Magnetism
Since everyone apart from me is currenlty watching the footie and I have no-one to play XBL with, I'm going to post today's update now before I get bored later and just forget to do it. Today's is - rather randomly - about the things known as Railguns and Gauss Guns.
I first heard of these in Half-life. It had a Gauss Gun, which you found when you passed a wall and heard :
"I think we've got to use this gun to escape-"
"Don't be stupid! That thing's untested-"
"So? It'll work fine?"
*Charging up noise*
*Violent explosion*
You then went through the destroyed wall and, next to the corpses, was the Gauss Gun. It fired supercharged sorta thingies which generally killed people and vortigaunts etc easily. I later encountered the Gauss Gun again mounted on the back of a Warthog in Halo 2.
And the Railgun. It's used in countless scifi films, and also in Heli Attack 2.
But how do they work? Do they exist, or are they just the product of someone's imagination?
Both have been built. A shot fired from a railgun holds a record speed of 20km/s. Just think about that speed a moment, then read on.
They both work on magnetic principles. Firstly, the Gauss Gun, also known as the Coilgun (the Gau gun in HL was completely invented). The Gauss Gun uses a large number of coils of wire, and the projectile rests in the middle. A current is passed through the first, which induces a magnetic field and pulls the projectile forward. Then, the current in that one cuts out and the next one has a current passed through it, pulling the projectile further forward into the next coil. That current cuts out, the next one starts up, and the projectile is accelerated through dozens of coils in a fraction of a second. The projectile then fires.
These will not yet replace current military weapons because although they can achieve impressive speeds, they are expensive and required advanced machinery to ensure the timing of the electrical charges is perfect.
More interesting is the Railgun. The projectile is mounted on two rails. Then a HUGE current of, say, 1,000,000Amps is fed into the rails. The projectile launches, and as I said the record is 20 kilometres in a second, which would basically tear through anything. There's one in Scotland which holds this record.
While more deadly than the coilgun, the huge amount of heat generated by firing the projectile at such speeds destroys the coils and they have to be replaced after every shot.
So there you have it. A final explanation of what they actually are (so the Railgun in Heli Attack 2 is infact wholly unrealistic and fires some kind of laser thing).
I first heard of these in Half-life. It had a Gauss Gun, which you found when you passed a wall and heard :
"I think we've got to use this gun to escape-"
"Don't be stupid! That thing's untested-"
"So? It'll work fine?"
*Charging up noise*
*Violent explosion*
You then went through the destroyed wall and, next to the corpses, was the Gauss Gun. It fired supercharged sorta thingies which generally killed people and vortigaunts etc easily. I later encountered the Gauss Gun again mounted on the back of a Warthog in Halo 2.
And the Railgun. It's used in countless scifi films, and also in Heli Attack 2.
But how do they work? Do they exist, or are they just the product of someone's imagination?
Both have been built. A shot fired from a railgun holds a record speed of 20km/s. Just think about that speed a moment, then read on.
They both work on magnetic principles. Firstly, the Gauss Gun, also known as the Coilgun (the Gau gun in HL was completely invented). The Gauss Gun uses a large number of coils of wire, and the projectile rests in the middle. A current is passed through the first, which induces a magnetic field and pulls the projectile forward. Then, the current in that one cuts out and the next one has a current passed through it, pulling the projectile further forward into the next coil. That current cuts out, the next one starts up, and the projectile is accelerated through dozens of coils in a fraction of a second. The projectile then fires.
These will not yet replace current military weapons because although they can achieve impressive speeds, they are expensive and required advanced machinery to ensure the timing of the electrical charges is perfect.
More interesting is the Railgun. The projectile is mounted on two rails. Then a HUGE current of, say, 1,000,000Amps is fed into the rails. The projectile launches, and as I said the record is 20 kilometres in a second, which would basically tear through anything. There's one in Scotland which holds this record.
While more deadly than the coilgun, the huge amount of heat generated by firing the projectile at such speeds destroys the coils and they have to be replaced after every shot.
So there you have it. A final explanation of what they actually are (so the Railgun in Heli Attack 2 is infact wholly unrealistic and fires some kind of laser thing).
posted by Mkzrj at 6:15 pm
2 Comments:
Very impressive...but I think the video here should interest you..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9175092807176422356&q=halflife+2
It's a demonstration of the physics in Halflife 2, with a rather amusing ending. Think the Honda advert, but with a more satisfying end.
Also, that railgun sounds fun, where can I purchase such a weapon?
I love the idea of a railgun and so i intend to create one this summer holidays. Now i know they are real !
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