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Yes we did! Any organic material shows up pretty well under backscatter X-ray, and so can be used to cover darker contraband. You can see this done with Teflon
by kmowery 12y ago
Yes we did! Any organic material shows up pretty well under backscatter X-ray, and so can be used to cover darker contraband. You can see this done with Teflon in our gallery: https://www.radsec.org/gallery.html https://www.radsec.org/gallery.html under "Concealing a Knife by Masking".
We didn't try meat due to the mess, but it would almost certainly work as well!
(Technically, in this X-ray energy spectrum, the amount of backscatter is related to the "effective Z" of the material, where Z is the atomic number of the elements involved. Materials made from lighter elements like carbon and oxygen? Backscatters well. Heavy elements like iron? Absorbs x-rays.)
- batbomb 12y agoYeah, I guess I thought they might have something a bit more spectographically advanced to determine molecular makeup rather than just backscatter (something that might distinguish teflon with it's abundance of fluorine from organic matter). It seems like a much more crude instrument than I thought. For millimeter wave, I'm pretty sure the teflon wouldn't work though, since the millimeter wave machines are likely tuned for organic makeup rather than just backscatter.