Name the Serendipitous Discovery

Name the Serendipitous Discovery Serendipity: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable goals not originally sought. For more PowerPoint pre-shows, see: http://murov.info/PPTPreshows.htm

In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M Company, while trying to invent a super strong adhesive, discovered a super weak one instead. He could not find a use for the glue. In 1974, also while at 3M, Arthur Fry was looking for a way to hold bookmarks in his book of hymns. Fry tried Silver’s glue and successfully accomplished his goal. https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/who-invented-sticky-notes The results of the discovery by Silver and the application by Fry was the Post It Note. Those who invest only to get rich will fail. Those who invest to help others will probably succeed.Arthur Fry ? If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. Spencer Silver

In 1948, Swiss engineer and amateur mountaineer George de Mestral went hiking in the woods with his dog. Upon arriving home, he removed the burrs that clung to his clothes and dog. He studied a burr under a microscope only to discover that the burrs were covered in tiny hooks, which allowed them to grab onto clothes and fur that brushed in passing. De Mestral named his invention Velcro, a combination of the words "velvet" and "crochet," and formally patented it in 1955. Though the first Velcro was made from cotton, de Mestral soon discovered that nylon worked best because it didn't wear with use. https://www.livescience.com/34572-velcro.html He developed a product made up of two strips of fabric, one covered in thousands of tiny hooks and the other with thousands of tiny loops. The materials gripped together firmly while still allowing easy release.

26-year old Roy Plunkett was working for DuPont on gases which could be used as coolants in refrigerators. On 4/6/1938, he opened the valve of a cylinder containing about 1kg (2.2 lbs) of the gas tetrafluoroethene, but nothing came out. He poked the valve with a wire but to no avail. He then weighed the cylinder and the weight indicated that it was still full. Eventually he sawed open the cylinder to find that it contained a white, waxy solid. Instead of throwing out the solid, Plunkett checked out the solid and found it to be heat resistant, chemically inert, and to have very low surface friction so that most other substances would not adhere to it. Plunkett realized TFE had polymerized to produce this substance with useful characteristics that eventually found numerous applications. https://eic.rsc.org/news/the-discovery-of-teflon/2020492.article TEFLON The gas molecules of TFE, which each have a carbon-carbon double bond, had polymerized to PTFE.

Returning from holiday on September 3, 1928, Alexander Fleming began to sort through petri dishes containing colonies of Staphylococcus, bacteria that cause boils, sore throats and abscesses. He noticed something unusual on one dish. It was dotted with colonies, save for one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth. The mold was identified as a rare strain of Penicillium notatum and was capable of killing a wide range of harmful bacteria, such as streptococcus, meningococcus and the diphtheria bacillus. However, Fleming and his assistants found the mold was difficult to work with and did not find extraordinary uses for it. In 1939 and the following years, Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and their colleagues at Oxford University were able to develop a method of purifying and delivering the active component, penicillin G, into people and animals. The era of the effective use of antibiotics took off with this discovery and millions if not billions of lives have benefited. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/flemingpenicillin.html more on penicillin on next slide

In contrast to the serendipitous discovery of penicillin, penicillin improvement was planned and successful. Unfortunately, penicillin G is unstable in stomach acid and therefore ineffective taken orally and must be administered via injection. To overcome this issue, ampicillin and amoxicillin were developed with a basic (–NH2,see red arrow)group that makes them stable in acid, orally deliverable and better antibiotics (win-win). Penicillin G Ampicillin Amoxicillin  Penicillin is often prescribed when its use is not warranted. For example, penicillin is not effective against viral diseases. Penicillin and its derivatives have also been overutilized as food additives for feed animals. Inappropriate use has resulted in the evolution of bacteria to penicillin resistant and extremely dangerous bacteria. There are antibiotics of last resort that usually still work for these resistant bacteria but there is an urgent need for newer and better antibiotics.

