Excellent!
Makes my university mass driver project story where I sent a cat into planetary orbit pale into insignificance*.


*lies
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 11:21, 3 replies)

?
Lies about the cat, or false-modesty lies about the insignificance of the story?
:)
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 11:34, closed)

I too...
...do not buy into this tale.

Hyper-velocity magneto-rail weapons (commonly called the Railgun) have been a Holy Grail project for the military for some years... yet you build one in school? Ahem. Yes. Ahem.

Also, Gauss Cannon and/or Coilguns are exactly the same thing....
(EffinDoubt is breaking glass on, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 12:22, closed)

He didn't build a railgun
Gauss cannon equals coilgun, but neither of those is remotely like a railgun. They are quite different. See above. They all sound all sci-fi but they're not really, it's simple tech.

The holy grail for the military is to make a railgun that's reliable enough to use again and again. The rails melt because of the current and friction from the projectile. The military has had prototypes for years that are ridiculously powerful but liquify after a couple of shots. They are easy to make at home as well (at lower powers obviously), probably easier than a Gauss gun.

That reliability problem is not an issue with a Gauss gun. The difficulty with a Gauss gun is making it powerful enough to bring the pain, something that involves supercooled magnets and liquid nitrogen. That isn't really battlefield-friendly technology. Hence why all the research at the moment is directed at railguns. Which isn't what the OP built.
( Scrumper, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 13:07, closed)

Don't worry kids
It's all lies about the mass driver. However I did make a time machine in my garage and made a little money on the stock market*.



*I might be confusing my life with that of the protagonists in the movie 'Primer' again though...
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Wed 18 Feb 2009, 13:06, closed)