Eli5, How does a railgun work?
In: 35
Putting current through a loop of conductive material tries to push the loop apart. Putting a lot of current pushes a lot, and making all parts of the loop but one very sturdy and bolted down results in the non-sturdy part being pushed out fast. Aim that part at something and you got a railgun.
There are issues with this. The first one is you need a hell of a lot of current to push a projectile to speed that rival conventional guns, which is not something batteries or even generators can provide: you get around this by storing the energy in massive capacitors that can then release it fast. The second one is that the current heats up the loop, in our case the rails and the projectile, and makes them expand. Precise fits are not precise anymore, things grind together and everything heats up even more, resulting in horrendous barrel life (in the order of a few shots instead of several thousands): last I checked this was the main issue the US Navy had with their massive railgun prototype.
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