In 1989, British Pfizer scientists developed a drug that they hoped would be useful in treating high blood pressure and angina, a chest pain associated with coronary heart disease. It was meant to dilate the heart’s blood vessels by blocking a protein called PDE-5. In animal tests, it seemed to work moderately well. It was brought into a phase one clinical trial in the early 1990s, to test whether humans could tolerate the new compound. It appeared that the blood vessels dilating were not in the heart, but rather the penis (dilating blood vessels is part of the process that leads to male sexual arousal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil

In 1965, James M. Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle and Company, was working on a project to discover new treatments for gastric ulcers. One of the steps in his research was to make a dipeptide intermediate, aspartyl-phenylalanine methyl ester. In the course of his work, Schlatter accidentally got a small amount of the compound on his hands without noticing it. Later that morning, he licked his finger and noticed a sweet taste. His curiosity drove him to ask "Where did that sweet taste come from? http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/aspartame/aspartameh.html The substance on Schlatter's finger, 200 times sweeter than sugar, was aspartame, the artificial sweetener known today by the brand names NutraSweet, Equal and Spoonful. Almost 50 years after Schlatter discovered aspartame's incredible sweetness, disagreement still exists among scientists about whether it's safe for human consumption.

Charles Goodyear was a very persistent inventor who had no experience with chemistry. In 1839, he was in his own kitchen trying to make rubber useful and reliable in the industrial world when he happened to throw together the right combination of elements and the right conditions. “He accidentally heated rubber with sulfur and white lead (which accelerated the reaction) to produce a harder material which could withstand changes in temperature.” This process was named Vulcanization after the Roman god Vulcan who is the god of fire. The process was patented in 1844. Goodyear did not benefit financially from his discovery and passed away in debt in 1860. There was also a claim that the process was developed a couple of years earlier by Thomas Hancock but there is some evidence that Hancock benefited from samples prepared by Goodyear. https://www.americanheritage.com/charles-goodyear

When Dr. Constantine Fahlberg was asked how he made this discovery, he said (some sentences cut). “Well, it was partly by accident and partly by study. I had worked a long time on substitution products of coal tar, and had made a number of scientific discoveries, that are, so far as I know, of no commercial value. One evening I was so interested in my laboratory that I forgot about my supper till quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash my hands. I sat down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to my lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet. I accordingly tasted the end of my thumb, and found it surpassed any confectionery I had ever eaten. I saw the whole thing at once. I had discovered some coal tar substance which out-sugared sugar. I dropped my dinner and ran back to the laboratory. There, in my excitement, I tasted the contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the table. Luckily for me, none contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid. “One of them contained an impure solution of _____________ . On this I worked then for weeks and months till I had determined its chemical composition, its characteristics and reactions, and the best modes of making it, scientifically and commercially. https://todayinsci.com/F/Fahlberg_Constantin/FahlbergConstantin-Saccharin.htm SACCHARIN

Discovered in 1976 by scientists from Tate & Lyle, working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at Queen Elizabeth College (now part of King's College London). While researching novel uses of sucrose and its synthetic derivatives, Phadnis was told to "test" a chlorinated sugar compound. Phadnis thought Hough asked him to "taste" it, so he did. He found the compound to be exceptionally sweet (600 times sweeter than sugar). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose Hough Khan Phadnis Notice the difference between sucrose and sucralose is the replacement of 3 hydroxy groups by chlorines. As a result, sucralose is not metabolized by humans.

As an opportunity to make money, a researcher was looking for a substitute for shellac, which is a natural resin that is secreted by the female lac bug. He discovered that if the pressure and temperature were carefully controlled, a polymer could be synthesized from phenol and formaldehyde. On mixing this polymer with fillers, a hard, moldable plastic was formed. This was the first plastic that held its shape after being heated. Other scientists had come across the strange material while experimenting but didn't think it could be useful. The researcher’s name was Leo Baekeland. He obtained a patent in 1909 for his hard moldable plastic and founded the General Bakelite Company in 1910. Soon, the plastic was being used in the production of many diverse products including radios, costume jewelry, and car parts. The Age of Plastics had begun. https://www.globalbeads.com/2011/08/03/bakelite/

