It would be a good idea to place the rectifier inside a steel container when you are operating the device. 1-2 mm of steel will effectively filter out all X-rays below 40 KeV. It is important to remove these, as they are readily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns. Modern medical equipment filters out everything of low energy to ensure only the deep penetrating rays make it to the patient. These higher energy rays are far less likely to deposite thier energy within the subjects body, so they are much safer.
3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time. The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly. In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you? His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you. I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.
Well you really should use an ion chamber with integrated-max dose rate. GM counters are not quick enough to really be effective for the short exposure time
I was a station scientist at ESRF (grenoble, france) about 30 years ago, which was at that time the strongest X-ray source in the world. and I also developed soft X-ray lasers. Some more details: soft X-rays (up to a few keV can be reflected - even at 90 degrees using multilayer mirrors. But your detector likely would not be able to detect soft x-rays , and working with them typically requires working in vacuum. Harder X-rays can indeed be reflected or focused at grazing incidence, if the mirror surface is really really smoothly polished and made of a heavy element such as platinum. Roughness of the mirrors I used was only a few tenths of a nanometer. A more common way to focus or modify the direction of monochromatic X-rays is using crystals. And... I also produced X-rays with transition radiation. No way to do this on a tabletop: as you need to accelerate electrons to 40 Million electron volts or higher.
@@d0gkiller87 The multilayer mirrors, it depends on the materials used. Our problem was that the power involved in making the x-ray lasers pulse made such mirrors typically single use as they were destroyed after a single x-ray pulse. The x-ray grazing incidence mirrors look metallic. They were 1.2 meters long for an x-ray beam of about 3 mm high. It was made out of a single cristal of silicon with a coating of platinum. These typically take many months of design studies (optical behavior, mechanical behavior, thermal behavior of the cooling system while being exposed to very intense x-ray beam) before starting its production, and then the actual mirror production and testing takes another few months. Only few companies are able to produce these with the stringent specifications for x-ray mirrors. The actual mirror is rarely seen directly : once produced in a clean room, it is placed in the ultra high vacuum chamber connected to the synchrotron accelerator during the rest of its lifetime.
@@RMX7777 tritium beta is - from memory around 18 keV... which is way easier to detect. below 5 keV, you typically get a lot of your x-rays absorbed by air, detector windows etc... I used a few micron thick beryllium windows in front of a liquid nitrogen cooled SiLi spectrometer for spectroscopy, The spectrum you get out of your detector then needs to be corrected to deal for anything that may have absorbed the x-rays.
Nice experiment. I had no idea it was so easy to produce x-rays. One thing for anyone curious. Even at 8000 microsieverts/hour isn't a massive dose of radiation, especially for the brief time you were generating them. For reference, 8000 micosieverts is about the amount you get from a chest CT scan. So assuming the reading corresponds to the dose you'd receive an hour, your machine is producing about 1 chest CT scan of radiation an hour. That's not nothing, but most wouldn't consider it dangerous. It's not a bad idea to put in the shielding, since this obviously isn't a controlled device and you had no idea how much radiation it'd produce. But you likely were never in an real danger for the few seconds you ran the setup.
@@Fun-guy9859 After an hour, yes. Applying that rate to the few seconds to maybe a minute that we saw isn't huge though. Going 100mph is fast, but if you only travel that fast for a few seconds, you haven't actually gone very far.
It's also important to note that alot of these X-rays are being emitted in the lower energy region, between 10 and 40 KeV. These X-rays are easily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns, which doesn't happen with modern medical X-ray machines.
I warn students that the biggest radiation threat to themselves is getting too many medical X-Rays for checking up. Don’t think getting too many X-Ray checkups is good or safe for you.
I was more impressed that those wire leads could handle that much voltage. They "moved" a few times, which suggests to me the insulation may still be compromised.
@@jovetj They definetly wouldnt handle it if they were laying next to each other. I think the air and the table is the real insulator here, not the insulation on the cables.
a DC 100KV power supply is many kilobucks ...but if you only want 30kv, then find lots of used $75 supplies online, like Spellman X3000 and CZE1000. Those are variable voltage, but only put out less than one mA. But if you go that way, then it's also time to buy lots of lead sheets and bricks!
3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time. The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly. In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you? His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you. I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.
the natural resistance of the body defeats the low volts, thats why 3V at 10KA wont kill you, but 1MV at 1mA will, and lightning will do you in super quick so extended time isnt a real factor there.
@@bunnykillerYou are partially correct, yes. I'm not sure what your point here was. Are you disagreeing with my comment? What I said is completely true. It is a combination of volts, amps, and time. A lightning strike, while fast, is not anywhere near as fast as a static shock. Also, the higher the voltage and amps are, the less time is needed for it to hurt you. So, yes, you would assume that a lightning strike would be FAR more capable of killing you compared to a static shock. A lighting strike deals anywhere between 200 megajoules and 7 gigajoules of energy. A static shock ranges anywhere from several hundred millijoules to several hundred joules. So, yes, the lightning strike isn't going to NEED a whole lot of time to kill you, and yet people do still survive even lightning strikes. The whole point here is that it is a myth that static shocks almost no amps, along with the fact that it is a combination of volts, amps, and time that kills you, not volts or amps on their own.
The current must flow through the heart to cause it to fibrillate and cause cardiac arrest. High frequency current only flows "skin depth" so isn't dangerous.
@@ryanjohnson3615 Yes he does, and I fckin LOVE it. That video he made when he was making his point that its not just amps that kills you was insane. He was letting so much power travel through his body, and putting himself at crazy risk, all just to prove a point. In the end though, nobody can argue against him.
When i was in high school, in the chapter 'production of the x-rays', that apparatus, i realized that i've seen some sort of small x-ray vessel. And exactly that was this. Thank you very much for such awesome video.
You are so creative! I am amazed by the number of experiments you have done here. Wonderful channel ! Thank you very much for the quality of your content.
Yes you can, eventually. But for photography stuff you kinda want a scintillation screen with a piece of photo paper stuck to it. That's how many X-ray photos were made. The emulsion is always a bit Xray sensitive, but it's much more sensitive to the green light from the scintillation screen.
