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:Degaussing gun

[SgtXaos]

The navy has a degaussing station near Norfolk Naval base (and probably others near big bases). They use it to degauss entire ships. The ships, being predominately steel, pick up residual magnetic fields from sailing though the earth's magnetic field. They need to periodically remove these residual fields. They float the ship in, then connect big cables over top of the vessel, and send big currents through the coils. Not sure how it affects internal equipment, but I suppose that the hull shields most of it the same way the shielding in your computer speakers prevents the voice coil magnets from screwing up your monitor.
If you have an old color monitor you don't care about, put a magnet near the screen sometime. (ooh, a rainbow!) As this falls in the same category of fun as microwaving CDs, don't expect the degaussing circuits to fix the result anytime soon. in other words, don't do this to a monitor you wanna use.