This discovery was not serendipitous but extremely important, follows the scientific method, but unfortunately involves the sad abuse of animals. The understanding of diabetes has been developing for thousands of years; even the ancient Greeks knew about it and would diagnose diabetes by tasting urine. While 19th-century physiologists understood that the pancreas had key involvement in processing energy throughout the body, they did not understand the direct role of the pancreas in diabetes until two physiologists removed the pancreas from a dog in 1890. These two scientists observed the development of severe diabetes in the space of 3 weeks. The first physiologist to suggest that the pancreatic islets might be driving the effects on blood sugar control was Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schäfer, who made these claims around 1894. During the first two decades of the 20th century, several investigators prepared extracts of pancreas that were often successful in lowering blood sugar in test animals. However, they were unable to remove impurities, and toxic reactions prevented its use in humans with diabetes. In the spring of 1921, Frederick G. Banting working with J.R. Macleod and Charles Best were able to extract a chemical from the pancreas that reduced the hyperglycemia and glycosuria in dogs made diabetic by the removal of their pancreases. The chemical was found to be successful for treating humans with diabetes. Note: there was considerable feuding about who deserved credit for the discovery.

Robert Augustus Chesebrough, a 22 year-old British chemist, travelled to Titusville, a small Pennsylvania town where petroleum had recently been discovered. Chesebrough, who had been making kerosene from the oil of sperm wales, was eager to learn what other products could be made from petroleum. Shortly after arriving in Titusville he became intrigued by a naturally-occurring byproduct of the oil drilling process that seemed to have remarkable skin-healing properties. While watching the oilmen, Chesebrough took note of how they would smear their skin with the residue from the drill to help heal their cuts and burns. Inspired, Chesebrough began his quest to help heal America’s dry skin. http://www.vaseline.in/article/vaselinestory.html The name Vaseline comes from the German word for water and the Greek word for oil.

It was first synthesized in 1844 by Italian chemist Michele Peyrone. In 1965, Barnett Rosenberg was trying to study the effect electric fields had on bacterial growth. During his experiments, he found bacteria grew 300 times their normal size, a very unusual result, when he used platinum electrodes to generate the electric fields. In the end, he discovered the platinum electrodes were corroding in the test solution, producing __________. Rosenberg published his remarkable findings in the journal Nature and followed this up three years later with another paper showing __________could cure tumors in mice. __________has been used as a treatment for cancer since its approval by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1978. Platinum drugs are now used in 40% of all chemotherapy treatments. This has completely changed how some cancers are treated. For instance, before cisplatin’s discovery the cure rate of testicular cancer was just 10%, but when combined with early detection the cure rate is now approaching 100%. Cis-platinum causes cancer cells to commit suicide. But cisplatin is not without its problems. Its suite of horrible side effects includes severe nausea and vomiting. These two side effects are, in fact, so bad that the drug’s development was almost stopped when it was first tested on people. It was only the invention of effective anti-nausea drugs that led to cisplatin’s approval by drug authorities. http://theconversation.com/happy-50th-anniversary-to-cisplatin-the-drug-that-changed-cancer-treatment-38382

Working for Canon, Ichiro Endo in Japan in 1977 discovered the use of thermal excitation to move ink droplets accidentally in 1977. He was working on a way to apply the piezoelectric effect to transfer ink from the nozzle but realized that the ink came out of a syringe after being heated unintentionally using a soldering iron. The technique was also independently developed by John Vaught, an HP employee in the United States. http://prsync.com/atlantic-inkjet/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-history-of-inkjet-printers-2201563/ https://www.1ink.com/blog/the-history-of-printing/ The process involved the use of many tiny dots of ink, much like a dot matrix printer. However, unlike a dot matrix printer, the dots produced by this device are too small to be seen with the naked eye. There are two primary types of inkjet printers. The first kind, called a bubblejet printer, heats ink inside the nozzle right up to the point of boiling. This forms a bubble that eventually bursts, projecting ink droplets at the paper. The second type of inkjet printer uses piezoelectric crystals to build up pressure. Upon release, the ink inside the chamber is shot out at the page. You might be surprised to learn that the first incarnation of the inkjet printer was invented by the Belfast born, Lord Kelvin, otherwise known as William Thomson, in the 1860’s.

