It was 3:45 pm. I was sitting crossed-legged with twenty other seven-year olds under a wall of flat glass windows. An eerie calm had settled outside, where a short time before there had been whipping winds and a sky as green as Kermit the Frog. My mom whisked into the building, her sensible yet fashionable heels clicking on the worn linoleum, and the petals of her flowered dress rippling with her gait. Shocked that I was not huddled in an enclosed room, she took one look at my position under the windows and told me it was time to go. That was the last time I ever saw my after-school program. Everyone knows not to take cover under glass during a tornado.

On the way home, my mom angled the car around downed branches the width of tree trunks and garbage cans lolling down the curb. The world was spent: siding dangled from the edge of condos, and telephone poles were precariously tilted, if they stood at all. People ambled about, assessing the damage as the neighborhood settled into a collective sigh. A policeman at the end of the lane directed traffic to make only a right turn onto the main street because of downed power lines to the left, the direction of our house. My mom said, exasperated, “Now we’ll never get home!” My mom, always tough and calm, was worried. It wasn’t until that moment that I got scared too.

We did, eventually, make our way to our still-intact home. Thinking back on that moment, one of a few post-tornado moments during my Indiana childhood, I note most how my fear was derived from my parents’ fear. I always felt safe and happy when at their side, but in the rare moments when they were fearful, I became beside myself with terror.

When I was growing up my mom and I would sometimes watch horror movies while sitting on our worn, brown suede couch. When the background music began its inevitable, this-is-the-scariest-part crescendo, I would turn my head 90 degrees to the right and look straight into my mom’s eyes. For the entire duration, my mom would calmly report that the masked man was bludgeoning the babysitter or wryly observe, “Oh, looks like the psycho wasn’t dead after all.” Sometimes she’d insert an, “Ew, gross!” exclamation when something bloody took her by surprise. I got all the emotion I could handle by looking into her eyes during those parts; she became a sort of “closed captioning” for me—recapping what my senses wouldn’t let me experience first-hand.

When I was a child and swam competitively for years with the local swim club, my parents attended every swim meet I participated in. They would sweat it out on the hot bleachers of the indoor pool deck, fanning themselves as they sat for hours in the backless bleachers waiting for my race to begin. If I became nervous before my event, as I always did, I’d scan the population of faces in ordered rows until I found my parents. My dad, always looking for me, would catch my eye and give me a thumbs up with a double eyebrow raise and a big smile for support. I would immediately feel relief and was instantly braver because he believed in me.

When I graduated from my small-town college and decided to move to New York City without a job, a friend, or a long-term place to stay, my parents took care not to discourage me. Instead, they threw an early birthday party for me and did the tough thing—they bought me luggage, in acceptance that I had to live my dreams, even if they took me far away from family. Upon unpacking that luggage, I found a tiny yellow post-it that my parents and older sister signed that said, “Love ya!!!” with each of their familiar signatures surrounding it. Beneath it was a card that said, “You Must Take Your Chance.” Never once did they remind me of my shy demeanor or annoying tendency to throw up repeatedly when travelling on my own. Never once did they ask me to stay with them forever, even though their eyes might have mentioned it.

 As an adult, I still gauge fear by my parents’ eyes. A few years ago, during a phone call that bridged the 1000-mile gap between our homes, my mom told me my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She spoke flatly, like a tiny person standing in the mouth of a huge cave, every syllable clear and solitary. There were no reverberations, no hints of emotion. I tried to be the echo of her stillness. But when I arrived at my parent’s house and looked into my mom’s eyes, I knew we were in trouble.

The night before my dad’s brain surgery, he and I sat in cushioned deck chairs on the shaded back porch of the house. He looked intently into my face and asked if I thought he was doing the right thing by having surgery and if I thought he was going to be okay. His doctor had given him 6-12 months to live and flatly stated that this condition had a high mortality rate. Surgery could buy him time, but most likely he would not survive. My dad’s tumor gave him short term memory loss, so he forgot all of that. What he remembered was that he trusted me. What I knew was that every moment we’re given here on earth, we are living. If there was even a one percent chance that my dad would live, what’s to say he wouldn’t be in that one percent? Sitting on the porch that night, I breathed in, collecting all the calm I could from the cheerful summer day, erased fear from my face, and answered, “You’ve improved so much in this past week on medicine alone. I think you’re going to be fine.”

