Into Unscientific

Chapter 299 Roentgen: You are amazing, you are noble! (7.4K)

inside the laboratory.

After discovering this abnormal light.

Faraday, Gauss, and Weber did not dare to neglect, and immediately gathered at the edge of the table.

I saw the heads of the three people touching each other, staring fixedly at the vacuum tube in front of them.

Do not know why.

This picture reminded Xu Yun of an emoji he had seen before time travel:

Three golden retrievers are surrounded by a mat, looking at a small milk cat on the mat, which is about the same size as their nose, and next to it is written "Is this guy new here?"

Ahem, this shouldn't be regarded as deceiving the master and destroying the ancestors.

after awhile.

Wei Bo stroked his thick beard, turned his head to look at Mai, with doubts in his eyes:

"It's so weird"

"Student Maxwell, how did you discover this light?"

At this time, Mai Mai was still standing beside the switch, and pointed to the window when he heard the words, and replied:

"I coughed and coughed just now. The position I was standing just now was facing that window."

"The window is in the corner, and the door is blocked by curtains, so the view in that area will be relatively dark."

"As a result, when I turned my head, I suddenly felt something flashed on the vase, but it disappeared when I turned my head, so..."

Faraday raised his head and glanced at him, then said:

"That's why you think it might be an illusion. You didn't tell us this phenomenon directly, but chose to verify it yourself, right?"

Wheat nodded slightly.

be honest.

The flash of light just appeared for a short time, and it disappeared before he could take a closer look, so he really thought it was his hallucination.

Besides, although the curtains were drawn on the windows at this time, it was broad daylight outside, and some sunlight would come in more or less.

Is it the light from outside that is not evenly shining on the vase?

So out of this psychology.

Wheat was not in a hurry to tell Faraday and Gauss about the situation, but rearranged the vase by himself and conducted another experiment.

There's really nothing special about the context of the whole thing, but the problem is.

What the hell is going on with this light?

How on earth did it appear?

What are its physical properties?

Now that electromagnetic waves have been discovered, Faraday and others are qualified to conduct a more in-depth analysis of some phenomena.

Then Faraday thought for a while, turned around, and said to Kirchhoff:

"Gustav, take out another Xiao Yan tube."

"Remember to cut the middle area into two sections, with a hollow of ten centimeters from each other, and do another experiment."

Kirchhoff was slightly taken aback, and confirmed to Faraday:

"Professor Faraday, you mean to cut a Xiaoyan tube into two pieces? Mouth-to-mouth interval of ten centimeters?"

Faraday nodded:

"That's right."

Seeing that there was a trace of hesitation on Kirchhoff's face, he hesitated and said:

"Professor Faraday, it's no problem to cut off the vacuum tube, but in this way, the degree of vacuum we worked so hard to prepare will be affected."

Mentioned long ago.

Xiaoyan tube. Or the modified version of the Gessler tube is somewhat similar in structure to the Crooks tube.

In order to facilitate experimental observation, this vacuum tube can be twisted into two sections from the middle and then increased in length.

For example, the vacuum tube used in Leonard's experiment was once supplemented to a length of 1.3 meters.

So it is not surprising that the vacuum tube is twisted into two sections separately, in order to add another part of the tube body to facilitate observation.

However, as Faraday said, it does not increase the body of the tube after unscrewing, but directly faces each other ten centimeters apart, which is undoubtedly a bit puzzling.

Because the design purpose of the vacuum tube is to create a vacuum environment, once the two tube bodies are exposed to the air, the vacuum degree will inevitably drop severely.

As soon as the vacuum degree drops, the cathode rays will not appear well.

Facing Kirchhoff's question, Faraday waved his hand at him and said:

"Gustav, let's do this first, I know what to do."

Seeing that Faraday insisted on this approach, Kirchhoff was puzzled, but he had no choice but to obey:

"Understood, Professor Faraday."

There are more than 20 'Xiaoyan tubes' that Faraday handed over to Cambridge University this time, so Kirchhoff quickly prepared the new equipment that Faraday needed:

A vacuum tube was split in two, ten centimeters apart.

The outside of them is still connected to the circuit with wires to ensure that the cathode and anode can be connected without short circuit.

At the same time, Faraday placed a thermocouple on the cutout at the anode end to observe the data.

After everything is ready.

Faraday turned on the power again.

A few seconds passed.

A blue-white light routinely appeared at the cathode, accompanied by two or three dark areas.

But as the light path travels.

When light leaves the cathode slit and comes into contact with air

The blue and white light only advanced three to five centimeters before completely dissipating in the air.

at the same time.

Faraday glanced at the thermocouple, and the temperature rise value was clearly displayed on it:

0.00007.

This is a rather small number.

According to the simple calculation of the formula for temperature rise conversion, it can be said that almost no cathode rays reach the anode end.

This is the case at the kerf, let alone the anode end.

See this situation.

Faraday turned off the switch and exchanged glances with Gauss and Weber.

The three of them could see a sense of solemnity and excitement in each other's eyes.

Whether it is the phenomenon or the digital feedback of the thermocouple in this control experiment, it clearly shows one thing:

The penetration of cathode rays in the air is weaker than they expected, and it is considered long to travel a few centimeters.

But the light shining on the vase fully penetrated two meters of air!

This means that the energy levels, wavelengths, and frequencies of the two are different!

Think here.

Gauss suddenly realized something, and took out a cylindrical magnifying glass from his body—that is, the kind of monocular magnifying glass commonly used by watch repairers in later generations, and walked quickly to the vacuum tube emitting mysterious rays.

I saw him leaning down and moving his eyes wearing a magnifying glass to near the anode.

A few seconds passed.

Gauss suddenly let out a light sigh, and beckoned to Faraday and Weber on the side:

"Michael, Edward, come and see!"

Faraday and Weber walked quickly to him one after another. Faraday put his hand on Gauss' shoulder and asked:

"What happened, Friedrich?"

Gauss took off the magnifying glass, handed it to the two, pointed to the end of the anode and said:

"Look for yourselves, and pay attention to the position of the two rays of light."

Faraday and Weber looked at each other, and Faraday took the magnifying glass from Gauss first.

After tuning the coefficients.

He also put on the magnifying glass and bent down to observe.

soon.

Faraday raised his thick sword eyebrows slightly, as if he had discovered something strange, and leaned forward a little again.

After about half a minute.

Faraday took a deep breath, stood up, and gave Weber the magnifying glass and the position.

Weber then repeated his movements.

After Weber got up too.

Gauss asked him and Faraday:

"Well, Michael, Edward, did you see that?"

Faraday nodded slightly, glanced at Riemann and Kirchhoff, who were unclear, and said slowly:

"See, the entry point of the cathode ray at the anode and the exit point of the unknown ray are not on the same horizontal line."

"You know, the anode is a metal plate."

in the field of optics.

If some refraction occurs in the medium, the incident point and the exit point of the light may indeed not be on a horizontal line.

But it could happen with crystals, it could happen inside stones, it could even happen in water or air.

But it is only impossible to happen in the metal plate-because most metal plates of normal thickness cannot allow light to pass through at all.

This is colloquially known as 'metal opaque'.

The reason for this phenomenon can be barely explained by classical mechanics.

That is to say, the metal has high electrical conductivity, and the reflectivity is inherently high, and the transmitted light will be dissipated by Joule heat.

Of course.

This explanation is relatively simple, and the fundamental reason still requires quantum mechanics to explain, which involves the problem of electron energy levels in metals.

well known.

Light of various colors is essentially electromagnetic waves of various wavelengths.

According to quantum mechanics, electrons in matter can be in various or continuous or separated energies, called energy levels.

If an electron at a low energy level encounters a photon with the right energy, it will absorb the energy of the photon and jump to a higher energy level—the right energy means that the energy of the photon is equal to the difference between the high and low energy levels.

Whether a wavelength of light is absorbed depends on the existence of such electrons and two energy levels.

If it is not absorbed, the light passes through the material.

This is transparency.

For example.

If the energy levels of a substance are less than or equal to 0 and greater than or equal to 5, all electrons just fill those energy levels less than or equal to 0.

Then the energy of the photon must reach at least 5 to be absorbed, and those lights less than 5 will pass through.

Metals are opaque because the energy levels of electrons in metals are continuous in a wide range, and photons of any energy can be absorbed when they come in.

Useless knowledge adds another .JPG.

The topic returns to the original place.

So for metal anodes.