George Crum, who was both African-American and Native American, and a chef employed as a chef at Moon Lake Lodge --an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York was getting complaints from a customer about thick, soggy fried potatoes. Crum wanted to teach the patron a lesson, so he sliced a new batch of potatoes as thin as he possibly could, and then fried them until they were hard and crunchy. Finally, to top them off, he added a generous heaping of salt. To Crum's surprise, the dish ended up being a hit with the patron and a new snack was born.https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/the-surprising-history-of-potato-chips POTATO CHIPS Crum's chips were originally called Saratoga Chips and potato crunches. They were soon packaged and sold in New England - Crum later opened his own restaurant. William Tappendon manufactured and marketed the chips in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1895. In the 1920s, the salesman Herman Lay sold potato chips to the southern USA (selling the chips from the trunk of his car). In 1926, Laura Scudder (who owned a potato chip factory in Monterey Park, California) invented a wax paper potato chip bag to keep the chips fresh and crunchy - this made potato chips even more popular. https://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/page/p/potatochip.shtml

In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. He and his brother Will Keith Kellogg were Seventh Day Adventists, and they were searching for wholesome foods to feed patients that also complied with the Adventists' strict vegetarian diet. (Note: they were apparently trying to find a way to prevent patients from self sexual “sinning”.) When Will accidentally left some boiled wheat sitting out, it went stale by the time he returned. Rather than throw it away, the brothers sent it through rollers, hoping to make long sheets of dough, but they got flakes instead. They toasted the flakes, which were a big hit with patients, and patented them under the name Granose. The brothers experimented with other grains, including corn, and in 1906, Will created the Kellogg's company to sell the product. On principle, John refused to join the company because Will lowered the health benefits of the cereal by adding sugar. https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/9-things-invented-or-discovered-by-accident1.htm John Will

In 1903, a French chemist, painter, bookbinder and fabric designer, Edward Benedictus, was working in his laboratory when he needed to get certain chemicals from a high shelf. Grabbing his ladder, he climbed up to the top shelf, but accidentally knocked over a flask from a shelf below. Looking down at the broken glassware, Benedictus noticed that even though the glass was cracked and broken, it had not shattered. There were no glass shards scattered around the laboratory that could easily cut someone. SAFETY GLASS After investigating, the scientist learned that one of his assistants had been getting slightly lazy with cleaning his glassware and had not completely removed the chemical inside. The solution—cellulose nitrate—was a liquid plastic which had evaporated and coated the interior of the flask with a thin film. This chemical prevented the glass from shattering. At this time, when the development of the automobile was relatively new, Benedictus realized that this new material could greatly increase the safety of vehicles, as most car accidents resulted in the driver being harmed by shattered glass. For more info, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rojSImGBjkw Example of Edward Benedictus’ art

Working for Eastman Kodak, in 1942, Dr Harry Coover was attempting to create crystal clear, plastic based gun sights during WWII. It was during one of his earlier attempts that the plastic he created did not work well for creating the sights but worked excellently at bonding things together. However, he quickly abandoned his discovery as it did not serve a purpose for the project at hand. It would be a further 9 years later in 1951, working as a supervisor on a project to create heat-resistant jet canopies alongside Fred Joyner. Joyner discovered the previous glue that Coover had created and decided to test it by spreading a layer of the glue between two refractor prisms which quickly became permanently bonded. It was at this time that Coover realized the potential of this glue and pushed forwards with his invention. https://www.cedesa.co.uk/who-invented-superglue.html

