Judging by the power of the "meplat" to blow unrelated threads off track (f'rinstance), I thought the "Magical Meplat" really deserved its own thread. Here it is...
To get the boolit spinning, let's start with somewhat different views from two well-regarded experts on the subject. Here's a diagram from Hatcher's Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers (page 410) which should easily satisfy all four criteria for "fair use" of copyrighted material:
Note that Hatcher's numbers for "relative disruptive power" come from measuring the volumes of the holes the bullets punched in blocks of clay and that "It does not follow that the efficiency on flesh or bone follow these numbers..."
In his book Bullet Penetration: Modeling the Dynamics & the Incapacitation Resulting from Wound Trauma Duncan MacPherson basically concludes that the full, sharp-edged wadcutter crushes about 50% more gelatin than any of the other nose shapes and that differences among the other shapes are insignificant. However, MacPherson does suggest that when the flat nose of a bullet approaches the full diameter of the bullet, it makes sense (for estimating penetration and wound mass) to treat that bullet as a wadcutter of the diameter of the meplat.