Haven't been on the forums for a while, been busy with school and stuff. But hey, i'm free now.

 

Anyway, what i've been wondering about lately are tesla coils and railguns (not in relation to eachother, just wondering about two seperate things). Mostly tesla coils, though. From what I can recall, they generate very strong magnetic fields.. but what else is there to them?

 

Also, how do railguns work, and are any actually in existance? I can't exactly find a very in-depth technical resource on them.

Tesla coils generate high voltage which is discharged through air, or through an innocent bystander. I don't recall them generating particularly strong magnetic fields though.

 

Railguns base on the Lorentz force. ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun ) A particularly impressive medium-budget railgun can be seen at http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun2.htm

Thanks, I must've been thinking of something else when I was thinking about the coils.

the coils use electromagnetic harmonics to generate teh high voltage, they're basically transformers designed to give power at optimum (dynamic) efficiency.

so yes, they do produce quite a substantial magnetic feild but it oscillates at very high frequencies so there is no real force involved in that however, the electrostatic forces combined with the possibility of RF burns are pretty dangerous.

I must've been thinking of something else when I was thinking about the coils.

Maybe you were thinking of Van de Graaff generators:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_de_Graaff_generator