The ring launcher is another piece of equipment that does an extraordinary job living up to its namesake. Believe it or not, it launches a ring.
Important note regarding this device: do not attempt to use this without the iron core in place or it will overheat.
There is a basic and incorrect description of the ring launcher and a much more involved explanation. Both descriptions arise from Faraday's Law (or Lenz's Law, depending on how you look at it), where the time rate of change of the magnetic flux can create a current within a conducting material. The fact that the ring moves is also due to the fact that this is not an ideal solenoid, as an ideal solenoid has no magnetic field outside of it, where the ring sits. Also, the magnetic field outside of the ring is not perfectly vertical, otherwise the ring would not move because the force F = IL x B must point perpendicular to the magnetic field (and thus could only point horizontally). Thus, the motion arises due to the horizontal component of the magnetic field outside of the non-ideal solenoid, which acts a force upon an induced horizontal current that arises in the conductive ring due to the change in magnetic flux.
Anyway, time to launch a ring. Here it goes:
It can launch several meters up.
