Gauss gun (coil gun)

For a semester long experiment, I am to build a coil (gauss) gun. I also need to hand in a paper including all equations and theory relevant to the experiment, but I have not been able to find any equations that actually work for the purposes I require. Any help to guide me in the right direction is much appreciated.

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berkeman
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For a semester long experiment, I am to build a coil (gauss) gun. I also need to hand in a paper including all equations and theory relevant to the experiment, but I have not been able to find any equations that actually work for the purposes I require. Any help to guide me in the right direction is much appreciated.
What level are you in school now? Have you learned Maxwell's Equations yet? What web resources have you looked at so far? (wikipedia, hyperphysics, etc.)

That sounds like a lot of fun. Wish I was taking that class with you!

I suppose one place to start is the Wiki page for Coilguns:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

Seems like a great starting place. There's some great information there about various things to consider. Other than that, as berkeman said, we'd have to know a bit more about what you know about Electricity and Magnetism and such things to know where to start. Nor am I in any way an expert about those beyond a basic knowledge, so I'll leave that to others. But that page is a great way to start. Google also seems to return all sorts of potentially useful information.

Hope you have fun with it!

Well, I am doing CEGEP 2 (equivelent to 1st year university), and I have looked at Wikipedia, and many other sources such as numerous papers from Google scholar, but have had little success.

I have not, as of yet learned the Maxwell equations, and I am trying to use Faraday`s law of induction: $$\phi$$ = $$\int$$ BxdA

and F =qvBsin$$\Theta$$

So far have gotten both equations to equal zero, as I am using a cylindrical projectile and the field is in the same direction as the acceleration and speed.