After his surgery, my mom, sister, and I walked down the hallway to see my dad in the intensive care unit. I have a nauseous fear of hospitals, one I inherited from my dad: a feeling that the hallway is too long, that the patients behind the floor-to-ceiling windows are unprotected so near to the thin glass walls, their bodies storming inside. We shakily entered Dad’s room, and he smiled at us and groggily said, “I feel fine,” then crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue to prove his normalcy. I relaxed, seeing his face, seeing he was okay. I think he did it for that reason.

I guess that is what love is—reassuring each other in the eye of a storm, being the wall of calm and protective peace within the whirl of a tornado.

Is this life?
This drastic contrast?
This black and white?
This sunshine and rain?
Is it?

Is it normal
for worlds to collide?
Combine?
Crash?

And these emotions?
To effervesce differently, yet be present,
in the same world,
the same existence.

It is.
And, apparently this is life,
When your mind and heart will be playing a tug of war,
and you sit,
you sit and realize it’s your choice.

See…
It’s your choice to visualize what you want to see. It’s your choice to just stay in the sunshine, ignoring the rain.
It’s your choice to just stare at that white and don’t look back at that black.

So this is what they meant,
when they told us to look at the cup, half full.

Even when you’re grieving the half that is gone, half is still there.

It’s the choice.
It’s the choice to chose how we look at our lives, the good and the bad.
How we smile in our happiness,
and find strength in our sadness.

How we laugh when we hear something funny,
something fun,
and hold those tears
when the sadness stings our hearts.

It’s our choice.
Our choice to be those optimisms
who just look at the glass as half full.

And who know,

deep down,
Even if the glass isn’t half full,
even if it’s only a quarter, or even a tenth, full
it will still, to some degree, be full.

And that it’ll get better.
It will get fuller.
Just know
that it will get better.
It will fill up.

No one’s glass
is constantly full…

While wandering near a creek, have you ever seen bugs walking on the surface of the water? Have you felt any resistance when you hit the surface of the sea with your palm? Have you ever thought about what causes these to happen?

The two examples of events given above happen to be related to “surface tension.” This situation is described as the force per distance unit that is generated in the opposite direction of the direction of expansion between two different surfaces. It can take place in between two different liquid layers, as well as among liquid-gas and liquid-solid layers. For example, the surface tension of a liquid forms in the transitional region where liquid and gas molecules make contact. The source of this force generated on the liquid’s surface is the intermolecular attractions that hold the liquid molecules together. Each molecule in the liquid is pulled via opposite but equal forces by neighboring molecules, thus no single force is acting on the molecules. However, the molecules on the surface are only surrounded by one side, therefore they are pulled inwards with a net force (Figure 1), causing a tension similar to an inflated balloon on the surface of the liquid.

When we look carefully to a stagnant pool of water in a container, the surface of the water seems to be covered with a thin layer of film, resembling a stretched membrane. In order for a substance to enter or leave the body of water successfully, it must puncture this membrane. In other words it has to overcome this intermolecular force. If a steel blade is laid horizontally on the surface of the water slowly, it floats despite that it is made of denser steel because it cannot overcome this surface tension. Surface tension is the principle responsible for the trampoline-like behavior of liquid surfaces. Many insect species created for aqueous habitats can maintain their lives on the water via their adapted leg parts. The best example of this is the water strider. This insect lives on water by taking advantage of water surface tension. Though the surface tension principle is a requirement to be on the water, it is also necessary that the strider not to stick to the surface. Therefore, this insect is also equipped with a paddle made of waxy hairs at the end of their legs (Figure 2).

