- #1
cavis
- 8
- 0
Greetings,
I am a Physics instructor teaching a course on Physics for Medical Radiologists and have a question to further my own understanding of wave / particle behaviour of X-Rays as used in x-ray image production. My background is more in climate / geophysics.
The textbooks available for this course (written at a very basic Physics level) briefly describe both the wave and particle nature of light and then go on to suggest that X-Rays, as far as medical radiologists are concerned typically behave like particles (ie. should be envisioned as photons, rather than EM waves) and don't exhibit wave like behaviour in this application.
However, I also know that X-Rays, as used in applications such as crystallography, rely on the radiation's essentially behaving as waves. Other pieces of Physics writing I've read written for the lay person describe high-energy light as behaving in a "particle like fashion" and lower energy light as behaving in a wave light fashion when interacting with matter.
My round about question is therefore this: Is there a general rule that one can apply in terms of a relationship between the wavelength of light and the nature or characteristic length scales of the matter it is interacting with in terms of when one can state that the light behaves "as a particle" and when it behaves "as a wave" when interacting with matter?
Secondly, and this part is more directed at instructors, I suppose. Is it reasonably correct to say that, when one is visualizing a beam of x-rays as behaving like particles to think of this beam as being essentially similar to a beam of electrons, made up of discrete chunks of quantized energy?
I would appreciate any guidance and clarification anyone can offer.
Chris
I am a Physics instructor teaching a course on Physics for Medical Radiologists and have a question to further my own understanding of wave / particle behaviour of X-Rays as used in x-ray image production. My background is more in climate / geophysics.
The textbooks available for this course (written at a very basic Physics level) briefly describe both the wave and particle nature of light and then go on to suggest that X-Rays, as far as medical radiologists are concerned typically behave like particles (ie. should be envisioned as photons, rather than EM waves) and don't exhibit wave like behaviour in this application.
However, I also know that X-Rays, as used in applications such as crystallography, rely on the radiation's essentially behaving as waves. Other pieces of Physics writing I've read written for the lay person describe high-energy light as behaving in a "particle like fashion" and lower energy light as behaving in a wave light fashion when interacting with matter.
My round about question is therefore this: Is there a general rule that one can apply in terms of a relationship between the wavelength of light and the nature or characteristic length scales of the matter it is interacting with in terms of when one can state that the light behaves "as a particle" and when it behaves "as a wave" when interacting with matter?
Secondly, and this part is more directed at instructors, I suppose. Is it reasonably correct to say that, when one is visualizing a beam of x-rays as behaving like particles to think of this beam as being essentially similar to a beam of electrons, made up of discrete chunks of quantized energy?
I would appreciate any guidance and clarification anyone can offer.
Chris