Oprah Winfrey once said, “I feel that
luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” It turns out that most of the
scientific discoveries were strokes of serendipity made by scientists on an
alternative quest. And we can take comfort in the fact that genius arrives not
by choice but by chance to these inventors who have changed the world in one
way or the other. Here are the three inventions that owe as much to luck as
judgment and the science behind them!
The big bang
It has been 50 years since the ground
breaking discovery about how our universe was formed is known. But surprisingly
it was not an ‘aha’ moment for the Nobel Prize winners Amo Penzias and Robert
Wilson. Instead it was a story of frustration! They both were frustrated that
their telescope which they used to observe the space was not functioning
properly. It was giving this background noise which made them think if a pigeon
was trapped inside it; it was polluting the data they were really after.
But, later they realized that this
noise was actually traces of some of the earliest light also known as the
cosmic microwave background radiation. How did the duo find this left over
light from 13.7 billion years ago?
The science is that when the universe
cooled enough from the initial hot and dense state, it allowed photons to flow
freely throughout the cosmos. This light has been travelling since then and
showed up as up as static on Bell Labs’ six-meter Horn Antenna radio telescope.
The persisting light formed radio and micro waves that matched the predictions
of the 1920 big bang theory.
Thus, this discovery was the first evidence that the universe started off compact and is expanding ever since!
Thus, this discovery was the first evidence that the universe started off compact and is expanding ever since!
Stainless Steel
What can a wrong mixture of elements
can do to humanity is called Stainless Steel. As the name suggests this form of
steel is more resistant to corrosion than any other alloy steel with varying
carbon percentage.
Although, steel was invented way
before stainless steel, it was by accident that Harry Brearley a chemist
discovered this most important metal in 1913. Harry was given a responsibility
to develop a steel alloy that could withstand extreme heat inside a rifle
barrel, while doing so, he started making different combinations of alloys
using different combinations chromium and carbon. Accidently his eyes rolled
onto a still shiny and bright metal piece that had sustained corrosion and dug
up the formula for ‘rustless steel’ or stainless steel as we know it to be 12%
chromium.
How did 12% chromium protect the
steel from rusting?
When exposed to friction heat in the
rifle barrel, this steel formed a sheet of oxygen around it and protected it
from rusting. High chromium content steel sustained the routine acid test
making Harry realize the potential of his discovery!
The stainless steel that we use today
has high amount of chromium and carbon. They both oxidize at the
decarburization of melt at temperature greater than 122 degree Celsius when
both the elements are in pure state. Thus, stainless steel is formed at all
temperatures above 1800 degree Celsius when carbon oxidation occurs.
Chromite, FeCr2O4, is extensively
used for extraction of chromium in a stainless steel ore. A low carbon
ferrochrome formed by the reduction of chromite with coke in an arc furnace is
used to produce steel that is stainless and hard!
Penicillin
No accident story is complete without
Penicillin, and it is for Sir Alexander Fleming that we could survive small
infections since 1929! This story is retold a million times, Sir Fleming went a
vacation in midst of a never ending search for a magical drug that cures all
diseases and came back to discover a mould growing on his petri dishes. When he
left, the dishes were covered in colonies of bacteria, except around the area
where the mold was growing. And this area was free of bacteria like the
mold had blocked the bacteria from growing any further. But do you know the
science behind it? Let’s strain!
Since Fleming was working with a
particular strain of bacteria called as Staphylococcus, one petri dish which
was accidentally left open had a mold growing on it, but what was unusual was
that there was no bacterium around the mold. He took the ingredients of the
mould and grew a pure fresh culture which was identified as Penicillium notatu.
Later, while describing the filtrate
and the broth culture he coined the term ‘Penicillin’ and grew it with gram
positive as well as gram negative bacteria and fungi. The bacterium was lysed
and penicillin was started to be used as a disinfectant since it was highly
potent, has minimum toxicity and also plays a vital role in isolating Bacillus
influenza.
A decade later, Howard Florey and
Ernst Chain dug deep into Fleming’s research and isolated powdered penicillin
from the mould in a process that involves freeze drying Penicillin and then
subjecting it to ice evaporation under vacuum. All the three researchers
won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1945.
Besides being discovered by accident,
there is one more thing common in these discoveries and it is keen observation.
All the scientists who are victims to these happy accidents had an eye
for detail and keenly looked into the failed experiments and made progress.
We fondly call all the progress by accident, serendipity.
