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2002 Series
The Three
Programmes
Click here to listen to the programmes
on-line.
1. Material Milestones and
Fantastic Plastics
Man’s attempts to manipulate and
recreate materials found in the natural world have shaped the
world we live in. And many of our successes owe a lot to luck.
Simon visits a rubber mill, and hears the tale of Charles
Goodyear, who in the 1840s discovered the process known as
vulcanisation. The man whose name graces a thousand tyres
worked out how to turn rubber from an awkward material which
melted in warm weather into a useful substance, when he
accidentally dropped a piece on a stove. And thus began an age
in which natural substances could be altered through
industrial processes. Continuing the rubber theme, the
artificial rubber neoprene was a serendipitous find, made when
a lab assistant left a chemical impurity in a test-tube over a
weekend. A week and half later, in the same laboratory, the
first artificial fibre was created, also by accident - a
development which would lead to nylon. The significance of
these finds was never realised by the scientist in charge,
Wallace Carrothers. This brilliant man was the first person to
truly understand the chemistry of these long chain molecules -
polymers - but he tragically committed suicide before the
importance of his work was recognised.
As chemists learned to manipulate
natural and man-made polymers, the surprises kept coming. Just
after WW2, chemist Harry Coover discovered superglue when the
polymer he was examining got stuck in his lab instruments.
Quite independently, superglue lead to another fortuitous find
in the late 70s, when Northampton policeman Laurie Wood
realised that fumes from the glue condensed around his
fingerprints. He’d stumbled on a forensic technique which is
now used worldwide. And in 2000, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
was awarded to three scientists who worked out how to make
plastics conduct electricity. Their work began when a foreign
researcher mistranslated instructions and added a chemical a
thousand times more concentrated than usual to an experiment.
Co-winners Alan Heeger and Alan McDiarmid tell their story.
2: Going with a
Bang
This programme features some
explosive discoveries. Simon hears about the bacteria thought
by its discoverers to be useless, but which turned out to be
essential in making the shell propellant cordite during WW1;
and meets a marine geologist who was looking for underwater
salt deposits and instead found a huge meteorite crater. The
biggest meteor impact of all, the one which killed the
dinosaurs, left its in Mexico’s Yucutan Peninsula. That crater
too, was found as a result of serendipity, when NASA
scientists were talking to a journalist, who suddenly realised
that the weird buried volcano he’d heard about at oil
exploration conference a decade earlier might be more
significant...
And from the biggest explosive
events the planet has witnessed to the smallest. A powerful
micro-explosive was discovered by a member of research team
examining microchips made from a porous form of silicon. While
cutting one of these silicon wafers in half, it unexpectedly
blew up in his face, like a cap gun going off. Porous silicon
is now being developed for use as a trigger for car airbags,
or even microscopic robots. |
To visit the BBC website pages about the
new series of Serendipity of Science, click on the
image. |
