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Gamers May Get a Charge Out of the Gauss Rifle
Zothecula writes "Well, Patrick Priebe might have outdone himself with this one. In the past, the German cyberpunk weapons-maker has brought us such creations as a wrist-mounted mini-crossbow, a laser-sighted rotary-saw-blade-shooting crossbow, and a flame-throwing glove. His latest nasty futuristic device? A video game-inspired electromagnetic weapon, called the Gauss Rifle."
From the description is'nt it more of a railgun type of weapon ?
are we talking starcraft gauss rifle? fallout 3/new vegas gauss rifle? it looks like it belongs in dead space. it also looks like a glorified version of this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPciBQnZw3c
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
If remember well Beretta 92F is about 500J.
If this man is really looking to cyberpunk writing, then perhaps he'll follow recent advancements in implanted electronics and, taking a cue from Neil Stephenson's The Diamond Age , offer us a gun that can be concealed in the cranium. Then again, if you set off the metal detector at a location even when walking through completely naked, someone's going to know that something is up.
This was in SF books, in the 70's.
As for gaming antecedents, do you remember the role-playing system, Traveller?
When I was a teen - around '79, I remember Gauss Rifles, and polyhera dice in the game. This was when the video-game combat state-of-the-art was Asteroids and Space Invaders...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As with electric cars and aircraft, the power density of boring, smelly chemical fuels are just stubbornly competitive with electric tricks...
It's a pity, because they are much more entertaining; but it's persistently the case.
Wonderful! And is it attached to a battery pack the size of a truck trailer?
I love the smell of toasted zergling in the morning.
TFA: Fortunately, he has no plans on developing it commercially, or on telling other people how to make one of their own.
Capacitors, em coils, pressure sensors... you pretty much already told us how to build it. Of course, anyone with an IQ above room temperature could have worked that out from the descriptions in the various games that employ similar weapons. I personally would have gone with something other than pressure sensors to trigger the next coil -- wear/tear, added drag, etc. -- but to each his own.
As far as producing it commercially? The US Navy is already working on that, thanks.
This guy has a history of making cool garage-project, working replicas, but it's nothing as innovative as all that. There's a reason soldiers are still carrying around powder-charged ammo instead of giant power packs and several pounds of coil.
For even more 'awesome but impractical' bonus points, I suspect you could modify this so that the laser sight actually shines out of the barrel. Repurpose the mirror-flipping mechanism out of an old SLR camera.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It looks neat, but performance is unimpressive. 328 FPS is only about a third of the muzzle velocity of 45 ACP pistol ammo
I agree.
A reply to that comment
what is the weight of the projectile
it is slow, but if it is 3 X heavier than a 45 ACP than it would deliver the same power to the target
If it is 3X the mass and travels 1/3rd the speed, it carries 1/3rd the energy.
Won't somebody please teach the children science?
In some contexts, stopping power is measured by momentum transferred, not energy transferred. It is using "power" in the colloquial sense, not physics jargon sense.
Where I live they are too busy teaching the kids English and Creationism.
I want to see a Quake 1 lightning gun.
God spoke to me
Also, it's a 22 caliber projectile made of steel (less dense than either lead or copper, which any schoolboy knows most bullets are made of). So at half the diameter, it should be 12 times the length to be 3x the volume -- and even longer for 3x the mass.
The ignorance, it burns.
What do you mean, overcharge?
With 3X the mass and 1/3rd the speed it would have the same momentum. Granted, the power, as in energy, delivered would be less, but with a weapon you might be more concerned about momemtum. A small high-energy particle might pass completely through a target while doing minimal damage. But a larger particle with less energy might be able to do more damage, or at least have a greater chance of knocking the target down, often referred to as "stopping power". Consider a gun battle between two beligerents, and suppose one of the combatants shoots the other with a smaller bullet that passes quickly through their shoulder. Imagine that the impact slightly jolts the combatant, but they quickly recover their position and aim to hit the other combatant with a much larger bullet that might be moving much slower. The larger bullet may impact the combatant's shoulder in a manner identical to the first, but the impact from the larger bullet might have the affect of knocking the combatant off balance, perhaps to the floor. Penetration might not even be lethal depending on various factors, but being knocked off balance, on the ground, the second combatant is at much of a disadvantage if the first pursues the second for follow-up shots that keep him down and possibly end in fatality, such as a shot to the head, which is fatal even with a rubber slug.
