Barely Legal Lego: Making a Powerful Lego Coil Gun

This project combines some of my favourite things - Lego, high (ish) voltage, and shooting things! What happens if we dump a large charge into a copper coil? We get a massive magnetic field that we can use to propel metal pieces. But the problem with many electromagnetic shooters is that they rely on dangerously high voltages, large capacitor banks, and complicated electronic timing mechanisms. Does it really have to be this way though? In this video, I’m going to experiment with building a simplified but powerful coil gun using Lego, some capacitors, and a mechanical means of timing the shots. Lego is ideal here, as it allows a lot of modularity and refinement of the design. We’ll use different combinations of capacitors, projectiles, and voltages to arrive at a powerful, but simple coil gun design. A word of caution though - please be aware that higher voltages can be dangerous to handle, and of course, anything that shoots projectiles can be potentially injurious. So please don’t try this at home!