Introduction - Rail Gun Part 1

    A friend of mine and I have been getting really interested in rail guns as of late. Rail guns harness the properties of electromagnetism to accelerate projectiles at high speeds. Here is a video of the U.S. Navy's rail gun, which can reportedly shoot rounds at up to Mach 7, firing:

(from yt/The Military Show)

    Now, of course, we don't have the capabilities of creating a device that powerful yet, so we settled for trying to make it using some more obtainable means. The basic design of the rail gun is 2 conducting rails that are attached to capacitors of some kind. A conductive projectile is placed between the two rails, which completes the circuit and allows a current to flow. This current provides a magnetic force that propels the projectile off the rails. The capacitors in the design allow a significant pulse of current to flow through in a short amount of time. Here is a diagram of a basic rail gun:

(from ResearchGate)

    This layout is very common in hobbyist rail guns and even in ones that become very powerful. Here is an example of a high-power rail gun using the design by Ziggy Zee:

(from yt/Ziggy Zee)

    For more on his rail gun: https://imgur.com/a/diy-250-lb-most-powerful-mobile-railgun-27-000-joule-GrAiE

    Capacitors are a key aspect of the rail gun, and we're opting to try and make our own. A basic homemade capacitor can be made with aluminum foil and some kind of paper dielectric. However, these capacitors are usually only in the nF (nanofarad) range, and we'll be needing capacitance well into the hundreds of uF (microfarad) range. I'll detail more about capacitors and the design we're going to use in a separate line of posts. These capacitors will be placed in parallel (to increase capacitance) and will need to be easy to produce in large quantities because of this. 

    For the conducting rails and projectile, we are thinking of using copper since it's pretty cheap and easy to find in the shapes we need. 

    Power will likely be supplied by 9V batteries lined in series (to increase voltage), similar to how Ziggy Zee powered his rail gun.

    In the next post, I'll show some design choices we are thinking of using and some reasons as to why.