Re: Rail guns (was: US SOCOM desires...)

[Roger Burton West <roger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2002 at 10:03:48AM -0600, Robert J. Hansen wrote:

>Brian, look at the numbers.  If you like, grab a physics book while
>you're up--we're going to be covering basic Newtonian mechanics.  You'll
>also need a calculus book, since we're going to be covering definite
>integrals.

Momentum is conserved as well as energy, though. You don't instantly
accelerate the soldier so as to convert all that recoil into kinetic
energy - some of the energy goes to other things. As far as I have been
able to discern, recoil works a lot more on momentium than on energy -
which suggests that, for a given energy, a light fast round will have
less recoil than a slow heavy one.

Roger