Railguns

Since they've been mentioned in a couple of threads...

For those who don't want to read it all: Railgun tanks, by 2015.

 

...From that I take it you don't know I have one on my car, where the ski rack would go.

 

To protect the gun.

 

The latest I saw on railguns was a video of some college engineers using air pressure to propel their projectile initially, and then using electromagnetism to accelerate it. It reduces the cost of the energy used, because less power is needed to move the bullet. I like it. I was trying to build one of my own, but got discouraged and decided on a potato cannon.

 

for real shits and giggles, you should build a pumpkin gun instead.

 

Plain old RPG is enough for me

 

A pumpkin gun is something I've really wanted to try, but a potato cannon is more within my budget.

 

there's a corn field near fish's hometown, every halloween they grow it in the shape of a maze, and when you finish it, you get to fire miniature pumpkins at large wooden targets... for a small fee, of course. it's totally awesome.

 

...I thought that the railgun was something that only available in QUAKE. I didn't know some of you already had one.

 

Well, I personally do not have a railgun. I have tried to make one, several times. The best I got was a mini railgun, that could fire paperclips into peoples' eyes. It didn't hurt, and did no damage, it was just frigging hilarious. According to some uneducated sources on the internet, whom I don't feel like mentioning, "Railguns are science fiction, or, at best, a madman's wet dream." In reality, the American navy has new railguns on some of their battleships, a part of their AEGIS auto-defense system. It fires a twenty to thirty pound steel spike at over 5000 feet per second.

 

You mean any weapon that can launch a nail(ignore the size) is called railgun? Well, then I think I've already got one on my backyard.

 

Well, technically, yes, but it needs to launch the nail using electromagnetism.

 

Nailguns are these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nailgun

Railguns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun
Coilguns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

 

Now I know. Is there any reference to plasma guns?

 

I thought that's called Gauss Rifle.

 

A good friend of mine is currently working for a Houston-based company that has close ties to the university of texas (he's doing something on flywheels: http://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/Elec ... hicle.html )
He was able to visit their railgun lab recently, and told me that that shit is freakin' huge and impressive. Pity about the high-frequency AC stuff they use though; though I don't really know how exactly their guns work, the entire high-frequency thing makes superconductors useless. I bet it would be cooler if they used superconductors.

 

Well, that's also a technicality. A gauss rifle launches projectiles through electromagnetism, but also has the tell-tale sign of a gun: the gun barrel. A railgun has no gun barrel. It has, as the name implies, rails to lauch the spike (or whatever you're trying to fire). There are two rails, charged positive and negative, and they exchange a current of plasma that carries whatever you're firing at a ridiculously high speed.

 

I hate these words, all seem the same to me, and the links provided...I can't understant, totally.

 

Wikipedia says you're wrong. It's not an electrostatic thing, it's a magnetic thing with the lorentz force propelling the bullets. I didn't see any mention of a plasma either (and I don't see how creating a plasma would help a railgun in any way)