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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.
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?
That is really interesting, in particular because Nature magazine (where the paper will appear) used to have a policy of not accepting submissions that are being or have been patented.
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.