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Harvesting Capacitors for Backyard Munitions

Posted by michael on from the say-cheese dept.

Diabolus writes "This is the tale of a man, a bunch of disposable cameras, and his techniques for harvesting lots of capacitors to build a gauss gun. Insane..." A basic capacitor tutorial is probably in order.

6 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. IANAL, but.. by fadeaway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Isn't it, oh, I don't know, kind of illegal to manufacture weapons that far surpass anything the army currently has, or will have in the next 20 years? =P

    1. Re:IANAL, but.. by billstr78 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm a, pretty sure the Army has munitions far more sophisticated than a bunch of camera capacitors strung together in parrallel today. I don't think anyone has even concieved of what they will have in 20 years. The military has always required the most cutting edge technology to develop weapons. This is not cutting edge.

    2. Re:IANAL, but.. by Capsaicin · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Do you see the Second Amendment there in the U.S. Constitution?

      1. Adelaide is not yet in the U.S.

      2. I can't see how his building the gun is reasonably related to the maintainance of a state militia. So the 2nd amendment wouldn't apply anyway.

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
  2. Re:Anti-slashdotting.... by billstr78 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    True. The ./ employees probably did not have much else in ther submit box to throw up at this time of night. This site is seriously lame and laking in any cool geek content that ./ is so famous for. wtf?

  3. Re:cheap yes, but practical? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Car audio capacitors aren't normally rated at 350 V.

    The energy stored in a capcitor is 1/2CV^2.

    Higher voltage gains you a lot more than higher capacitance.

  4. Gauss Guns by ctar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here are a few different Gauss Guns, including the one from Half Life!

    Yes, I did just pilfer these sites from Google, but didn't see any other references linked so far, soooo.....