I was going to say the Chandra X-ray observatory used very long mirrors and basically bounced xrays off them at shallow angles in order to focus the light.
the thick lead glass in the front is there specifically to prevent the tube from blasting you with x-rays...large color screen tubes ran upwards of 60kV...
That not only generates Xrays but also some visible light!! I noticed that when working on something under pitch black darkness and my tape was glowing when unrolling it
Many years ago, I had letters from a bank that when you opened them, they'd give off like a blueish glow as the gum separated. But only from that one bank though did I ever see that :-)
Do X-rays reflect off of mirrors? Without watching the video I’ll say, no. That is why it’s incredibly difficult to make an x-ray telescope. They e done it (e.g. Chandra X-ray observatory). They focus the X-rays using some structured material that gradually bends X-rays, from what I understand. If it were as easy as making a parabolic dish to focus X-rays we’d probably have some crazy power beam weapons.
EUV lithography are using a wavelength that are well into x-rays, even if it is called UV. And they are using mirrors. They don't work as normal mirrors and are not reflecting all the x-rays.
@@lubricustheslippery5028it really depends on the wavelength/photon energy. A brief search online says that EUV uses about 13.5nm wavelength and the 20keV radiation used in the video is closer to 0.06nm.
From the Wikipedia article, it's called a Wolter telescope, and consists of a combination of hyperbolic, and parabolic surfaces that bend the x-rays at shallow angles of less than 2 degrees. I don't think the problem is so much that it's hard to make these types of surfaces, but that x-rays are absorbed by the atmosphere, and ionize it. So you'd have a really limited range. That's why the only x-ray telescopes we have are in orbit.
Quick clarification: Static shocks are high voltage and high current. The reason it doesn't hurt you is the duration is very small (micro to nanoseconds) so the total energy delivered is very low. That said, the Wimhurst machine and typical static shocks will deliver between 10-50 amps of current.
With the filament hot, the Wimshurst generator would never have reached a useful voltage. You'd have to carefully regulate filament current to avoid this.
@@d.jensen5153I like the suggestion that Peter Terren (from the Tesladownunder website) had for this. Instead of wiring a vacuum tube directly to the voltage source you could charge a capacitor and then pulse it into the tube with a spark gap etc. It might be hard to get a reading of the output,though, since it would be short high intensity pulses.
He could have bought a vacuum tube specifically designed to produce x-rays off eBay if he wanted. A 1B3GT is a cheap HV rectifier often used as a flyback converter in 1940's -60's tv's that is usually shielded because it gives off x-rays. Somewhere on the inter webs I've seen a simple schematic to use one and an old car ignition coil to make an x-ray generator.
My Dad would have liked this. He liked the old X-ray glasses you see on the back of an old comic or crappy news paper back in the day. I remember him grimacing and telling me those damn things just had chicken feathers in em. 😂😂😂 I would always just laugh pretty hard. Made me question some of the things he was into possibly for a good laugh later.
When I worked for Philip Morris International we were using polypropylene plastic film which was shredded into fibres and the process collects static electricity to overcome this we used Polonium 210 anti static inhibitors. Over time the crimped tow will have a weak radioactive signal so you pulling the Sellotape your instrument picked it up . In the plastic industry coiling sheets gathers up so much static a spark from your finger touching a 1.2 tonne plastic coil . At work we did not have Geiger counters to check the Polonium 210 in a purer form if you consumed it by tea or coffee it can kill you.
3:50 Electroboom is coming to rectifier you haha. (If the voltage is high, the current must be high. It doesnt kill you becouse it doesnt have much energy, so the pulse time is very low).
It was the thought process of this video that made me, as a kid, try to figure out how X-Ray telescopes work since the x-rays would just go right through any focusing mirrors. (Maybe the explanation as to how they work would be a good video idea? :) )
you still need to ground the X-ray detector. False X-ray positives are produced in HV systems. Some time ago someone published (YT does not allow links in comments) that a HV discharge produced X.rays, as in lightnings. It's just an arctifact of poorly shielded detectors. Try at least what Roentgen did, an x-ray image of a key on a wrapped photographic emulsion plate.
You just showed millions of kids how to radiate themselves and others. Great work. Btw if you change the incident angle of the mirror you actually will get secondary emissions from the metal atoms. This is how they do x ray spectroscopy.
WOW!!!!! I think this was my FAVORITE EPISODE of Action Lab!!!! That is so cool!!!! (any your little money making scheme was HILARIOUS!! lmao) You should get a piece of undeveloped film and then blast something x-rays with the film behind it, then develop the film!!!! - That would be a GREAT VIDEO!!!!!!
For years we have been refracting x-rays off of a PC-0 and PC-1 crystal, which are visually reflective - front surface mirrors. These crystals refract light element K-alpha x-rays from Boron to Sodium. This is done using an electron microprobe with spectrometers. Some SEMs can also do this with a spectrometer attachment. It all depends on the material the reflective surface is made of. A tin or silvered mirror has its reflective material on the back of the glass. It defeats the purpose as the x-rays have to travel through the glass.
I was watching a science video recently that mentioned that the issue with reflecting high energy photons is they are smaller than the atoms you're attempting to reflect them off of. Not sure how true this is, but it does roughly align that start of hard x-rays so happens to be around the size of atoms.
@@heyhoe168Being able to count individual photons and measure their energy would still help greatly with identifying radioactive elements and isotopes. Forget the Curies, this detector would be a big improvement over the most state-of-the-art gamma detectors Oppenheimer and Fermi had.
When you mentioned Bremsstrahlung radiation it got me quite concerned, as someone who does a lot of welding (MMA/MIG etc) I have always wondered about welding and X-rays. I remember reading a paper pubmed/somewhere many years ago and i'm pretty sure it said X-rays can be produced during welding but I have googled it a few times since and returned nothing. Only the obvious non ionising UVA/B/C as expected. But this has me thinking that incredibly powerful 3kW+ focused energy onto a point ~mm across, enough to burn straight through metals, surely produces X-rays? Or is it the sheer voltage and therefore electron speed needed to produce the X-rays which a typical welder's ~60V initial/30V sustained is just way too low? Maybe you can use your detector to check! And then write a paper on it as there seems to be a lack of them lol. Great video keep them coming! 👍
2:25 What you need is stronger tape. Strong tape more breaking energy more x-rays. There is a article on popsci 15 years ago talking about the possibility making X-ray with tape for remote location scenarios.
