Homemade Gauss Gun

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!"

Comments

Re:Full-size gun

[Repton]

It's basically slight-of-hand with kinetic energy.

If you just had one ball and a lot of doughnut magnets that the ball rolls through, you wouldn't get anywhere: The energy the ball gained as it rolled towards a magnet would be lost at it rolled through and away from that magnet.

By having the ball hit the magnet, and having two balls on the other side, energy is transferred (like in a Newton's Cradle) from one ball, which is touching the magnet (and, thus, difficult to shift) to another ball, which is further away from the magnet, and hence requiring less energy to get "free".

It's quite clever :-)

Re:so, you people want to build a gun eh?

[SevenTowers]

So fuckin what if it's the width of northern missouri?

Take a look at this page before talking about something you don't know about. Do you know how much energy you can get out of an electromagnetic field generated by a solenoid that's got 400km of wire? A hell of a lot. Oh, yah, do planes that fly at mach 7 burst into flames? It's gonna heat up like hell that's for sure. And by the way, the payload they accelerated was of the order of a few grams.

Have you ever heard of people being in a separate room? And the concrete wall being in the middle of a room with about 10 meters of water barrels behind it.

Don't think people are stupid before knowing the whole story. Every one aound would be dead, that has to be the stupidest I have ever heard. You check your physics dude, because expirements with explosives and high velocity projectiles happen everyday and people don't die.

Re:so, you people want to build a gun eh?

[coding_ape]

The armor piercing rounds of a standard American tank cannon (120mm Rheinmetall) have a muzzle velocity of around 1800m/s. The length of the barrel is around 3-4 m. So no, the payload would not shatter under the strain. And that's total bull about the air having the consistency of concrete. Like the previous poster said, we couldn't exactly expect missiles and rockets to fly at mach 4+ if they were slogging through concrete.

Oh yes and though the voltage inside your house may be 120v, the voltage in the lines outside is much, much higher. That's why they use AC, so they can transform it.

Re:Other Fun Ideas

[Graymalkin]

A while back in G&A I think I saw an article about stun gloves which took the components of a stun gun and housed them inside a leather glove. You pressed down on a trigger and the electrodes were in the cuff of your hand between your index finger and thumb. All you had to do was grab somebody and they were in for a shock.

Re:Full-size gun

[Chagrin]

At low speeds, the elasticity of the magnets or balls isn't much of an issue as the ball clicks up against the next magnet. However, towards the end of your gun, with the balls striking the magnets at ever-increasing speeds, I think you'd start shattering everything.