Fix the tesla name?

[superspirality]

Actually it isn't an accurate name for a tesla at the moment.
It isn't a 'generator', it is a tesla coil as I can understand. Or name it something like 'tesla zapper', I don't know...but now it's a wrong name.
Wikipedia agrees. And here too. Objections?

[SPK]

YOu're really bored, really

[David]

The rifle is more of a SMG.
The chain gun doesn't have a chain.
The mass drivers projectiles lack any mass.
The blaster doesn't blast much.
The construction kit doesn't construct anything (it warps them in or something).
The DCC doesn't do much defence control.
The Dragoon isn't a dude on a horse.
The Basilisk isn't a snake.
The Tyrant doesn't seem very tyrannical.



But who really cares?

[superspirality]

ROFLMAO David.
Nah, okay okay, I'll stop being a physics nerd.
BTW, marauder also ain't stealing things from a destroyed armoury.
And the Basilisk actually should be a lizard and freeze all humans who look in it's eyes.

[Crava_Loft]

[deleted]

[Conzul]

The mass drivers projectiles lack any mass.

Not so. An MD pellet will actually slow you down mid-air if your pouncing or something.
Edit: Unless you mean 1.1

[Kiwi]

lol David

[Nux]

I can link to wikipedia too!

It's generating electric death zaps at you, hence 'generator'.

The mass drivers projectiles lack any mass.

Not so. An MD pellet will actually slow you down mid-air if your pouncing or something.
Edit: Unless you mean 1.1

A real physics nerd might point out that a collision with a massless particle can create a force, as demonstrated by that japanese spacecraft a month ago.

[Conzul]

I can link to wikipedia too!

It's generating electric death zaps at you, hence 'generator'.

The mass drivers projectiles lack any mass.

Not so. An MD pellet will actually slow you down mid-air if your pouncing or something.
Edit: Unless you mean 1.1

massless particle

Oxymoron. Like Jumbo shrimp, or left-handed knives.

[David]

And then along come photons, gamma rays, quantum mechanics, and nobody really even knows what mass is...

And how is left-handed knives an oxymoron?

[Conzul]

And how is left-handed knives an oxymoron?

Those ppl don't need knives to do damage.

[Crava_Loft]

[deleted]

[Aelita]

And then along come photons, gamma rays, quantum mechanics, and nobody really even knows what mass is...

And how is left-handed knives an oxymoron?

Entirely off topic, but this was your 3200 post.

[Nux]

As fun as it is to invent some sort of explanation for how these weapons work, I think it should be clear that they weren't named with too much care for technical correctness... but to hell with that. I relish technical correctness. It brings joy to my oh-so-nerdy heart.

Before you completely dismiss it as a chaingun, be careful not to confuse the 'chain' with the 'belt' (like I did). The chain cycles the mechanism within and could be completely internal.

'Mass driver' is technically a term reserved for the large spacelaunching method, whereas the general term for the projectile slinging device would be 'Coilgun'. See also 'Railgun' for a far more practical weapon.

Though it is possible that photons have mass it is beside the point. Massless particles do exist (within models) and can interact to transfer momentum. Yet that is also beside the point since we're concerned with the macroscopic event and not the fundamental interactions within. I just brought up the bit about massless particles to look smart but mass is really required to give any significant knockback on large scale systems. Just look at that solar sail for example; with all that solar energy it barely accelerates it at all!

[UniqPhoeniX]

The "chaingun" is actually a gatling gun.

[Kiwi]

Hm, that's interesting..

[superspirality]

Sure. And though gatling guns are popular in FPS games, no human really can use it as a personal weapon.
A *real* gatling gun's recoil could smash you against a wall.
They're installed only in vehicles IRL.

[UniqPhoeniX]

There are also miniguns, which are *basically* rifle caliber gatling guns, tho those are still vehicle mounted. But that doesn't mean they always will be.

[mooseberry]

Battlesuit could handle it.

[Venkman]

Battlesuit could handle it.

Exactly. That's why Chainsuits are so efficient/ridiculous. Whether it's a Gatling (manually-operated multi-barrel) or Mini (battery-operated multi-barrel, making it the more likely candidate), they're able to use a weapon that would otherwise need to be mounted to a vehicle to fire effectively. But, of course, that's why they're called Battlesuits.

And Mass Driver being some form of futuristic Rail Gun also makes a lot of sense. I always imagined that, in the world of Trem, the Mass Driver was invented as a more efficient answer to the sniper rifle. If you've ever fired a real gun (or at least played a lot of Counter Strike), then you know that bullets are only accurate to a certain range. Even rounds designed to travel great distances, like those from a high-powered rifle, still require extensive training to be used effectively. Basically, a bullet's accuracy has a lot to do with its mass (Ah, there we go...)

Now a Rail-Gun on the other hand uses electromagnetism to basically negate the mass of its projectile, allowing for a MUCH GREATER range of accuracy.

For a frame of reference, here's a quote from the Rail-Gun Wiki:

"The U.S. Navy has tested a railgun that accelerates a 3.2 kg (7.0547 pound) projectile to 2.4 kilometers per second (seven times the speed of sound)."

