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Homemade Gauss Gun

Posted by michael on from the physics-is-phun dept.

bonzoesc writes: "I'm sure we all remember getting owned by some railgun-wielding kid in Quake2. Ever wanted a way to get back? Enter the Homemade Gauss Rifle. Requires wooden ruler with groove down the middle to serve as the rail, steel balls that can roll down the groove to use as projectiles, and magnets to store and redirect energy. Physics is fun!"

5 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Games for Physicists? by citroidSD · · Score: 5, Funny

    I knew this would happen. First you had Physics for Game Developers Now you have Game Weapons for Physicists.

    Sigh, what's next, perpetual motion?

  2. Lies. by whee · · Score: 5, Funny
    This is obviously a fake railgun; It lacks the spiral of blue particles that lead back to the source. Nice try, though.

    (At least this isn't a homemade BFG -- I'd be really scared then)

  3. Degaussing gun by mcc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Eh.. i'm disappointed. I initially misread that as "degauss rifle"..

    After discovering in computer labs that hitting the "deguass" button on a monitor will cause the monitors nearby to trip out very slightly for an instant, i had these vague daydreams of rewiring whatever it is in the monitor that makes it deguass to be unreasonably strong, so that hitting "deguass" would cause the monitors of all the computers in the lab or whatever else is in a 40-foot radius to be degaussed at once, Matrix EMP-blast style. This would probably break stuff, but then that's the point, i suppose.

    I dunno.. i guess having instructions on how to build a mini-rail-gun really is much cooler, but still, i wonder if the guass-blast idea is possible.. and if it were, modifying the idea to create a gun you could stick at a monitor and pull the trigger to deguass it would be really funny. Alas, there's no practical use for such a thing as far as i can tell, and it isn't really *that* interesting, so i don't really care enough to do any research on the subject, so for now, it looks like i'm going to have to limit myself to putting an electric pencil sharpener next to the monitor, sticking in pencils, and giggling.

    --
    Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
  4. Uhh... by AnalogBoy · · Score: 5, Funny

    you didn't just give a bunch of undersexed, over hormonal, arrogant teenagers instructions on how to build a DANGEROUS WEAPON, now, did you?

    -ugh-

    :)

  5. Re:2 birds with one stone by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Nice little website ya have here. Be a shame if it got slashdotted, ya know?"

    Chris Mattern