Yes, Tesla is definately an underappreciated genius. He's the one that gave us AC current, afterall. 🙂
I've always wanted to make a "rail gun". It wouldn't really be too hard in principal, but to make one that would fire a projectile accurately would be much, much harder..
It would be really, really cool, though. hmm. Hmmmm.. ideas.. ideas.. must write down.. hehe
I bet you could do it with a bunch of through-hole solenoid coils. find a iron tube that fits snugly inside the holes, line them all up on it right.. insert projectile.. and hit the power.. Hmm.. I'm going to have to start working on that..
I've built a miniature tesla coil before, when I was younger. I didn't do a very good job, but it still gave me nice little 1/8" blue sparks.. lol..
I've always wanted to build one that would jump 1 - 2" .. scare the neighbors.. 😉 lol