Although this news was quickly confirmed as a rumor, I believe many people have a question in their hearts: Is it true that diamonds can't be detected under X-rays?
Actually, it is not.
To understand this, let's look at the principle of X-ray inspection. X-ray belongs to high-energy particle flow, which has certain penetrating power to various substances. If the human body is placed between the X-ray generator and the photographic film, and the X-rays in the bones and other parts are seriously attenuated and cannot penetrate, then the film of the bones cannot be exposed, and an image of the bones will appear. However, fat, organs and other tissues can be successfully penetrated by X-rays, and the film is sensitized by photochemical action, and the silver halide on the film is decomposed into silver, which is black. This is how the black, white and gray images on the film are obtained.
It can be seen that the key of X-ray imaging lies in its penetrability, which is related to attenuation coefficient. The greater the attenuation coefficient, the lower the penetration. If you use it? M represents the attenuation coefficient, and z represents the atomic number of the absorbing substance. Represents the wavelength of x-rays, then the relationship between them can be approximately expressed as:
(k is a constant,? Usually greater than 1)
Diamond is a colorless crystal made of carbon. The number of carbon atoms is 6, which is very small. It can be found that the attenuation coefficient of diamond is small, and most of the X-rays pass through the diamond, so it is difficult to directly detect the diamond under the X-ray machine.
But just as hospitals need to find out the internal organs of human bodies, if people take X-ray contrast agents, the situation will be very different. Under normal circumstances, the hospital will let patients take barium sulfate orally, commonly known as? Barium meal? Barium has an atomic number of 56, is opaque to X-rays, and is black under X-rays. In this way, diamonds have nowhere to hide.
In addition, the X-ray security instrument used in the airport has two sets of detector arrays, which can detect high-energy and low-energy ray signals respectively. By comparing these two signals, the effective atomic number of the detected object can be obtained, thus distinguishing various substances. In this way, diamonds can obviously be found.
So we can't generally say that because the attenuation coefficient of diamonds is small? Real diamonds can't be found under X-rays? . In fact, many ore companies use X-ray machines for inspection after work to prevent employees from stealing diamonds.
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Author: Zhao Yanchang