Summer

Well, summer is coming up, and we all know what that means: summer jobs. I am trying to get a job at the college in the physics department. A couple of other engineering majors are trying to get similar jobs and we are hoping to share an apartment. But what happens when you get 3 engineering students stuck in an apartment together over the summer? They plan on building a rail-gun.

What is a rail-gun you ask? Well, the general concept is that you run a couple thousand amps of current through some copper rails and the induced magnetic field fires a conducting ferromagnetic projectile. We are also hoping this can count as our senior projects. However, as I am not a physics engineering major, but actually a computer engineering major, building something mechanical won't count for my project. So I am hoping to build a guidance system for it, so it will hit a target without us having to physically point it at the object. Hehehe.

I already have the capacitors we would use picked out. It has a peak current of 2200 Amps. Just for reference, the wall outlet in your house carries a current of 20 Amps. We plan on using a bunch of these (possibly 10+).

*maniacal laughter*