Neutrons aren’t the same as x-rays and even with them, I don’t think they get reflected directly. It’s more like they get scattered back the way light does after hitting snow or milk etc.
You could probably use Polaroid film to take x-ray pictures and develop them instantly. You might even be able to rig up the sensor used in medical or dental xrays. I wonder if light sensors from ordinary digital cameras also can detect xrays and produce a picture, with all lenses and filters removed.
Unfortunately both film and CCDs are very insensitive to x-rays. It would take a huge exposure to register an image. Medical radiographic equipment uses a “screen” next to the film or CCD which fluoresces when struck by x-rays, and most of the actual image production is from visible light.
I was a veterinary nurse. Scatter xrays are a thing- I was taught that xrays will scatter off of any shiny metal surface (EG exam tables) so even if you are not in the path of the beam you are in danger.
Scatter lose momentum with distance and time. Much like the swinging bowling ball experiment, it will not have enough energy to bounce back that far. And X-rays don't bounce off metal surfaces. They go right thru. Even with lead, Xrays still go through if the strength is strong enough. The weaker more damaging photons get absorbed by lead and other surfaces such as concrete but the higher energy photons will still pass through, and if they pass through, they will pass through you with you relatively unharmed. Just ask your x-ray tech to take an image of an old school image receptor with it inverted. The image receptor is made of lead shielding on the back, but it will pass thru show the innards on the film if shot directly. After watching the video, he shows you in this video that it doesn't reflect and passes through behind the mirror instead. Exactly what I explained.
It may be dangerous to the nurse who works 40 years constantly getting exposed to small amounts of xrays, but not when you just do a brief experiment. Keep in mind that the patients are actually blasted with a lot more x-rays and they're just fine because they're not doing it very often.
You'd need to be in a nea-absolute vacuum. If an Astronaught did that, without a suit they'd be dead. Using it with a suit, it wouldn't bother them. The suit is already lined to reduce harmful solar radiation. The volume of Xrays cellotape produces in a vacuum is very small (photon count) and has low Kv energy so it's not very good at penetrating anything. Still, a cool concept.
This is exactly how Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen found the X-rays. BTW It seems that Welding machine procuces UV light for same reason (bombing steel with electrons).
I have a question that is not related to the topic of the video. Why do you have a channel in Spanish? Could you consider having this channel with a Spanish translation?, and have it in English in the original language.
A standard vacuum tube is similar to the Drain to Source resistance of a MOSFET controlled by the gate voltage. You can have more conductivity across the tubes cathode to anode by heating up the cathode to a higher temperature. This helps electrons first overcome the work function and then they can more easily accelerate to the anode. U can look up the tubes data sheet and just find how many amps u need thru its cathode for it to become more conductive as you need Hope this helps I'm curious to see more! 🎉
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In high school physics, there was this cabinet with a lot of bits and bobs from various experiements over the years. One of them was a vacuum tube with a very simple arrangement. A sharp tipped rod and on the other contact was a metal plate. Well turns out it was an x-ray tube. A friend borrowed it, hooked it up to a power supply designed for laser tubes and was able to use actual x-ray film to make an image of the bones in his hand. Lots of smarts, but not a lot of wisdom with him.
To make an x-ray "mirror" we can use a perfect crystal material, e.g. silicon wafers or diamond. Only thing is they only "reflect" at certain angles to the crystal (really Bragg diffraction). However, you can get a different angle using different materials as it is based on its atomic spacing. You could use multicrytalline material for a range of angles. The issue is technologically important as photolithography used to make computer processors need small wavelength radiation to make smaller devices, which for today's devices is in the extreme UV to X-ray region.
I had heard before that this effect was known about and taking into consideration by NASA when astronauts were doing EVA maintenance (spacewalks). I also heard that if 2 pieces of metal are clean and free of impurities, if you touch them together in the vacuum of space, they fuse and become one single piece.
You are confusing two different things. I have you two pieces of the same type of metal, perfectly smooth, and with nothing in between them (like the vacuum of space), they can form a permanent bond. This is called cold welding. If the tolerances are as small as possible, electrons can jump between the two similar metals, essentially turning it into a single piece in spots. I believe there are YT videos of this, if you search.
@@finkelmana I wasn't confusing 2 different things, I was talking about 2 completely different things that are related to almost perfect vacuums, ie. EVA missions in space. I admit I went off at a tangent, but I didn't say X rays were related to metals fusing together, I don't know why you got that idea. But anyway I knew about cold welding, but thanks for the information and the comment
@@finkelmanavacuum isn't even necessary, I have a set of gauge blocks I had to replace because I left my two most commonly used sizes together for too long. Couldn't get them back apart, even cut them with a band saw to see what happened, looked like one piece to my eye. They need to have a high precision surface finish as well as some time, obviously without gas molecules to squeeze out it would be even faster.
@@RealSlowLike That is interesting to read. You mentioned that it happens with metals that are the same. I imagine because they have the same electron configuration. Do you know perhaps if they HAVE to be the same metals or would it also work with 2 different metals that have the same number of electrons in the outer shell? Thanks for your previous reply anyway.
If Superman looks at the mirror, he does not the through the mirror, but nothing, as the X-Rays continue their way not coming back to Superman's eyes. He just irradiate everything that is behind the mirror :)
In the steel industry on a galvanize/galvalume hot dip process, we use an x-ray scatter gauge specifically to monitor the zinc zinc/aluminum coating weight averages as the strip passes thru the detector. Not an expert as the machine never interested me very much and it was outside of my responsibility, but my understanding was that emitted power from the x-ray tube was too low to pass through the coating + the steel and would be partially absorbed by the material and also reflect at specific angles based on coating thickness.
As a kid experimented/learned electronics from old tube TV. I remember warnings about x-rays listed inside the TV case. I'm not surprises generating them is so simple.
