Sticky Tape Found To Emit Terahertz Radiation

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from New Scientist "'Peeling sticky tape has already been shown to produce X-rays, so Joseph Horvat and Roger Lewis of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia, tried to see if it could create lower-frequency terahertz radiation. "We were rather pleasantly surprised to obtain a clear signal in our first attempt," says Horvat. Strongly adhesive Scotch Magic 810 tape and weakly adhesive electrical tape both yielded strong terahertz signals, ranging from 0.1 to 10 terahertz, but only about a microwatt of power, too little for practical use (Optics Letters, vol 34, p 2195). Horvat says that refinements should increase the power by orders of magnitude.' It may be old news to Slashdot that [peeling clear tape] had been proved to produce X-rays, but watching the linked video where they use tape to expose X-ray film was pretty amazing."

Comments

Peeling tape causes radiation?

[russotto]

From now on, it's staples for everything.

Re:Peeling tape causes radiation?

[Fieryphoenix]

I prefer Office Depot.

Terminology

[93 Escort Wagon]

Strongly adhesive Scotch Magic 810 tape and weakly adhesive electrical tape both yielded strong terahertz signals,

I propose that we add two new fundamental forces to our physics lexicon - "strongly adhesive" and "weakly adhesive".

Re:The burning question!

[ArsonSmith]

Yes, you will have the power to mend small tears in sheets of paper. The magical ability to control paint to be applied in some areas but not in others along nice sharp lines. The super human ability to stop electricity from shorting between two wires.

Among other similar powers.