Railguns have been studied and developed primarily as high-speed ballistic launchers for a variety of applications ranging from military weapons to space launchers. Typically, a high voltage capacitor bank is rapidly discharged (a few milliseconds) down a rail, across a sliding armature, and then up a return rail. The resulting current surge generates a large magnetic field and huge Lorentz forces across the armature, accelerating it at thousands of g’s to speeds as high as 5.9 km/s. Recent demonstrations are impressive: a 2010 Navy railgun test implies a projectile range of 110 miles, inevitably leading to student interest in the operation and performance of these advanced linear motors.