Sparkling sugar.

In one of many attempts to find out a little bit more about the history of rope I stumbled upon a short science piece making the rounds at all the news services. Seems scientists have discovered if you peel Scotch tape off it's roll in a vacuum it emits x-rays.

The article doesn't have any background, that is to say, what got the scientists unfurling tape in a vacuum anyway. Maybe it was a slow day, who knows.

Researchers at UCLA found that peeling Scotch tape off a pane of glass "ejects enough radiation to take an x-ray image."

The phenomenon is called triboluminescence and was first written about by Sir Francis Bacon in 1620 when he noted "It is well known that all sugar whether candied or plain, if it be hard, will sparkle when broken or scraped in the dark." Sounds like they played around with Lifesavers back then a bit. But that's just the idea. Many substances emit mild radiation when rubbed scraped and scratched.

The researchers above are thinking of using the energy to power portable x-ray machines. I'm sure someone else will come up something real fun to do with it.

In case you want to follow up, here's one link to the story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081023/ap_on_sc/sci_scotch_tape_surprise