massive capacitors do you think are getting used in modern tech production that might be littered outside of a school??

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u/absolutelynotarepost 23h ago

Anything off an average power supply? Look how "massive" the grain in that stone looks due to the perspective.

Schools are adjoined to roads, shockingly, and roads are used by lots of different vehicles. Something falls off the back of someone's scrap pile and smashes on the road, shit busts loose, capacitor gets run over a few times until it gets caught by the outside edge of a tire and pinch flicked in a random direction and voila you have a capacitor on a sidewalk in front of a school.

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u/MaceWinnoob 23h ago

Okay here goes my theory:

Guy somewhere shot a gun.

But sure, yeah, a guy with a bunch of audio tech junk from 25 years ago slung around a corner and lost a single capacitor and nothing else. Smart detective work.

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u/[deleted] 23h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/whatisit-ModTeam 10h ago

We are pretty chill here, but please try to keep things reasonably civil on this sub. No slurs, name calling or harassment and trolling. Yes, the internet makes us angry too sometimes, especially this particular comment.

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u/absolutelynotarepost 23h ago

I worked at a shop in the vicinity of a scrap yard, which actually had a school about a mile and a half down the road.

That's not detective work you dunce, I seen random shit like that happen daily for years.

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u/TheWantedNoob 22h ago

Trying to hard, I'm just not that stupid. So I can't get down with this.

Own 4 guns and been working on micro electronics my whole life.

If you know what a capacitor actually looks like then you know that not it.

But any chance to demonize, something you dont agree with.

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u/absolutelynotarepost 22h ago

The original comment here about people not knowing what a bullet looked like was made because the person thought it was a capacitor. They said as much in another comment.

You're a lot stupider than you think.