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Wilhelm Rontgen and the Nobel Prize Essay

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Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen was born on March 27, 1845 in Lennep, Prussia; which is now Remscheid, Germany. His family moved to Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, where we went to Institute of Martinus Herman van Doorn, a boarding school. He did not show any special aptitude, but he had a fascination with nature and loved roaming the countryside and walking through forests. Later he attended a technical school in Utrecht, but unfortunately was unfairly expelled for allegedly drawing a rude caricature of one of the teachers, which was in fact drawn by another student. He then entered the University of Utrecht in 1865 to study physics. He did not have the required credentials to enter the University, but he heard he could enter by passing an exam. He …show more content…

He named this new discovery “X-Ray” because x is the term for an unknown number in mathematics. It was later called “Roentgen Rays” although changed back to “X-Ray”. With his new discovery, he found that the rays would travel through human tissue, but leave a shadow of bone and metal behind. One of his first experiments was on his wife Bertha’s hand with a ring on her finger in 1895. Medical X-rays work by letting fast moving electrons come to a sudden stop on a metal plate. They show up different on the radiograph because of different absorption rates of different material. The calcium in bones absorb the most x-rays so they appear white on a radiograph, or the film x-rays are displayed on, although other things like tissue, fat and skin absorb it less so they appear grey. Air absorbs the least x-rays so this is why lungs look completely black on a radiograph. Todays x-ray machines are much faster, more efficient and produce much less harmful radiation. Excessive exposure to x-rays can be dangerous but in modern medicine doctors are able to keep us safe with their knowledge on this. The original x-ray machine took 90 minutes and produced 1500 times the radiation as modern x-rays. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen has made a huge impact on todays technology. It’s obvious to see that inventing the x-ray is a big deal, but this was actually a very big accomplishment and made a lot of new things possible. Without the x-ray our ability in the medical world would be

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