Not all important findings made by the human being have been the result of their effort and dedication, much less.Some of the most important discoveries in history have not been born as a result of the scientific method but luck has had much to say.
Penicillin, Teflon or dynamics are some of those elements that were discovered by accident, as well as hundreds of other things that make everyday life more safe, simple or convenient, pleasant, healthy or interesting.Everyone has reached the world as a result of serendipia, that is, the gift of finding valuable or pleasant things not sought or the power to make lucky and unexpected discoveries by accident.
The word serendipia was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 after reading the story about the adventures of "The three princes of Serendip", which were always making discoveries due to accident and insight of things that had not been raised.
Many of the people who have been blessed with these types of events are not ashamedIt usually says "luck must be sought" and you don't have to belittle the fact that being in a timely manone.
One of the first examples collected in history, and perhaps the most famous, took place in the third century BC.C. And he is in charge, neither more nor less than Archimedes.The Greek mathematician lived in Syracuse (current Sicily) at that time, King Hierón had commissioned a goldsmith a pure gold crown but upon receiving it finished he doubted whether the material used corresponded to everyone who had given the manufacturer.He then contacted the scientist and offered him the task of revealing if the crown was pure gold and contained all the precious metal that the king had given the jeweler.It goes without saying that the chemical analysis was not as advanced at that time as mathematics and Archimedes was, after all, mathematician and engineer.
He had previously calculated mathematical formulas for the volumes of regular solids such as spheres and cylinders so he realized that if he could determine the volume of the King's crown would be able to find out if the crown was made of pure gold or aMix of gold with other metals, what I didn't know was how to get it.
Thinking about how to solve this problem, Archimedes went to the public bathrooms of Syracuse.When he got into the bathtub, when he saw out of the water on the top of the bathroom, he realized that the volume of the leftway to calculate the volume of any irregular solid object, whether a foot or a crown.So, if the crown put in a container full of water, it could measure the volume of the water that evicted and this would be equal to the crown volume.
He could not Archimedes avoid emotion and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, Eureka!, Or what is the same, I found it!And everything was the result of a chance.
No one can doubt that if Archimedes had not been, he had found another way to solve the problem since as Pasteur said, who made great advances in chemistry, microbiology and medicine: “In the fields of observation, chance favorsonly to the prepared mind. ”
Another well -known case of casual discovery is that of the Law of Gravity, with which Sir Isaac Newton found while watching an apple.TheHistory, collected in the scientist's biography, written by William Stukeley, tells how it was when he saw the fall of an apple when he stayed in a contemplative state and questioned why the apple always fell perpendicular to the earth and did not do it to the sideor up but constantly towards the center of the earth.From there it was stated that surely the reason was that the earth attracted it so there should be a force of attraction in the matter and the sum of the forces of attraction in the matter of the earth should be in the center of the earthAnd not elsewhere.This was the birth of those amazing discoveries through which Newton built philosophy on a solid foundation.
Medical Casualities
Also in fields such as Medicine Fortune has resulted in great discoveries.Back in 1985, Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was alone in his laboratory performing electron movement experiments produced in cathode ray tubes.
With his devices in operation and in the darkness he needed for his trials, he casually warned a glow on a card recorded with phosphorescent ink located quite a distance.He realized that it could not be the consequence of electrons but of secondary and invisible radiation.He placed a card in the middle of the road to these rays and observed that he was crossed as if it were transparent.
The same passed with the whole deck of cards.A book gave a little shadow, and a lead sheet already produced the complete shadow.However, he made his wife hold the lead sheet in front of the beam and was surprised to observe the image of the bones of his wife's hands in what resulted in the first human radiography.A few weeks later, he also discovered that photographic plates that he kept in his box were veiled.
Röntgen, his discoverer, called these “unknown rays” rays, or what is the same: “X -rays”, because he did not know what they were, nor how they were caused."Unknown rays", a name that gives them a historical sense and that is still preserved today.
And changing land, the field of pharmacology owes a lot to serendipia.On numerous occasions a drug used with one purpose has been found effective for another entirely different and sometimes more significant.
The ‘acetylsalicylic acid’, better known as ‘aspirin’, was first prepared to be used as an internal antiseptic although it was found that it was not effective.However, it was found that it was a valuable analgesic and an antipyretic drug, it is also currently recommended to prevent heart attacks.
Also the 'chlorpromacin' was indicated in the first instance to calm patients before an operation but different psychiatrists found that it was very useful to calm their manic state patients of the depressive manic disease, they practiced with other mentally ill and finally found thatIt was especially effective in the treatment of schizophrenia a disease for which there was no similar something.
Another very striking case is that of the ‘procaína’ and ‘lidocaine’, drugs widely used as local anesthetics.In the 40s it was accidentally discovered that an injection of the first in dogs that had developed cardiac arrhythmias with danger of death, when they were placed under general anesthesia, restored their hearts to the normal beat.Since then, and after several humans, the use of intravenous injection of several local anesthetics in connection with cardiac surgery has become a very common practice.
best impossible moment
Especially striking is the case of some accidental discoveries that also occur whenmore necessary are.A clear example is that of safety glass that appeared shortly after the invention of the car and the use of the windshield.Given that it was much more likely that cars, more than the horses, lost control and collide, causing serious injuries to the occupants due to the breakage of the windshields there is no doubt about the importance of this finding.
The glass has been in circulation for a long time, in fact it is known that the Romans already used it for the windows.It was in 1903 when the French chemist Edouard Benedictus and threw a flask on the ground that shattered but surprisingly the fragments did not come out separately but remained almost in their original form.The scientist examined the flask and found that there was a film inside which the broken pieces of the glass were attached.He realized that this film came from the evaporation of colodion (or cellulose nitrate, prepared from cotton and nitric acid) that had once contained the flask but that by being open it had evaporated.
At that time Benedictus did not pay more attention to what happened but shortly after reading several information about injured people as a consequence of glass cuts in traffic accidents he got to work.Some time spent planning how a layer of that material could be applied to get a safety glass and shortly after with the help of a printing press produced the first safety glass sheet.
He called it ‘Triplex’ in relation to the design of the material that consisted of a snack in which the two glass sheets acted like the bread being the food a cellulose sheet between them and all joined by heat.
Another very useful material in modern life was also discovered by chance.In the early 50s George de Mestral went to take a walk through the field of his native Switzerland.When he returned home, he realized that he had a jacket covered with starts (a kind of herbaceous plant) and when he began to remove them he wondered what made them adhere so tenaciously.
His curiosity led him to use a microscope to investigate it more carefully.He discovered that they were coated with hooks and hooks had embedded in the curls of their jacket's fabric.The nature's plan for the reproduction and dispersion of the corn is that their hedgehizy seeds get to hold on the birds and animals that pass.From Mestral he wondered if he could design a system based on the model that was more useful than annoying and that was how Velcro was born.
References:
“Eureka!Scientific discoveries that changed the world ”;LESLIE HORVITZ, PAIDOS IBÉRICA, 2003. ISBN 978849313547
“Serendipia.Accidental discoveries of science ”, Royston M. Roberts, Editorial Alliance, 2004. ISBN 9788420656700
