Serendipity

Serendipity, is a scientific term that means the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it, this term is also called “Pleasant surprise”, “happy

accident”, also “fortunate mistake” by the scientifics. In my opinion this has to be called Scientific’s luck or Scientific miracle’s, because its something unusual that occurs to scientifics while they are searching another discover, many scientifics became popular o well named by their serendipities.

I include the “X-Rays” as example of serendipity because it is one of the best discovers that help the medicine. The” X-Rays” were discovered by a German physicist, W. C. Roentgen in 1895 while he was working with a cathode ray tube in his laboratory. He was working with tubes similar to our fluorescent light bulbs. He evacuated the tube of all air, filled it with a special gas, and passed a high electric voltage through it. When he did this, the tube would produce a fluorescent glow. Roentgen covered the tube with heavy black paper, and found that a green colored fluorescent light could be seen coming from a screen setting a few meters away from the tube. He realized that he had produced a previously unknown "invisible light," or ray, that was being emitted from the tube; a ray that was capable of passing through the heavy paper covering the tube. Through additional experiments, he also found that the new ray would pass through most substances casting shadows of solid objects on pieces of film. He named the new ray X-ray, because in mathematics "X" is used to indicated the unknown quantity. I used this example because the story is curious and similar to other serendipities, and also a perfect example to understand more deeply how this erros occur. In my opinion if these scientific doesn’t discovered the x-rays the medicine will be in slow progress and many things wouldn’t exist. The “X-Rays” started to be applied since 1896 and since there the medicine has changed and become better everyday.

In my opinion serendipity is the best error a scientific could have because this errors have changed the world in many diferent forms, also the scientifics became famous and prestiges.  

References:

http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/HighSchool/Radiography/discoveryxrays.htm

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