Brilliant Blunders: 15 Science Mistakes To Be Thankful For
November 3, 2008
We all use science all the time. People come up with cures, devices and pills that make things happen or stop things from happening. Often, we have to take something to counteract the side effects from something else that we’re taking for our actual problem. Not all of science comes from great brains making great discoveries. The rest of it comes from people who just goofed – but it turned out all right.
Here are the top fifteen science mishaps we can all be thankful for:
1. Penicillin
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| We’ve got Alexander Fleming to thank for this one. What you probably didn’t know, though, is that he sneezed in a Petri dish where he was working on something else and found penicillin by accident. If it wasn’t for his mucus, who knows how long it would have been before the antibiotic would have shown up? |
2. Phosphorus
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| This came from a German scientist – Henning Brand – who set fire to dried urine. Yes. He kept buckets of urine in his basement, believing that there would be gold residue left in them when all the liquid evaporated. He was wrong, and the whole thing spontaneously caught on fire. |
3. Viagra
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| When angina suffers were given a drug trial over in Wales in 1992 they still had chest pains. The men in the group, however, found that they also had something else. This was a side effect they could live with, so the drug was re-marketed with the side effect as the main goal, and other things as side effects. |
4. Fireworks
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| The Chinese, in an effort to ensure that they lived long and healthy lives, mixed up a concoction of sulfur, saltpeter, realgar, and dried honey. They didn’t live any longer because of it, but they did make gunpowder, and they used it to make lots of amazing fireworks. |
5. Teflon
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| Roy Plunkett, a chemist from DuPont, opened a canister of tetrafluoroethylene gas. It was defective, and the white powder he found in it was almost friction-free. Teflon was created, but eventually it lost popularity because it had cancer-causing chemicals in it, many of which are in the bloodstreams of about 95% of the American population. |
6. Coca-Cola
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| Pharmacist and doctor John Pemberton made up a concoction of plant leaves and nuts way back in 1886. It was used to help relieve stress, headaches and things like that. When someone who wasn’t paying attention accidentally put soda water in it instead of regular water, though, the fizzy little drink started to catch on. |
7. Pacemaker
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| Yep, that’s right. The thing that’s powering a lot of people’s hearts today comes from an accident. John Hopps, an electrical engineer in the Navy, was trying to find a way to quickly warm up hypothermic people. He got more than he bargained for when he realized the device sent electrical impulses that could actually restart someone’s heart. Another doctor later improved on it to make it smaller and keep it from burning patients’ skin. It’s been working (and being improved upon) ever since. |
8. The Microwave Oven
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| Percy Spencer was working on improving radar when he realized that the chocolate bar he had in his pocket melted. He kept experimenting and finally created one that was big, bulky, and could only be used in restaurants, airplanes, and ships for re-warming food. |
9. Chocolate chip cookies
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| Ruth Wakefield of Massachusetts wasn’t too good at the laws of physics, which is great news for cookie lovers everywhere. She put chunks of chocolate into her butter cookie dough because she thought that they would melt and make chocolate biscuits. They didn’t. |
10. Silly Putty
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| Scientists trying to figure out a substitute for rubber during WWII ended up making a gooey, bouncy substance that ended up failing as a rubber substitute but became an enormous winner when it came to a toy for kids. |
11. Sticky notes
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| A 3M researcher was trying to improve adhesive tape. He got some semi-sticky stuff that wouldn’t work, but he knew he was onto something. Then he had to wait four long years before he realized that it was perfect to stick on the back of paper – it even held his bookmark when he sang in the church choir. |
12. Scotchgard
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| It’s a great substance and we all love it, but it wasn’t intended to exist when things got started. Instead, the researcher was looking for synthetic rubber for airplane fuel lines. Some of it spilled onto the shoe of her assistant and it wouldn’t come off. The shoe got old and dingy, but the part with the substance on it, didn’t. After three long years of fiddling around with it, Scotchgard was born. |
13. Chocolate
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| The Aztecs invented chocolate over 3,000 years ago. The catch is, they were trying to make beer instead, which also would have been popular. The chocolate was originally used as a celebratory beverage, much like we would use beer today. |
14. Cornflakes
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| A doctor looking to help his vegetarian patients have more to eat ended up leaving a pot of boiling wheat to stand. It was put through a rolling process and baked, and he got the crispy little flakes that we know and love today. |
15. Rubber
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| All that rubber that rolls down the road each day on the wheels of cars and trucks showed up because of Charles Goodyear. He was playing around with some gum elastic and he dropped rubber mixed with sulfur onto a hot stove. That’s how he discovered the vulcanization process. |
Well, now you know. The 15 greatest scientific inventions that almost never were, probably shouldn’t have been, and that we’re glad we have anyway.
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