A bit of research tells me that 45 ACP rounds are about 10-15 grams. The video says the railgun projectiles are 5.6 x 16 mm.. I'm assuming both are mm, then, which would mean a perfect cylinder would have 0.394 cm cubed of mass. Most steel seems to be about 7.5 gram per cm3, so that'd be about 3 grams.. a little less, because it's not a cylinder.
It has 1/5th the mass, and 1/3rd the velocity. Kinetic energy would be.. what. 1/75th?
These numbers seem excessive, so please correct me if I'm wrong. It's rather shocking that a pretty well designed, heavy coilgun only gives 1/75th the power of an average handgun. Especially since said handgun can probably unload its ammo into its target 5 times faster.
Everything you said is true. But don't get the idea that smaller, high-velocity bullets are useless - otherwise, we'd still be using 20mm musket balls. Bullets since the Minie ball in the American Civil War have been designed to offset their lack of stopping power with fragmentation and wounding effects - your hit through the shoulder isn't just going to zip in and out. It's going to zip in, shatter, then tear out, taking many times its volume in flesh with it. And the smaller, lighter ammo and easier recoil are also demonstrable benefits.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Had this guy released the plans I might not have looked at them, but since he offensively censored the information I went and learned all about coil guns.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. so 1/5 * 1/3 * 1/3 = 1/45, not 1/75. Dunno where you got 1/75.
It's not excessive. The energy stored and released by the capacitors in this guys rail gun is nowhere near as much as the amount released by the gun powder in a bullet. Assuming those are 100uf 400V capacitors, you're talking about 1600J, a fair amount of that would be lost as heat in the internal resistance of the capacitor and the resistance of the coils. The projectile carries around 10 - 15J of energy.
That's why modern rifle rounds are unstable, but spin stabilized. Low weight and high velocity means they have good range and accuracy, as well as some ability to penetrate armor. Instability means when they are disrupted by some kind of resistance, like a human, they tend to yaw violently and then fragment. Technology to provide all the lethality of a hollow point bullet, but without violating the Geneva Convention.
These numbers seem excessive, so please correct me if I'm wrong. It's rather shocking that a pretty well designed, heavy coilgun only gives 1/75th the power of an average handgun.
Coilguns only do a few percent efficiency. Out of a claimed 500J propellent energy from the caps, only some 15J or so were transferred to the projectile.
It's a fucking coilgun.
It's not a railgun.
en.wikipedia.org/coilgun
en.wikipedia.org/railgun
Accidently squared the 1/5. Derp. Still a tiny number though.
Someone should tell him that a decent airsoft rifle will shoot a projectile further and have more impact energy than his home-made coilgun, and have the battery power to do that a few thousand times rather than a few dozen.
He's all like "OH LOOK AT THAT DENT IN MY WALL I MADE WITH MY COILGUN BECAUSE I COULDN'T HIT A WATERMELON AT THREE FEET!"
Yeah? I've got a similar dent in my wall. I slipped and slammed my elbow into it. Hurt like hell, and would apparently be just as powerful as your mighty weapon.
Now, I do enjoy the science aspect of electromagnetic weapons development, but I frankly get a bit embarrassed on behalf of people like this who try and paint it up as so hugely powerful when it's clearly nowhere near being so. Is it a cool looking gun? Sure. Is it a gauss rifle? Not even close. Is it a dangerous toy? Yeah, about as dangerous as an old school nerf gun - you could put someones eye out.
Is the creator a 13 year old boy? Well, apparently in some regards. And I posted AC because from my experience, so is a lot of mods.
I just took one look at the picture and thought the guy made it with 8 iPads. I felt a sigh of relief to know that no one would've been that stupid, but also paradoxically felt bummed that they weren't.