Let’s proceed to the list of accidental scientific discoveries and inventions made by mistake. Insider Monkey has recently published an exciting article about it. In order to explain the role of so called “accidental” discoveries played in the history of science, you can see that it is actually very high percentage of “accidental” discoveries in science – round 30% of discoveries happen by mistake or accident. While looking for some explanation or discovery there are a lot of unexpected things occurring in the way of scientific research, some of them being serendipitous and some just show up on their own. So whatever role the accidental had in science, there are surely many of those inventions made by mistake that had changed the world we live in. Some of these include accidental discoveries in physics, chemistry and on many other fields as we will see.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked two accidental scientific discoveries and inventions made by mistake from their list.
The first one is Teflon. Teflon is yet another of scientific discoveries and inventions made by mistake. It was invented by Roy J. Plunket in 1938 while experimenting with tetrafluoroethylene gas in order to research some new chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants. So, he stored the tetrafluoroethylene gas in huge cylinders, and one day he realized there was no gas left in them, but instead he found a white powder. After he investigated it, he realized that it was very friction and heat resistant. So he decided to polymerize this substance, creating what we now know and use in everyday life as Teflon. The second one should be Safety Glass that was invented in 1903 when Édouard Bénédictus, one versatile man, accidentally dropped a glass bottle and it didn’t break. So he decided to investigate the case and realized that there was some plastic cellulose which had dried on the bottle and saved it from breaking. After some years of experimenting, he patented his first laminated glass in 1909. At last, but not least we are mentioning Smart Dust. It is among the most recent accidental discoveries and inventions made by mistake. But first, what is smart dust? It is a bunch of microelectromechanical systems such as sensors or mini devices which detect light, vibration, or chemicals for example. It was invented unexpectedly by a graduate student in 2003 while destroying a silicon chip and in this way creating miniature programmable silicon particles named smart dust.
For any further useful information, read Insider Monkey’s article about 16 accidental scientific discoveries and inventions made by mistake.
