Thread: Spring-loaded cannon

Thank you for the complement! Of course you're totally correct about estimating distance, but I have no way to measure how long it takes the springs to release their energy. It's definitely a fraction of a second though. I like the tennis ball idea. Not only do they weigh ~2 oz., which is 1/8 of the weight of the dart mentioned earlier, but they can be lit on fire. Accidentally, of course.

The problem with springs is that, even the best of them, eventually start to compress and hold that shape (lose their tensile strength)  

I just realized something (it's been too many years since I've done homework problems in classical physics :-).  You don't need to know the snap-time of the spring to solve the muzzle velocity problem.  Conservation of energy does it for you. You know the spring constant (10 lb/inch; what Amazon writes on their Web site is the wrong unit), so you can compute the potential energy (= 1/2 kd 2 ) stored in the...

This project sounds like good times. I'm not sure how far you are looking to launch the darts, but I might suggest making them heavier than 1 lb . You'd of course have to increase either the number of springs or the distance you pulled them back to get the same distance. I'm not sure what the standard spring is rated for, but I suspect it would be easier to find springs that can be pulled farther back than to it would be to...

u would need some big sprngs, my spring bb gun cant pop a balloon at point bank range