How do Railguns work?

Question

Can someone explain the physics around railguns.
Do they use Electromagnetic waves for propulsion or?

In: 1

Answer 1

>Do they use Electromagnetic waves for propulsion or?

Kind of, but not in the way you understand them

Rainguns are a bit quirky.

Take a conductive sled or projectile, put it on two conductive rails, then run high current up the rail, across the projectile, and down the other rail and understand that charges moving through a magnetic field get pushed to the side and you’ve got yourself a railgun.

The current flowing up the rail makes a strong magnetic field circling around it, and the rail with current flowing down it creates a field circling the other direction. As the electrons move across the projectile they get pushed on by the magnetic fields they are leaving and heading towards and these fields push the electron sideways relative to its movement and down the rails. Applied across an insane number of electrons this results in quite a bit of force pushing the projectile down the rails.