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X-Rays Emitted From Ordinary Scotch Tape
Maximum Prophet writes "When I was in High School, I built an X-Ray machine that (probably) didn't produce any X-Rays. I used an old vacuum tube and high voltage. Little did I know that simple triboluminescence would have enough energy to do useful work." The catch: you'll need to peel your tape in a vacuum, and have the x-ray film at the ready.
does this mean that x-mas gifts can give you cancer?
The catch: you'll need to peel your tape in a vacuum
I've been practicing this for years. I knew it would come in handy some day.
Sounds like a job for....
THE GLOVEBOX!!!
No, not that glovebox, this glovebox. What do you think this is, a redneck website?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The claims for the patent are, of course, not really indicated, but since the article itself states
Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass.
I hope that either they've invented something truly novel to do with this effect or they get a big, fat denied letter in the mail from the USPTO.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
...EVERYTHING in the universe is radioactive to some degree. Except for iron. Meh. And /. trolls. They're flammmmming.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
It was cleverly disguised as a malfunctioning computer monitor.
Getting your face and eyes hit by needlepoints of pain isn't an experience I care to repeat. It's fun for about the first 15 seconds after that no so much.
does this mean that x-mas gifts can give you cancer?
No, and if you'd read the article instead of scrambling for FP you'd know that it only works in a vacuum. Actually, that bit's even in the summary...!
The catch: you'll need to peel your tape in a vacuum
Oh trust me, I "peel my tape in a vacuum" all the time....
This guy's the limit!
...to have your post considered. I posted this at 11:48AM MST but I guess that doesn't matter?
I'm sure, almost certain, that the ripping sound you hear is the sound of a million geeks all pulling about 1.2 inches of tape off of their desktop dispenser.
Bonus points if it's now wrapped around your finger as a memento.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Did you know that Brazil nuts are radioactive? And so is granite! There's radiation everywhere! Luckily, I have a hat.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
...in Lake Superior.
They have an exhibit of one of the first x-ray machines.
It consists of a 6' diameter dispenser roll of scotch tape inside an even larger vacuum chamber.
They'll even let your kids take a complementary souvenir floroscope picture of themselves.
There goes my plans for building the biggest ball of Scotch Tape!!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
I wonder how this is going to affect items with similar properties (like good ol' duct tape) while at the space station.
"Hey! there's a leak on the outside wall but damn it, they wouldn't let us bring any duct tape!" :)
A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere. -- Groucho Marx
"Hey baby, I'm gonna get some scotch tape cause I wanna see your insides."
-or-
"If I'm scotch tape and your the vacuum then why don't we go release some energy."
-or even-
"If you want rapid pulses, I'll give you 1.2 inches a second."
but instead you went with:
Oh trust me, I "peel my tape in a vacuum" all the time....
I'm sorry but I just can't accept that.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Or a pony.
In which case the pony-shaped wrapping and the labored breathing give it away.
Can anyone with more of a clue than I have about such things maybe give us a high-level summary as to exactly what mechanism is at play here?
I find myself having no idea of how this would work, and TFA doesn't really seem to say much about the mechanism. It just seems so damned bizarre.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Pablo, is that you?
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
A more practical approach might be to have two wide wheels, one covered in the substance, and the other with a smooth non-stick surface centered in a vaccum ball. The substance could be reapplied easily whenever need be, and be a little less ridiculous.
My duct tape produces cold fusion!
:q! Oh crap, not again...
Will this lead to a wave of new sticky-tape-related superheroes?
I see you got to your pony on xmas faster than I did.
I used an old vacuum tube and high voltage.
Well, I don't necessarily endorse your kink, but if it provides a cost effective alternative to Viagra for you ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
We will not see this technology being used to actually help people for 20+ years. The researchers have already been paid to discover this result in their salaries. Why should they be paid again on the backs of those who actually develop practical uses for this discovery? Of what benefit is it to society for this technology to be hoarded by a small few?
The patenting of scientific phenomena is a shameful institution that needs to be stopped. A university is not supposed to be a for profit institution.
May the Maths Be with you!