When comparing the backscattered X-rays against those in the direct path of the source, you should be measuring the souce from twice as far away. Radiation follows the square inverse law, and thus doubling the distance will reduce the intensity measured by 4 times. When reflecting X-rays, they have to leave the source, travel to the mirror, and then travel back to the detector. To make a fair comparison you need to place the detector at an equal distance to that full path when measuring the direct rays.
When talking about vacuum, the level of vacuum is inversely proportional to the pressure. Low pressures means high vacuum and a typical roughing pump will only get you rough (or low) vacuum that can get you down to around 1 Torr though if you wait long enough and have a decent one you can get to fine vacuum like where you were talking. You want high vacuum so the mean free path of particles is around the scale of the chamber itself, though I know going the other way with looking at electrons excited from X-rays using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy even starts to approach ultra-high vacuum below 1 microPascal.
This was a great hypothesis and simple test and explanation. great job. It makes me think of how these scientific principles sound so easy at first, but actually getting the X-rays was a whole other ordeal. the devil is in the details and I can see you put a lot of effort into the details. I worked at an X-ray manufacturer and they produced X-Rays by a rotating tungsten ring that arced into another piece of metal. They faced this same problem that X-rays don't reflect , so all they could do is block them in every OTHER direction. This meant the machine was extremely energy inefficient.
Ok what should I X-Ray now? No but seriously, don’t try this!
I'm planning make one of those voltage machines at home... It is safe right? I have too much spare time so I want some fun projects like this..
It would be a good idea to place the rectifier inside a steel container when you are operating the device. 1-2 mm of steel will effectively filter out all X-rays below 40 KeV. It is important to remove these, as they are readily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns. Modern medical equipment filters out everything of low energy to ensure only the deep penetrating rays make it to the patient. These higher energy rays are far less likely to deposite thier energy within the subjects body, so they are much safer.
3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time.
The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly.
In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you?
His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you.
I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.
@@gmadh8343 The voltage machine is safe, just don't plug it into one of those rectifiers!
Well you really should use an ion chamber with integrated-max dose rate. GM counters are not quick enough to really be effective for the short exposure time
Making X-rays with scotch tape should’ve been a MacGyver episode
Sadly tho it got cancelled....
@@THE_Game_Mental That's what happens if you don't make x-rays from scotch tape
It was done in an episode of Bones. Not scientifically accurate though...
Definitely a MacGyver/ Sheldon Cooper vibe to this episode. Is it even legal to make this? 😂 hope you were wearing lead pants 👍
And by MacGyver I hope you're mean the 1985 version. 😉
I was a station scientist at ESRF (grenoble, france) about 30 years ago, which was at that time the strongest X-ray source in the world. and I also developed soft X-ray lasers.
Some more details: soft X-rays (up to a few keV can be reflected - even at 90 degrees using multilayer mirrors. But your detector likely would not be able to detect soft x-rays , and working with them typically requires working in vacuum.
Harder X-rays can indeed be reflected or focused at grazing incidence, if the mirror surface is really really smoothly polished and made of a heavy element such as platinum. Roughness of the mirrors I used was only a few tenths of a nanometer.
A more common way to focus or modify the direction of monochromatic X-rays is using crystals.
And... I also produced X-rays with transition radiation. No way to do this on a tabletop: as you need to accelerate electrons to 40 Million electron volts or higher.
Very good points. I also wanted to point out that backscatter X-ray machines are an entire technology built on the principle of reflecting X-rays.
The Radiacode likely can detect them, mine was able to read the photopeak from Tritium Bremsstrahlung.
I'm kinda curious, does the mirror you use look any different than 'normal' mirorrs with bare eyes?
@@d0gkiller87 The multilayer mirrors, it depends on the materials used. Our problem was that the power involved in making the x-ray lasers pulse made such mirrors typically single use as they were destroyed after a single x-ray pulse.
The x-ray grazing incidence mirrors look metallic. They were 1.2 meters long for an x-ray beam of about 3 mm high. It was made out of a single cristal of silicon with a coating of platinum. These typically take many months of design studies (optical behavior, mechanical behavior, thermal behavior of the cooling system while being exposed to very intense x-ray beam) before starting its production, and then the actual mirror production and testing takes another few months. Only few companies are able to produce these with the stringent specifications for x-ray mirrors.
The actual mirror is rarely seen directly : once produced in a clean room, it is placed in the ultra high vacuum chamber connected to the synchrotron accelerator during the rest of its lifetime.
@@RMX7777 tritium beta is - from memory around 18 keV... which is way easier to detect. below 5 keV, you typically get a lot of your x-rays absorbed by air, detector windows etc...
I used a few micron thick beryllium windows in front of a liquid nitrogen cooled SiLi spectrometer for spectroscopy, The spectrum you get out of your detector then needs to be corrected to deal for anything that may have absorbed the x-rays.
Nice experiment. I had no idea it was so easy to produce x-rays.
One thing for anyone curious. Even at 8000 microsieverts/hour isn't a massive dose of radiation, especially for the brief time you were generating them.
For reference, 8000 micosieverts is about the amount you get from a chest CT scan. So assuming the reading corresponds to the dose you'd receive an hour, your machine is producing about 1 chest CT scan of radiation an hour. That's not nothing, but most wouldn't consider it dangerous.
It's not a bad idea to put in the shielding, since this obviously isn't a controlled device and you had no idea how much radiation it'd produce. But you likely were never in an real danger for the few seconds you ran the setup.
If my math is correct, 8000 uSv is the same as 8 mSv. Which is a huge dose.
@@Fun-guy9859 After an hour, yes. Applying that rate to the few seconds to maybe a minute that we saw isn't huge though. Going 100mph is fast, but if you only travel that fast for a few seconds, you haven't actually gone very far.
It's also important to note that alot of these X-rays are being emitted in the lower energy region, between 10 and 40 KeV. These X-rays are easily absorbed by the skin and will cause radiation burns, which doesn't happen with modern medical X-ray machines.
I warn students that the biggest radiation threat to themselves is getting too many medical X-Rays for checking up. Don’t think getting too many X-Ray checkups is good or safe for you.
@@westonding8953 Unless you take dozens of x-rays per year, or is a kid,, you are more likely safer taking x-rays then unknowing what you have.
