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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.
Um, X-rays don't hurt. Stupid-rays do, though. That's probably what you were feeling.
The article suggests Bremsstrahlung (note the 3rd paragraph of the linked article) of the electrons jumping from the non-sticky surface to the sticky surface of the tape - I guess the air present in a non-vacuum situation lets the electrons slow gradually or maybe have lower initial velocity - that part is unclear from the article.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
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.
the first should result in the second failing to get a patent
No, it really shouldn't. There's a difference between describing a physical phenomenon and coming up with an application for it. Just because tape produces x-rays does not mean that it is intuitivly obvious how to create a portable x-ray machine out of it. Ask yourself if you could knock one together in your garage this weekend, knowing only that x causes y.
...EVERYTHING in the universe is radioactive to some degree. Except for iron.
To be radioactive you have to have nuclei. 96% of the Universe is Dark Matter and Dark Energy that does not contain any nuclei. Of the remaining 4% the vast majority is in stable isotopes of hydrogen and helium and so is not radioactive. Additionally there are radioactive isotopes of iron. Iron-56 may be the most stable atomic nucleus but there are many other isotopes of iron some of which are radioactive.
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.
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