X-rays and other radiation are no longer the superhero-creating mystery factor. It's genetic engineering now. Get with the times!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If not, we should add this to the list of uses for Duct-tape. I am also curious about if the stickiness factor were to increase, would the pulses or x-rays increase as well? What about other adhesive media?
I'm all for this path for science so long as the technology stays out of the hands of TSA agents.
Where am I gonna get a piece of tape in space...at this hour?
Typical X-ray machines use 50 to 200 kilovolts and milliamps of electrons slamming into a tungsten target. Nothing less will do.
It's kinda unlikely Scotch (brand) tape can bypass all the bottlenecks and emit copious X-rays.
It's much more likely they're getting electrostatic discharges in the film. The New Age loonballs call it "Kirlian Photography".
I'll be glad to eat a hat if this pans out. Until then I'll just wear it.
a phenomenon I learned about in photography class many years ago. Back in the days of film a roll of 35mm film was attached to the spool inside the canister by a small bit of tape. In the darkroom as you disassembled the canister to remove the film for processing, if you peeled this tape quickly the "peeling", or "stretching" adhesive would glow. We learned to peel the tape slowly because the glow from rapidly pulled tape was sufficient to fog film.
Not so! The Red Green show shows the hoser stereotype, not the redneck stereotype.
With the work Ive done with high power vaccum tubes (> 30 Kilowatts output), it has become standard practice for Eimac and other manufacturers to list dangers for them.
eg., the 4-1000 tetrode, with > 12 KV on the anode, will emit xrays. As will almost ANY other tetrode or triode in existance.
I'd say the person who wrote the article didn't understand that He'd need THAT much anode voltage to get the tube to emit.
That being said, I'd almost have to say that the scotch tape being used to emit the XRays would be doing so because of a HUGE electrostatic (static electricity) charge.
Most of the tubes I work with are a quarter megawatt can be seen on my old website, http://www.bigradios.com/tollfree
--Toll_Free
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually any tube will emit X-rays but the energy of the X-rays will depend on the voltage, so at lower voltages the X-rays are not very penetrating and will not make it out through the glass or metal envelope. The energy is directly related to the voltage, eg each electron gets accelerated through a potential difference which is the voltage applied to the tube. So 10kV will give you 10keV Xrays, and so on. There was a bit of a panic back in the early days of colour TV when it was belatedly realised that the 25kV or so potentials being used were generating significant doses of X-rays.
So it in a movie last year. Wink. Wink.
There's a lot of mechanical energy involved in peeling tape. (Including creating and depositing the glue & tape film)
my friend actually did research on this last year.
There's an informative video in Nature about the phenomenom and the experiment: http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/x-rays/
They even show how to take x-rays using scotch tape.
All Rights Reversed.
Don't save the big one for last.
I guess that solves the x-ray problem. Lots of glue for next xmas.
According to John T.M. Lyles, an engineer who works on megawatt and bigger amps and oscillators for the federal government at an installation in New Mexico, it takes > 8 KV to emit xrays that would be measurable or damaging.
contesting.com amps reflector has a nice email exchange on it, as does the Yahoo.com ham amps reflector.
NO, not every tube will emit xrays. EMITTING xrays is what's dangerous. Just because a ceramic / metal triode / tetrode is GENERATING them, if it doesn't escape the envelope, it's not emitting them.
Kind of like your microwave. It shouldn't be emitting microwaves, but it creates them.
Hope that makes sense, or at least makes my point.
--Toll_Free
Don't know if it works for all brands of self-seal envelopes, or only some. Not aware of any exhaustive studies on envelope-adhesive types.
Eric Baird
I wonder if different kinds of tape would generate different amounts of x-rays depending on stickiness -- for example, duct tape or packing tape.
I suppose it's kind of hard to use tape in the vacuum of space since the cold also tends to ruin the stickiness almost immediately...
http://www.tenjou.net/
Don't know if this is related or not, but I noticed recently while peeling the protective backing from a breathe-right strip off in a darkened room that the area where the adhesive was peeling away from the backing emits a dull glow for a fraction of a second while it's being pulled.
