Having completed this project I have several thoughts about what I did, what I could’ve done, and what I want to do in the future. This project taught me a lot about physics, a little about engineering, and a great deal about modeling and the work and mindset necessary to complete projects of this nature.

The physics I got to explore as part of this project was extraordinary. Before I began, I knew little about railguns, only that they used extremely powerful electromagnetic forces to create massive destruction. The first part of my results showed an interesting but unsurprising result. The initial current originating from the capacitor was extremely large; a capacitor charged to 1.8 coulombs generated an initial current of over a million amperes. At first, this value seemed a bit high, and in reality was most likely a little higher than we expected. However, within a matter of several hundredths of a micro-second, this value immediately dropped to several hundred thousand amperes and then even lower values shortly thereafter. The current dropped even further when the length of the rails changed or when the cross sectional area of the rail decreased. Doing both of these, something that is realistic over time, lowers the current even more drastically. Therefore, we saw that the rail gun really does involve an initial intense burst of current followed by no further circuit action. We then saw the effect of EMF. At the beginning of the project, I thought that EMF would be too hard to derive and almost discounted it. Having done it, I realize that this decision would have been poor, as EMF ended up playing a huge role. The EMF induced a current that reduced the original current by almost 3/7ths, a substantial amount. Once again, this factor was dependent on the length of the rails and conductivity of the material. Finally, the resulting magnetic field was extremely powerful but fell in line with all the other results we found. In the first moments of the circuit’s operation, an enormous magnetic field is generated, creating a large force for a very brief amount of time.  This occurrence made sense of course, as magnetic field depends on current. I am happy with these results, as they mirror the conceptual understanding of railguns I have developed during the course of this project; an enormous power lasts for an infinitesimal amount of time.

    Part of our project was not able to happen, of course. We had originally planned to build the small scale rail gun, but because of time and safety concerns were unable to. In the future when doing these kinds of projects I will be able to better adjust my plans for safety and for time. I also could have tried to make more 3D models of my models, but thought that the 2D representations made sense in the context of the project.

    In the future I would like to be able to derive equations of motion as functions of time. So many of the results I obtained were dependent on velocity and position. I adjusted for this by allowing these variables to be selected over a certain range; for example, using my model can tell you what the magnetic field of a railgun is at an exact time, position, and velocity. This result is very useful, but I would ideally like to be able to have position and velocity as functions of time as well. With more time and more math, specifically a greater knowledge of differential equations, I think I would be able to do so.