Happy birthday to Wilhem Röntgen (1845-1923), the German physicist who discovered x-rays and earned the Nobel Prize for physics in 1901. 🧪🐡🎢 #histsci I’ve depicted him in this thermochromic portrait at work, studying this mysterious, newly discovered, invisible form of light, based on a photo of 🧵 - ThreadSky

minouette.bsky.social • 41 days ago

Happy birthday to Wilhem Röntgen (1845-1923), the German physicist who discovered x-rays and earned the Nobel Prize for physics in 1901. 🧪🐡🎢 #histsci I’ve depicted him in this thermochromic portrait at work, studying this mysterious, newly discovered, invisible form of light, based on a photo of 🧵

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andrewr.bsky.social•41 days ago

Thanks for reminding me. It happens that I am mentioning Rōntgen in my lecture today, so I will put that in.

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

You’re welcome & thanks!

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

him in his lab, using a Crookes tube to produce x-rays. The form of the print mimics the nature of his discovery - much as x-rays reveal the skeleton within, the thermochromic ink in which Wilhelm Röntgen is printed disappears when heated to reveal his skeleton below!
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Wilhelm Röntgen discovered

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

X-rays using the Crookes tube in 1895. A Crookes tube is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were discovered. Despite his efforts to block the light from the tube with

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

cardboard, during his experiments, he noticed that the invisible cathode rays (electrons) caused a fluorescent effect on a small cardboard screen painted with barium platinocyanide when it was placed close to the aluminium window in the tube. Some sort of light was passing through the opaque

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

cardboard & Röntgen speculated that a new kind of ray might be responsible. He called these unknown rays ‘x-rays’. We now know that x-rays can be produced when electrons strike a metal target, through a process called Bremsstrahlung (or ‘the braking of radiation’). During further tests of the

minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

interaction of these rays with metals, he saw the image of his own ghostly skeleton on the barium platinocyanide screen. Within two weeks he had taken the first x-ray photograph: an image of his wife Anna Bertha’s hand, inventing the entire field of radiology and medical imaging! ⁠
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minouette.bsky.social•41 days ago

Thermochromic ink changes colour with temperature. If you heat the print above about 30°C ( 86 F) Röntgen will go colourless and disappear, to reveal his skeleton. #linocut #physics #printmaking

paiviten.bsky.social•41 days ago

I love it how in Finnish we call x-rays Röntgen rays.

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