Those big fancy X-ray machines in hospitals cost an absolute bomb. When it was decided that we needed some kind of battlefield X-ray machine for use in the military, scientists set to work, and discovered possibly the most cost-effective way to take pictures of your bony bits. It turns out that you can use sticky tape (Scotch Tape in the US, Sellotape in the UK), as a rudimentary X-ray due to its mysterious properties. The tape, when stripped from a glass surface inside a vacuum will emit electrons. This idea has been around since the 50s, but in 2007, scientists at UCLA found that the amount of electron emitted was 10 times the amount they originally thought. This is burst of over a million electrons is more than enough to produce a ghostly image of an X-rayed finger on a piece of photographic paper, creating one of the cheapest, most portable X-ray machines ever invented. It could also help slash NASA budgets with the production of cheap X-ray telescopes. Not bad for a little bit of tape.
