Gauss' gun/magnetic linear accelerator

[daisy3110]

Hi,
I'm currently doing my extended essay for the IB in physics and I'm basing mine around the Gauss gun (similar post that explains it really well here https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...celerator-magnetic-linear-accelerator.320389/). What I was wondering was how I would calculate a value for the force on the ball bearing due to the magnetic field and/or the potential energy of the ball bearing at varying distances from the magnet?

I was also really interested by the suggestion in the above post about the effect of temperature on the acceleration - does anyone know at what temperature this effect may be noticeable? Using school equipment the range of temperatures will be quite limited!

I would be really grateful for any advice.

 

[mfb]

For small distances (and you need those), this is a very complicated problem. Dimensional analysis will give some order of magnitude estimate, but getting the prefactor right will need a lot of simulation work, probably beyond the scope of this project. You can make measurements.