Backscatter

Backscatter is like playing catch with your friend. When you throw a ball to your friend, they catch it and throw it back to you. Sometimes when you throw the ball, it bounces off your friend's hands or body and comes back to you instead of going where it was supposed to.

This bouncing back is similar to what happens with backscatter. In this case, instead of a ball and a friend, we have a beam of light or other radiation and an object in its path. When the beam hits the object, some of the radiation bounces back in the opposite direction. This is called backscatter.

Backscatter is used in a lot of things, like X-ray machines at the airport. These machines send out a beam of radiation that can pass through your clothes and detect if you have anything hidden under them. When the radiation hits the object, some of it bounces back and is detected by the machine. This is how the machine knows if you have anything hidden.

Backscatter can also be used in things like radar, where it helps detect objects at a distance. The radar sends out a beam of radio waves, which bounce off objects and return to the radar as backscatter. This backscatter can be used to determine the distance and speed of the object, which is useful for things like detecting airplanes or ships.

Overall, backscatter is a way that radiation can bounce back after hitting an object. It's used in things like X-ray machines and radar to help detect hidden objects and identify things at a distance.