I am very confused how x rays work. How does the radiation get into the camera?
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Imagine a shadow-puppet show.
In the far back there is a light source shining brightly, then there is a kind of “stage area” where the puppets move around (in between the light and the screen), and finally there is a screen which is bright everywhere except for where the puppets and other props blocked the light and made a shadow.
We’re not actually seeing the puppets themselves, just their shadows on the screen.
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X-rays work in very much the same way.
In the far back there is an x-ray source shining brightly, then there is a “staging area” where the patient stands, and finally there is a screen (which used to just be a very large square of special Xray-sensitive film).
So, when an X-ray technician “takes an X-ray” what they are essentially doing is clicking the camera so that a short bright flash of X-rays happens; that bright flash then hits the patient and gets blocked by their bones which ends up making bone-shadows at the screen area; the film at the screen area then absorbs the X-ray flash and turns black if there was light there or stays white if it was in a shadow.
So, we’re not actually seeing pictures of ‘white bones’ when we look at an X-ray, what we are seeing is a black-and white image of the shadows of bones (as a film negative).
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Also, nowadays there are multiple ways to engineer reusable/digital detectors (like digital cameras) rather than literal old-school sheets of film.
And also, bones aren’t the *only* things that block X-rays, they are just really good X-ray blocking/absorbing materials. Our meaty watery fleshy bits can also block *some* X-rays but they are mostly clear… kinda analogous to how if you had a shadow-puppet hold a water bottle you could maybe see how full/empty the bottle it is based on how much light comes through in the shadow.
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