IELTS GT Reading Test – Serendipity

Daguerre’s serendipitous research effort was rewarded, a year later, with a medal conferred by the French government. Many great scientists have benefited from serendipity, including Nobel Prize winners. In fact the scientist who established the Nobel Prize was himself blessed with serendipity. In 1861 the Nobel family built a factory in Stockholm to produce nitroglycerine, a colourless and highly explosive oil that had first been prepared by an Italian chemist fifteen years earlier. Nitroglycerine was known to be volatile and unpredictable, often exploding as a result of very small knocks. But the Nobel family believed that this new explosive could solve a major problem facing the Swedish State Railways – the need to dig channels and tunnels through mountains so that the developing railway system could expand.

However, as turnover increased, so did the number of accidental explosions resulting from the use of nitroglycerine. Some people blamed the people who used the explosive more than the substance itself, because nitroglycerine had become popular for inappropriate purposes such as polishing the leather of shoes.

At the age of thirty, Alfred Nobel made the first of his major inventions: and innovative blasting cap, ad device designed to control the nitroglycerine explosion. Nobel was also determined to discover a way to make this explosive safer to manufacture, transport and use. Firstly he experimented with adding chemicals to nitroglycerine, but because the chemicals required huge amounts of resources and energy to wash out, this process was considered to be impractical. He then tried to use fibrous material such as sawdust, charcoal or paper to stabilise the explosive, but these combustible materials tended to catch fire when placed near nitroglycerine. As an alternative, he added powdered brick dust to tame the explosive as he knew that brick dust would not catch fire. However, the brick dust reduced the explosive power of the product, and so was also found to be unsatisfactory.

According to one version of how the eventual solution was found, a metal container of nitroglycerine sprang a leak and some of the liquid soaked into packaging material that lay around the container. Nobel immediately set to work to examine the connection between the two materials and found that when the packaging material was mixed with nitroglycerine it could be pressed into a compact solid. This solid retained the explosive power of the liquid but was entirely safe and reliable because it would not ignite until set off by a blasting cap.

As a scientist who had worked systematically towards a solution for a number of years, Nobel immediately understood the importance of this discovery. But the discovery had only come about because of his perseverance. Through Nobel’s clear vision, systematic research and his quick grasp of the significance of his discovery he set himself apart from the many scientists who were not ‘fortunate’ enough to create new products that would make them famous.

Alfred Nobel, a livelong pacifist, hoped that his explosive would be a powerful deterrent to warfare. Nobel sought to achieve permanent worldwide peace. In setting up the Nobel Foundation and the Nobel Peace Prizes, he hoped to accomplish what he had not been able to do during his lifetime: to encourage research and activities that would bestow the ‘greatest benefit to encourage research and activities that would bestow the ‘greatest benefit to mankind’, especially peach and fraternity between nations.