Wilhelm Röntgen
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A new type of radiation was discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen, a German physicist, he called it X-radiation to denote its unknown nature. This mysterious radiation had the ability to pass through many materials that absorb visible light. X-rays also have the ability to knock electrons loose from atoms. Over the years these exceptional properties have made X-rays useful in many fields, such as medicine and atomic research.
Eventually, X-rays were found to be a form of light. X-rays are a highly energetic form of light not visible to the human eye. Objects at very high temperatures (millions of degrees Celsius) emit most of their energy as X-rays.
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Highspeed collision
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When charged particles collide (or undergo sudden changes in their motion) they produce packets of energy called photons that radically outward from the point of collision at the speed of light. Since electrons are the lightest known charged particle, they overlap, so they are responsible for most of the photons produced in the universe. X-rays can be produced by a high-speed collision between an electron and a proton.
As, we have stated earlier, the energy of the photon tells what kind of light it is and radio waves are composed of low energy photons. Optical photons (the only photons perceived by the human eye) are a million times more energetic than typical radio wave. The energies of X-ray photons range from hundreds to thousands of times higher than that of optical photons.
A broken leg
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X-rays are often used in medicine to see inside the body, without invasive surgery. The easiest method is to place photographic paper behind the target (the body) and shine X-rays through the target onto the film. Because the bones are much denser than the rest of the tissue, the X-rays do not pass through them as well, so the bones show up as a light areas on the negative film. The rest of the tissue is relatively transparent to the X-rays and show up as dark areas on the film.
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