Forces of cohesion and adhesion

The intermolecular force of a liquid among the same kind of molecules is called the “cohesion force,” and intermolecular attraction between different types of liquid molecules is called the “adhesion force.” These forces of adhesion and cohesion determine the behavior of a liquid in a container. If some mercury is put in a glass tube, because the cohesive forces among the mercury atoms is greater than the adhesive forces in between the glass container and the mercury, the mercury assumes a convex shape. Here, mercury has a tendency to reduce its contact with the glass and does not wet it. In contrast to mercury, when water is put inside the tube, the surface layer between the water and air takes an inward concave shape. This is caused by the greater adhesion force between the water and glass compared to the intermolecular cohesion forces of water. Water wets the glass since it has a tendency to spread towards the greatest surface possible (Figure 3).

When there is a thin layer of water or tea left in between a tea glass and its plate, the adhesion force glues the glass and plate together. Since the adhesion force is greater than the weight of the plate, the glass cup can be lifted together with the plate. Contact lenses also stay in position on the eyes without falling through the help of adhesion forces. Tears strongly pull both cornea and the contact lens together, holding it in place.

The capillary effect

A liquid inside a thin vertical tube is pulled upwards by the inner surface of the tube until the adhesion force becomes balanced with the liquid weight. This event is called the capillary effect or capillarity. Liquids naturally rise in narrow channels if there is sufficient adhesion force. This effect is enhanced in narrow tubes due to the smaller volume of the liquid, but reduced in wider tubes because of gravity. Therefore, there is an inverse ratio between the channel diameter and liquid height in capillarity.

The reason a sponge absorbs water effectively is the easy rise of water in the capillary openings of the sponge. In a similar fashion, there are small openings found in paper napkins and towels. When a napkin makes contact with a wet surface, water is pulled inside the small openings with capillary action, thus removing the water from the surface. This is because the adhesion force in between the napkin tissue and water is greater than the cohesion force of the water molecules. This principle is also utilized while getting blood samples with capillary tubes. In addition, the removal of continuously excreted tears by the capillary ocular ducts that extend into the nasal cavity is another example of this wise law.

Capillary action is also important for the transportation of water molecules from humid parts towards drier areas in soil, providing for the spread of water. The same principle is also vital to nourishment of trees. Every part of a tree encompasses capillary channels, all the way from the tips of the roots to very ends of the branches. Water molecules are transported to the leaves against gravity when they enter the tips of these capillary channels at the roots. Even though the adhesion forces between the water molecules and the root’s tissues win the war against gravity, at a certain height, this force becomes equal to the gravitational pull, thus not allowing water molecules to climb higher. This is the ultimate height a tree reaches. Capillarity also affects internal water pressure of a tree, leaf size, photosynthesis, and other factors. This is why the leaves of a tree are usually bigger on lower branches compared to higher ones (Figure 4).

The surface tension of water is the highest among the known values of other liquids and this has very significant biological effects. If the surface tension of water was to be lower, like other liquids, it would not be able reach the higher parts of plants through capillary action, thus preventing the survival of taller plants. The vegetation waits patiently as nourishment is delivered to its roots. Water has been assigned a vital role in this service.

The water-dependent survival of plants is made possible through the capillarity and surface tension. Could this amazing phenomenon, in which the capillarity is on duty to water the leaves on the highest branches of the tallest trees to ensure the maintenance of life, take place via blind atomic interactions or accidental occurrences?

How do liquid droplets get their shape?

Objects with a wider surface will have a greater surface tension. Since the force of surface tension, acting on per unit distance, is equal to the surface energy per surface area, a wider surface requires greater accumulation of energy on the surface. All the matter in the universe tends to stay at a lowered energy level. Therefore, it is ideal for objects to reduce their surface area. When the surface area to volume ratio of the known geometric shapes is investigated, the smallest ratio is found to belong to a sphere. A small value of this ratio means the most reduced surface area per volume. Among enclosed containers of equal volume, a sphere is also the one with the smallest surface area. When two equal volume watermelons of spherical and cubical shape are peeled, the spherical one will produce the least amount of rinds.

