psah! Rail gun physics don't work. Yes, we've all seen Eraser and we've all played Quake, but you just can't make a rail gun an effective hand-held weapon.
This site explains all the physics behind it:
http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/eraser.html
This quote explains just the recoil of a railgun:
Quote:
As Lee observes, "...they said the physics [of the rail gun] were impossible", and we're inclined to heartily agree. The first problem is a nasty little law of physics called conservation of momentum. Briefly, this states that the forward momentum of the bullet must be counteracted by the backward momentum of the gun. The magnitude of an object's momentum is equal to its mass times the magnitude of its velocity, as expressed by the following equation:
p = mv
We know that the bullet is travelling close to the speed of light (3 × 108 m/s). To be conservative, we will assume the bullet travels at only half the speed of light, and that its mass is about the mass of a paper clip (0.0005 kg). For the sake of simplicity, we will ignore the effects of relativity, which would cause the bullet's mass to be even greater. Thus, we calculate the bullet's momentum:
pbullet = (0.0005 kg)(½)(3 × 108 m/s)
= 7.5 × 104 N·s
If we assume the mass of the rifle is 10 kg, its backward velocity must be 7.5 × 104 N·s divided by 10 kg, which equals 7500 m/s. Compared to the velocity of a .45 cal bullet going a sedate 330 m/s, our rail gun would be a mite difficult to hold.
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A recoil with the force of 7500 m/s, eh? Thats a nice kick to it, and that number is when the bullet travels at only
half the speed of light.
Anyways, check that site out. It's a bunch of physics nerds analyzing the physics behind popular movies and shows how Hollywood repeatidly bends the laws of the universe =)