post #2856198

Railguns are weapons that use electromagnetism to accelerate projectiles to extremely high speeds. The name refers to the distinctive pair of parallel conductors that an electrical current passes through to achieve the acceleration. They are a type of mass driver.

Although the terms "railgun", "mass driver", and "Gauss rifle" are often used interchangeably, they refer to technically different things. Railguns and Gauss rifles are both types of mass drivers, however the Gauss rifle uses a series of coiled electromagnets wrapped around a barrel to accelerate a magnetic slug (indeed, they are sometimes called "coilguns"), rather than the pair of rails on a railgun.

For the time being, the "railgun" tag should be used to indicate any sort of futuristic mass-driver style weapon, at least until a "mass driver" tag is created and all the other types are implicated to it.

See also

• tag_group:weapons