Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Monguce t1_iuhqqcj wrote

Reply to comment by intervenroentgen in Is there such a thing as a gamma radiation mirror? by AlarmingAffect0

I had always wondered why it had to rotate. That makes far more sense than I expected!

You know how something can be opaque, translucent or transparent?

Shouldn't the equivalent terms for radioactivity be something like radio-opaque, transradiant and... Urm... transparent?

Radiolucent means radio-light, which sort of sounds like nonsense. Translucent means light gets through. Shouldn't it be transradiant?

Just wondering.

2

intervenroentgen t1_iuipl9x wrote

-lucent as a suffix can have broad definitions. I work in the medical industry. I went to school for and worked as a radiologic technologist for years. Radiolucent and radiopaque were the standard terms used in radiology by both technologists and radiologists (ie: “the X-ray shows multiple radiolucent lesions”)

There may be more technically correct terms from a physician standpoint, but at this point it’s an established set of terms use in medicine. I’d be interested to see if it was terms used initially because of its time period and the definition of -lucent adapted to reflect that over time, or if it’s just terms used by tradition, which does happen.

1