The concept of a rail gun is simple: two parallel bars connected to a power source produce an electric field. This electric field can be used to propel a projectile along the bars. If enough amperage is provided, the projectile can achieve velocities of up to 4 km/s. The U.S. Army has been interested in the potential of electromagnetic guns for quite some time. In 1988 the University of Texas Center for Electromagnetics began work on a 9 MJ range gun, which would be designed to launch 2-4 kg projectiles at velocities of up to 4 km/s. Design features of this range gun included up to 230 MJ stored energy, 6 kV and 3 MA peak output ratings, and a 9 shot repetitive fire capability. In the early 1990's, the U.S. Army, along with the Marine Corps, showed much interest in the Cannon Caliber Electromagnetic Gun System (CCEMG). This project seeks to demonstrate an elecrtomagnetic gun system designed from a system/mission prospective. The CCEMG showed a 3 times increase in energy and power density over the range gun system. The U.S. Army plans to produce electric tanks by the year 2015 with electromagnetic guns mounted on them. The all-electric tank would include electric vehicle drive and suspension and electric armaments. In this concept, the flywheel energy can be used as a flywheel battery to provide power for vehicle acceleration and regenerative braking, and will also produce electrical power for the electromagnetic armaments. This is the perfect example of how physics is still impacting the world in which we live. A rail gun in it's simplest form is a pair of conducting rails separated by a distance L and with one rail connected to the positive and one the negative side of a power source supplying voltage V and current I.... ... middle of paper ... ...an use the right hand rule. Since all the angles involved are 90 degrees, the resultant force has a magnitude resulting from the simple multiplication of the magnitude of i and B and the value of L. (|F|=L|i||B|) To determine the direction, lay your right hand along the path of the current through the projectile, with your fingers pointing in the direction the current is travelling. Next, curl your fingers in the direction of the B field. Your thumb will now be pointing in the direction of the applied force. Bibliography 1. Jengel and Fatro's Rail Gun Page. http://home.insightbb.com/~jmengel4/rail/rail-intro.html 2. Pappas, John. University of Texas Center for Electromechanics http://www.utexas.edu/research/cem/ 3. MIT students. Amateur Rail Gun Production Journal http://www.railgun.org 4. United States Patent and Trademark Office http://www.uspto.gov/
"A Loaded Gun," is a piece by Patrick Radden Keefe, which published on February 11 and 18, 2013 on The New Yorker weekly magazine. This piece revolves around Amy Bishop, a neuroscientist working at the University of Alabama, Huntsville city. On the day of February 12, 2012, at the conference room of the Shelby Center for Science and Technology, Bishop used a 9-mm rifle killed three colleagues and wounded three others. The question is how does a person with a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. D) from prestigious university of Harvard, with a cozy family-a husband and four children, with no criminal record turn into such a cold-blooded killer? Does Bishop's tenure ended is the main reason that leads to the crime, or because of her "gun accidents" that
During the years leading up to and during the American Civil War there were a number of advancements in firearms technology. This paper will focus on a few of those advancements, namely the inventions of the Minié ball, the Spencer and Henry repeating rifles, and of the Gatling gun.
Well it's quite simple actually. Spudguns use some of the same principles as internal combustion engines. Just as burning gas forces a piston out of a cylinder it can also force out a potato. A spudgun is a device that uses some form of propellant to project a potato across the sky. Usually these devices are made of ABS plastic sewer pipe. There are several major parts of the spud gun that these pages will refer to. These parts are the firing chamber, the igniter, and the barrel.
Melton, Jack W. and Lawrence E. Pawl. “Basic Facts Concerning Artillery.” Civil War Artillery. 2009. 17 January 2010. .
For over two hundred centuries, mankind has wrestled with the problem of how to hit an object with another object. From the earliest days of the bow and arrow, to today's modern missile defense system, the need to achieve maximum accuracy and distance from a projectile has been critical to the survival of the human race. There are numerous of ways to solve the problem ranging from trial and error—as early man did—to advanced mathematics including trigonometry and calculus. (While the specific mathematical operations are beyond the scope of this work, we will briefly touch on the equations of motion and how they apply to projectile motion as the project progresses.)
The primary long gun of the Union Army was the M-1861 Springfield Rifle. The 1861 Springfield was a .58 Caliber, muzzle loading, single-shot rifle. The 1861 Springfield rifle used the 500 grain .58 caliber bullet and 60 grains of powder. It had a muzzle velocity of 950 Fps and was accurate up to 300 yards with a maximum range of 500 yards. The 1861 Spring...
A majority of weapons used in World War II were improved weapons from World War II. Most guns increased in power and abilities. In World War II people thought that pistols were useless but this was proved wrong due to the fact that the U.S. Mi...
Talking about the history of BB guns brings much scope for pointing out as many interesting facts related to BB guns, as possible. Therefore, it must be mentioned without fail that the first BB was actually a shotgun shot, which was sized no more than .180 i...
The first guns used in America were a simple machine where the person did most of the work. The user measured and put the powder down the barrel of the gun. Next some shotgun pellets were put in the same way. This was then all compacted and the gun was ready to fire. This reloading took over a minute before each shot could be fired and the guns weren't very accurate by today's standards. If too much powder was used then the gun could explode or if the powder were wet then the gun wouldn't fire. One of inventions during the Revolutionary War was a way to reload faster. The powder was already pre-measured and kept in little sacks. This made reloading faster because the user no longer had to measure the powder between each reloading. These guns were crude but in that day was a powerful modern invention that was considered very useful. The American Revolution was a political war to obtain what the people of that era wanted. By today's standards the destruction of gun was minimal so war was used to obtain political objectives.
A gun has a high muzzle velocity and a very flat trajectory. Normally a gun is used in a direct fire mode where the target can be seen and penetration is desirable. Good targets for a gun would be things like brick or earth forts, ships, buildings, and targets in tree lines. Howitzers have a somewhat lower muzzle velocity and arc their shells onto a target. They are used in both direct fire and indirect fire mode.
These kinds of weapons were impractical for military use, but attracted many people to the arms race for weapons that could sweep the battlefield. “They had limitations in practice, among them slow re...
Environmental concerns have been raised from time to time because of the dependency on the gasoline-fueled engine as the chief auto powertrain technology. This has resulted in exposing many automobile users to unpredictable prices of fuel. These issues were, however, the reason for the inception of Tesla Motors so as to bring into existence another set of automotive which serves the similar purpose; but uses another form of energy that being electricity to drive them instead of the disadvantageous gasoline-powered engine. This invention was influenced by a number of factors in terms of their planning and performance (Hunger, 2010).
Imagine that you’re driving on an open highway in the middle of summer. All you see in front of you is asphalt for miles and miles. The windows are down and your favorite song comes on the radio. You’re behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S, the newest electric car that can go from zero to sixty miles per hour in 2.4 seconds. This will soon be the future of all motor vehicles. Electric cars are beginning to have colossal impacts on our society because of their energy efficiency, performance benefits, and the fact that they are less harmful to the environment. In the near future, electric cars will dominate the road and eventually the planet’s overall need for oil will decrease immensely.
There is no doubt that electric cars are the most appealing from of transportation in the world. They provide two of the most important key points of good transportation: reliable and efficient. They are reliable due to their simplicity of their power trains and the advancement of technology they have. They are efficient because they don't use any gasoline and because their motors can pass the zero-emission standard. Even though they may seem like a boring form of transportation, they offer good features that help keep the Earth's air clean and they help reduce pollution.
Here, we can use the vectors to use the Pythagorean Theorem, a2 + b2 = c2, to find the speed and angle of the object, which was used in previous equations.