« More "If You Disagree You're A Racist" Crap | Main | I Musta Missed That Part »

October 22, 2008

How Cool Is This?

Screw the election; today we're all about weird science

NEW YORK (AP) - 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.

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

...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.

This so far only seems to work in a vacuum., but I could imagine an x-ray device for an area with no electricity: you pop a roll of scotch tape into a chamber, close it and create a vacuum using a hand pump, and peel off tape in the chamber via a hand-turned crank whilst holding the device over the body part you want to x-ray.

Neat, neat stuff.

Insert body part here

Posted by Mr. Bingley at October 22, 2008 01:41 PM

Comments

Most body parts won't fit in that opening, Mr. Bingley. And I don't care to discuss which body parts would fit. If naught else, Sis would smack me.

Posted by: The_Real_JeffS at October 22, 2008 01:50 PM

If I had a sense of humor, there would be no end of jokes to make about this. Sadly, I can't think of any.

Posted by: Skyler at October 22, 2008 02:18 PM

If Scotch tape emits x-rays,it kinda makes me think
cellphones may be causing brain tumors.There's a connection there.
Scotch tape- Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
invented for use in painting cars.It could peel off easily and not damage the auto's paint(History
Channel circa 1998)

Posted by: greg newson at October 22, 2008 09:34 PM

And just why would I want to x-ray that part of my anatomy (even if, you know, theoretically, it WOULD fit...ahem)
I already know from my seventh-grade health class that there's not really a BONE in there. :-D

Posted by: B Smith at October 22, 2008 10:36 PM

What I want to know is...who thinks of these experiments? Was it a slow day at the lab? Seriously.

Posted by: JudieBluEyes at October 22, 2008 10:38 PM

I can see them trying this on Mythbusters. (Which is good, 'cos it seems they're running low on cool things to test.)

Posted by: ricki at October 23, 2008 07:31 AM

If they get x-rays from scotch tape I wonder what they'd get from duct tape.

Posted by: Retread at October 23, 2008 07:39 AM