Serendipity

Serendipity, fortunate discoveries by accident.

 
Serendipity is making fortunate discoveries by accident. Especially when one is looking for something unrelated, these lucky events can occur. In our daily life, sometimes we come across fortunate findings that makes us wonder. Usually, we phrase this as coincidence. Also in Physics and Science, in particular in fields as pharmacology and chemistry, there have been quite a few serendipitous discoveries. A famous example is Alexander Flemings discovery of penicillin. 

A creative serendip link

Links related to serendipity:

• Serendipity definition
• Serendip 

Rodin's The Thinker & 20 microns lasered sculpture

(I'm thinking about spending a blogpost about thinking)

•  Thought
• Lateral thinking (solving problems through an indirect and creative approach)
• Blogpost Lateral Thinking
• Thinking portal 

Serendipity, fortunate findings makes us wonder.

Serendipity, mistakes are the portals of discoveries

Famous serendipitous examples:

• The organic chemist Kekulé had a vision of a snake forming a circle, which led to his solution of closed chemical structures such as the cyclic compound benzene.

• While the chemist Louis Pasteur was investigating the properties of sodium ammonium tartrate, he managed to separate the two optical isomers of the salt. His luck was twofold: it turned out to be the only racemate salt with this property and the room temperature at that day was just below the seperation point.

• A chemist unintentionally, absorbed a small amount of LSD upon investigating it's properties, and had the first trip in history.

• The observation of an apple falling from a tree, by Isaac Newton, was at the basis for a theory about the nature of gravitation. 

• The discovery of X rays by Wilhelm Roentgen as radiation that could pass a lighttight cover.

• Astronomers discovered the rings of Uranus from an observation of periodic brief disappearance of view.

• During the repair of the Star Scan Machine, there was time to inspect photographic plate with the same "defects", a bulge in the planet's image which was actually the moon Charon of Pluto.

• While searching for a nonconducting material, superconductivity was found  instead.

• Inkjet printers were invented by accidently putting a hot iron on a pen, the ink was ejected from the pen's point a few moments later.

• The microwave oven was invented after a peanut candy bar in a men's pocket was melted after exposure with radar waves.

• Columbus was looking for a new way to India and landed in the America's.

Serendipitous example in our laboratory:

closed and open conformation of the PITP protein

For quite a number of trials we failed in improving the X-ray diffraction quality for crystals from a phospholipid-binding transfer protein in order to solve its molecular structure. Finally, we came up with the idea to exchange the bound lipid with a modified lipid having bromine as heavy atom to accomplish phasing. Phasing is essential to solve the crystal structure of a protein with low sequence homology. In the meantime the competitors scooped us by succeeding in solving the structure of the natural phospholipid containing protein (closed holo-form). Luckily, in a later stage, we revealed that the protein was not able to accomodate our modified phospholipid at all, probably due to steric hindrance. Nevertheless, we succeeded in elucidating the crystal structure of this phospholipid free protein (open apo-form), that turned out to be a representative model for the interesting membrane-bound conformation of the protein (see apo-PITP). In view of understanding the role of the  phospholipid binding protein, the model for phospholipid binding and membrane association had major implications for its function: from closed for transport to open for exchange. An example of fortunate discovery by accident.

Cybernetic serendipity, an exhibition of computer art

Serendipity, the art of making happy discoveries