3168859
Re: lasgun Recoil
nucleosynthesis
August 30th, 2006 05:37 AM
The plasma gun emits super heated fluid of protons, neutrons and delocalised electrons (plasma basically). All of these have a mass and therefore by conservation of momentum must cause some recoil.
A laser (or light amplification by simulated emission of radiation) does exactly what it says on the tin so to speak. It is almost monochromatic light focused down a straight line. The light can be considered as packets of energy or "photons" and hence by special relativity, they have momentum. Et^2=(Mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2. The p is the momentum bit and since photons have 0 mass, p=Et/c.
So now were talking about photons with not alot of energy multiplied so that those IG can do more than damage a few orky retinas. Big energy means big momentum, from above, so we need recoil by conservation of momentum. I'm not certain of the frequency of these laser photons but i assume they are somewhere in the red end of the visible spectrum. (a comment was made earlier regarding the fact we can actually see the laser beam even though we shouldn't, well thats true apart from when you fire a laser through say a smoke machine, then you can see the laser as it interacts with smoke particles. I guess that fog of war is pretty thick.)
Hope that helps, maybe someone can play with the numbers if they're interested and see how much recoil we could get. I hope i got all the theories right too.