Government Railguns Declassified

BAD SANTA

BAD SANTA

Well-known member
Lol, yer I think the MOD and pentagon might have something to say about that although it would be pretty cool looking.
Just out of interest do you think the 12v car battery would be a sufficient power source.
 
DeadEyeDuk

DeadEyeDuk

Superhero Level Poster
Nah would need some sort of reactor in the boot (so might only be available on cars with a decent sized rear storage space).

But of course a sizable amount of AAs should be kept in the glove compartment...just in case...

I feel this has diverted slightly from your point Santa, sorry :D

The reality of it does look quite interesting, as the principal does not differ too much from what we as supe awesome PC gamers have seen over the last 10 or more years (though devs probably nicked it from real ideas in the first place...).

Personal Guass Gun for every GDI recruit! (slipped again :D )
 
SrgColman

SrgColman

Enthusiast
My college physics prof had our small class (there were three of us taking advance physics so our lessons were very... non curriculum) erect a small one in the labs, and after firing it once and breaking something deemed it too dangerous and dismantled it and asked us not to mention what happened...

Its actually a lot easier than some of the videos on youtube make out to look like (though our scale and thus strength was a lot smaller), especially when equipped with a big phsyics lab that our college had (science college ftw) all we had to get ourselves was two long lengths of copper rails.

Blah blah blah, long story short, railguns are so awesome, and I think last I heard there is a fully working one in Scotland one of our ships.
 
BAD SANTA

BAD SANTA

Well-known member
Yep, yep and yep, I have read loads about them and they are a very simple concept I think the main problems are materials, power and physics and I reckon I have a pretty good understanding of all of those. The thing that seems to keep cropping up is that a stationary projectile between the rails will spot weld itself when the current passes through. I think this is why the in military tests they use tungsten as it's properties stop it from doing that.
Also it seems that people use aluminium foil and I was thinking about using steel ball bearings, how lethal are these things on a small scale? I mean I don't want to do serious damage to me or anything else?
What power source did you use?
By the way I wish I was in that physics class!
 
SrgColman

SrgColman

Enthusiast
Different to how military railguns will work you don't need a big power source if you use enough capacitors, the only problem you'll come up against then is charging them, however you can grab a DC/AC converter and use that, charge a series of capacitors (I'd say 8-10 450v capacitors) and go crazy.

As for the projectile we used a largeish steel ball (kinda like a marble), and we estimated to exceed 1000m/s. A lot of people use aluminium foil but tbh I'd be worried about it forming an unstable plasma depending on the voltage output, I mean you could be reaching 2500vs easily with the capacitors, and that would be mental. But use a tiny ammount of tin foil and you'll pose no danger to anything and it will be hella cool.

And just a thought, if you are on a tight budget, go into any photo developing shop and ask if you can have their disposed of disposeable cameras, they have capacitors in that will be great for making this a reality and you can use a spare camera as a trigger (the button system will be perfect for this).

As for my phsyics class, it really spoiled me, doing adv applied physics at uni was really boring compared to that class...
 
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