Peeling Scotch Tape Emits X-Rays, Startling Study Finds

Status
Not open for further replies.
G

GrnMarvl14

Lying
Joined
Jan 4, 2003
Messages
13,846
Reaction score
4
Source.

NEW YORK — Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.

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.

Who knew?

Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

"We were very surprised," said Juan Escobar. "The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous."

Escobar, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports the work with UCLA colleagues in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

He suggests that with some refinements, the process might be harnessed for making inexpensive X-ray machines for paramedics or for places where electricity is expensive or hard to get.

After all, you could peel tape or do something similar in such machines with just human power, such as cranking.

The researchers and UCLA have applied for a patent covering such devices.

In the new work, a machine peeled ordinary Scotch tape off a roll in a vacuum chamber at about 1.2 inches per second.

Rapid pulses of X-rays, each about a billionth of a second long, emerged from very close to where the tape was coming off the roll.

That's where electrons jumped from the roll to the sticky underside of the tape that was being pulled away, a journey of about two-thousandths of an inch, Escobar said.

When those electrons struck the sticky side they slowed down, and that slowing made them emit X-rays.

So is this a health hazard for unsuspecting tape-peelers?

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.

"If you're going to peel tape in a vacuum, you should be extra careful," he said. But "I will continue to use Scotch tape during my daily life, and I think it's safe to do it in your office. No guarantees."

James Hevezi, who chairs the American College of Radiology's Commission on Medical Physics, said the notion of developing an X-ray machine from the new finding was "a very interesting idea, and I think it should be carried further in research."
Click to expand...

Okay...wtf? I don't even WANT to know the scientific process that explains how this is possible. Still interesting to know.
 
...



...Huh. Well, that's unusual. I wonder how that works. At least there's apparently no danger because X-rays apparently don't form in the presence of air.
 
Betcha the x-rays that come from duct tape would be that much stronger. :p
 
good ol tape for ya! Weird how it does that, but cool anyway. Who knows what different things are capable of if you put them in unusual or "not normal" situations? The tape for example being one of them.
 
And tape proves itself more useful once again (except during those moments where you're removing tape and that extra bit sticks on no matter how much you prod it.)

It's interesting, but transferring the x-ray potential out of a vacuum into something portable sounds like a lot of R&D dollars away.
 
At last, the mystery of gamma ray bursts is solved. They're caused by aliens peeling too much duct tape!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom