I Made My Own X-Ray Machine

Ok what should I X-Ray now? No but seriously, don’t try this!

Making X-rays with scotch tape should’ve been a MacGyver episode

I was a station scientist at ESRF (grenoble, france) about 30 years ago, which was at that time the strongest X-ray source in the world. and I also developed soft X-ray lasers. Some more details: soft X-rays (up to a few keV can be reflected - even at 90 degrees using multilayer mirrors. But your detector likely would not be able to detect soft x-rays , and working with them typically requires working in vacuum. Harder X-rays can indeed be reflected or focused at grazing incidence, if the mirror surface is really really smoothly polished and made of a heavy element such as platinum. Roughness of the mirrors I used was only a few tenths of a nanometer. A more common way to focus or modify the direction of monochromatic X-rays is using crystals. And... I also produced X-rays with transition radiation. No way to do this on a tabletop: as you need to accelerate electrons to 40 Million electron volts or higher.

Nice experiment. I had no idea it was so easy to produce x-rays. One thing for anyone curious. Even at 8000 microsieverts/hour isn't a massive dose of radiation, especially for the brief time you were generating them. For reference, 8000 micosieverts is about the amount you get from a chest CT scan. So assuming the reading corresponds to the dose you'd receive an hour, your machine is producing about 1 chest CT scan of radiation an hour. That's not nothing, but most wouldn't consider it dangerous. It's not a bad idea to put in the shielding, since this obviously isn't a controlled device and you had no idea how much radiation it'd produce. But you likely were never in an real danger for the few seconds you ran the setup.

Making X-rays in your garage using a hundred thousand volts? This channel is becoming increasingly unhinged and I love it.

Honestly I think the “hand cranked” part is the most impressive aspect of the machine

somehow figures out a way to bring a vacuum chamber into every video, love it

TheActionLab's neighbour: Why are my teeth glowing?

Next video: I made my own fusion reactor 💀

3:50 Styropyro made a GREAT video about this and the fact is that these static discharges dump several amps at a time. The reason it doesnt kill/hurt you is because it happens so quickly. In the video he spends a lot of time, and does a lot of crazy things, to answer the common question: Is it the amps or the volts that kill you? His conclusion is that its a combination of volts, amps, and TIME. You need enough voltage so that electricity can flow through you, that electricity needs to have enough amps to hurt you, and that electricity needs enough time to hurt you. I'd def recommend you, or anyone interested in electricity, lasers, etc to watch him and his videos.

The way the camera slowly zooms in on my dude while he says insane shit like “I’m going to need 100K volts” is sublime. Absolute mad lad.

loved the sneaking a mirror in bit

You are so creative! I am amazed by the number of experiments you have done here. Wonderful channel ! Thank you very much for the quality of your content.

Thanks for sharing! And loving seeing the little humorous segments in the mix! 👍

An "actual mad scientist" on YouTube 😮. Dude, that was awesome!

Excellent video ! Very much appreciated going to the length you did to make your experiment possible.

When i was in high school, in the chapter 'production of the x-rays', that apparatus, i realized that i've seen some sort of small x-ray vessel. And exactly that was this. Thank you very much for such awesome video.

Try using analog film in front of this rectifier, to see if you can ruin it.

It's really delightful seeing someone be this playful, resourceful and experiment-driven. Fantastic work!

Good thing you’re not William Osman or your audience would of lost their minds over this video.