Honestly I think the “hand cranked” part is the most impressive aspect of the machine
Old-timey x ray machine
I was more impressed that those wire leads could handle that much voltage. They "moved" a few times, which suggests to me the insulation may still be compromised.
@@plixplop Ye old ionizer
@@jovetj remember, amps remained low, so the high voltage is no issue
@@jovetj They definetly wouldnt handle it if they were laying next to each other.
I think the air and the table is the real insulator here, not the insulation on the cables.
somehow figures out a way to bring a vacuum chamber into every video, love it
Making X-rays in your garage using a hundred thousand volts? This channel is becoming increasingly unhinged and I love it.
With a hand crank of all things
a DC 100KV power supply is many kilobucks ...but if you only want 30kv, then find lots of used $75 supplies online, like Spellman X3000 and CZE1000. Those are variable voltage, but only put out less than one mA. But if you go that way, then it's also time to buy lots of lead sheets and bricks!
@@mgancarzjrYes, when can I wind-up my smartphone? That would be real progress.
@@SubTroppo I can just imagine designing a 1950s zap gun enclosure and registering it with the BATF. "What kind of bullets does it shoot?"
"X-Rays."
Not quite Styropyro, but I welcome the madness.
3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time.
The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly.
In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you?
His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you.
I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.
That dude cranks everything to 11.
the natural resistance of the body defeats the low volts, thats why 3V at 10KA wont kill you, but 1MV at 1mA will, and lightning will do you in super quick so extended time isnt a real factor there.
@@bunnykillerYou are partially correct, yes.
I'm not sure what your point here was. Are you disagreeing with my comment?
What I said is completely true.
It is a combination of volts, amps, and time.
A lightning strike, while fast, is not anywhere near as fast as a static shock.
Also, the higher the voltage and amps are, the less time is needed for it to hurt you. So, yes, you would assume that a lightning strike would be FAR more capable of killing you compared to a static shock. A lighting strike deals anywhere between 200 megajoules and 7 gigajoules of energy.
A static shock ranges anywhere from several hundred millijoules to several hundred joules. So, yes, the lightning strike isn't going to NEED a whole lot of time to kill you, and yet people do still survive even lightning strikes.
The whole point here is that it is a myth that static shocks almost no amps, along with the fact that it is a combination of volts, amps, and time that kills you, not volts or amps on their own.
The current must flow through the heart to cause it to fibrillate and cause cardiac arrest.
High frequency current only flows "skin depth" so isn't dangerous.
@@ryanjohnson3615 Yes he does, and I fckin LOVE it.
That video he made when he was making his point that its not just amps that kills you was insane. He was letting so much power travel through his body, and putting himself at crazy risk, all just to prove a point.
In the end though, nobody can argue against him.
The way the camera slowly zooms in on my dude while he says insane shit like “I’m going to need 100K volts” is sublime. Absolute mad lad.
Just a few jiggawatts away from needing a delorian
Next video:
I made my own fusion reactor 💀
Leaving my mark on the world.
should be the next iron man
that's not hard, the hard part is high-Q
Following video: how my interview with Homeland security went!
fission!! fusion is a myth
TheActionLab's neighbour: _Why are my teeth glowing?_
This is only one of the problems he's facing...
I made the machine and the x-rays don't go past about 1 inch
@@samyosocoohow do you know? 💀?
@@Alvin0614 I made one
loved the sneaking a mirror in bit
When i was in high school, in the chapter 'production of the x-rays', that apparatus, i realized that i've seen some sort of small x-ray vessel. And exactly that was this.
Thank you very much for such awesome video.
It's really delightful seeing someone be this playful, resourceful and experiment-driven. Fantastic work!
You are so creative! I am amazed by the number of experiments you have done here. Wonderful channel ! Thank you very much for the quality of your content.
An "actual mad scientist" on UA-cam 😮. Dude, that was awesome!
Have you not seen the backyard scientist?! lol he’s a mad lad.
William Osman made an X-Ray in his garage stacked on cardboard and bean tins
styropyro is the actual mad scientist here.
Try using analog film in front of this rectifier, to see if you can ruin it.
Yes you can, eventually. But for photography stuff you kinda want a scintillation screen with a piece of photo paper stuck to it. That's how many X-ray photos were made. The emulsion is always a bit Xray sensitive, but it's much more sensitive to the green light from the scintillation screen.
Do you think an alpha source scintillation medium would work as well?@@mfbfreak
i use film. i travel and send my film through the scanners at the airport. never had any issues.
Thanks for sharing! And loving seeing the little humorous segments in the mix! 👍
I was going to say the Chandra X-ray observatory used very long mirrors and basically bounced xrays off them at shallow angles in order to focus the light.
Yep, I expected a slight digression into that, but nope.
@@mytube001 I mean he did mention a blip at the end about how you can reflect xrays with very shallow angles.
@@Mike__B But those mirrors aren't your typical mirrors.
I think you can use an old TV tube. Usualy in their service manual they stat that a to high acceleration voltage can cause X rays to be emitted.
the thick lead glass in the front is there specifically to prevent the tube from blasting you with x-rays...large color screen tubes ran upwards of 60kV...
Old TV:s used to have x-ray warning labels on the back.
You could also create a short xray pulse by sparking the rectifier tube with a spark from a lighter.
@@mytube001 Yes. And their source was the HV rectifier tube - the exact type of tube our host is using.
Yes exactly. Or just buy used x-ray generator from medical devices
Good thing you’re not William Osman or your audience would of lost their minds over this video.
Or he may have lost his life attempting it.
This is one of the coolest science videos I've ever seen. Thank you!
That not only generates Xrays but also some visible light!! I noticed that when working on something under pitch black darkness and my tape was glowing when unrolling it
Many years ago, I had letters from a bank that when you opened them, they'd give off like a blueish glow as the gum separated. But only from that one bank though did I ever see that :-)
I have had nice glowy envelope glue lights too! Breaking sugarcubes may also emit light. Appearantly it's the nitrogen, same spectrum as in lightning.
