Ep. 34 X-Rays

This week I look at X-Rays and try to find out who made them. Come along for the ride this week as I ask, X-Rays, how did that happen? Before we get too deep in the idea of X-rays we have to cover a couple topics. I want to lay out a few definitions that will helpfully make this easier to understand.  If you’ve been listening for awhile I’ve done this before. I’m not a science person, but I do enjoy it. The vocab kills me though. X-rays - A form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than those of ultraviolet light. , another form of penetrating rays was discovered. In 1896, French scientist Henri Becquerel discovered natural radioactivity. Cathode - A negatively charged electrode, as of an electrolytic cell, a storage battery, or an electron tube. The electrode at which reduction (and practically no corrosion) occurs. It is the opposite of anode. rays, and other scientists were gathering evidence on the theory that the atom. Radioactivity - spontaneous decay of the nucleus of an atom by the emission of particles, usually accompanied by electromagnetic radiation. It is also defined as the mean number of nuclear transformations occurring in a given quantity of radioactive material per unit time. They can be expressed in either becquerels (Bq) or curies (Ci). Most radionuclides have multiple forms of radioactive emissions, and are classified according to their principal decay modes. The most common types of radiation are Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation.                 The history of Radium. Radium naturally occurs in Uranium and also in Thorium. Radium is not necessary for living organisms. Besides its use in nuclear medicine radium has no commercial applications.                 Radium in the form of radium chloride was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in in 1898 from ore mined in the Czech republic. They published the discovery at the French academy of sciences. They were able to isolate radium in a metallic state by Marie Curie and Andre-Louis Debierne X-Rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. He was a professor at Wuerzberg University in Germany. He discovered it by accident. He named them X-rays to underline the fact that their nature was unknown. Wilhelm observed a fluorescent glow of crystals on a table near his cathode ray tube. The cathode ray tube was a glass bulb with positive and negative electrodes in it. When the air in the tube left and a high voltage was applied to it a fluorescent glow appeared.  When he saw this he put black paper around the bulb and noticed that the light still passed through. This lead him to believe that a new type of undiscovered ray was emitting from his bulb. After this he found that the ray could pass through a lot of things and then cast a shadow of them. Human tissue is on of those objects. One of the first humans he xrayed was his wife, Bertha. In 1896 a French scientist by the name of Henri Becquerel discovered natural radioactivity. Walkhoff said that those 25 min of exposure were a torture to him.1 However, the exact nature of this torture has not been described.  The Safety of X-rays Later, in 1896, Walkhoff succeeded in making extra-oral pictures with an exposure time of 30 min. He noticed a loss of hair on the side of the head of some of the patients he irradiated. Around 14 days after the announcement of the discovery of xrays that Friedrich Otto Walkhoff took the first dental radiograph. He took an ordinary photographic glass plate, wrapped it in a rubber dam, held it in his mouth between his teeth and tongue and then lay on the floor for a 25 min exposure. Wilhelm Issues of safety with xrays 1st Instance In 1896, Otto Walkhoff and Fritz Giesel established the first dental roentgenological laboratory in the world.  For many years the laboratory provided practitioners with images of the jaw and head. Fritz Giesel later died in 1927 of metastatic ...