had to do a write up for physical chemistry project. below is my write-up... tell me wad u tink! :)
Mistakes or Discoveries
(Story by Chew Jie Ying, FS0701 and 072537P)
Do you fear making mistake? Or fear that you will fail to get what you want to get?
Mistake. The word "mistake". What are the things that come across your mind? A road to failure? Or do you treat it as a learning point, an opportunity to learn something from your mistakes?
Many people fear of making mistakes or face failures in whatever they do. So do I. But unknown to many, some of the discoveries and inventions, that are commonly seen and used in our daily lives are resulted from repeated failures and mistakes before getting the desired result and get what it planned to be in the first place. While some discoveries and inventions despite to the repeated failure and mistakes, the desired result was not achieve, but a new product was invented or discovered. These discoveries and inventions can be from toys to food to electrical appliances.
Do you know that Post-it Notes may not exist if not for a failed experiment to invent a strong adhesive? Nobody had the idea and stayed up to make Post-It Notes.
In 1970, a man, Spencer Silver, was working in the 3M research labs, trying to make a good adhesive. He made a new adhesive, with aims of making it stronger. However, it turned out to be weaker than anything they already made, instead of stronger. It would stick to things, but would come off easily when lifted. No-one knew what to do with it, but it was not thrown away. Instead, it was kept.
About another 4 years later, another 3M scientist, Arthur Fry, was singing in his church choir. He noticed that the markers he used in his hymnal kept falling out. He remembered Silver’s weak glue. He put some of it on the markers. The weak glue hold the markers in place, but it also enable the markers to be lifted off without ripping the hymnal pages.
In 1980, tens years after Spencer Silver invented his super weak adhesive, 3M started selling Post-It Notes nationwide. Now, they are one of the most popular items for office and people use
them in all sizes and colour.
Food, such as cheese, potato chips and Popsicle, are discoveries by mistake too.
Cheese
Cheese was made and discovered due to a bad storage of milk by an Arab nomad. The nomad was traveling through the desert, alone. He poured some milk into his pouch, which was made from a sheep’s stomach. During the journey, he opened the pouch to find that the milk had been separated and formed into thick masses (now known as curd) and a watery fluid (now known as whey). This traveler had just invented cheese by mistake.
Two things caused the milk to become cheese:
- The sun had warmed the traveler’s milk during the long journey.
- The digestive juice inside the sheep stomach bag dried up. These juices had rennet in them, which has become a key ingredient in making cheese today.
Potato Chips
In the summer of 1853, American Indian, George Crum, was employed as a chef at an elegant resort in Saratoga Springs, New York. On Moon Lake Lodge’s restaurant menu were French-friend potatoes, prepared by Crum in the standard, thick-cut French style.
At Moon Lake Lodge, one dinner guest found chef Crum’s French fries too thick for his liking and rejected the order. Crum cut and fried a thinner batch, but these, too, met with disapproval. Exasperated, Crum decided to rile the guest by producing French fries too thin and crisp to skewer with a fork.
The plan backfired. The guest was ecstatic over the browned, paper-thin potatoes, and other diners requested Crum’s potato chips, which began to appear on the menu as Saratoga Chips, a house specialty. Soon, they were packaged and sold, first locally, then throughout the New England area. Crum eventually opened his own restaurant, featuring chips.
Popsicle
In 1905, Frank Epperson, then eleven years old, mixed powered soda with water and stirred the mixture with a stick. He was planning to make soda pop. However, he accidentally left his soda on the front porch overnight with the stick in it. As the temperature lowered during the night, the soda froze. In the morning, Frank taste the frozen soda and found it taste great. He named it Epsicle, and sold it for five cents. In 1923, he applied for a patent and was granted. His family later changed the name to Popsicle.
Mistakes made, instead of leading to failure, it can be a brand new invention. An invention that you may not have expected to invent. If the above mistakes have not been made, maybe those inventions would not have existed in today’s world. And we wouldn’t have the luxury of these everyday items that we take for granted.
Mistakes and failure does not mean that it's the end. It is beginning to another journey, a new journey to produce better results or products. By keeping your mind open, a failed product can turn out to be more successful than you expected as the product serve another purpose that you did not plan to have it originally.
Date submitted: 30/07/07
64/100
