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Scientific Discoveries
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Archimedes' Principle |
Archimedes was busy thinking about
how to find out whether the king's
crown was made of solid gold. He
suddenly understood that the volume
of water displaced is equal to the
volume of a subject submerged after
he had stepped into a batch. |
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Newton's Law of Gravity |
Isaac
Newton was sitting beneath an apple
tree contemplating the mysterious
universe when the notion of
gravitation came into his mind. It
was occasioned by the fall of an
apple. "Why should that apple always
descend perpendicularly to the
ground?" thought Newton to himself. |
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X-Rays |
Wilhelm Roentgen, a physicist, was
working with a cathode ray tube.
Despite the fact that the tube was
covered, he saw that a nearby
fluorescent screen would glow when
the tube was on and the room was
dark. Roentgen tried to block the
rays, but most things that he placed
in front of them didn't seem to make
a difference. When he placed his
hand in front of the tube, he
noticed he could see his bones in
the image that was projected on the
screen. |
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Radioactivity |
Intrigued by the discovery of
x-rays, Henri Becquerel decided to
investigate the connection between
them and phosphorescence. Becquerel
tried to expose photographic plates
using uranium salts. He thought he
needed sunlight to complete his
experiment, but the sky was
overcast. He stored his items and
decided to wait for a sunny day. To
his surprise he discovered the
photographic plates were exposed
despite the lack of light. |
Invention of New Products
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Champagne |
Dom
Perignon, a monk, invented Champagne
when a bottle of wine accidentally
had a secondary fermentation. |
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Coca Cola |
John Pemberton, the inventor of the
Coca-Cola, just wanted to cure
headaches. A pharmacist by
profession, Pemberton used two main
ingredients in his hopeful headache
cure: coca leaves and cola nuts.
When his lab assistant accidentally
mixed the two with carbonated water,
the world's first Coke was the
result. |
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Cornflakes |
When Will Keith Kellogg cooked meals
for patients at the Sanitarium at
which he worked, he ended up
accidentally stumbling across the
recipe for Corn Flakes after leaving
some bread dough sitting out for
several hours. Upon finding the
flaky dough he decided to see what
would happen so he baked it anyway. |
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Dynamite |
Alfred
Nobel accidentally discovered
dynamite. Nitroglycerin was becoming
a widely produced explosive, but it
had some serious problems. It was
unstable and regularly blew up
everything around. While working
with nitroglycerin one afternoon, a
vial slipped out of Nobel's hand,
yet there was no explosion because
the nitroglycerin landed in sawdust,
which soaked it up. Nobel was later
able to explode the sawdust, and
concluded that mixing the
nitroglycerin with an inert
substance stabilized it. |
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Microwave |
Percy
Spencer walked in front of a
magnetron, a vacuum tube used to
generate microwaves, and noticed
that the chocolate bar in his pocket
melted. After a few more
experiments, Spencer successfully
invented the first microwave oven. |
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Penicillin |
Biologist Alexander Fleming took a
vacation from his day-to-day work in
the lab investigating staphylococci.
Upon his return, the scientist found
a strange fungus on a culture he had
left in his lab ‒ a fungus that had
killed off all surrounding bacteria
in the culture. |
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Plastic |
Chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland tried
to invent a cheaper insulation
material/ What he came up with
however, was a moldable material
that could be heated to extremely
high temperatures without being
distorted. |
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Potato Chips |
George
Crum, a chef, accidentally invented
potato chips when an annoying patron
kept sending his French-fried
potatoes back to the kitchen because
they were soggy. In an attempt to
teach the customer a lesson, Crum
sliced them extra thin, fried them
to a crisp and drowned them in salt.
To his surprise, the complaining
customer liked them. |
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Post-it Note |
Dr. Spencer Silver, a scientist at
3M, was attempting to develop a
super-strong adhesive. Instead he
accidentally created a "low-tack",
reusable, pressure-sensitive
adhesive. |
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Saccharin |
Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist
trying to find alternative uses for
coal tar, came home after a long day
of work only to notice that his
wife’s biscuits tasted a lot
sweeter. After asking her about it
he realized he hadn’t washed his
hands after work. |
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Safety Glass |
After
Édouard Bénédictus, a chemist,
accidentally knocked a flask off of
his desk it fell to the ground but
rather than shattering it only
cracked. Upon closer inspection he
realized that it had recently
contained plastic cellulose nitrate
which had coated the inside of it
and kept it from coming apart on
impact. |
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Teflon |
Roy
Plunkett, a chemist, accidentally
stumbled across the non reactive, no
stick chemical while experimenting
with refrigerants. |
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Velcro |
On a
hiking trip, Georges de Mestral
found burrs clinging to his pants
and also to his dog's fur. On closer
inspection, he found that the burr's
hooks would cling to anything
loop-shaped. This accidental
discovery led him to invention of
hook and loop fasteners.
>>> |
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Viagra |
Pfizer
originally introduced the chemical
slatternly, the active drug in
Viagra, as a heart medication.
During clinical trials the drug
proved ineffective for heart
conditions. But men noted that the
medication seemed to cause another
effect ‒ stronger and longer lasting
erections. |
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Vulcanized Rubber |
Charles Goodyear had spent ages
trying to find a way to make rubber
resistant to heat and cold. After a
number of failed attempts he finally
stumbled across a mixture that
worked. Before turning out the
lights one evening he accidentally
spilled some rubber, sulfur, and
lead onto a stove resulting in a
mixture that charred and hardened
but could still be used. |
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