Coil gun?

It can be difficult to get optimal results. Most designs involve charging up one or more capacitors to a moderately high voltage and then rapidly discharging them (sequentially, for multi-coil designs) into the coil(s) of the gun. A small HV inverter (typically a photo flash supply) is used to charge one or more electrolytic capacitors to several hundred volts. Switching is usually done by IGBT's or thyristors, with high current diodes to block voltage reversal on the capacitors. The tricky part is optimizing projectile weight and shape, coil design, sequential timing, and snubber circuitry.

Since the voltage (and energy) stored in the HV capacitors can be significant, I suppose a careless experimenter could become a potential Darwin Award recipient. However, coil guns are not very efficient, and the projectile mass and muzzle velocity of even well-designed hand-held coil guns are much lower than their chemically-driven counterparts.

But they can be cute...

Bert