In theory, it is impossible for a beam of light to pass through from the left and then appear from the lower area on the right.

Either it is completely blocked, or it passes through some gap - but if this is the case, then the point of entry and point of exit must be at the same location.

In other words.

The source of generating this beam of abnormal light is neither the cathode nor the air ionization in the tube, but

The anode itself!

Think here.

Gauss' heart skipped a beat, turned to look at Faraday, and asked:

"Michael, what metal is the anode?"

Faraday froze for a moment, then subconsciously blurted out:

"Tungsten plate!"

Immediately, he suddenly thought of something, and suddenly turned his head to look at Xu Yun.

But to his surprise

Xu Yun's expression at this time was also mixed with confusion, shock and doubt.

Judging by Faraday's experience.

This really doesn't look like a fake.

Then he and Gauss looked at each other, pondered for a moment, and asked Xu Yun aloud:

"Student Luo Feng, did Mr. Fat Yu say why he chose tungsten plates as anodes?"

Only then did Xu Yun come back to his senses, and shook his head again with a cute face:

"I can't make it."

Faraday stared at him seriously for a few seconds, feeling a little puzzled in his heart.

Could it be that he really didn't know about it?

After all, tungsten plates are considered common electrodes, and sometimes they are even easier to obtain than zinc plates, which are not uncommon in laboratories.

There is no such thing as high or low cost for a tungsten plate with a diameter of one centimeter.

In addition, "Fat Fish" lives in the Netherlands, where tungsten plates are abundant.

In this way, the past can be explained by coincidence.

Think here.

Although Faraday still hesitated in his heart, he still slowly looked back.

Looking at Faraday who returned his attention to the vacuum tube, Xu Yun couldn't help but heaved a sigh of relief.

It's okay, it's okay, it's finally a fool this time.

Although from a theoretical point of view, both copper and zinc plates can excite this special ray.

However, the excitation conditions of these materials are relatively complicated, and at least a high-voltage generator is required.

Although the high-voltage generator is not difficult to find, it is not an easy task to properly incorporate it into the research process of cathode rays.

Once Faraday and others discover that cathode rays can be generated without a high-voltage generator, it is easy to suspect the cause of the mysterious rays on themselves.

This is obviously not a good thing.

Actually.

Xu Yun did not intend to guide Faraday and others to discover new rays this time, and his expected goal was actually the cathode ray.

In the end, he didn't expect that he tried his best to push history forward by a small step. Mai Mai, a fool or the son of luck, foolishly kicked history forward again.

That's right.

The son of luck.

Why do you say that?

the reason is simple.

The light wheat discovered was nothing but the famous

X-ray!

The discoverer of X-rays in history was William Conrad Roentgen, and the process of his discovery of X-rays was recorded in elementary school (or middle school forgot) textbooks.

It was on the evening of November 8, 1895, that Roentgen routinely began to study cathode rays.

At that time, in order to prevent the influence of external light on the discharge tube, and to prevent the visible light in the tube from leaking out of the tube, he darkened the room completely, and made a cover for the discharge tube with black hard paper.

In order to check whether the envelope leaked light, he connected the discharge tube to the power supply, and he was satisfied that the envelope did not leak light.

But when he cut off the power, he unexpectedly found a flash of light on a small workbench one meter away, and the flash was emitted from a fluorescent screen.

However, cathode rays can only travel a few centimeters in the air, which has long been confirmed by others and his own experiments.

So Roentgen made a judgment:

This is not cathode ray, but a new kind of ray.

Later, after repeated experiments, Roentgen finally determined that this was a new ray that was not yet known, so he gave it a name:

X-rays.

Later, a classic appeared:

One day when his wife came to see him in the laboratory, he asked her to put her hand on the photographic film wrapped tightly in black paper, and then irradiated it with X-rays for 15 minutes.

After developing.

The negatives clearly showed his wife's hand bones, and the wedding ring on her finger was also very clear.

After many years, many people are deeply impressed by the photo of Mrs. Roentgen's hand bone.

Roentgen later won the Nobel Prize for this and became the winner of the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

But on the one hand.

Due to the age of the audience, the textbook did not describe the process of Roentgen's discovery of X-rays too deeply.

In the original history, the process of Roentgen's discovery of X-rays was far from simple as written in the book.

