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I had 4 identical 3" thick phone books laying around so I decided to do an impromptu test using 3 types of 5.56 ammo. The ammo was Fed xm193 55gr, Pmc xtac m855 62gr green tips and Fed American eagle 55 gr jsp. All were shot into dry phonebooks stacked inline. The weapon was a 12.5" AR pistol fired at 25'. The results were exactly opposite of what I would have guessed. The Pmc green tips penetrated the least and fragmented the most, penetrating 2/3 of the way through the second phone book. The Fed 55gr jsp also fragmented violently but stopped just inside the back cover of the second book. The fed xm 193 showed no expansion or fragmenting and plowed a clean hole until it entered the third book and started yawing. It came to rest 2/3 of the way through the third book. The squished bullet was recovered mostly intact. The others had no large pieces to recover, just small fragments. I know this sample size is too small to draw too many conclusions but interesting just the same. For comparison, 9mm 115 ball ammo shot through a pistol at 20' will penetrate about 3/4 of the way through 1 phonebook. My take aways are, bullets don't always perform as expected through all mediums and phone books are tougher than you would think.