Feature story

The mystery
of x-rays
The Discovery of X-Rays
It was nearly midnight on 8th November 1895. The wind was
howling outside, and rain lashed through the trees. What had
just appeared before Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was terrifying. He
had seen his own bones.

For several years, scientists around the world had been

reporting a bizarre glow when they electrified the thin gas in
vacuum tubes. Some were convinced that they were producing
ectoplasm or ghosts. Now, in Germany, Röntgen was doing
similar experiments and now, alone in the night, his imagination
ran wild. Earlier that day, as the sun had started to set, he noticed
that whenever he made sparks in a vacuum tube, a fluorescent
screen at the other end of the laboratory table glowed slightly.

This was a sign that invisible rays were being produced in the
tube, crossing the room and hitting the screen, producing the
faint glow. To track the rays he had been putting pieces of card
in their way, but the screen continued to glow whether the
cards were there or not. It was as if the mystery rays were able to
pass straight through them! He then tried to block the rays with
metal... but the pieces of copper and aluminium he used had no
effect!

Scratching his head, he picked up a piece of lead. Moving it

closer to the screen, he watched its shadow sharpen, and it was
then that he cried out in surprise: he had seen the dark skeletal
pattern of the bones in his hand as it moved across the screen.

Hardly able to believe his eyes, he took out some photographic

film to make a record. Just before Christmas, he invited his wife
Bertha into his laboratory and took a shadow photograph of her
hand. If you look at the picture, you can even see her wedding
ring! Doctors realised straightaway that Röntgen’s mystery rays
could be used to see inside people, and the first images of
fractured bones were made in January 1896. Because the rays
were unknown up until then, Röntgen called them X-rays! The First X-Ray
Picture, 1895

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So What Are X-Rays?
X-rays are more or less the same thing as
visible light rays. Both are wavelike forms of
electromagnetic energy carried by particles
called photons. The difference between X-rays
and visible light rays is the energy level of the
individual photons. This is also expressed as the
wavelength of the rays.
Our eyes are sensitive to the particular
wavelength of visible light, but not to the
shorter wavelength of higher energy X-ray
waves or the longer wavelength of the lower
energy radio waves.
Uses of X-rays
As well as being used by doctors to see
inside people, X-rays are also used in airport
security checks to see inside your luggage, in
industry to inspect products made by various
kinds of materials, and even to see through
layers of paint on works of art to discover
hidden masterpieces!
How X-Ray Machines Work?
Inside an X-ray machine is an electrode pair - a cathode
and an anode - that sit inside a glass vacuum tube.
The cathode is a heated filament, like you might find
in a lightbulb. The machine passes current through the
filament, heating it up. The heat sputters electrons off
the filament surface. The positively-charged anode, a flat
disc made of tungsten, draws the electrons across the
tube. The voltage difference between the cathode and
anode is extremely high, so the electrons fly through the
tube with a great deal of force. When a speeding electron
collides with a tungsten atom, it knocks loose an electron
in one of the atom’s lower energy levels, or orbitals. An
electron in a higher orbital immediately falls to the lower
energy level, releasing its extra energy in the form of a
photon. It’s a big drop, so the photon has a high energy
level -- it is an X-ray photon.
The entire machine is surrounded by a thick lead shield.
The lead, as Röntgen found, blocks the X-rays and stops
them from escaping. A small window in the shield lets
some of the X-rays through. They then pass through a
series of filters on its way to the patient.
A camera on the other side of the patient records the
pattern of X-ray light that passes all the way through
the patient’s body. The X-ray camera uses the same film
technology as an ordinary camera, but X-ray light sets off
the chemical reaction instead of visible light.
Dangers of X-Rays
X-Rays emit radiation, which can cause
healthy cells to mutate, causing cancer. Too
much radiation at one body site can cause
skin conditions resembling severe burns or
local cancers. Widely distributed over the
body so that it penetrates much of the blood-
forming marrow, excessive radiation can
cause leukaemia, a form of cancer. That is why
X-ray technicians use very low doses, and
block most of the X-rays with lead.
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