A few weeks ago, a guy on YouTube built a real Mjölnir hammer. Now, YouTuber Ziggy Zee has created a DIY railgun. And no, as they say in the video, you won’t be finding this on Pinterest.
A railgun, simply put, is an electrically powered electromagnetic gun. The U.S. military often experiments with them and NASA even once toyed with the idea of using one to launch objects into space.
The backyard rail gun fires the projectile with 56 480-joule capacitors, with a burst of carbon dioxide to help it along. To give you some perspective, one joule is the amount of energy needed to lift a 100 gram (0.2 pound) apple vertically through one meter of air – they're using over 25,000 joules.
The railgun is the fruit of two years' work, some of which you can check out on Imgur.
Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, don’t try this at home.
