Several scientists and researchers must have the super optimistic "there is no such thing as accidents" as their mantra, because several of the most important scientific discoveries in history have been attributed to accidents-fire, penicillin, x-rays, radiation, the microwave (if not for that chocolate bar melting as the scientist walked by a radar tube, we would not have had the quickest heating alternative to cooking stoves. Thanks, guy!)-there are more, leading many to believe that there really must be no such things as accidents, that everything in the world happens precisely for a reason, only that we might just be really, really clumsy.
Researchers from both Cornell University and University of Ulm have recently stumbled upon the perfect formula of making the thinnest possible glass. The accident has landed the researchers on the Guinness Book of World Records, for creating the world's thinnest glass. It is only as thick as a molecule. Grad student Pinshane Huang and Prof. David Muller are mostly responsible for the "accidental" discovery, saying that "the glass is so thin its individual silicon and oxygen atoms are clearly visible via electron microscopy." The discovery introduces the possibilities of improving glass materials in transistors, and improves the performance of computers, smartphones and other related devices.
"At just a molecule thick, it's a new record: The world's thinnest sheet of glass, a serendipitous discovery by scientists at Cornell and Germany's University of Ulm, is recorded for posterity in the Guinness Book of World Records," Cornell University has said in a statement regarding the discovery.
The researchers had originally been trying to make Graphene, which is basically a kind of 2D chicken wire crystal formation of 2D carbon atom sheets, whereupon closer inspection they saw what they initially described as "muck" on the finished product, as being comprised of silicon and oxygen-the elements that form glass.
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