8 replies to this topic

[El Hombre]

Recently a friend of mine from a nearby governor's school had to do a pretty large science fair project. When he came up to me to ask for help, I was surprised by what he said when I asked what it was gonna be about.

"Nerf!" He replied. The title of his project was: The Effect of Barrel Length Modification on the Projectile Motion of a Nerf Dart. (Really long, huh?)
His description: I used different barrel lengths on a modified Nerf Crossbow and fired multiple shots horizontally in projectile motion, and measured flight time, length, and accuracy.

The only way I helped him was by letting him borrow my crossbow, a single dart, changing the barrels on it when needed, and helping to measure in each trial.
Of course the dart type can effect performance, yatta.. but this wasn't meant to be super in-depth.
I had a chance to go into the classroom and look at some of the projects other people were working on.. There was some pretty tough competition- one group of three people were working on a fully functional robot that looked like it came straight out of robot wars, another person was working on this big experiment with sound waves (long story) etc..

ANYWAY, onto the climax.. the result of the project? 2nd place....!! I was really happy to see his success, I was glad that the teachers didn't think he was just some kind of gun-nut, and I was thrilled to see people so interested in his Nerf-based project! Alot of people were simply fascinated by the fact that nerf guns could be modified to achieve better distance. It went really well.. He said he's going to have a website up on it soon, which you can expect me to post up soon. Overall, wicked!

[Atticus]

Too cool for school.

It actually is pretty cool, if I ever have a topic relating to any aspect of Nerf, I'm sure I'll look into it. Anyway, I'm pretty interested in the results themself also. What type of barrel did you use?

[El Hombre]

We used 3 different lengths of 1/2 inch PVC- one was 5 inches (pretty stubby), the next was 8 I think, and the last was a foot long. The 8 inch barrel seemed to perform with the most distance (the 12 inches were a bit too much and actually slowed the Zero dart *thanks Zero* down a little bit, but the accuracy was pretty dead-on there).

[One Man Clan]

In answer to your topic, i would have to say "so cool that it hurts"

[Zero Talent]

Hey, well, that helps solidify my own experiences into something tanglible. Thanks for the awesome story, and looking forward to the website presentation!

[DJ Hurley]

Thats awesome! Can't wait to check out his site.

Last year, we had to do a project for Science, and I was gonna make a homemade Nerf gun, but seeing that my school is ghetto enough, they'd be to strict abut my "gun". So I ended up making a skateboard with shoes attached to it. but if I did that Nerf profect, Im sure some people would be interested in Nerf...

[17yellow]

One of my Friends (six hungry ducks) is doing a projet with nerf guns.
He is seeing if homemade darts or regular darts work better in a modified Gun.I was actually thinking about doing a project almost just like this one but with a homemade gun so when you put that website on here. But no really Idid think about htis project before I read this. Great minds think alike.

[IronRhino]

I had a dream once where I got assigned a report for science about a hobby that involves physics. I did Nerf. You should start a clan there!

[Puddle of Foam]

Dang, you beat me to the cool school quote. That's sweet dude.