Railguns and Peace

Railguns and Peace

I saw the term railgun for the first time when I had played the PC game Quake. It was projected as a single shot kill weapon. It became more famous when the movie Eraser had the railgun in it as a central theme. More and more games are being published with the railgun in it. To be honest, I didn't know that such a thing existed for real.

17/08/2005 was the deadline for submitting the seminar topics for S7. I had lifted(or acquired through piracy via barter system or whatever) a seminar on "Electronic Stability Control"(ESC) , from a friend in another college. The plan was to get it approved and the job would be half done. Unfortunately, the faculty member had insisted on us to submit two topics. I was tired of searching for topics, and rang up my friend Sarat, who is studying in TKM. He gave me a list of the stuff being put up by the people over there, as possible semiar topics. The name "Railgun" kinda caught my fancy and I begged him to mail me its abstract. I took the printouts and was on my way, to get ESC approved(hopefully).

Fate had other plans. The teacher was suddenly adamant that I should take a seminar on railguns. I tried my best to convince her that it was not a good topic and ESC was a far better choice. My bargaining skills had left me in a fix. I was seeing railguns staring at me from all angles as I left her room.

The professors and lecturers in my college are peace fanatics. When I had presented a paper on "The Electromagnetic Bomb", at the college, the judges were viewing me and my partner as possible terrorists, even though we tried in vain to make them understand that we were simply trying to increase the awareness about the existence of such weapons. One man, in particular, wanted to know if we wanted to kill any one using the e bomb(as if we had made the damn thing). Rumour has it that this particular man will probably be a judge for the railgun seminar. In simple terms, I am in a tight spot. I must somehow try and make them feel that railguns are as peaceful as baby pacifiers.

By the way, railguns consist of two parallel rails, with a groove between them. A conductive projectile aka armature is placed at the supply end of the rails. A very high power dc supply is used to fire the railgun. For this, a capacitor bank may be used. The current moves up one rail, passes through the projectile, and goes down the other rail. The projectile experiences a constant accelerating Lorentz force F=B*I*l and is acclerated along the rails. The longer the rails, greater is the velocity attained by the projectile. This technology is still in its developmental state as the projectile vaporises the rails as it acclerates to very high velocities like say, 20km/s, in a very short time. Reusability is almost zilch. Also, the rails have to braced against immense deforming electromagnetic forces.

Other than the possibility of its use as an explosive-free weapon, the railgun is also considered as a possible mass driver. It can probably(hopefully!) be used to slingshot projectiles into space, and eliminating the need for rockets. Other than that, it can act as a Peacemaker in wars of the future.

;)

addendum ==>>

a pair of judges keen about weaponry happened to be the judges and i aced the seminar. ha!

so said -Poison- the in(s)ane one @ Thursday, August 18, 2005

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