After brainstorming project ideas we have decided that our project this semester will be to construct a railgun. We will begin by numerically approximating the properties of our rails and capacitor bank then designing and possibly building a small model.

Before begging the construction of the final product we will need to take the machine shop’s safety course. A group course will be organized in the near future. If you have any ideas, want to help out, or have any questions about the project let us know!

 

Be sure to follow @GTSPS on Twitter for project updates!

As I mentioned previously we are currently in the process of brainstorming ideas for a project. Hopefully we’ll be able to secure some departmental funding and do something interesting, dangerous, educational, or any combination of the three!

A few of the ideas we came up with at the last meeting were:

• Railgun research
• Building a Gauss gun (coilgun)
• Manipulating a ferrofluid with magnetic fields
• Building a Ruben’s Tube

If you have any other ideas for an interesting physics demo or something that you’d like to see us build or research, send them our way.