Question:easy
The walls of a CT scanner room are coated with:
The walls of a CT scanner room are coated with:
Show Hint
Think dense, high atomic number, cheap, and easy to roll into sheets.
Updated On: Jun 24, 2026
- Lead
- Glass
- Tungsten
- Iron
Show Solution
The Correct Option is A
Solution and Explanation
Shielding a CT room is a radiation-protection problem. The wall lining has to stop scattered X-rays from reaching people outside, so the right material absorbs photons strongly while staying affordable and easy to install.
The physics favours dense, high atomic number elements because photoelectric absorption climbs steeply with atomic number. Lead, at atomic number 82, ticks every box: it attenuates X-rays in a thin layer, costs little, and bends into sheets that are sandwiched into walls, doors, and around windows as leaded glass.
Eliminate the rest. Plain glass barely attenuates X-rays and is reserved for the leaded viewing pane. Tungsten is superb at stopping photons and is used for the tube target and collimators, but it is too hard and costly to clad an entire room. Iron is denser than concrete yet far weaker than lead per millimetre, so it is not the coating of choice.
The practical, standard answer for diagnostic X-ray and CT suites is therefore lead.
\[\boxed{\text{Lead}}\]
The physics favours dense, high atomic number elements because photoelectric absorption climbs steeply with atomic number. Lead, at atomic number 82, ticks every box: it attenuates X-rays in a thin layer, costs little, and bends into sheets that are sandwiched into walls, doors, and around windows as leaded glass.
Eliminate the rest. Plain glass barely attenuates X-rays and is reserved for the leaded viewing pane. Tungsten is superb at stopping photons and is used for the tube target and collimators, but it is too hard and costly to clad an entire room. Iron is denser than concrete yet far weaker than lead per millimetre, so it is not the coating of choice.
The practical, standard answer for diagnostic X-ray and CT suites is therefore lead.
\[\boxed{\text{Lead}}\]
Was this answer helpful?
0
