X-rays Definition and 106 Threads

Airports are thinking about installing new backscatter X-ray machines for screening passengers (http://www.campaignfortruth.com/Eclub/210703/CTM-airportxray.htm These screeners see through clothes, but bounce off metal and skin, leaving the traveller essentially naked to the person...

X-ray energies increase with atomic number, Z. X-rays originate from photon emissions as electrons drop back into the K and L shells of atoms. Thus they have characteristic wavelengths. Hydrogen has the lowest energy X-rays (Ek=13.6 eV) which is the first ionzation potential. It has one...

@ howstuffworks.com, it says: I thought that only photons could knock and electron loose. How do electrons do the same? [edit] Actually, I was viewing http://www.cvm.okstate.edu/~groups/students/web/2001/diagimag/Physics_of_Radiology.ppt , and on slide 22-23, it shows the knocking...

How can we see the x-ray emission from the center of our galaxy? I thought that the intersteller dust extinguished practically all of the visible light from that direction, which is why we can't "see" the bulge. How then, can even shorter wavelength photons manage to get through? I thought...

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994927" It seems that the organs that could be affected are the hypothalamus, the pituitary and the thyroid gland. Although it is ofcourse possible that requiring an X-ray itself might be the riskfactor.. The dental records of total 4500 women...

Is there a formula to work out the energy associated with x-rays when i have a frequency and wavelength?