The Discovery Of Roentgen Rays And Radioactivity

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was born on August 16th in 1832. He was born in the town of Neckarau in Germany to a Lutheran minister. He was an intelligent, odd boy, taught mostly by his father’s associate, Friedrich M üller, whom he moved in with later on. Wundt studied at the Gymnasien and then at the University of Tübingen in 1851, when he was 19 years old. He transferred after only one year to the University of Heidelberg, majoring in medicine. He published his first publication during his third year there. He changed his major from medicine to physiology, studying under Johannes Müller at Berlin for a semester. Wundt received his doctorate in medicine at Heidelberg, and worked as Hermann von Helmholtz’s assistant 2 years afterwards for 7 years.

Until the early 1900's, scientists used several methods of measurement in their efforts to determine the age of the Earth. They studied sedimentation and erosion, stratification (with fossil evidence), measured the salinity of the oceans, and used thermodynamics to determine loss of heat since the Earth's beginning. Each of these approaches yielded estimates that the Earth was anywhere from 24 to 100 million years old.

1895 – X-rays were discovered accidentally by physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen. Rontgen was working on a experiment and testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass. He noticed that a nearby tube emitted fluorescent glow of crystals. The air in the tube was released, high voltage applied, the same tube emitted a fluorescent glow. When Rontgen covered the tube in a heavy black paper, a green light could be seen. He concluded that a new light ray was being broadcast. Rontgen discovered that the light was very powerful and the same ray could pass through human tissue, but not through bones and metal objects. Medical applications were soon to follow. ("History of radiography," )

Radiation was discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen during a scientific experiment. Roentgen, classified radioactivity into three concepts: negative, positive, and electrically neutral. Radiation- is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium. Technology is created with radiation and humans are exposed to the aspect daily with tons or material; especially in the doctor’s office and everywhere else.

Radiation is part of the aftermath of war. In “Thunder in Roses” people everywhere are affected. The author stated “The air is becoming radioactive.” (Sturgeon 191). Only a few million people were left after the war hit them. Most of the bombs that hit the states were nuclear. “So saturated is the atmosphere with Carbon Fourteen

Medalia (2011) concludes that ionizing radiation, in other words radiation separate from harmless radio waves and light, has the ability to knock electrons out of atoms, causing a condition that produces an electrically charged atom that can damage human cells. Only a very small amount is needed to produce biological change. Symptoms include cancer, genetic mutations, sickness, vomiting, diarrhea, hemorrhaging, and at high doses, death within hours (Medalia 2011).

On December 2, 1895, Roentgen sent his paper titled, "Concerning a New Kind of Ray: Preliminary Report" to the Physical-Medical Association who published it in their 1895 volume of the minutes of the association. His report was soon published in several magazines around the world and in daily newspapers causing a tremendous stir. On January 23, 1896, about a year before the Invisible Man was published, Roentgen delivered his first public lecture on X-rays at the meeting of the Physical-Medical Association. During the lecture, he asked a well known anatomist to have his hand photographed using X-rays. The photo came out good and was passed around. The hall erupted in applause and cheers for Roentgen for everyone saw the practical uses of this new ray. Less than twenty days after the lecture, an X-ray machine was used in the United States to locate a bullet in a

Radiology was invented in 1895 when Wilhelm Röntgen, a German Physicist, discovered x-rays. The technology

Imagine a machine that made what was once invisible, visible. Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the X-ray in 1895. X-rays impacted the field of medicine greatly. The discovery of X-rays significantly changed how we could see the human body, treatment options, and how we viewed X-rays.

The X-Ray was invented in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. It all started with a vacuum tube called a Crookes tube, with this Roentgen noticed that by pressing a button that activated an electric current through it a shadow was projected onto a screen that showed the photograph of his wife’s hand with a ring

By 1892, Tesla became aware of certain characteristics later identified by Wilhelm Conrad R�ntgen as effects of X-rays. He performed several experiments (including taking photographs of the bones of his hand). Tesla did not make his findings widely known. Much of his research was lost in the 1895 Houston Street lab fire. He did obtain pictures of the human body with X-rays and subsequently sent the images to R�ntgen. His later X-ray experimentation by vacuum high field emissions led him to alert the scientific community first to the biological hazards associated with X-ray exposure.

This discovery was made by the radiation team, Emilio Segrè, Thomas Ypsilantis, Clyde Wiegand, and Owen Chamberlain at Berkley, University of California.

Thomas Edison played a major role in expansion of first x-ray technology (Gurley & Callaway, 2011). Soon after Roentgen’s discovery was announced, Thomas Edison started working with roentgen rays. His main concern was experimenting with fluoroscopy, procedure that used x-rays to acquire real time moving images (Sherer, 2013). Edison, along with his assistant Clarence Madison Dally, tried to develop a Crookes tube to transform energy into light rather than x-rays. During this experiment, Dally tested each tube he made by putting his hand directly in the beam (Gurley & Callaway, 2011). However, Edison noticed that Dally’s skin was severely damaged by radiation. His skin appeared burned with erythema and unusual epilation (Gagliardi, 1991). At

During the cold winter of 1895, a German scientist by the name of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen was working with a cathode-ray tube when he noticed nearby crystals were glowing. When Roentgen reached for the crystals he was amazed when the shadow cast on the crystal was not of his whole hand, but just his bones. Roentgen covered the tube with heavy black paper and saw that the crystals still glowed and the shadow of his hand bones still shown through, he then determined that a new ray was being emitted that could penetrate through thick materials. (1.) He later found that the rays could pass through most anything, but would cast a shadow of solid objects; these shadows could then be captured on film. Among the solid objects Roentgen shot with

X-rays is one of the many discoveries that revolutionized the way the humanity functions technologically, economically and socially in a fast changing world. This invention was thanks to Dr. Rontgen. His invention changed the medical and astronomy field drastically and therefore he was awarded the first Nobel prize in physics. He was awarded this incredible and highly valued award in the year 1901 after producing, detecting and then discovering these high frequency wavelengths produced by electromagnetic radiation. This Physicist and scientist later to be recognized as doctor gave the world the gift of this amazing, invisible and powerful rays that would change the world for ever.