Educational Media Reviews Online

This excellent film is a part of the CBC's series The Nature of Things, hosted by David Suzuki. The film illustrates and discusses the role of chance in discoveries and developments in science and technology. There are many interviews with scientists about the importance of serendipity, some with those who've made serendipitous discoveries and others who comment on historic discoveries. The opening features discoveries of Archimedes, Columbus, and Edison. The first story is of the discovery of x-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen, one of several animated illustrations using the physicist's face on a cartoon body. Exposition of Fleming's discovery of penicillin leads to the delightful Principle of Limited Sloppiness: things should be sloppy enough to allow the unexpected to happen but not so sloppy that we can't find out why they did. Some discoveries are the result of an unexpected solution to a problem and some are observations that lead in a new direction. The educated mind is required to be alert to new possibilities; Pasteur stated it succinctly: "Chance favors the prepared mind."

Engaging animations and reenactments of discoveries bring us to the scene of many discoveries. One is the invention of the kitchen microwave from work with radar. A Swiss inventor removing seed pods after a walk in the country was prompted to examine them and came up with the hook and loop principle, used in Velcro®. A Canadian dentist makes a contribution to orthodontia with the use of ultrasound to stimulate bone growth, based on work with rabbits. Viagra was originally used to treat angina pain, but patients kept requesting it for its unintended effect.

Suzuki's commentary also delves into factors that encourage and inhibit serendipity, such as the importance of openness to experience and curiosity about the unusual. Distractibility can be a virtue, allowing focus to shift from a problem or observation to something unusual or new. Other factors can thwart serendipity, such as the current funding system for scientific research that forces researchers to focus on only one problem at a time. Dogmatism and assumptions are also the enemy of serendipity. One lengthy story concerns the Burgess Shale Cambrian-era fossils in Canada found by a railroad worker. This led to considerable discoveries, due to the preservation of so many creatures, even their soft tissues. The last story is that of Nobel-prize winners Penzias and Wilson, researchers with Bell Labs. Their work with mysterious static led to the discovery of the left-over radiation from the Big Bang. One oddity is that the film seems to attribute vaccination to Pasteur rather than Jenner.

As Suzuki says, "Let the imagination take flight." This film is an exciting song of praise for imagination and curiosity as primary motivators in science, useful in creating incentives for students in any field of science or engineering.