@@mellertid Cheers
Shots fired at William Osman
Do X-rays reflect off of mirrors? Without watching the video I’ll say, no. That is why it’s incredibly difficult to make an x-ray telescope. They e done it (e.g. Chandra X-ray observatory). They focus the X-rays using some structured material that gradually bends X-rays, from what I understand. If it were as easy as making a parabolic dish to focus X-rays we’d probably have some crazy power beam weapons.
EUV lithography are using a wavelength that are well into x-rays, even if it is called UV. And they are using mirrors. They don't work as normal mirrors and are not reflecting all the x-rays.
I mean I'm pretty sure using a Xaser would constitute a war crime
@@lubricustheslippery5028it really depends on the wavelength/photon energy. A brief search online says that EUV uses about 13.5nm wavelength and the 20keV radiation used in the video is closer to 0.06nm.
@@deltab9768 according to wikipedia X-rays starts about 10nm so I was wrong, it's an border case
From the Wikipedia article, it's called a Wolter telescope, and consists of a combination of hyperbolic, and parabolic surfaces that bend the x-rays at shallow angles of less than 2 degrees.
I don't think the problem is so much that it's hard to make these types of surfaces, but that x-rays are absorbed by the atmosphere, and ionize it. So you'd have a really limited range. That's why the only x-ray telescopes we have are in orbit.
thank you very much.
People like you make me still have some hope in humanity.😊
Quick clarification: Static shocks are high voltage and high current. The reason it doesn't hurt you is the duration is very small (micro to nanoseconds) so the total energy delivered is very low. That said, the Wimhurst machine and typical static shocks will deliver between 10-50 amps of current.
Also, resistance.
You should have powered up the filament of the tube, thermonic emission would have given you more current and more x-rays.
8 mSv/h is plenty for testing though
With the filament hot, the Wimshurst generator would never have reached a useful voltage. You'd have to carefully regulate filament current to avoid this.
@@d.jensen5153I like the suggestion that Peter Terren (from the Tesladownunder website) had for this. Instead of wiring a vacuum tube directly to the voltage source you could charge a capacitor and then pulse it into the tube with a spark gap etc.
It might be hard to get a reading of the output,though, since it would be short high intensity pulses.
He could have bought a vacuum tube specifically designed to produce x-rays off eBay if he wanted. A 1B3GT is a cheap HV rectifier often used as a flyback converter in 1940's -60's tv's that is usually shielded because it gives off x-rays. Somewhere on the inter webs I've seen a simple schematic to use one and an old car ignition coil to make an x-ray generator.
@@d.jensen5153Furthermore, this kind of tube is not designed for such high voltage, using it with a hot cathode would result in arc-over.
My Dad would have liked this.
He liked the old X-ray glasses you see on the back of an old comic or crappy news paper back in the day. I remember him grimacing and telling me those damn things just had chicken feathers in em. 😂😂😂 I would always just laugh pretty hard. Made me question some of the things he was into possibly for a good laugh later.
When I worked for Philip Morris International we were using polypropylene plastic film which was shredded into fibres and the process collects static electricity to overcome this we used Polonium 210 anti static inhibitors. Over time the crimped tow will have a weak radioactive signal so you pulling the Sellotape your instrument picked it up . In the plastic industry coiling sheets gathers up so much static a spark from your finger touching a 1.2 tonne plastic coil . At work we did not have Geiger counters to check the Polonium 210 in a purer form if you consumed it by tea or coffee it can kill you.
As always, you made an informative and learnable video.
That static electricity on steel wool is insane!
Surprised it isn't mentioned!
That blinking was the detector's LED.
You didn’t exclude electrostatic effects from the second source. Try the steal wool again. Being past the mirror at the end should do the same.
No need to steal it - it's not expensive.
I agree, when I was experimenting with xrays electrostatics were a nightmare.
Excellent video ! Very much appreciated going to the length you did to make your experiment possible.
3:50 Electroboom is coming to rectifier you haha. (If the voltage is high, the current must be high. It doesnt kill you becouse it doesnt have much energy, so the pulse time is very low).
Nah, the electric resistance of a vacuum diode in reverse is just very high.
It was the thought process of this video that made me, as a kid, try to figure out how X-Ray telescopes work since the x-rays would just go right through any focusing mirrors. (Maybe the explanation as to how they work would be a good video idea? :) )
This man is living in 2024!
yeah no shit, this was posted in 2024
@@TheCardboardBoxGDthe joke went right over your head 😂
@@abroadjoel9478 WAS IT A JOKE, IM SO STUPID LOL
2:37 you doom fo ELECTROBOOM!!!)))
you still need to ground the X-ray detector. False X-ray positives are produced in HV systems. Some time ago someone published (YT does not allow links in comments) that a HV discharge produced X.rays, as in lightnings. It's just an arctifact of poorly shielded detectors. Try at least what Roentgen did, an x-ray image of a key on a wrapped photographic emulsion plate.
You just showed millions of kids how to radiate themselves and others. Great work.
Btw if you change the incident angle of the mirror you actually will get secondary emissions from the metal atoms. This is how they do x ray spectroscopy.
How many rolls of tape lost in production?
Still one of the best channels around, by far. Thanks, man.
0:11 how do they always find out 😤
I love watching the way your brain works. It's inspiring and genious.
WOW!!!!! I think this was my FAVORITE EPISODE of Action Lab!!!! That is so cool!!!! (any your little money making scheme was HILARIOUS!! lmao)
You should get a piece of undeveloped film and then blast something x-rays with the film behind it, then develop the film!!!! - That would be a GREAT VIDEO!!!!!!
Some guy named Roentgen did that already. Can't find his UA-cam channel, though.
For years we have been refracting x-rays off of a PC-0 and PC-1 crystal, which are visually reflective - front surface mirrors. These crystals refract light element K-alpha x-rays from Boron to Sodium. This is done using an electron microprobe with spectrometers. Some SEMs can also do this with a spectrometer attachment. It all depends on the material the reflective surface is made of. A tin or silvered mirror has its reflective material on the back of the glass. It defeats the purpose as the x-rays have to travel through the glass.
The jump cut is killing me lol
No it's not
where?
@@hiihay 0:08 probably
I was watching a science video recently that mentioned that the issue with reflecting high energy photons is they are smaller than the atoms you're attempting to reflect them off of. Not sure how true this is, but it does roughly align that start of hard x-rays so happens to be around the size of atoms.
