Updated: Sep 18, 2020
The x-ray technician position had a steep learning curve. Taking x-rays is a lot like snapping black and white pictures, but the radiation beam is more intense. A black and white camera gathers light waves coming from an object and places the incoming light stream onto film in the back of a camera. An x-ray machine generates photons with a higher energy and shorter wavelength than regular light waves.
This shorter wavelength allows the photons to travel through soft tissue. Unlike a regular camera where light bounces off a person and enters the film at the back of a camera, the lower wavelength photons of an x-ray can be used to see through the soft tissue. If a person places his hand between the x-ray head and the film and a radiograph is taken the photons will travel through the soft tissue of the hand and expose that part of the X-ray film. Conversely, bones of the hand are too dense to allow these photons through, and the underlying region on the X-ray film will remain unexposed.
The developed film appears in the usual black, and white; the unexposed areas of bone come out white while the soft tissue areas the photons traveled through coming out dark.
X-rays are electromagnetic rays which have a very small wavelength as compared to visible light. Thus having a small wavelength it easily passes through our flesh but fails to pass through our bones and thus we can get the image of our bones differentiated from our flesh.of our bones differentiated from our flesh.