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X-Rays Emitted From Ordinary Scotch Tape

Posted by timothy on from the unusual-circumstances dept.

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.

1 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. This sounds similar to... by willoughby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.