Students who have studied optics should know it.

Light is actually the transfer of energy, and its essence is a flow of photons in a specific frequency band.

The light source emits light because the electrons in the light source gain extra energy and release energy in the form of waves during the transition process.

The same is true of sunlight, lightning, and fire.

Therefore.

In essence, light is a kind of electromagnetic wave, which is energy information transmitted by photons.

If there is energy, then naturally there is the theory of frequency.

In the long-term evolution of the human eye, it is only sensitive to the frequency band of about 380~780nm, so the electromagnetic wave of this specific frequency band is called visible light.

That is, red orange yellow green blue blue purple and so on.

In addition to visible light, there are many lights invisible to the human eye.

Such as radio waves, infrared rays, ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays are invisible light.

These lights all belong to a certain band and frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum.

X-rays are electromagnetic waves second only to γ-rays, with a wavelength between 10 nanometers and 0.01 nanometers, a frequency between 3^16 and 3^20 Hz, and an energy of 124eV~1.24MeV.

This is the energy of each photon. X-rays are high-energy rays, so they have strong penetrating power.

When X-rays irradiate the human body.

Some of the x-rays are absorbed by the body material, and most of them pass through the atomic gaps.

The higher the frequency and the shorter the wavelength of X-rays, the greater the energy and the stronger the penetrating ability.

in the process of penetrating the object.

X-rays are absorbed differently depending on the density and thickness of the object.

Therefore, the X-rays that pass through have different strengths and weaknesses, so that the structure of the passed-through object is displayed in the photosensitive film-this is the principle of X-rays in later generations.

Having said that, here comes the question:

Since X-rays are invisible light, how did Roentgen notice them?

The textbook only said that Roentgen found a spot of light on the screen outside the vacuum tube, but X-rays are invisible, so theoretically they can't notice it.

Of course.

Seeing this, some people may ask:

Not right.

Why can't ultraviolet light be seen, but ultraviolet light can see purple light?

the reason is simple:

Because manufacturers of ultraviolet lamps have added photoinitiators or photosensitizers to the lamps, active free radicals or ionic radicals are generated after absorbing ultraviolet light, thereby initiating polymerization, crosslinking and grafting reactions.

This process has a proper term, called UV curing.

The physical properties of UV light radiation are similar to visible light, so you can see the 'light' of UV lamps.

You can't see real UV rays.

So for Roentgen.

Even in a closed room, at most, there will be a little light at the anode due to the ionization effect (that is, the emission point observed by Faraday and the others), but it should not be visible at the end.

What really helped Rontgen discover X-rays was actually something called barium cyanide-platinate.

It emits a visible fluorescence when exposed to X-rays.

Barium cyanide platinate is a common paint in the 19th century, which is common in laboratories and literary and artistic creations.

At that time, Rontgen saw something projecting X-ray spots, which was a screen coated with barium cyanide platinate.

And now in this laboratory.

The only one coated with barium cyanide platinate, is the .

The vase decoration that Mai saw.

So sometimes Xu Yun really had to wonder if there really was such a thing as a child of luck in the world.

in his plan.

The reason why the tungsten plate is used as the anode during the experiment is only to fix it as a common material for cathode ray research.

Just like the copper rods commonly used in electrolytic cells, let future generations develop a habit.

There are many people waiting to use it, the shortest is three to five years, and the longest is eleven or twelve years.

There will always be someone who happens to see X-rays hitting the barium cyanide platinate-like material.

By then, Xu Yun will have returned to his hometown (?).

There is a certain buffer period in terms of time and now, which is undoubtedly a very delicate arrangement.

Who would have thought of the result.

Wheat doesn't talk about martial arts, so he found the only vase in the house coated with barium cyanide platinate, and it happened to be on the X-ray light path

at the same time.

The Netherlands, a thousand kilometers away.

In a small town called Apeldoorn.

in a kindergarten.

A little boy with an ordinary face who was preparing for a nap suddenly stretched out his hand and grabbed the air.

The childcare worker not far away saw this scene and came over and asked:

"What happened?"

The little boy subconsciously opened his mouth.

For some reason, he suddenly felt empty in his heart, as if

Something is lost in general.

But in the end, he shook his head:

"I'm fine, Mr. Sanchi."

"Then take a nap first, Roentgen."