Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-4830106-20130809183159/@comment-9090085-20130825030911

BRTE500 wrote: Just so you know, when you pass a magnet over a pin, the magent is being drawn to the pin as well as the pin being drawn to the magnet. However, the momentum each object receives is dependant on its mass, your hand holding the magnet shows no change because it has a much greater mass, but the small amount transferred to the pin shows a more drastic change.

I feel I should point out that the inverse is also true, and is the main sticking point for rail guns: the magnets in the rail gun repel the slug and the slug repels the magnets. This means that with each firing the magnets are pushed farther away from each other, "widening" the barrel. This means the rail gun is only good for one or two shots before you need to replace the gun.

I see no good reason for a rail gun or Gauss gun to have no recoil, since they repel the slug forward, and the slug will repel them backward.

Another thing, Gauss guns or "coil guns" have magnets arranged in a spiral rather then in lines("rails") like in rail guns. In theory, Gauss guns are less likely to destroy themselves from their own magnetism; but they have even bigger problems with timing said magnets.