Project Proposal:

Electrodynamics provides for some frighteningly fascinating applications. John Loree and I plan on investigating the physics of rail guns, powerful machines that fire slugs at high velocities using electromagnetic forces. We plan to build a functioning gun and analyze its motion with LoggerPro. Furthermore, I hope to use Mathematica to model the physics involved in the circuitry of the gun. This analysis will include finding current as a function of resistance, charging capacitors in the system, and the induced EMF. John and I will combine our results to produce general equations of motion for the rail gun.