X-rays

[Marlin]

Electromagnet radiation generated by accelerating electrons into a metal target is called Rontgen Radiation or more commonly X-rays. Where did the name X-ray come from?

The answer is intuitive if you don't want to google it.

Answer in a week if no one gets it.

[SloGlo]

dey wuz "x"tremely rare before the electron/metal target interaction wuz dizcovert?

[RDTroja]

'X' was simply Roentgen's way of expressing 'unknown' -- just like in algebra.

[Marlin]

'X' was simply Roentgen's way of expressing 'unknown' -- just like in algebra.

Very good, these are excerpts from three sources.

On the evening of November 8, 1895, he found that, if the discharge tube is enclosed in a sealed, thick black carton to exclude all light, and if he worked in a dark room, a paper plate covered on one side with barium platinocyanide placed in the path of the rays became fluorescent even when it was as far as two metres from the discharge tube. During subsequent experiments he found that objects of different thicknesses interposed in the path of the rays showed variable transparency to them when recorded on a photographic plate. When he immobilised for some moments the hand of his wife in the path of the rays over a photographic plate, he observed after development of the plate an image of his wife's hand which showed the shadows thrown by the bones of her hand and that of a ring she was wearing, surrounded by the penumbra of the flesh, which was more permeable to the rays and therefore threw a fainter shadow. This was the first "röntgenogram" ever taken. In further experiments, Röntgen showed that the new rays are produced by the impact of cathode rays on a material object. Because their nature was then unknown, he gave them the name X-rays. Later, Max von Laue and his pupils showed that they are of the same electromagnetic nature as light, but differ from it only in the higher frequency of their vibration.

"X-rays are also called Röntgen rays in the recognition of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. He discovered them while experimenting with a Crookes tube, which generates cathode rays. He noted that a photographic plate wrapped in black paper lying near the tube was fogged when developed. Later, in his laboratory, he noticed that a screen located six feet away was glowing. Knowing that cathode rays can only travel short distances outside the tube, he realized he was observing a new, unknown form of ray which he called X-ray because the symbol ‘X’ is used for the unknown in mathematics."

"X-rays (are a kind of) penetrating electromagnetic radiation having a shorter wavelength than light and are produced by bombarding a target, usually made of tungsten, with high-speed electrons. X-rays were discovered accidentally in 1895 by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen while he was studying cathode rays in a high-voltage, gaseous-discharge tube. Despite the fact that the tube was encased in a black cardboard box, Röntgen noticed that a barium-platinocyanide screen, inadvertently lying nearby, emitted fluorescent light whenever the tube was in operation. After conducting further experiments, he determined that the fluorescence was caused by invisible radiation of a more penetrating nature than ultraviolet rays. He named the invisible radiation ‘X-ray’ because of its unknown nature. Subsequently, X-rays were known also as Röntgen rays in his honour."

[SloGlo]

dang!  dat wuz won fast weak!  eye taugh yinz sayed "intuitive", not logical.  hail, "x" as unknown is logical, knot intuitive! 

roflmao.... karma two ya ennyweigh, marlin.