Because of the reasons mentioned above, liquids take a droplet shape immediately when they fall, reducing their surface area. That is why a water droplet dripping from a faucet, a falling rain drop, and a droplet on a leaf are all in the shape of a sphere (Figure 5). It is the same principle that makes planets and other heavenly bodies resemble a globular form. This indeed points to an Almighty Power who plans the motions, positions, and assignments of all the objects, from particles to giants, managing and dispatching them as The Self-Existent One holding everything together.

Factors affecting surface tension

Temperature increase is directly proportional to a decrease in the surface tension in most liquids. When the temperature of a liquid rises, so does the kinetic energy of the particles in it, making these particles move faster. This leads to a weakened intermolecular attraction that binds molecules together. Since this change affects the particles at the surface, it decreases the tension. Improved soaking of hands and laundry can be achieved with warm water during cleaning because heat reduces the surface tension. This helps with better cleaning results in a shorter amount of time.

In a similar fashion, soap and detergents also reduce the surface tension of water. If a small soap bubble is placed on a water droplet, the droplet spreads away instantly. This indeed tells us that the soap bubble reduces surface tension.

If a substance dissolves in a pure material, surface tension is found to change depending on the solute and the solvent structure. For example, salt decreases the surface tension of water. Salt weakens the intermolecular bonds of the water molecules, and therefore reduces the cohesion and surface tension. That’s why sea waves foam when they hit shore.

Can surface tension be associated with the ability of unconscious and primitive atoms as the principle behind many functions and tasks in the lives of plants and animals? Do such wondrous events happen by chance? Isn’t this principle such a blessing of the One who easily provides what is necessary to all living things, nourishing them in time according to their needs?

She might as well save her breath. After carrying water in pails and plastic bins from the first to the fourth floor of the building where we live, I know better than to waste a drop of it.

Moms love to warn though, so there she goes again: “We have so little left. Use it sparingly. Make it last until evening.”

In the evening my sister and I will start our summer ritual-water carrying-like the rest of our neighbors who don’t live on the first floor. The town’s water reserve level drops so low in the summer that the water pushes itself up the pipes to the first floor, but no further. On the first floor the water flows from the taps while in the higher floors it carries only growling sounds, like a monster in a bad mood.

So we use it sparingly, only when strictly necessary.

In winter the water runs through the taps of the whole building, not discriminating on the terms of the floors, three times a day for an hour and a half. Every household is busy filling every useable container in their possession during that time.

In the summer our survival grimly depends on the mercy of our first floor neighbors. Twelve families, three for each floor, carry their water up four flights of stairs, utilizing pails, bins, bottles, even cauldrons for this vital cause. Children are the most diligent carriers.

The clock on the wall reminds me that I need to get ready for the water’s evening course. The water won’t come for fifteen more minutes, but I must get in line at my first floor neighbor’s door to be ready.

I grab a pail and two bottles in a plastic bag. I run down the worn smooth stairs.

Soon, other neighbors join the march.

I am third in line.

The first is our next door neighbor, Auntie Jazja. She handles the ordeal quite normally. “I have seen worse,” tell her eyes.

Lina comes second. She lives in the fifth floor, above us. Three years older than me, but not much stronger, she holds an aluminum pail with a blackened bottom. Who knows how many times it has been used to heat water on the stove?

Behind me, fourth in line, is my best friend, Dita. She is restlessly switching hands with her glass bottles clinking noisily. She will break them sooner than she fills them with water. The line grows longer each minute.

Everybody talks with those nearby. Lina and Dita are chatterboxes. I am caught in the crossfire of their words.

I worry that our buzz will annoy our gracious first floor neighbor and she will shoo us away.

When the water starts gushing in we fall silent, listening in reverie. It is proper to wait ten to fifteen minutes for the household to fill their share of water, before the first in line is urged to knock.

I am glad Auntie Jazja is to do that today. A senior lady is always hard to turn down.

