Boing boing!
Have you ever played with a semicircular spring toy that gracefully bounces into position even when it falls down? Navy engineer, Richard James, was seriously engaged in the task of fitting springs on sensitive instruments to prevent them from rocking. When a piece of spring crashed onto the floor, it didn’t roll away. Instead, it sprang downward and righted itself back into an upright position. That spring got a cool name – Slinky- and went on to become a popular toy that even found a place in USA’s National Hall of Fame.
Magnetron magic
Every anxious ‘snacker’ who loves to have popcorn or brownies ready in minutes has Percy Spencer and his magnetron-fiddling curiosity to thank. Who would have thought that in 1945, Spencer would be studying microwave radiations from a magnetron while keeping a bar of chocolate in his pocket? A sizzling sound and the melting of chocolate was a dramatic moment for the scientist – he realized that hidden in microwave radiation was the power to bring smiles on food lovers worldwide!
A sweet surprise
In 1879, chemist Constantin Fahlberg forgot to follow every Mom’s golden rule: ‘Wash your hands before you eat! Had he been handling dangerous chemicals, he might have ended up in major trouble. As it turned out, he’d only been dealing with saccharin and so he was simply in for a pleasant surprise the food tasted oddly sweet. It also opened the door for saccharin, ‘an artificial sweetener’, to make it into the market.
Vacations are good
How did the most popular antibiotic in the world come to be? It’s thanks to the fact that Alexander Fleming decided to go on holiday. When Fleming returned from his holiday, he noticed a green fungal mould growing in one of the unwashed petri dishes in which bacterial cultures were being grown. He was about to throw it away when he noticed something odd: there was a clear circle around the mould where the bacteria didn’t grow. Was it some chemical compound in the mould that stopped bacterial growth? You bet! Had Fleming been less excited about going on a vacation, he’d have cleaned the petri dish before making the fabulous discovery. So the moral seems to be: rush, when it’s time for your vacation. Everything else can wait!
Make a note of this…
Spencer Silver was asked to make a super-strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. What he invented was a weakling that could barely stay stuck. The only saving grace was that the adhesive was decent enough to work even after peeling and sticking back many times. Nobody seemed to want it until another gentleman, Stephen Fry, cut a bunch of yellow papers and coated the glue at the top and handed out free samples to people – the Post-It sticky notes became an instant hit.
When an idea struck
We will never know who the first person to discover fire was, but we do know that matches made a glowing entry into this world. John Walker was stirring a medley of chemicals in a pot when he noticed a dried lump sticking to the stirring stick. How do you remove dried gob from something? Walker rubbed the stick on a surface, trying to scrape it off when suddenly it ignited. That was all he needed to patent and sell matches in a box along with a piece of sandpaper.
Picture Credit : Google
