Can you make a pneumatic cannon shoot snowballs?
Winter is closer and closer so I want to spice up the classic snowball fights with a lil bit of scrambling. I've decided that a snowball artillery barrage from several dozen meters would be a fun thing (even on the receiving end of the barrel) but i don't know how to make the snowballs survive the acceleration. Does anybody have any experience with such things? I thought about using a foam sabot to held the snowball together but i don't know if it would work.
My feeling is that success would depend on the snow itself. With a dry snow it falls apart in my hands and I can't even make a snowball, but there's a certain consistency where it's wet and slushy enough to really hold together well. If I was trying to do this, I would start by experimenting with adding small amounts of water to some snow until I found that perfect consistency that holds together really well. Then I would make snowballs from it and carefully load them into a launcher with a barrel that is wider than the snowball. My concern would be that friction in the barrel could shatter the snowball. I would also be really careful not to let them freeze because I wouldn't want to be launching dangerous iceballs around my neighborhood.