Electromagnetic plasma gun (night test fire)
Of all the crazy garage-built weapons I’ve ever come across, this one from YouTuber/tinkerer Alex Smyth is definitely one of the craziest. Except for the fact that it looks like a prop that was stolen from the set District 9, Smyth’s “phase plasma” gun doesn’t just fire normal projectiles. It’s actually designed to fire bullets filled with ionized plasma, which in turn, at least in theory, should explode on impact.
If you’re not familiar, a railgun is a type of weapon that uses electricity instead of gunpowder to fire projectiles. Using a phenomenon called the Lorentz force, railguns work by delivering a high-powered electrical impulse to a pair of conductive rails, which in turn generate a magnetic field and rapidly accelerate the bullet between them.
Smyth’s gun is a little different though. Instead of a straight rail, its construction has a pair of rails that are twisted into a double helix. According to Smyth, this gives the projectile a bit of spin and added stability, just as grooves on a firearm barrel would give a normal bullet. The only difference is that, instead of a regular metal projectile, Smyth’s rifle is designed to fire glass vacuum tubes filled with neon gas. In theory, the electromagnetic fields created by the rails will ionize the gas and create a plasma that will be released when the glass projectile shatters.
Electromagnetic plasma gun testing
“The projectiles I made to fire are 10 by 60 millimeters,” explains Smyth. “It’s a glass vacuum tube that’s filled with neon gas, with a copper jacket around it. So the current passes through the rails and accelerates the copper bushing through the double helix, so that it rotates a little. Then, the electromagnetic field in there ionizes the neon gas, so it should glow bright red. Hopefully this will accelerate, hit the target, shatter the glass and disperse the plasma – hopefully blow up one of the pumpkins.”
The pumpkin didn’t quite explode, but apparently the projectile managed to penetrate a piece of steel behind it — although the video is too dark to see the evidence.
In a separate video, Smyth admits that he doesn’t know if his missiles actually work as intended, but they’re still a pretty bad idea. “I’m not sure if the neon gas is actually ionized into plasma or not because I can’t see it in flight. But ionizing the gas into a plasma is not too unusual,” he says.
Unless this is an elaborate and well executed scam, the Smyth gun bodes well for the future of guns. Railguns are not yet practical as handguns — they are generally quite large, unwieldy, and must be reloaded between each shot. However, if they could be reduced to a manageable size, users could theoretically reduce the lethality of their weapons just by adjusting the current flowing through them. Ironically, the greatest promise of railguns is that they may be less lethal than traditional firearms.
Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn