Guns[17] were the first machines to harness the power of combustion to make stuff go. If you want to do a little armchair international psychoanalysis, consider this: The Chinese discovered gunpowder around 800 AD and used it to make medicine and fireworks. Arabs and Europeans created their version of gunpowder about 500 years later and promptly built guns.
This Marshmallow Muzzleloader isn’t all that different from an internal combustion engine: A cylinder is filled with a mix of combustible vapor and air that, when ignited with a spark, drives a piston forward. In this case the cylinder is the chamber of our gun (see Figure 24-2), the fuel is breath spray, the spark plug is made from a camera flash, and the piston is a deliciously soft marshmallow.
a wood saw
a miter box
a standard soldering kit (See the appendix.)
a utility knife
a tape measure or ruler
an electric drill with bits
a pair of insulated test leads, aka clip jumpers
a pocket knife
safety goggles or a face shield
sandpaper (including medium grit, such as 80–120, and fine grit, such as 150)
(optional) an electric sander
(optional) a very small Philips head screwdriver, aka a jeweler’s screwdriver
(optional) a multimeter with clip leads
[17] A “gun” is any tube-based projectile launching machine with a closed breech, from gigantic ancient cannons to modern artillery, .585-caliber elephant guns to tiny derringers.