On this night in science
The discovery of X-rays
November 8, 1895
On this night in 1895, the German scientist Wilhelm Röntgen was working in his darkened laboratory when he noticed a coated screen across the room begin to glow. Rays he couldn't see were passing right through things to reach it, so he called them X-rays, X for unknown.
Why it mattered
X-rays pass through skin more easily than through bone, so doctors could see inside the body for the first time. Röntgen won the very first Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.
Wonder together
If you could see through things, what would you most want to look inside?
Where this comes from