Posted on 05/11/2005 1:07:57 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Nice one! :o)
On a positive note, if you were driving under the influence, the cop behind you would never see you weaving down the road. 'Course, otoh, you might not be able to make any right turns either, and you could never go home again! ;-)
Nah, couldn't be! :-)
Uber-cool-gotta-check-it-out-later BUMP!
But it does not recoil in that direction. The release of force is perpendicular to the direction the projectile leaves. The force the projectile is applying to the gun barrel is very nearly perpendicular to the motion of the projectile at any given moment. At release the barrel suddenly stops receiving that outward force. The projectile continues moving in the direction it was moving in at the moment of release and the rotating barrel suddenly (instantly) experiences a lack of force in the radial direction. Imagine you are holding two buckets of water and spinning around. The moment you release one you are unbalanced and the remain bucket causes you to wobble in a circle. effectively your center of rotation was moved very suddenly. The actual acceleration of the buckets was absorbed long ago by your feet pushing in circles on the ground.
,,, I read years ago that the East Germans [before the Wall was taken down] had a weapon called the SM52 or SM70 - can't recall the numbers. This thing spat out ballbearings with little razor like edges, designed to rip flesh as they spun. This was the stage escapees would encounter after they had scaled electric fences, negotiated a narrow strip minefield and avoided the eye of any border guards and their dogs. The projectiles were launched from a vent-like pipe that was above ground, but fed from underground, much like a vent pipe on a ship's deck... that's how I remember it. The article gave no info on dispertion angles.
,,, I see you've been reading too.
Heck, I built one of these in HIGH SCHOOL with a couple of buddies. It spun at about 1000RPM and had an extremely simple electric release system that allowed it to be reasonably accurate. I have no idea what the exit velocity was (1000RPM with a 24 inch flywheel diameter, if anyone wants to do the math), but it easily fired our .40 caliber lead shot through our plywood target at 10 feet.
We had two problems with this thing. First, in order to get the motor up to full RPM it had to be balanced perfectly. When we released our shot, the weapon went out of balance and it was everything you could do to keep a grip on it. Second, the high speed flywheel meant that the weapon suffered from a gyroscopic effect. It was easy to fire if you had it stable, but it was very difficult to control the weapon if you tried to move or change directions while it was powered up. It would literally try to tear itself from your hands! We ended up only using it a few times before tucking it into the garage rafters.
Hmm...I wonder if my parents still have it out there...
Just getting a bird's-eye view.
A clear application for anti-gravity technology. Use it to reduce the spinning momentum to zero.
Yep, it'd sure make it tough to acquire moving targets! I've got to wonder how practical this gizmo can be.
The mass is already accelerated before it is released. When released there is no acceleration of the balls. They are already in full speed motion.
Before being released, the centrifugal force is equally and oppositely counteracted by a centripetal force which holds the ball bearing in place (centripetal prevents the ball bearing from flying out)
When the balls are released the centripetal force goes to zero and the opposing centrifugal force goes to zero but the ball bearing continues its motion tangentially without any real loss of energy, or change in total inertia (ideally).
Thus when the bearings are released there is no loss of energy in the system (or gain of energy as in a shell explosion) so there is no recoil.
[Note: It may be difficult to hold the aim on target since the angular torsion will vary as the mass is unequally released from the circumferance of the spinning device.]
In other words, at the time the projectile is released, the propelling force has already been imparted to it. So there would be no recoil.
Or another DREAD spinning the opposite direction?
What a missed opportunity! The logical name for this weapon is the "David".
Then there is the HTML sandbox issue...
"It would literally try to tear itself from your hands!"
An unpleasant example of the same principle that keeps a motorcycle upright at speed, I suppose --- very difficult to get the parallel spinning wheels to change plane of rotatation.
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