Plutonium? He does exist!
When I peel the plastic backing off a new bandaid in the dark, it glows along the separating point where the backing peels off the adhesive. Even the paper wrapping package of the individual bandaid glows as I peel it apart along its glued seams.
Is there x-ray frequency light that I'm not seeing in that glowing little miracle?
--
make install -not war
That's cause he got it on xrays, which is obviously before xmas.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This does not surprise me too much. Last year the glue on an envelope also emitted a blueish light as I opened it (without tearing the paper). I already wondered if this was a know effect.
If you go into a dark room/closet and pull duct (or duck, dukk,...) tape from the roll very quickly, you can observe quick flashes of light emitting from the corner of the freshly peeled tape.
Not sure if anyone else has noticed this phenomenon, but it's pretty cool. My guess is the light is either 'sparks' generated from the heat of breaking chemical bonds, or a discharge of static electricity.
(P.S.: don't inquire about what I was doing when I discovered this phenomenon!)
--ae
Secondly, to make a decent amount of x-rays, the applied voltage needs to be a fair bit higher than what is normally used in a colour picture tube to generate the image. The O.P. said it was faulty, perhaps it could have generated it. But there are normally multiple protection circuits on the EHT that prevent this (as in, they go "phut" before the voltage gets that high and the monitor shuts off/never works again).
You know, I don't think that's entirely true. I used to repair televisions, and I don't remember anything in the circuits being designed specifically to prevent an overvoltage condition on the CRT 2nd anode.
In fact, I remember most of the older color sets had a warning label in the back about the fact that the CRT would produce X-rays if the voltage was turned up too high.
The really old sets that still used a vacuum tube (aka valve) to rectify the 2nd anode voltage had that tube inside a steel box, since that rectifier tube was more than capable of emitting x-rays if the voltage went high enough. It seems to me that if there had been anything in the circuit to prevent the overvoltage condition, the TV set manufacturer wouldn't have spent the money to build a metal x-ray shielding box. I remember one TV in particular had a prominent warning stamped on the removable access panel on the metal box that held the rectifier tube telling the repairman to reinstall the cover to prevent x-ray leakage.
Isn't one problem with X-rays and similar radiation that the risk is cumulative? So a low dose over a very long time could be the same as a short duration high-rate dose?
I don't think anyone can feel x-rays though. That sounds a little silly.
Hulk smash!
Putting moderation advice in your
The target information is off as well. At least for metallurgical use of X-rays the target is typically copper emitting alpha peaks at 1.544390 and 1.540562 Angstroms. X-ray energy is 8.04keV
You're comparing metallurgical radiography to medical x-rays?
The power levels are different by an order of magnitude - it takes a lot more energy to penetrate metal parts to check for internal defects.
Medical x-rays can be taken at much lower energy levels.
Perfect delivery. You shouldn't have posted AC :)
I understand that demos may be simplified, but this one is ridiculous, for many reasons.
* There isn't any attempt made to check for actual x-rays. The crystal and geiger counter are both sensitive to a very wide spectrum.
* The sensors could be fooled by static discharges. Geiger counters and scintilating crystals are both very sensitive to electric fields, just what you expect to find around tape and adhesives and friction.
* The geiger counter is not a calibrated piece of lab equipment, but just about the cheapest handheld consumer device. Does not reflect well on the experimenters scientific accuracy.
* They don't take the slightest effort to filter out non x-rays. A simple piece of aluminum foil over the plexiglass cover would stop electric fields, the most probably confounding element. Even Roentgen was more scientific, determining that X-rays acted like light, in that they could be reflected and refracted. 130 years later and these guys can't even do the simple due diligence that's been in the books for over a century.
* These guys have no clue what's happening. A scientist would try to work up a theory and a mechanism for X-ray emission. Quite a challenge as x-ray radiation is almost always associated with abrupt electron acceleration near high-Z elements.
All in all the demo video is very shabby experimentation, I don't dare call it "science". If it was science they would try null experiments, say using other sources of sparks against their rather inappropriate sensors. This does not seem to have been done.
In Soviet Russia, transparent tape sees through YOU!