well, you already know that vandaagraph machine is a type of particle accelerator. a vand graph machine is one. one of the earliest examples of particle accelerators that were also called atom smashers, because the accelerated particles would be smashed into a target material to see what would be created as a result of this high-speed impact. in this case, the result of smashing protons into our archaeological sample is x-ray emissions of different energy levels, but why? well, this high-speed protons can cause inner. sell electrons of atoms to be knocked out of its orbit, which is then replaced by an electron from higher energy level and higher orbits. as the electron moves down a level, some energy is released in the form of x-ray, but the x-ray emitted by different elements have different energy levels that are detected by our x-ray detector and the pi-xe system to determine what types of elements exist within our sample with no damage to it whatsoever. now that you know how the pixie technique works and allows us to determine what material, what element is insid