Lucky Lab Accidents
You’d be surprised at how often science meets serendipity. Without happy lab accidents, we might never have discovered phosphorous or penicillin. Moreover, once an experiment’s been conducted, not even the most prescient of researchers can foresee its every impact. Who could’ve predicted, for instance, that a kerosene test would help out sperm whales? Necessity may be the mother of invention, but—as we’ll see—Lady Luck often guides the way.
1. THE GOAL: SYNTHETIC RUBBER // THE RESULT: AMERICA’S FAVORITE TOY
In World War II, the allied forces were handicapped by a severe rubber shortage. By occupying a swath of rubber-producing countries in southeast Asia, Japan had put a stranglehold on the commodity. For Britain and America, this was a serious blow. Without rubber, it would be impossible to equip their troops with such vital supplies as truck tires or gas masks. Enter an American engineer based in New Haven, Connecticut, who tried to produce a In 1823, Faraday took a v-shaped glass tube and filled it with chlorine hydrate. He then simultaneously heated one side while cooling the other, in an attempt to prove the theory that gasses could be liquefied if introduced to low temperatures or high pressures. After a while, he noticed a peculiar liquid at the bottom of his container. Ever inquisitive, Faraday gently cracked open the tube. What followed was a sudden, forceful blast that sent glass shards every which way. In the aftermath, Faraday learned two things. For starters, internal pressure must have converted his chlorine hydrate into a liquid. Also, the explosion had somehow cooled down the air around him. Without meaning to, he’d just planted the seeds for the technology behind today’s iceboxes, freezers, and refrigerators.
6. THE GOAL: EXPERIMENT WITH GLASS // THE RESULT: YOUR STOVETOP
A temperature snafu was arguably the best thing that ever happened to one New York-based chemist in 1953. While tinkering with some photosensitive glass, the scientist placed a sample into a furnace and set it to 600°C—or so he thought. Then he took a breather. “When I came back, the temperature gauge was stuck on 900 degrees and I thought I’d wrecked the furnace,” he later recalled. Immediately, he pulled out the glass, which had somehow turned milky white and rock-hard. Lo and behold, his blooper created the world’s first glass-ceramic, which has since been used in everything from glass stovetops to the noses of guided missiles.
7. THE GOAL: WEIGH THE EARTH // THE RESULT: A CRUCIAL MAPMAKING TOOL
Science doesn’t get much more ambitious than this. In 1774, British astronomer Nevil Maskelyne set out to calculate the mass of our home planet. How could he possibly pull that off? Maskelyne’s strategy was two-fold. First, he determined the exact percentage of the earth’s surface that’s covered by the Schiehallion mountain in central Scotland. Afterward, his team spent 17 arduous weeks measuring Schiehallion’s every slope and cranny. This allowed Maskelyne to estimate the mountain’s mass—and, from there, the world’s. For the record, he concluded that earth has a mass of 4.5 x 1024 kilograms. Modern science puts that number at 5.98 x 1024 kilograms. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Maskelyne’s right-hand man was mathematician Charles Hutton. To help their crew go about the whole mountain-measuring business, Hutton invented “contour lines.” A series of concentric circles, these connect points of equal elevation on maps. Over 200 years later, cartographers are still using them.
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