After the neutron was discovered by Chadwick in 1932, scientists realized that it would make a good probe of the atomic nucleus. In 1934 Enrico Fermi bombarded uranium with neutrons, producing what he thought were the first elements heavier than uranium. Most scientists thought that hitting a large nucleus like uranium with a neutron could only induce small changes in the number of neutrons or protons. However, one chemist, Ida Noddack, pointed out that the uranium might have broken up into lighter elements. Her paper was largely ignored, and no one, not even Noddack herself, followed up on the idea. Following Fermi’s work, Meitner and Hahn, along with chemist Fritz Strassmann, also began bombarding uranium and other elements with neutrons and identifying the series of decay products (e.g., barium and krypton). Hahn carried out the careful chemical analysis; Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch explained the science of the nuclear processes involved. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200712/physicshistory.cfm NUCLEAR FISSION Inappropriately, only Hahn received the Nobel prize for discovering fission. Note the important features about the reaction. 1. one neutron initiates the reaction but in addition to lighter elements energy, 3 neutrons are produced enabling a chain reaction. 2. U-235 amounts to only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium and it is very difficult to separate from non-fissionable U-238. Enrico Fermi Hahn Meitner Strassmann

Vin Mariani , a coca wine developed in Europe created by Angelo Mariani in 1863, was introduced in the U.S. in the 1880’s. In the U.S., Dr. John S. Pemberton in 1884, based on Vin Mariani, produced French Wine Coca but he discontinued making it the following year when Atlanta passed legislation preventing the manufacturing or sale of alcohol in the city. Pemberton went back to the drawing board and in 1886 he developed a new medicine consisting of coca leaves and kola nut extracts, sugar and other ingredients. The result was a syrup that his partner Frank Robinson gave its current name _______. The exact amount of cocaine that was used in the original recipe is not certain, which at the time was not illegal nor unusual for patent medicines. The amount of cocaine was decreased considerably over the years. The label claimed that it was an exhilarating fountain drink as well as a cure for nervous disorders, including sick headaches, neuralgia, hysteria and melancholy. Asa Candler—also a pharmacist from Atlanta—purchased Coca-Cola from Pemberton and created the Coca-Cola Company in 1892. When Candler began advertising Coke as a beverage, making it available at lunch counters across America, the drink still contained a trace of cocaine. Obviously, the Coca-Cola you buy today does not contain cocaine—but it remained an ingredient well into the 1900s. But by 1929, with public pressure and Prohibition against alcohol in full force, the company was forced to remove all traces of cocaine. Coke soon became popular as a “soft drink,” an alternative to alcohol. https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/coca-colas-scandalous-past

In the mid-nineteenth century, the British Empire was adding colonies in tropical areas, where more and more soldiers were contracting malaria. The only medical remedy that existed at the time was quinine, a natural substance expensive to obtain. It was urgent to find a way to synthesize it artificially in the laboratory. Focused on the task were the young student William Henry Perkin (12 March 1838 – 14 July 1907) and his professor, the celebrated German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann. During the Easter vacation of 1856, while Hofmann was visiting his family, Perkin tried a new idea in the small laboratory of his house in London: oxidize another known compound (aniline) to obtain quinine. He did not succeed and the experiment left behind a solid blackish precipitate in the beaker. While trying to clean up the result of his mistake with alcohol, Perkin noticed that the material contained a substance with a purplish hue. At the age of only 18, without intending to do so, he had just obtained the world’s first synthetic dye. Perkin von Hofmann Today we know the dye by several names: aniline purple, mauveine, purple aniline or Perkin’s mallow or mauve.

Although Röntgen’s lab records were burned at his request when he died, many people have speculated about the sequence of events leading to his discovery. On November 8, 1895, Röntgen was experimenting with cathode rays to test a phenomenon of light. Röntgen had set up a florescent screen and a Crookes tube, wrapped in black cardboard to cover its florescence – when he noticed a green glow about a meter away. The cathode rays should not have been able to reach the screen, but they did. Even when Röntgen attempted to block the glow, the screen still glowed. He had discovered a new form of electromagnetic radiation - but because he did not know what it was, he simply called it ____. He was wise enough to recognize he'd found something new and important and he continued to study it. Röntgen didn't leave his laboratory for the next six weeks while he deepened his knowledge and research into this chance find. He stayed there, working, even though his apartment was on a floor above the lab. The image (lower right) is the first x-ray Roentgen ever created. It is an image of his wife's hand - you can see her wedding ring. "X.“ X-rays The early x-ray machines used very hazardous doses of radiation. Current machines are relatively safe. For stories about early x-rays, see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3520298/

