Ball Bearing Launcher

Description:

Now, here's a neat gizmo that will surely catch the attention of anyone who
sees this working. This demonstrates how magnets can be used to increase
the momentum of ball bearings in order to launch one a several inches
through the air. I first saw this as a linear accelerator and decided to make
one to experiment with.

Construction:
This is made with very few items, that cost me less than $5 to build! All you
really need are:
1) three NIB magnets, about 1/2" diameter and 1/8" thick
2) 10 steel ball bearings, about 1/2" diameter
3) a piece of aluminum angle, about 1/2" on the side, and 2' to 3' long

I got all of these at American Science & Surplus. However, most hardware
stores carry the ball bearings and the aluminum angle, and the NIB magnets
can be purchased from several of the suppliers I have listed. If possible, the
ball bearings should be just a little larger in diameter than the ball bearings.

Additional stuff you will need are some ty-raps and double-sided tape to
help hold the magnets in place, and something to hold the aluminum angle
rail.

First, mount a magnet onto the aluminum rail. I did this by putting a piece of
double-sided tape around the edge of the magnet, put a little foam on top,
and placed it about 2.5" from the end of the angle. I then ty-rapped it to hold
it in place. I also made some "V" notches in two blocks of wood to use as a
holder for the rail. Instead of using the blocks, you could also use a lump of
clay as a holder. Then, I raised one end of the aluminum rail up by about 4"
by placing some books under the right hand end to make it into a launching
rail as shown here.
Demonstration:
Next, do some experimenting to see how this works under various
conditions. For example, I first placed two ball bearings onto the right hand
side of the magnet, and allowed one ball bearing to be attracted to the
magnet from a fixed distance away on the left hand side, and measured how
far the last ball bearing on the right would be launched. Then I changed the
number of balls on the right hand side to one, three, four and five and
repeated the experiment. Which set-up do you think would launch the ball
the farthest?

When I removed my finger as shown above, the one ball bearing on the left
would be pulled toward the magnet, hit it, stick to it, and its momentum
would be great enough to transfer through the balls and the magnet and
launch the last ball bearing on the right hand side. (similar to "Newton's
Cradle") If I started with two balls on the right, I would end up with one ball
on each side of the magnet. If I started with three balls on the right, I would
end up with one ball on the left and two on the right, as shown above.
Then, I made a multiple stage launcher, by fastening three magnets to the
aluminum rail. The second magnet is placed 4" from the first one, and
oriented so that the poles are facing the same direction - in other words, the
magnets are attracted to each other. It is held in place the same way using
the tape, foam and ty-rap. The third magnet is also placed 4" from the
second one, and oriented the same way and fastened the same way. You
should now have something like this:

Again, I would start the process with two balls on the right hand side of each
magnet and measure how far the last ball on the right would be launched. I
tried several combinations of number of balls on each magnet, and measured
the distance of the launched ball. Here's a table of my experimental results.
The rail was 4" higher on the right hand side than the left hand side, and the
length of the rail was 23", so the sine of it's angle = 4/23 = 0.174, so the
angle is about 10degrees (using the arcsine(0.174) function).

distance
# of balls # of balls # of balls
Test launched from
on magnet on magnet on magnet
number end of rail,
1 2 3
inches
1 0 0 1 0
2 0 0 2 10.5
3 0 0 3 12
4 0 0 4 12
5 0 0 5 12
6 0 0 6 11
7 0 2 4 19
8 0 2 3 20
9 0 3 2 20
10 0 4 2 20
11 0 3 3 22
12 2 2 2 24
13 3 3 3 24.5
14 4 4 4 25
As you can see in test #1, when there is only one ball on the right hand side
of the magnet, it will not be knocked off by the ball attracted to it from the
left. You will want to try some other combinations of number of balls on
each magnet, as well as different launch angles, and even different distances
between the magnets! There are lots of things to try. Be sure to always
keep the starting ball the same distance away from the magnet in order to
have a control in your experiment. You may find that with a steep launch
angle, the distance of the starting ball may need to be closer in order to be
attracted and accelerated toward the magnet.

One note, since the balls really stick to the magnets, I found the best way to
pull the balls off of the magnets is to slide them off sideways. When I tried
to pull them off directly, the magnet would tend to be pulled out from under
the ty-rap, making it a problem to fix each time I wanted to set up for an
experimental run.

Conclusions:
This demonstrates how magnets can be used to increase the momentum of a
steel ball bearing, from stage to stage, so that the last stage would have
enough momentum to force the last ball away from the attraction it has to its
magnet, and send it flying through the air.

Now, this in no way demonstrates the recovery of free energy! Each time
you perform this experiment, you do the following:
remove the balls stuck on the left hand side of the magnets
place the desired number of balls on the right hand side of the magnets
hold the starting ball away from the first magnet
release the starting ball and watch the last ball fly through the air

Each time, you put more energy into the system that what you get out. Heat
energy is lost from the collisions that occur between the balls and the
magnets, sound energy is lost when the balls and magnets collide, energy is
required to pull the ball from the magnet to set up the experiment, etc. This
is very similar to setting the spring in a mouse trap, and have it trip, causing
it to launch a ball through the air like a medieval catapult. You put energy
in and get some of it back out.
Using the FREE Maxwell program, I plotted what the magnetic fields
looked like under a few conditions. This is a great tool to help you see
what's going on and better understand how designs can be improved or
optimized. The conditions are where it is set up with two balls on the right
hand side, where the starter ball comes along (three diagrams showing lots
of field lines, very few field lines so you can see how they are complete
curves, and the magnetic field strengths), and where the finish is with one
ball on each side of the magnet.