Soon enough she goes inside, greeting and blessing the benevolence of the neighbor who seems unpleased opening the door to a bunch of thirsty people. As we hear the water fill Aunties Jazja’s glass bottle, we let out a breath of relief.

Meanwhile the chatting resumes. We talk of anything but water.

Lina runs inside with her pail when Auntie Jazja calls her name, letting her know that she is almost done.

Auntie Jazja comes out carrying four one-liter glass bottles, two in each hand. A thin layer of condensation has formed on them. I think that is the picture of perfection. Those drops forming and dripping on the transparent glass refresh my soul.

Lina, shouts my name. It’s my turn. My heart beats in panic for fear that the moment I place my bottle under the tap, the water will stop flowing. Instead, I will hear that horrible whistle which I dread so much.

I enter, greet the lady of the house and head toward the bathroom. Lina is filling her pail, keeping a short hose in it. The water is forming turbulence, increasing in level, making me feel dizzy a bit with impatience.

When she withdraws her pail, I very quickly put my own under the hose, not wasting a drop of water or a second of time. We have to race with time as well, you see. There are people in line waiting.

I fill my container and call my best friend who appears in a second by my side.

I thank my neighbor, although I will return for more water in a few minutes. She knows that a pail and a few bottles of water are not enough for a family of six. I will make two more rounds if the time permits.

As I go up the stairs, I see a trail of water drops. Lina’s pail must be leaking. How silly! By the time she reaches home, half of the water will be gone. I look behind me to see if my pail is leaking, too. I am glad it is not.

At the second floor I feel my arm tighten. Warm numbness creeps up to my shoulders. The pail is heavy; my limbs stretch while my back complains. I put down my burden and I notice a fine red line forming in my palm by the handle of the pail.

I feel hot, and sweat is roller coasting down the bones of my spine. I will drink half a bottle of water to quench my thirst.

I take a deep breath, grab the pail and the bottle and step up the stairs. A frightful thought invades my mind. I had heard from Lina that carrying heavy weight was extremely harmful to young girls. It could badly damage the back, and also be disabling in childbearing. Although nine times out of ten I don’t believe what Lina tells me, this time I worry. Could it be true? My breathing becomes heavier and my muscles tenser. Tears swell around my eyes. I decide not to worry. Why have children anyway? To send them downstairs to carry water until they break their backs?

As I approach the third floor, I come across my little sister hurrying down the steps with one-liter plastic bottles under each arm. She smiles. I remember once when I was her age, I fell on the last steps of the fourth floor. I hurt my knee and my bottles rolled down, mercilessly spilling the water. I couldn’t stop crying, pretending that it was my knee that made me cry so much when it was the waste of water that broke my heart.

I leave the pail and the bottles in front of my door and as I catch my breath, I listen to Lina’s mother scold her daughter for carelessly spilling half of the pail on the stairs. It’s not her fault. The pail is leaking. But I would rather not interfere.

I ring the bell. Mom appears with a worried look. A shade of pity lingers on her face as she takes the full containers inside, and with an air of apology hands me the empty ones. “My poor girl” her eyes lament. I have noticed that the more I go up and down to make Mom happier with the abundance of water she could use, the sadder she gets. That’s when I feel most miserable.

As she closes the door, I overhear her curse the incompetent government, blaming the infrastructure for our misery. I know the government blames the lack of rain. When the rain vindicates itself in fall showers the government will blame it again, this time for the flood. You see how hopeless it is?

I go down the stairs, this time with two plastic pails. I feel so light that I wish I would never reach the first floor, but I do. Lina is again in front of me. The chatting continues as intensely as the flow of water.

Lina produces a photo from her dress pocket. A young man poses in front of greenest garden I have ever seen. The blue of the sky and the whiteness of his teeth contrast attractively, but I can’t take my eyes off the vast lawn behind him.

“This is my cousin, Alban,” Lina says. “You remember? He immigrated to France four years ago. He is doing quite well. He works in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris,” she says proudly, as if her cousin had become the mayor of the city.

