I What travels faster: visible light in water or X-rays in liquid mercury?

[Dante Meira]

TL;DR Summary

In which medium electromagnetic waves travel faster, distilled water or liquid mercury?

I could find some approximations in a Google search about the speed of visible light in distilled water, but couldn't find much about the speed of X-rays in liquid mercury.

In which medium electromagnetic waves travel faster, distilled water or liquid mercury? Does the wavelength of the electromagnetic waves influence the speed in each medium?

What travels faster, visible light in distilled water or X-rays in liquid mercury?

 

[Gordianus]

Check this page:
https://henke.lbl.gov/optical_constants/pert_form.html

 

[Dante Meira]

Check this page:
https://henke.lbl.gov/optical_constants/pert_form.html

Thank you. I checked the data there for Hg (mercury) but I didn't know how to use the data to calculate the speed of propagation of X-rays.

But I did find this other website:

https://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=main&book=Hg&page=Inagaki

There I could check the refractive index of Hg for wavelengths between 0.06358 and 6 micrometers. The minimum wavelength in that data set, 0.06 micrometers (60 nanometers), is way above that of soft X-rays. Any way, the refractive index of Hg for that wavelength is 1.2085, then I calculated the speed of propagation of electromagnetic radiation of that wavelength in mercury as 299,792,458 divided by 1.2085 = 248,069,886 meters per second. That's faster than the average 225,000,000 meters per second of visible light in water.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the refractive index of mercury for wavelengths shorter than 60 nanometers.

 

[Dante Meira]

Check this page:
https://henke.lbl.gov/optical_constants/pert_form.html

If the refractive index in that page is "Beta", then the refractive index of Hg (mercury) for hard X-rays of 10keV is 1.6054 ?

 

[sophiecentaur]

TL;DR Summary: In which medium electromagnetic waves travel faster, distilled water or liquid mercury?

What travels faster, visible light in distilled water or X-rays in liquid mercury?

Is there any practical context for this question or is it just a Top Trumps type question?

 

[sophiecentaur]

If the OP is wondering about possible designs for focussing X rays, there are X Ray telescopes which use mirrors, rather than lenses. Quite smart, I thought; some lateral thinking involved.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The OP hasn't been seen in days, so it is difficult to gauge his level of interest. I'm just glad I didn't write a long, involved answer, only then to find that he had wandered off.