Right. I know this question sounds absolutely retarded. And I'm not saying it isn't. But the more I think about it the more it interests me.

Say you had a petri dish full of some generic bacteria sitting on a table. If I pointed a 9mm handgun at the center of it and fired what would happen to the bacteria in the spot the bullet impacts with? At such a small scale do physical impacts even work? If not, would kinetic energy from the impact kill any of them via a different means such as heat or pressure?

What if instead of having the dish on a table I had it held sideways in the air. Since the bullet would just pass right through the dish and keep going would the fact that there's no hard impact against a stronger surface lessen the effects?