I bet Marie Curie would have loved to have that detector.
Would not save her. Modern radiation safety standarts are based on analysis of all those poor radiation victims.
@@heyhoe168Being able to count individual photons and measure their energy would still help greatly with identifying radioactive elements and isotopes.
Forget the Curies, this detector would be a big improvement over the most state-of-the-art gamma detectors Oppenheimer and Fermi had.
When you mentioned Bremsstrahlung radiation it got me quite concerned, as someone who does a lot of welding (MMA/MIG etc) I have always wondered about welding and X-rays. I remember reading a paper pubmed/somewhere many years ago and i'm pretty sure it said X-rays can be produced during welding but I have googled it a few times since and returned nothing. Only the obvious non ionising UVA/B/C as expected. But this has me thinking that incredibly powerful 3kW+ focused energy onto a point ~mm across, enough to burn straight through metals, surely produces X-rays? Or is it the sheer voltage and therefore electron speed needed to produce the X-rays which a typical welder's ~60V initial/30V sustained is just way too low?
Maybe you can use your detector to check! And then write a paper on it as there seems to be a lack of them lol.
Great video keep them coming! 👍
2:25
What you need is stronger tape.
Strong tape more breaking energy more x-rays.
There is a article on popsci 15 years ago talking about the possibility making X-ray with tape for remote location scenarios.
Beryllium 😊 it should reflect nutrons. i wonder if it will reflect i have a sample if you like it's yours 😊
Neutrons aren’t the same as x-rays and even with them, I don’t think they get reflected directly. It’s more like they get scattered back the way light does after hitting snow or milk etc.
Searching for the xray film !!!
You could probably use Polaroid film to take x-ray pictures and develop them instantly. You might even be able to rig up the sensor used in medical or dental xrays. I wonder if light sensors from ordinary digital cameras also can detect xrays and produce a picture, with all lenses and filters removed.
Unfortunately both film and CCDs are very insensitive to x-rays. It would take a huge exposure to register an image. Medical radiographic equipment uses a “screen” next to the film or CCD which fluoresces when struck by x-rays, and most of the actual image production is from visible light.
You explain the different concepts theories facts and physics principles very simply and easy to understand thank you
Seeing him reflected in the mirror for his test confirmed in my mind that he knew the mirror wouldn't reflect the x-rays.
Great idea to use this old rectifier tube
Thanks a lot for sharing
0:50 “Strahlung” means “radiation”. So what you are actually saying is “braking radiation radiation”.
one of the best videos from you, in my opinion. Thank you!
Don’t let William Osman see this
This guy never runs out of ideas...
For consistency, please use steel wool in second experiment too. Thanks.
Apply current to the filament. Would be neat to see how much the emmisions increase with the thermonic emmission.
thats the funniest thumbnail i ever seen
You need to heat up the filament .....then apply height voltage between filament and metal plate
His audience loves him but his neighbors
Definitely one of your more interesting videos....and that's saying something because your content is almost always unique and thought-provoking.
I was a veterinary nurse. Scatter xrays are a thing- I was taught that xrays will scatter off of any shiny metal surface (EG exam tables) so even if you are not in the path of the beam you are in danger.
Ps... THIS EXPERIMENT IS SO DANGEROUS LOL
Scatter lose momentum with distance and time. Much like the swinging bowling ball experiment, it will not have enough energy to bounce back that far. And X-rays don't bounce off metal surfaces. They go right thru. Even with lead, Xrays still go through if the strength is strong enough. The weaker more damaging photons get absorbed by lead and other surfaces such as concrete but the higher energy photons will still pass through, and if they pass through, they will pass through you with you relatively unharmed. Just ask your x-ray tech to take an image of an old school image receptor with it inverted. The image receptor is made of lead shielding on the back, but it will pass thru show the innards on the film if shot directly.
After watching the video, he shows you in this video that it doesn't reflect and passes through behind the mirror instead. Exactly what I explained.
Scatter from a metal table? No. The animal on it however, yes.
It may be dangerous to the nurse who works 40 years constantly getting exposed to small amounts of xrays, but not when you just do a brief experiment. Keep in mind that the patients are actually blasted with a lot more x-rays and they're just fine because they're not doing it very often.
Never thought I'd be seeing a vacuum tube on this channel, but here it is and it's so cool!
No one:
Astronauts using scotch tape: 💀
You'd need to be in a nea-absolute vacuum. If an Astronaught did that, without a suit they'd be dead. Using it with a suit, it wouldn't bother them. The suit is already lined to reduce harmful solar radiation. The volume of Xrays cellotape produces in a vacuum is very small (photon count) and has low Kv energy so it's not very good at penetrating anything. Still, a cool concept.
you need particle to collide just not near the source. It wont produce in complete vacuum, right?
This is exactly how Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen found the X-rays.
BTW It seems that Welding machine procuces UV light for same reason (bombing steel with electrons).
I have a question that is not related to the topic of the video. Why do you have a channel in Spanish? Could you consider having this channel with a Spanish translation?, and have it in English in the original language.
It's fascinating how x-rays have so much energy they simply ignore the mirror.
...how is this even remotely legal?
It's not at least where I live
@@MEMEOMGwhere do you live? North Korea? This is simple off the shelf parts. It's a very cool experiment though
@@youtubehandlesareridiculous no.
@@MEMEOMG Answer the guy's question.
@@Oddo22 I'm not telling you my address u weirdo
A standard vacuum tube is similar to the Drain to Source resistance of a MOSFET controlled by the gate voltage. You can have more conductivity across the tubes cathode to anode by heating up the cathode to a higher temperature.
This helps electrons first overcome the work function and then they can more easily accelerate to the anode.
U can look up the tubes data sheet and just find how many amps u need thru its cathode for it to become more conductive as you need
Hope this helps I'm curious to see more! 🎉
William osman did it first
That's the first time I heard about an hand driven X-ray Mashine.