I am busy sorting out something confusing though. Isn’t Luxembourg a country in Europe? Then what business do Luxembourg Gardens have in Paris, the capital of France? I doubt Lina has any idea where France or Luxembourg is, so I keep my peace.

“Do you know they water the grass in this humongous garden with sprinklers that turn on automatically?” she asks.

And before I express my admiration, she goes on about her cousin’s high salary, the car he drives, his clothes and the gifts he sent to them last year.

“I envy him, you know,” she concludes. Her eyes are daydreaming.

“I envy the grass,” I think to myself, but I don’t say it aloud. I would break into tears if I pronounced how worthless I felt, and then I would have the whole line asking what was wrong. What is it like to lie under the sun and be sprinkled with thousands of silvery droplets that replenish every cell of your being? What makes the grass of Luxembourg luckier than me? A surge of envy fills my heart.

Lina counts with delight all the things her cousin has, unaware that she is counting all the things we lack as well. She gets on my nerves. I am saved only when her name is called. She goes in, leaving me with pails full of despair.

I did five rounds of water carrying today. Some neighbors had gone out of town leaving the line, ever so graciously, to us. After dinner I fell asleep listening to the news anchor woman explaining that this year’s drought was the worst ever.

With her drought-warning words echoing in my head, I dived into the world of sleep, and I dreamed. I saw my town was flooded. Angry rivers of water carried furniture, cars, and trees floating in the streets. Among them I saw a body floating, undisturbed. Then I recognized that it was my body. My eyes were closed peacefully. I looked like I was sleeping. In dreams you can do anything, even sleep on a flood’s current. A radiant smile of intact elation lingered on my face. I remember thinking out loud, “I don’t know whether I am dead or not. Yet, no doubt I am happy. So happy that I don’t envy the grass of Luxembourg anymore.”

Mirkena Ozer is pursuing MA in women studies at the University of Georgia, Atlanta. 

I am sure, to most of us who have learned about scientists as unapproachable figures sitting on top of Mount Everest (and somehow almost all of whom are Western), this viewpoint may seem quite new. Yet, there is more to it. The same thinker points to another equally important factor in the development of civilization and advancement of sciences: with a great strength in his weakness and potency in his impotence, man is very much like a pampered child in creation. If he recognizes his weakness and performs his worship with his words, actions and state of mind, if he knows his own impotence and asks for God’s aid, he will then have fulfilled the obligation of gratitude for the subjugation of creation to his needs.

As with a petted child who by means of a little cry or simply a sad look obtains the assistance of adults to serve him: even the tiniest part of what they do for him by far exceeds what lies in the child’s own power to do for himself, and their great help he owes to his great weakness. So too, the apparent dominance of man over the rest of creation and his progress in civilization are not the result of his own deserving but they were subjugated to him because he himself was weak: he received aid because he was helpless; he was enriched thereby because he was poor; he was inspired because he was ignorant; he was bestowed with favours because he was in need of them (Nursi, 23rd Word). 

Penicillin

Most people believe that great discoveries are results of deliberate, directed effort, planning. exhaustive experiment and logical inference. The discovery of penicillin is the most famous counter example. Although the role of planning, experimenting and research has an undeniable role in scientific discoveries, events do not always form a logical sequence, and this is what I am here trying to emphasize.

During World War I, doctors depended on antiseptics to cure battIe wounds. A. Fleming, a bacteriologist, observed that phenol (or carbolic acid, the most common antiseptic at that time) did more harm than good, in that it killed the leukocytes (white blood cells) faster than it killed the bacteria, and he knew this was bad because the leukocytes are the body’s natural defenders against bacteria.

In 1922, while suffering from a cold, Fleming made a culture from some of his own nasal secretions. As he examined the culture dish filled with yellow bacteria, a tear fell into it from his eye. The next day, when he examined the culture, he found a clear space where the tear had fallen. He correctly concluded that the tear contained a substance that caused rapid destruction of the bacteria, but was harmless to human tissue. The antibiotic enzyme in the tear he named lysozyme. It turned out to be of little practical importance because the germs that lysozyme killed were relatively harmless, but this discovery was an essential prelude to that of penicillin.

