I was just going to ask before we embark on our little scientific jaunt if anyone here has ever done it before (I bet someone has). Anyways we're scribbling down some ideas and I'll likely post them as they filter through, but we're just basing it on your good old home-made examples - two charged rails in parallel with some sort of slug attached to those rails with loops of wire. Turn current on, slug goes flying. Once we've got that working we're actually aiming to build a proper viable weapon with a 'trigger' and even a tripod

So yeah if anyone has any words of wisdom, ideas, further theory, warnings etc. etc. I'd love to hear them!

That and discuss any other homemade boomsticks you've made!

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

Sounds liek good old fashioned dangerous fun!
http://www.powerlabs.org/

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WOOSH|-----@%

My friend Laura made one in a physics course during high-school. Unfortunately she didn't think to make it with capacitors and so when it fired the metal washer through 2 ceiling tiles and a copper pipe it also drew enough charge to black out 2/3 of the school.

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[Blue Mink Bifocals !] [fsck -Rf /world/usr/] [<!-- kalimonster -->] [Capite Terram]
"That's why we had to beat you with tennis rackets".
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

I built a spud gun last summer. Its this big pipe the fires potatoes using a combustion chamber full of lit hair-spray.

Google can tell you more, it's freakin awesome.

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www.tednation.tk

I've mad big *** sling shots before. Those are always fun.

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

"Railgun on eBay - www.ebay.com
Find railgun items at low prices. With over 5 million items for sale every day, you'll find all kinds of unique things on eBay - the World's Online Marketplace."

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Friends is over. Kill yourself.

Indeed. I made a big one once I used a piece of bungee cord and a laundry basket tied up between two trees. I loaded it with lemons and then my friend and i would pull it back and launch lemons out of it. They would go for about a block.



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I have found that you can transform your character solely by the power of belief: as you believe yourself to be, so you shall become over time.

We're looking at something far lower power and more portable - likely powered off a bank of large batteries or something. We're not looking at a 10km/s jobbie, just something that'll fling a bit of metal a little way at least. I'm sketching up some stuff but the bugger is my scanner doesn't work, so I'll transfer it across into Word tomorrow and upload it here in some sort of format.

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

Railguns are cool.

I haven't done much by the way of projectile weapons - explosives are more my style.

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Four dimensions, four fundamental forces... coincidence?

I remember last year around christmas, a bunch of Grade 12s teamed up with the science teacher to make a chemical morater (ok, it was a bottle containing some alcohol... forgot what type, a hole for the flame and a cork in th end). The first shot was a success, but the second one killed it: It melted the top of the bottle off, and sent it (along with the cork) across the room and into a window .

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"Iraqniphobia - The fear of non-existant weapons of mass-destruction."

pfffff, you guys are nothing compared to the working trebuchet my friends and I built...

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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side

once made a catapult/crossbow type thing that could fire lightbulbs at a nice veolicity (BEST AMMO EVER).

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Drugs & Stupidity, Tons of it.

Well, if we ever get invaded by a country that is far below our standards of military might, I know who to call.

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Prowling out of the tundra, swinging a jeweled meat hammer, cometh Outlaw Torn! And he gives a gutteral bellow:

"I'm seriously going to hump you until you scream like a banshee!"

A long time ago I used to make little launcher things out of wooden cloth's line clip things. They only shot pebble sized objects not much further than they are throwable, but weren't as obvious as throwing and were sneaky. In elementry school I would make them for people and they would shoot paper wads in class, but never got caught.

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I am _ Ace_1 _ , and I approve this message.

My local university has a rail gun. The only problem is that the projectile keeps accidentally getting welded to the rails.

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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -Isaac Asimov

I have the power of mind bullets.

And for the reference claim, I give cookies!

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"If electricity comes from electrons, does morality come from morons?"

Plasma cannon.

Remember it must have two modes, explosion upon contact or a time delay with a grab-claw device on the projectiles.

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"We came, we saw, we conquered, we...woke up!"

Who here claims to be wonderboy?!

(That's telekenesis Kyle..)

*Munch munch munch...*

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If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards.

I haven't tried making a railgun, however I have tried making a concussive device ... a piece of wood with a nail stuck in it.

Oh... I've made a few things...

http://edward.leuf.org/eds_pics/WoodenWeapons.jpg

The only 2 things that are missing in this picture is a Babylon5 station and a turret.

/Edward

A board-with-nail is a piercing weapon. A concussive - or, as I prefer - a bludgeoning weapon is something like a baseball bat.

Bah ... its not a piercing weapon when the sharp end of the nail is stuck in the piece of wood and the other end is as smooth as a baby's bottom.

Woooonnddeeerrrrbooooyy!!

Uh... yeah. I want to build a rail gun, but I found somewhere a method of using a pair of powerful magnets on a bar as the 'slug', a 9v battery for the power and a few bits of foil. I haven't tried it yet, 'cause I can't get hold of the magnets, but sure as hell it seems like fun.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.

Okay here it is so far. You can either read this version here or view the original Word Document at http://charmed.slayuk.com/graz/RAILGUN_PROJECT.doc (36kb).

RAILGUN PROJECT[/i]

Railgun n. An experimental weapon that utilises the magnetic forces created by electrical currents to propel a magnetic projectile great distances at often immense velocities. The highest-powered prototypes can fire at some 10km (6 miles) per second.


A Domestic Railgun, Part 1

By using scaled down power sources, a more sensible firing velocity can be achieved so as to domestically develop a railgun. The actual theory and principle behind railguns is simple enough to be able to build one domestically.