I'm so happy I made productive decisions about my finances that changed my life forever,hoping to retire next year.. Investment should always be on any creative man's heart for success in life
You're right, with my current crpyto portfolio made from my investments with my personal financial advisor Fergus Waylen, I totally agree with you ,
Yes I'm familiar with him. Fergus Waylen demonstrates an excellent understanding of market trends, making well informed decisions that leads to consistent profit
YES! that's exactly his name (Mr Fergus Waylen) I watched his interview on CNN News and so many people recommended highly about him and his trading skills, he's an expert and I'm just starting with him....From Brisbane Australia
Waylen has to be the best mentor I've met. He's copy-trading has been the best because I hop on it with $3000 and I'm up with $35,000 in profit. He's insights, information and versatility in the market is super ,
I'm surprised that this name is being mentioned here, I stumbled upon one of his clients testimony on CNBC news last week
That was a good episode. Nice job
"Congrats to everyone Who is early and who found this comment.. 🐼...,,
Go to sleep fool
Comments like that are why we have something I'm evidently not allowed to say on YT but is pronounced "youth-en-asia."
I wish the dislike button in the comments does something
@@MediumSizedBagel But that would be negativity, so _SMILE BECAUSE THIS IS A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT! SSSSSSMMMMMIIIIIILLLLEEEE!!!!!_
😂
One of the best episodes hands down.
In high school physics, there was this cabinet with a lot of bits and bobs from various experiements over the years. One of them was a vacuum tube with a very simple arrangement. A sharp tipped rod and on the other contact was a metal plate. Well turns out it was an x-ray tube. A friend borrowed it, hooked it up to a power supply designed for laser tubes and was able to use actual x-ray film to make an image of the bones in his hand. Lots of smarts, but not a lot of wisdom with him.
I did actually think you’d opened an XRay business, but now I can see straight through it.
To make an x-ray "mirror" we can use a perfect crystal material, e.g. silicon wafers or diamond. Only thing is they only "reflect" at certain angles to the crystal (really Bragg diffraction). However, you can get a different angle using different materials as it is based on its atomic spacing. You could use multicrytalline material for a range of angles. The issue is technologically important as photolithography used to make computer processors need small wavelength radiation to make smaller devices, which for today's devices is in the extreme UV to X-ray region.
Attach to eyes, make Superman.
You are brilliant! Just friggin brilliant!
6:06 I would NOT stand there if I were you 😂
I had heard before that this effect was known about and taking into consideration by NASA when astronauts were doing EVA maintenance (spacewalks). I also heard that if 2 pieces of metal are clean and free of impurities, if you touch them together in the vacuum of space, they fuse and become one single piece.
You are confusing two different things. I have you two pieces of the same type of metal, perfectly smooth, and with nothing in between them (like the vacuum of space), they can form a permanent bond. This is called cold welding. If the tolerances are as small as possible, electrons can jump between the two similar metals, essentially turning it into a single piece in spots. I believe there are YT videos of this, if you search.
@@finkelmana I wasn't confusing 2 different things, I was talking about 2 completely different things that are related to almost perfect vacuums, ie. EVA missions in space. I admit I went off at a tangent, but I didn't say X rays were related to metals fusing together, I don't know why you got that idea. But anyway I knew about cold welding, but thanks for the information and the comment
@@finkelmanavacuum isn't even necessary, I have a set of gauge blocks I had to replace because I left my two most commonly used sizes together for too long. Couldn't get them back apart, even cut them with a band saw to see what happened, looked like one piece to my eye. They need to have a high precision surface finish as well as some time, obviously without gas molecules to squeeze out it would be even faster.
@@RealSlowLike That is interesting to read. You mentioned that it happens with metals that are the same. I imagine because they have the same electron configuration. Do you know perhaps if they HAVE to be the same metals or would it also work with 2 different metals that have the same number of electrons in the outer shell? Thanks for your previous reply anyway.
If Superman looks at the mirror, he does not the through the mirror, but nothing, as the X-Rays continue their way not coming back to Superman's eyes. He just irradiate everything that is behind the mirror :)
If X-rays don't reflect back into superman's eyes how would he see what he's looking at
You should put Newtons Cradle in a vacuum and see how long it lasts
In the steel industry on a galvanize/galvalume hot dip process, we use an x-ray scatter gauge specifically to monitor the zinc zinc/aluminum coating weight averages as the strip passes thru the detector. Not an expert as the machine never interested me very much and it was outside of my responsibility, but my understanding was that emitted power from the x-ray tube was too low to pass through the coating + the steel and would be partially absorbed by the material and also reflect at specific angles based on coating thickness.
You forgot to link the video to that high voltage machineamajigger in the description, my man.
As a kid experimented/learned electronics from old tube TV. I remember warnings about x-rays listed inside the TV case. I'm not surprises generating them is so simple.
Brilliant demonstration!!
I love your videos, you are like the modern day Mr. Wizard. Love the shirt too
When comparing the backscattered X-rays against those in the direct path of the source, you should be measuring the souce from twice as far away. Radiation follows the square inverse law, and thus doubling the distance will reduce the intensity measured by 4 times. When reflecting X-rays, they have to leave the source, travel to the mirror, and then travel back to the detector. To make a fair comparison you need to place the detector at an equal distance to that full path when measuring the direct rays.
When talking about vacuum, the level of vacuum is inversely proportional to the pressure. Low pressures means high vacuum and a typical roughing pump will only get you rough (or low) vacuum that can get you down to around 1 Torr though if you wait long enough and have a decent one you can get to fine vacuum like where you were talking. You want high vacuum so the mean free path of particles is around the scale of the chamber itself, though I know going the other way with looking at electrons excited from X-rays using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy even starts to approach ultra-high vacuum below 1 microPascal.
Thanks! Try Beryllium 😊
This was a great hypothesis and simple test and explanation. great job. It makes me think of how these scientific principles sound so easy at first, but actually getting the X-rays was a whole other ordeal. the devil is in the details and I can see you put a lot of effort into the details. I worked at an X-ray manufacturer and they produced X-Rays by a rotating tungsten ring that arced into another piece of metal. They faced this same problem that X-rays don't reflect , so all they could do is block them in every OTHER direction. This meant the machine was extremely energy inefficient.
Thanks for the $5 X-Ray. I'm not sure how the image came out but the new arm that grew out of my stomach is really useful.