Last week's Economist (I'm almost caught up) had this small story, X-rays and sticky tape.
"One of the more unusual things you can do with a roll of adhesive tape is to take an X-ray photograph of your finger. Carlos Camara, Juan Escobar and their colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, report in this week’s Nature that unwinding a reel of the stuff generates enough X-rays to do just that."
How did I not see this on the Internets? Nature even has a short video. This is amazing.
They say you can see regular light if you unroll tape in a dark room. I just tried it in a walk in closet and didn't see anything. I must have done something wrong. I wonder if a new use of duct tape will come out this? I suspect the first change we'll see is new warning labels on tape.
2 comments:
It's based on triboluminescence and is the same effect that causes the flashes when you bite down on a wintergreen lifesaver in the dark. The separation and recombination of the charges causes luminescence and releases energy.
I am sure that you have quickly ripped off a long strip of duct tape in the dark and seen flashes. It's very cool. You don't get X-rays under except under vacuum as the atmosphere would absorb them.
I've never seen this effect before and oddly don't have any duct tape on hand to try it. I'll have to get some.
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