Scotch tape's surprising power: X-rays

[Prrkitty]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/22/scotch.tape.xray/index.html

Quote: It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Quote 2: Escobar noted that no X-rays are produced in the presence of air. You need to work in a vacuum -- not exactly an everyday situation.
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Wow! Something we use all the time, scotch tape, could do an x-ray of our fingers... that is *IF* we were in a vacuum.

Very interesting...

[Pryme8]

sooo.. basically you could make an Xray machine at your house if you built a vacuum?

[Trevelyan_06]

sooo.. basically you could make an Xray machine at your house if you built a vacuum?

In theory, yes. But you'd have to first have a vacuum, a machine to peel the tape really fast, x-ray paper, and then a means to develop the x-ray.

Interesting article. I think it's going to be things like this that are the next breakthroughs in technology. I'm talking about discovering different uses for things that we never thought about before.

[Pryme8]

I figure we could make some pretty cool stuff, I wonder what else might happen in a vacuum then...

so i take it, that its the friction causing the reaction?

[Saffith]

Better picture here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27323869/


so i take it, that its the friction causing the reaction?
No, it's electrons jumping between the two surfaces.