At its most basic, a viable railgun consists of two parallel rails able to conduct an electrical current, plus a projectile, either resting on the rails (and hence therefore it must be metal) or wired to them in such a way that it makes contact but can still be fired (e.g. by using loops of wire, see below, and thus non-metal projectiles may also be fired). When the circuit completes, both the rails and the projectile conduct the current.



Here are the rails viewed from the front. In creating a sort of wire cradle, with loops that go round the rails (and lay on them) but can be fired off the end, one can sit non metal projectiles on the cradle and fire them.

The force between two parallel currents is obtained via the equation:

F = ILB

where F is the resultant, or net force of the projectile, I is the current in the ciruit, L is the length of the rails and B is the magnetic force the current produces. This force is perpendicular to the current and magnetic field direction. Larger currents therefore will increase the net force and thus velocity, as will longer rails. Since magnetic field strength increases with current anyway, an increase in field strength is due to an increase in current – hence the velocity is greater.


The Problems with Any Railgun

Any railgun (particularly larger scale examples) suffers problems. If the rails aren’t superconductors they can become very hot very quickly as large currents flow. The heat energy produced is in accordance with the equation:

P=I^2 x R

Where P is the power, I is the current and R is the resistance of the rails. As current increases, so does resistance, but current is squared in this equation, so we can see how even minor increases in current can very quickly have knock on effects that heat the rails up. At high temperatures the projectile can fuse to the rails and render the railgun inoperable. In a slightly less worse scenario, the velocity of the projectile is merely reduced due to the friction generated by the heat.

Moreover, the rail circuits are anti parallel to one another (the current flows in opposite directions) and hence there is a great deal of repulsion between the two rails. When the current is large this repulsion (in accordance with the magnetic force in the equation F=ILB) is large also. After a few uses the rails simply twist out of shape making the railgun useless for any sort of accurate shooting.

There is also ultimately a limit to the length of the rails. Because there is electromagnetism at work, its effect on the projectile gets greater as it moves down the rails, to the point where the initial force propelling the projectile is equal to that of the magnetic force pulling it back. When these two balance, the projectile is going to stop, and hence the rails have a maximum length. As they get longer so will the projectile slow as it continues down them.


A Domestic Railgun, Part 2

However, in a homemade railgun the currents are a little less, so damage to the rails is less, as is the problem of fusing. The basic railgun principle demonstrated above in Part 1 would be the initial weapon created. If this proves successful, this principle could be adapted to fashion a practical weapon:






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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

[This message has been edited by Gee_4ce (edited August 19, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Gee_4ce (edited August 19, 2004).]

We've got loads of bungee cord - always need it for Army Cadets when we go camping... ok that's idea #2!



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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

And here are the scribblings of Darren, the other half of the team:

http://charmed.slayuk.com/darren/railgun1.jpg

Not linking straight in with the image due to scrollage.

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

[This message has been edited by Gee_4ce (edited August 19, 2004).]

The University of South Carolina shoots carbon disks, but I guess those would be a bit hard to come by.

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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -Isaac Asimov

Wow. Someone considerate of side-scrolling.

And I'll race ya to completing it.

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Wise men say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, so look before you leap, so to speak, because the grass is not always greener on the other side of the hill.

Well we're not starting until October half-term anyway. If I'd have had more free time this holiday we'd have done it, but I'm working every day God sends except Thursday when my GCSE results come out.

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

http://www.xtremeads.com

Well, kind of. It's a taser-like device that uses plasma instead of wires to conduct electricity to the victim. It's cool though.

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Four dimensions, four fundamental forces... coincidence?

Wow, that's extremelly interesting. Similar to a design my Debate teacher and I cooked up for a magnetically charged bullet.

JediKirby

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jEDIkIRBY - Putting the Romance back into Necromancer.
Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council

Live on, Adam.

I always liked the idea of a super-soaker taser.

Basically, a super soaker with a thin wire going past the place where the water shoots out, which is charged (the wire), so when the water shoots through it, the current is passed into the water, through the air, and into target.

Then there was this guy at this camp who needed to uh.. experience a lot of pain. So my group decided to steal a fire engine, and then do the super soaker taser idea.. just with a fire hose.

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[16:38] Correction: dick tracy was a real man
[16:38] happydud: Actually... He wasn't.
[19:08] Dormouse: hi, my name's happydud and i'm passive-aggress.. SHUTUP!! *stabs nearby orphan*
[You have gained 3 Dark Side Points]

What exactly do rail guns shoot?

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"I'd rather be hated for who I am rather than loved for who I pretend to be." -Janis Joplin

Anything you can poke a wire through.

Metal VinnyBoy
and This reminds me of a SA thread I've come across
It's Something Awful, there's swearing and stuff, don't click if you want to complain about it


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What happens when you cast heal on the undead?

You guys are all n00bs. I have a concussion rifle that fires sky blue diamond-like energy projectiles and then expands into a sky blue 2-D ellipse upon contact with an obstruction.

I'll see your trebuchet and raise you a half-completed crossbow.

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1 of 14 | 6-16 Never Forget. | Click.

haha, a crossbow better than a trebuchet? Never!
I also have a spud cannon, but it's been borken for quite a while (used it for a school play and some actor doof but confetti in it, clogged the solonoid ) but my friend and I designed a 4 barreled spud cannon but never got around to making it.

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Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side

[This message has been edited by Evil_Tofu (edited August 19, 2004).]

If you gave me stryofoam and gasoline, I would be happy to make you guys some napalm....



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I have found that you can transform your character solely by the power of belief: as you believe yourself to be, so you shall become over time.