In 1896 Henri Becquerel was using naturally fluorescent minerals to study the properties of x-rays, which had been discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. He exposed potassium uranyl sulfate to sunlight and then placed it on photographic plates wrapped in black paper, believing that the uranium absorbed the sun’s energy and then emitted it as x-rays. This hypothesis was disproved on the 26th-27th of February, when his experiment "failed" because it was overcast in Paris. For some reason, Becquerel decided to develop his photographic plates anyway. To his surprise, the images were strong and clear, proving that the uranium emitted radiation without an external source of energy such as the sun. Becquerel had discovered _____________. RADIOACTIVITY A photographic plate made by Henri Becquerel shows the effects of exposure to radioactivity. A metal Maltese cross, placed between the plate and radioactive uranium salt, left a clearly visible shadow on the plate.

In the 1930s, Noah McVicker worked for his family’s soap company called Kutol Products. There, he made a new kind of wallpaper cleaner. It looked like putty and was made of flour, water, salt, and many other ingredients. McVicker’s cleaner was excellent for wallpaper. It didn’t contain any toxic chemicals and it could also be reused. Better yet, it didn’t stain the wallpaper. Teachers found a way to use the wallpaper cleaner at school. They realized it was great for making art and craft projects. In fact, it worked as a modeling compound much like clay. Students could shape the soft material with their hands. Then, they could turn it into something else or let it dry! Years later, Noah McVicker’s nephew, Joseph McVicker, joined the company. He’s the one who learned that teachers were using the wallpaper cleaner for arts and crafts. Joseph suggested giving the product a new name___________. Then, he marketed it to schools and department stores. Play-Doh

Two researchers from Procter & Gamble were simply looking for a way to increase premature babies' fat intake. The result of such a study was a molecule composed of sucrose and fatty-acids, otherwise known as sucrose polyester. Procter & Gamble found its current use as a vegetable oil that can fry foods without adding fat or calories. Olestra was believed to be a great discovery because its many fatty acids are so tightly packed around the core of the molecule that enzymes and bacteria cannot digest or break down. This means they can travel through the digestive system without being absorbed and therefore the body never takes in any of the fat or calories it contains. In addition, because olestra is a fatty molecule; it "can bind to cholesterol, vitamins, and other fat-soluble molecules" (www.cspinet.org/olestra/history.html ). Olestra has been shown to cause side effects in the form of gastrointestinal problems, as well as weight gain — instead of weight loss — on lab rats. The U.K. and Canada are two places that have banned this fat substitute from their food markets.

Nitrous oxide , or laughing gas, was discovered in 1772 by Joseph Priestley. In 1799 another British scientist, Humphry Davy, discovered that it made him laugh, and feel less pain - hence its nickname of ‘laughing gas’. In 1842, Dr. Crawford Long of Georgia used ether to perform the first painless surgery. Dr. Horace Wells attempted to demonstrate painless dentistry under nitrous oxide in 1844 but the patient woke during the procedure and so its use was abandoned. Ether was successfully used in 1846 by Dr. William Morton at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was difficult to use but was an effective anesthetic. James Simpson pioneered the use of chloroform as an anesthetic and it quickly replaced ether. Both ether and chloroform were administered by inhalation - local anesthetics were not introduced until 1877.. Discovery of anesthesia. Ether Chloroform Dr. Morton is often given credit for developing the use of anesthetics during surgery, but the history of anesthetics is much more complex.

