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!"

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 [a-city.de]) 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 [google.com] 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 [canoe.ca] 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:so, you people want to build a gun eh?

[KFKsingultus]

The sheer amount of energy required to launch a payload at 2km/s from such a short barrel would require a current far in excess of anything THIN copper wire could bear. Not only would the barrel burst and copper go flying everywhere, the copper would be molten.

You don't know much about physics do you?

All the wire has to do is carry the amperage it's being fed. The energy is generated by a variation in magnetic flux. This has absolutly nothing to do with melting the wire. If the amperage is high enough, yes the wire could overheat, but since it's so long, I don't think you need that much current.

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.

Let's get the physics straight

[pdp11e]

If You observe system in its initial "armed" condition you will find that it is not in its lowest possible energy configuration. Steel balls that are not immediately adjacent to magnets, do have higher potential energy than the balls touching the magnets. After firing, all the balls (except the projectile) are touching the magnets, meaning that the system has lower potential energy. The difference is the kinetic energy of the projectile.

You are, of course, right when you say that initial energy of the system came from the hands of the person who arranged the balls.

Now let's get semantics straight.

>However, none of the fixed magnets imparts energy to the ball

When the kinetic energy of the particle is enhanced at the expense of the system's potential energy (for the conservative system), the common expression in physics literature is that "field imparted energy to the particle". The expression: energy is "released" is also quite common and it simply means that system is in the configuration with lower potential energy.

Now let's get you straight.

>The energy of separating the magnets is not 'released' during this experiement, as the magnets do not move.

Indeed magnets did not move, but the balls did and the potential energy of the system is lower....

gauss projectiles

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Syndicate realy rocked. Second, I don't think you are restricted to solid metal-bodies as projectiles for your gauss-guns. Perhaps you could also use the gun to (silently!) propell a grenade which then explodes on impact. It would just need to contain enough iron (or whatever) to be accelerated by the coils. Can't remember the Syndicate-details though.