In the summer of 1928, Fleming was engaged in research on influenza. While doing some routine laboratory work involving microscopic examination of cultures of bacteria grown in petri dishes (flat glass dishes provided with covers), Fleming noticed in one dish an unusual clear area. Examination showed that the clear area surrounded a spot where a bit of mould had fallen into the dish, apparently while the dish was uncovered. Remembering his experience with lysozyme, Fleming concluded that the mould was producing something that was deadly to the staphylococcus in the culture dish. Later he would say: ‘There are thousands of different moulds and there are thousands of different bacteria, and that chance putting the mould in the right spot at the right time was like winning the Irish sweep.’

Fleming’s own words are enough as a response to those who attribute scientific discoveries to chance or idolize scientists. However, I will give other examples to make the point clearer.

Teflon

From non-stick frying pans to space suits to artificial heart valves, Teflon has found several areas of application. Its discovery resulted from an apparently ‘accidental’ observation by a young chemist, R. Plunket, working in Du Pont laboratories. On April 6, 1938, Plunket opened a tank of gaseous tetrafluoerothylene in the hope of preparing a non-toxic refrigerant from it, but no gas came out, to the surprise of Plunkett and his assistant. Plunkett could not understand this because the weight of the tank indicated that it should be full of the gaseous fluorocarbon.

Instead of discarding the tank and getting another in order to get on with his refrigerant research, Plunkett decided to satisfy his curiosity about the ‘empty tank’. Having determined that the valve was not faulty by running a wire through its opening, he sawed the tank open and looked inside. There he found a waxy white powder and, being a chemist, he realized what it must mean.

The molecules of the gaseous tetrafluoroethylene had combined with one another ‘polymerized’ to such an extent that they now formed a solid material. The waxy white powder did indeed have remarkable properties: it was more inert than sand – not affected by strong acids, bases or heat and no solvent could dissolve it – but, in contrast to sand, it was extremely slippery.

X (Roentgen) Rays

Physicist W. Roentgen discovered the rays which were later to be named after him, in an unexpected and unplanned manner. Roentgen was repeating experiments by other physicists in which electricity at high voltage was discharged through air or other gases in a partially evacuated glass tube. We now know that cathode rays are actually streams of electrons being emitted from the cathode, and the impact of these electrons on the walls of the glass tubes produces the phosphorescence.

In 1892, it was demonstrated that cathode rays could penetrate thin metallic foils. Discharge tubes having thin aluminium windows allowed the cathode rays to pass out of the tube where they could be detected by the light they produced on a screen of phosphorescent material (such screens were also used to detect ultraviolet light), but they were found to travel only two or three centimetres in the air at ordinary pressure outside the evacuated tube.

Roentgen repeated some of these experiments to familiarize himself with the techniques. He then decided to see whether he could detect cathode rays issuing from an evacuated all-glass tube, that is, one with no thin aliminium window. Na one had observed cathode rays under these conditions. Roentgen thought the reason for the failure might be that strong phosphorescence of the cathode tube obscured the weak fluorescence of the detecting screen. To test this theory, he devised a black cardboard cover for the cathode tube. To determine the effectiveness of the shield, he then darkened the room and turned on the high voltage coil to energize the tube. Satisfied that his black shield did indeed cover the tube and allowed no phosphorescent light to escape, he was about to shut off the coil and turn on the room lights so that he could position the phosphorescent screen at varying short distances from the vacuum tube:

Just at that moment, he noticed a weak light shimmering from a point in the dark room more than a yard from the vacuum tube. At first, he thought there must be, after all, a light leak from the black mask around the tube, which was being reflected from a mirror in the room. However, there was no mirror. When he passed another series of charges through the cathode tube, he saw the light appear in the same location again, looking like faint green clouds moving in synchronism with the fluctuating discharges of the cathode tube. Hurriedly lighting a match, Roentgen found to his amazement that the source of the mysterious light was the little fluorescent screen that he had planned to use as a detector near the blinded cathode tube, but it was lying on the bench more than a yard from the tube.

