Roll the loose ball bearing down the track. Then something unexpected happens... Why is it called the Gaussian Gun? Well, no reason really, except that a friend of ours just christened it that, and the name seems to have stuck. It is really very simple, which is why we like it! A plastic channel supports the row of 4 ball bearings, and a spherical neodymium magnet. At first sight, it looks like 5 ball bearings!Very slowly, you roll the loose ball bearing towards the magnet. As it approaches, it is pulled into the magnet very quickly, neodymium magnets are very strong. And as a result, rather like that Newton's Cradle executive toy we used to see a few years ago, the ball bearing at the other end shoots off at a surprisingly high velocity.What happens if there are only three ball bearings? Two?Our original version of this item used 2 cylindrical neodymium magnets. However we received an e-mail from Simon Poliakoff, who teachers physics here in the UK, suggested that the use of a spherical neodymium magnet made the demonstration much better, and certainly more enigmatic. So we sourced the spherical magnets, and can now offer you Gaussian Gun 2.0 - thank you Simon. I hope your students appreciate you as much as we do!CONTAINS MAGNETS. SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN 16 YEARS AND OVERMade in UK