Like on Jeopardy, the answer in advance is “smart dust.” But what is smart dust? Sometimes extraordinary things can emerge from apparent disaster. As University of California, San Diego, graduate student Jamie Link was working on a silicon chip, the chip fell to pieces. However, she discovered that the broken pieces could still work as sensors, resulting in the first self-assembling, programmable silicon particles. Nicknamed "smart dust," each particle is a mirrored surface that can stick to a desired target and change color to signal what it has found. Today, the dust is used for detecting biological agents and in treating tumors. Jamie Link, a graduate student in chemistry and biochemistry at UCSD, is among 100 of the world's top young innovators, as selected by MIT's Technology Review magazine — one of 30 women so honored and, at 26, the youngest member of the prestigious group. Link also won, in 2003, the $50,000 grand prize in the Collegiate Inventors Competition for developing "smart dust" sensors, tiny silicon chips that can be used for environmental testing, medical diagnostics and research, drug delivery and many other commercial, medical and scientific applications.

Wilson Greatbatch was an inveterate inventor, with more than 150 patents to his name. It was in 1956, while working at Buffalo, that he made his most important discovery, the result of a fortuitous error. Working on a heart-rhythm recorder, he mistakenly added an incorrect electronic component, so that the device produced electrical pulses instead of simply recording them. Recalling the event later, he said "I stared at the thing in disbelief", having realized at once that he had found a way to electrically simulate and stimulate a heart-beat. Before this time, PACEMAKERS were bulky, external units which required the use of mains power, as battery technology had not yet advanced sufficiently to allow implantation. Over the following two years he managed to miniaturize and package the device, culminating in a successful demonstration of the invention in a dog, in May 1958. By 1960 the pacemaker had been implanted in the first human patient, a 77-year-old man, who went on to live for a further 18 months. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/wilson-greatbatch-inventor-of-the-implantable-cardiac-pacemaker-2363206.html Wilson Greatbatch holding a 1980s implantable pacemaker, left, and the original one that he invented in the 1950s.

"Percy Spencer loved nature (due to his childhood in Maine)... especially his little friends the squirrels and the chipmunks," the younger Spencer says of his grandfather, "so he would always carry a peanut cluster bar in his pocket to break up and feed them during lunch. He was testing a military-grade magnetron, the high-powered vacuum tubes inside radars, and suddenly realized the peanut cluster bar in his pocket had melted. Understandably curious just what the heck had happened, Spencer ran another test with the magnetron. This time he put an egg underneath the tube. Moments later, it exploded, covering his face in egg. "I always thought that this was the origin of the expression 'egg in your face'," Rod Spencer laughs. The following day, Percy Spencer brought in corn kernels, popped them with his invention, and shared some popcorn with the entire office. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a19567/how-the-microwave-was-invented-by-accident/ The microwave oven was born.

Adhesive tape (specifically masking tape) was invented in the 1920's by Richard Drew of Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, Co. (3M). The idea for what became ____tape came from Vesta Stoudt, an ordnance-factory worker and mother of two Navy sailors, who worried that problems with ammunition box seals would cost soldiers precious time in battle. She wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943 with the idea to seal the boxes with a fabric tape, which she had tested at her factory. The letter was forwarded to the War Production Board, who put Johnson & Johnson on the job. The original use was to keep moisture out of the ammunition cases. Because it was waterproof, people referred to the tape as "Duck Tape." Also, the tape was made using cotton duck - similar to what was used in their cloth medical tapes. Military personnel quickly discovered that the tape was very versatile and used it to fix their guns, jeeps, aircraft, etc. After the war, the tape was used in the booming housing industry to connect heating and air conditioning duct work together and the alternate name, duct tape resulted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duct_tape

Examples of web sites used as sources for this presentation are at: https://www.storypick.com/inventions-made-by-mistake/ https://owlcation.com/stem/Serendipity-The-Role-of-Chance-in-Making-Scientific-Discoveries http://mentalfloss.com/article/53646/24-important-scientific-discoveries-happened-accident https://www.sciencealert.com/these-eighteen-accidental-scientific-discoveries-changed-the-world https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/g1216/10-awesome-accidental-discoveries/ • For more PowerPoint pre-shows, see: • http://murov.info/PPTPreshows.htm SERENDIPITY: AN AWESOME ACCIDENT

Name the Serendipitous Discovery