Scientific Research

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Section 1.4

• Scientific Research

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Types of Scientific Investigations

• Pure Research
• Gain knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself
• Applied Research
• Undertaken to solve a specific problem

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Chance Discoveries

• Planned research can result in unexpected
  conclusions
• Always look for chance discoveries!

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Examples of Chance Discoveries

• Nylon
• The discovery of Nylon, like so many other
  things, was almost entirely by pure chance. Nylon
  itself is a synthetic material with a structure
  very similar to silk. The discovery was made by a
  team of chemists working for the Du Pont company
  under the supervision of Wallace Hume Carothers.
  The team of chemists had been working to create a
  synthetic product much like silk, cellulose or
  rubber and eventually stumbled upon what they
  called Nylon. After it's discovery, Nylon would
  eventually become the single most important
  product that the Du Pont company had ever put on
  the market.
• Penicillin
• Alexander Fleming was a young bacteriologist at
  St. Mary's Hospital in London in 1928. One day in
  his cluttered laboratory, he noticed that a
  culture dish of bacteria had been invaded by a
  mold whose spore must have drifted in through an
  open window. Under the microscope, he saw that,
  all around the mold, the individual bacteria that
  he had been growing had burst. He saved the mold,
  and from it produced the first penicillin.

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• Vaccines
• In 1879, Louis Pasteur inoculated some chickens
  with cholera bacteria. It was supposed to kill
  them, but Pasteur or one of his assistants had
  accidentally used a culture from an old jar and
  the chickens merely got sick and recovered.
  Later, Pasteur inoculated them again with a fresh
  culture that he knew to be virulent, and the
  chickens didn't even get sick. Chance had led him
  to discover the principle of vaccination for
  disease prevention.
• Neurophysiology
• In 1791 Luigi Galvani was an anatomist at the
  University of Bologna. Galvani was investigating
  the nerves in frog legs, and had threaded some
  legs on copper wire hanging from a balcony in
  such a way that a puff of wind caused the legs to
  touch the iron railing. A spark snapped and the
  legs jerked violently (even today, we speak of
  being "galvanized" into action). In one
  unintended step, Galvani had observed a closed
  electrical circuit, and related electricity to
  nerve impulses.

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• X-Rays
• Wilhelm Roentgen was experimenting with
  electrical discharges one evening at the
  University of Wurzburg in 1895. There was a
  screen coated with a barium compound lying to one
  side, and Roentgen noticed that it would
  fluoresce when an electrical discharge would
  occur in the tube he was watching. On reaching
  for the screen, Roentgen got his hand between the
  discharge tube and the screen and saw the bones
  of his own hand through the shadow of his skin.
  In 1901, Roentgen received the Nobel prize for
  his accidental discovery of X-rays.
• Velcro
• Chance played a part when the Swiss engineer
  George de Mestral conceived the idea for Velcro
  in 1948. After returning from a walk he found
  seed pods sticking to his socks and to his dog.
  When he examined the pods under a microscope he
  saw how tiny hooks had caught in the loops of the
  wool (Figure 46). He developed a method of
  reproducing the hooks and loops in woven nylon
  for use in clothing instead of buttons and zips
  (Figure 47). He called the product Velcro from a
  combination of velours (velvet) and crochet
  (hook), and the product went on to have many
  other uses including medicine (for joining the
  chambers of an artificial heart) and the space
  programme (for securing objects in a weightless
  environment).

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• Botox
• Jean Carruthers, a Canadian ophthalmologist, was
  treating a patient in 1987 for a rare eye
  disorder known as blepharospasm. The off-the-wall
  ailment causes excessive blinking of the eyes
  and, in some, makes the eyelids to slam shut.
  Dr. Carruthers treated the woman with Botox, a
  then largely unknown substance which reduces
  activity in overactive muscles by blocking nerve
  impulses. It was a seemingly unlikely use of the
  botulinium toxin, which in purest form, is the
  deadliest known to science. However, tiny amounts
  worked well to halt the patients debilitating
  eye disorder. But, even with no symptoms, the
  patient kept coming back to Dr. Carruthers
  office, telling the doctor that each time she
  received a Botox injection, the wrinkles between
  her brows seemed to disappear, leaving a relaxed,
  untroubled expression on her face. The patient
  actually thought she looked younger. Because
  Jeans husband, Alastair, is a dermatologist, he
  found the story of the blepharospasm patient
  intriguing and looked further into how Botox
  could be used to enhance peoples appearance.