Roentgen realized immediately that he had encountered an entirely new phenomenon. These were not cathode rays that lit up the fluorescent screen more than a yard from the tube! With feverish activity, he devoted himself single-mindedly in the next several weeks to exploring this new form of radiation. He reported his findings in a paper published in Wunburg, dated December 28, 1895, and entitled ‘A New Kind of Ray, a Preliminary Communication’. Although he described accurately most of the basic qualitative properties of the new rays in this paper, his acknowledgement that he did not yet fully understand them was indicated by the name he chose for them, X-rays. (They have also often been called Roentgen rays.)

He reported that the new rays were not affected by a magnet, as cathode rays were known to be. Not only would they penetrate more than a yard of air, in contrast to the two or three inch limit of cathode rays, but also (to quote his paper):

‘All bodies are transparent to this agent, though in very different degrees. Paper is very transparent; behind a bound book of about one thousand pages I saw the fluorescent screen light up brightly. In the same way the fluorescence appeared behind a double pack of cards. Thick blocks of wood are also transparent, pine boards two or three centimetres thick absorbing only slightly. A plate of aluminium about fifteen millimetres thick, though it enfeebled the action seriously, did not cause the fluorescence to disappear entirely. If the hand be held between the discharge tube and the screen, the darker shadow of the bones is seen within the slightly dark shadow image of the hand itself.’

He found that he could even record such skeletal images on photographic film. This property of X-rays captured the attention of the medical world immediately. In an incredibly short time X-rays were used routinely for diagnosis in hospitals throughout the world.

Insulin

If a relative or a friend of yours has diabetes, you will probably know how important insulin is for them. As a partial remedy for most diabetics today, insulin was discovered as an answer to the prayers of hundreds of thousands of diabetics by the Most Merciful One. Perhaps, even better relief and remedy are awaiting discovery in some unexpected time or place.

In 1889, while studying the function of the pancreas in digestion, two researchers removed the pancreas from a dog. The very next day a laboratory assistant called their attention to a swarm of flies around the urine from this dog. Curious about why the flies were attracted to the urine, they analysed it and found it was loaded with sugar. Sugar in urine is a common sign of diabetes.

The researchers realized that they were seeing for the first time evidence of the experimental production of diabetes in an animal. The fact that this animal had no pancreas suggested a relationship between that organ and diabetes. The researchers subsequently proved that the pancreas produces a secretion that controls the use of sugar, and that lack of this secretion causes defects in sugar metabolism then exhibited as symptoms of diabetes.

Many attempts were made to isolate the secretion, with little success until 1921. A young Canadian medical student extracted the secretion from the pancreas of dogs. When they injected the extracts into dogs rendered diabetic by removal of their pancreases, the blood sugar levels of these dogs returned to normal or below, and the urine became sugar-free. The general condition of the dogs also improved.

Until recently, all insulin used for the treatment of human diabetes came from the pancreases of some animals. As a result of genetic engineering, based on knowing how DNA controls protein synthesis, a major pharmaceutical firm has begun to produce human insulin by using bacteria. The fact that a microscopic creature, like the bacterium can be made to work for the wellbeing of human beings is a subject worthy of study on its own.

Of course, these are by no means the only examples worth mentioning of ‘happy, chance discoveries’. Here are some more to add to the list: the discovery of molecular structure of organic compounds, saccharin and nutra-sweet (sugar substitutes, again for diabetics), ‘safety glass used in automobiles and planes, oxygen and several other chemical elements, radioactivity, astronomical discoveries like pulsars and background Big Bang radiation, many mathematical theorems, high temperature superconductors, synthetic dyes, etc., etc.

Can one really call all of these marvellous discoveries simply ‘happy, chance accidents’? I believe human conscience and reason must resist such a misconception. Surely, any person of common sense would say: ‘I am thankful to the Merciful One, who has bestowed upon us the favour of these discoveries, enabled us to benefit from them, among His innumerable other bounties’.