We all know that in the hospital, you can take X-rays, walk into a room, close the big iron door, click a few times, and the X-ray will illuminate the internal structure of the human body clearly. How exactly was such a magical X-ray discovered? It turns out that the discovery process of X-rays is such a story full of accidents.
On November 8, 1895, in Bavaria, central Germany, a professor of physics named Roentgen was conducting a scientific experiment. On this day Röntgen and Madame had dinner, and he went into his laboratory as usual, and the experiment he was conducting was to observe the luminescence in the sealed glass tube. A high voltage is added to the vacuum glass tube electrode equipped with two electrodes, and once the high voltage is added, the tube emits light. But why glow? Although many scientists are trying to complete this experiment, no physicist knows the truth, and Röntgen is very interested in it and began to study it. However, this experiment finally made him somewhat surprised to discover.
Entering the lab, Dr. Röntgen took a cathode ray tube from the shelf. In order to prevent external light from disturbing the cathode rays, dr. Röntgen wrapped the cathode ray discharge tube tightly with a black paper sleeve before the experiment. Then, he skillfully closed the doors and windows, blackened the room, and then connected the tube to a high-voltage power supply, let the tube discharge, and checked whether it would leak light. The experiment progressed step by step, however, just as he was about to begin the formal experiment, he suddenly noticed that the small nearby workbench was a little different from the past, and on it was a cardboard made of barium cyanide that emitted a bright fluorescence. Dr. Röntgen immediately cut off the power and found that the fluorescence on the cardboard had disappeared. Eh, what's going on here? This piece of cardboard can be 1 meter away from the radiation tube, you know, the energy of the cathode ray can not penetrate even a few centimeters of air! Well, this fluorescence is certainly not caused by cathode rays, it must be a new ray in the discharge tube! To confirm this conjecture, Dr. Röntgen first moved the cardboard farther away to see if it would still flash, and if it did, and then he placed a shield between the cathode ray discharge tube and the cardboard to see if this would affect the flash of the cardboard. But books, planks, and photographic negatives, these lightless, light-opaque substances still can't block the invisible mysterious ray between the discharge tube and the cardboard, and this beam even easily passes through the 15 mm thick aluminum plate; so what about trying to block the thicker items? Sure enough, Dr. Röntgen discovered that the flash of cardboard disappeared only when a lead block or a thick iron plate was placed between them. After many experiments, Röntgen confirmed his conjecture and he discovered new rays!
And then, a dramatic scene happened. Because Dr. Roentgen was always in the laboratory, his wife ran to the laboratory angrily to find him theorizing, and When Roentgen saw that madame's angry face was not comforting, he grabbed her and said to her, "You put your hand between this tube and this photographic negative, that's right." The wife still wanted to be angry, but saw that Röntgen was so obsessed with the experiment that she did. Thus was born the first X-ray in human history, the precious image of Madame Roentgen's finger bones and wedding ring. Röntgen was aware of the peculiarities of this ray, but because he did not know enough about the ray, he called it X-ray.
On 28 December 1895 Röntgen published a study on X-rays. In the months that followed, the Vienna Daily newspaper made a major report on the X-ray discovery, which was a sensation around the world. Just 4 days after the incident was reported in the United States, someone used X-rays on the patient and found a bullet in his foot. X-rays were quickly applied to medicine. Röntgen also won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901 for the discovery of X-rays.
It seems that X-ray discovery is so natural and rapid, but in fact, X-ray discovery in history has not been so smooth. Who knows that the X-rays found in the coincidence have actually been taken first? As early as 1892, Tesla discovered X-rays and completed related experiments, but he himself did not study it further, because he noticed the great harm of X-rays, so he also refused to use X-rays for medical experiments, and finally did not disclose his experimental results.
Later, as Tesla's sworn enemy, Edison saw the business opportunities of X-rays in the field of medicine, and he began to use X-rays for experiments. At the beginning, Edison found that he had some problems with his left eye in the research, and his stomach and intestines also felt uncomfortable, so he immediately entrusted the research work of X-ray to his assistant to complete, and the assistant had cut off the entire left arm and four fingers of his right hand within a few years, and finally died young because of X-ray. As a result, Edison no longer moved the X-ray's crooked mind, and he also refused to make the research on X-ray successfully public.
Therefore, Röntgen can indeed be called the first scientist to publicly discover X-rays, and the X-rays he discovered brought endless intellectual wealth to future generations and opened the prelude to modern physics. Today, X-rays shine not only in physics, but also in medicine. The X-rays discovered by Röntgen are an important tool for people to detect diseases and protect lives, and as long as we do not abuse this technology, X-rays will always escort human health.