If the Mass Driver is, in fact, a rail-Gun then its rounds aren't actually mass-less. Their mass has simply been negated by the gun.

[Nux]

If the Mass Driver is, in fact, a rail-Gun then its rounds aren't actually mass-less. Their mass has simply been negated by the gun.

I'm sorry but that just isn't true. Railgun projectiles DO have mass. No mass is 'negated'. The mass of the projectile itself is what carries the payload of the weapon. Momentum. It's transfered to the target in such a short space of time, it blows it apart.

Momentum is a function of mass multiplied by velocity (speed). A propelled heavy object may have the same momentum as a light object provided the lighter object is going fast enough. In the case of railguns this speed can be achieved (and then some) to allow for lighter projectiles. Not massless though. Massless particles can only be seen to transfer momentum because they occur on a level of scale where the line between wave and particle becomes blurred and momentum becomes equivelant to frequency energy (not actually energy, just simple wording).

Perhaps you meant that it allowed for lighter projectiles and weren't being so literal. Still, if you knew this and were just trying to explain it simply then at least I gave some clarification for anyone unsure.

[Kiwi]

I don't understand how a massless particle can have momentum then?  "p=mv" when m == 0 then p == 0?  How does a blurred line between waves and particles lead to momentum being measurable?  (also I thought that that could only be accomplished with light.  Seeing as how they have both wave properties and light properties)  But what do I know

[Nux]

Good to see you're asking the right questions!

What you must understand here is that the laws of conservation of momentum (and all of newtons teachings) only describe nature well on our sort of scale, in our sort of timeframe. For example, as soon as you start travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light, relativistic effects (einstien's work) become noticeable and you can no longer explain what you see with newtonian physics. Similarly, when trying to explain how very small things like photons work, the old model fails because of uncertainty and a theory like quantum mechanics comes along to explain it better.

The key thing is that when something as intuitive as newtonian physics fails to explain the world, it's largely because we're looking from a perspective we've never looked from before (the really big and fast/the really small and slow). At these scales, the every day stuff we're used to- like everyone sharing the same passage of time and everything having an obvious position in space -are no longer true. It's like how the earth looks flat from where you are but when you look close it's all bumpy with infinite detail, and when you look from far away it's actually spherical.

So the reason something like light can have 'momentum' is because 'momentum' doesn't mean the same thing it did on your scale.

[Fatalis]

I think it is named so because it generates "tesla" (in the case of electricity).  Maybe Tesla Coil would be a better name, but the current one is by no means broken/wrong.

[superspirality]

I think it is named so because it generates "tesla" (in the case of electricity).

Tesla is generated by that? So, is it right to think that in the time of buildables' attack he gets alive? o_o

[Conzul]

I think it is named so because it generates "tesla" (in the case of electricity).

Tesla is generated by that? So, is it right to think that in the time of buildables' attack he gets alive? o_o

Indeed, the Tesla Generator revives Tesla himself from his ancient sleep to bop the aliens on the head.

[Fatalis]

The tesla (symbol T) is the SI derived unit of magnetic field B (which is also known as "magnetic flux density" and "magnetic induction"). One tesla is equal to one weber per square meter, and it was defined in 1960[1] in honour of the Serbian inventor, physicist, and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. One billionth of a tesla is a nanotesla (nT), equivalent to 0.01 mG (milligauss), and it is in nanoteslas that common metric home measurements are made to determine local magnetic field levels[by whom?]. The strongest fields encountered from permanent magnets are from halbach spheres which can be over 5T

Copied from Wikipedia.

[Nux]

Yes, a 'Tesla' is indeed an SI unit. But the usage here does not refer to magnetic flux density but to Tesla Coil which gets it's name from the same guy.

[Kiwi]

What you must understand here is that the laws of conservation of momentum (and all of newtons teachings) ...

Ok, I've been thinking about this for a while and looking stuff up.  I get what you mean about how this become unpredictable when you get really small, such as with a massless particles, and if I remember correctly from physics we can only predict the chances that something will happen.  That's how solar sails in space work, the light from the sun pushes it.  The first thing about the Mass Driver is that the definition says that it causes minor nuclear reactions, which (correct me if I'm wrong) can't occur with a massless particle.  Secondly if the frequency is *that* high to cause such an enormous amount of damage with a massless particle, it wouldn't be visible, much less green.  I'm sure I've messed something up, but that's my rudimentary understanding of it all..

[Nux]

It's true to say a nuclear reaction can't occur without mass; by definition the reaction involves a nucleus (being altered) which is the majority of mass in an atom (electrons have mass too). It's not true to say, however, that there is no mass involved here because the thing the mass driver shoots at is jam-packed with the stuff. Neither is it true that the massdriver can't cause a nuclear reaction with massless particles as gamma rays are high energy photons (massless) and so theoretically all that's required is for the gamma rays to be carrying sufficient energy. The green glow just means the mass is being excited to a point where it emits green frequency light.

I can think of two reasons why I think it fires a massive ('has mass') projectile. Firstly the 'sufficient energy' the gamma rays would need are just stupid. I'm talking massive ('fucking huge').

Secondly,

Code: [Select]

mass·driv·er  [mas-drahy-ver]

–noun
1. something that drives mass.
2. not a fucking torch.