What's New(s) in Science

For my what new(s) in science presentation I decided to talk about the new finding that scotch tape can be used to find x-rays. I first saw this on the New York Times website and I found it interesting that something that is an everyday household idem could have a completely new use so different from what it is used for. Although the idea has been around for a long time like in 1939 they found that pulling scotch tape in the dark makes light and in 1953 the idea of electrons being produced by the tape was though up by Russian scientist. But no one believed this idea until now when this study was done by the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California.

The way that this works is the scotch tape must be placed into a vacuum. After it is inside the vacuum the tape is peeled at a certain speed it releases a current that is generated for a billionth of a second and has 300,00 X-ray photons. With the currents and the photons it crates enough energy to take a x-ray.

At this point in time they are only able to do this on a same scale such as a finger. But it is hoped that in the future they will be able to use it on a larger scale. If this happens we will be able to use it in areas that don’t have electricity because this would be able to be powered by a human by just cranking a handle.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/22/scotch.tape.xray/index.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/science/28xray.html?ref=science