aaaaaaaaaa (aaaaaaaaa)'s status on Wednesday, 25-May-11 19:06:07 UTC
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@abigpony So basically, these electrons that you blast out with x-ray radiation will actually become wavelike (recall the whole particle/wave duality thing), and will bounce off neighbouring atoms and cause interference patterns that we can measure. It turns out that these specific patterns and whatnot are element-specific. So, for example, if you shoot an x-ray of, say, 11.8 keV of energy into something, and you get a signal response, you know that it's a particular element (for this example, 11.8 is Arsenic)
