Every year at least two or three of my students come back to me in the month of May with their long faces their IIA projects that they've put months into thinking about and working just didn't work. One of them tried testing the antibacterial effects of garlic oil on E. coli.The bacteria refused to cooperate and another one wanted to test the effect of music on the growth of plants. Unfortunately, the plants seemed unimpressed. And at that point of time, the student is usually panicked.Ma'am, what do I do. ...

Spencer Silver was a chemist who specialized in creating adhesives. He set out with a simple goal to create an adhesive strong enough to be used in aircraft construction. Unfortunately for Mr.. Silver, not only was his um adhesive not strong enough for airplanes, it was actually categorized as low tac. But years later, his colleague Arthur Fry found a use for it. and together they gave us something that many of us can't imagine life without the post-it note.This redirection shaped the remainder of Silver's ...