Q 01/05

On a standard X-ray image, which of these appears black?

A) Bone

B) Air

C) Muscle

D) Metal

Answer · why

B) Air

Air. Dense bone and metal block most of the rays and show white, muscle and fat come out in shades of grey, and air-filled lungs let nearly everything...

Q 02/05

Röntgen named his discovery 'X-rays' because, in mathematics, x stands for what?

A) An unknown quantity

B) The number ten

C) A point of crossing

D) A multiplication

Answer · why

A) An unknown quantity

An unknown quantity. He meant the label as a stopgap while he worked out what the rays were, but it stuck in English; many other languages call them R...

Q 03/05

Whose hand appears in Röntgen's famous first X-ray photograph of the human body, taken in 1895?

A) His wife's

B) His own

C) His assistant's

D) Marie Curie's

Answer · why

A) His wife's

His wife's. Anna Bertha Röntgen kept her hand still over a photographic plate, and the developed picture showed the shadows of its bones and of the ri...

Q 04/05

Röntgen won which award in 1901 for discovering X-rays?

A) The first Nobel Prize in Medicine

B) The Copley Medal

C) The first Nobel Prize in Physics

D) The Fields Medal

Answer · why

C) The first Nobel Prize in Physics

The first Nobel Prize in Physics. He accepted the award but, shy of public speaking, declined to give the lecture that laureates are expected to deliv...

Q 05/05

A DEXA scan uses low-dose X-rays to measure what?

A) Hormone levels

B) Blood flow

C) Lung capacity

D) Bone density

Answer · why

D) Bone density

Bone density. Two X-ray beams of different energies pass through the bones, and the difference in how they are absorbed reveals thinning that an ordin...