Alphabe-thursday..."X"

It's Thursday, and although I am hoping to put up some images of items I've been working on, ARTwise.  I have to attend my Alphabe-Thursday class.


Today's letter is X, as an X-ray and MRI Technologist, I felt it only fitting to share some info with you about X-rays.

X-rays are part of the electromagnetic spectrum; light waves as it were…you know ROYGBIV, among others.  These are measured in waves.  From Largest to smallest they are:

Radio waves, Microwaves, Infrared, Visible Light, Ultraviolet, X-rays, Gamma Rays.

X-rays were accidentally discovered by a German scientist Wilhelm Roentegen in 1895 when experimenting with Vacuum tubes. (Kind of neat when we think about it, medical imaging has only been around for a little over 100 years) The accidental finding was actually due to him having something in his back pants pocket at the time, and it burned his butt! :D

A week later, Wilhelm took an X-ray photograph of his wife's hand which clearly revealed her wedding ring and her bones.  The Photograph electrified the general public and aroused great scientific interest in the new form of radiation. Roentgen called it "X" to indicate it was an unknown type of radiation. The name stuck, although (over Roentgen's objections), many of his colleagues suggested calling them Roentgen rays. They are still occasionally referred to as Roentgen rays in German-speaking countries. (he did not realize it at the time, but he actually way over-radiated his wife with that photograph(you can see by how black the bones and ring appear), as well as himself with the accidental x-ray of the metal object in his back pocket.)

Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was a German scientist born on March 27, 1845 in Rhenish, Russia. Wilhelm was raised in the Netherlands as an only child. He earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Zurich in 1869. In 1875 he became a professor at an academy in Wurttenburg. He was then appointed the head of physics chair at the University of Giessen. During an experiment in 1895 involving vaccuum tubes when an electrical discharge ran through the tubing system.

Wilhelm then made various alterations to the experiment, replacing variables similar to the gold foil experiment of Ernest Rutherford. He discovered a new type of wavelength being produced by his experiment, and soon realized they were radioactive x-rays. The final experiment Roentgen used to conclude his discovery was his wife's hand which he held under the radioactive x-ray machine.(as listed above)He was awarded the first Nobel Prize of physics in 1901, and then died of carcinoma in 1923.

This is just a taste of what X-rays are.

Today's lesson is brought to you by the letter "X"

You can read other great "X" lessons here:

Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday

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