I am a metrologist/test engineer, both by trade and by
"disposition of personality" (inside industry joke ... it basically means you are a certain kind of useful pain-in-the-neck)
Ballistics Gelatin testing satisfies only two criteria of scientific metrology:- Consistant, known initial conditions
- Consistant testing medium
Where it fails is in using a meaningful
and duplicative analog to the problem being simulated ... gelatin does not
really duplicate any known body structure, and only does a very rough job of simulating certain aspects of muscle tissue. Gelatin is similar to muscle in terms of viscosity, for instance but not at all in respects to fibrous structures of varying tensile strength, shear strength, blah, blah, blah.
It works
sorta well as an
extrapolative test however, and nobody has come up with anything better in this regard than calibrated gel testing. Just don't be fooled (the FBI isn't) into thinking that X" of penetration or expansion will result in the same on anything living. It won't.