Sunday, April 13, 2008

Braking radiation(bremstrahlung rad)


pic taken from: www.rstp.uwaterloo.ca
A car with KE slow down resulting in heat generated. Similarly a electron with kinetic energy emits photon(Xray) when it slows down.The energy of the Xray photon has to be less than or equal to the incident KE of the electron. This accounts for maximum value for the photon hence a limiting minimum wavelength of the photon.