45 Unexpected Finds That Were Too Good Not To Photograph

A surprises might sound like something insignificant but even good scientists search for them, as well as coincidences and mistakes. With a little curiosity and perseverance, they can turn unexpected incidents into new insights.

As author Isaac Asimov once wrote, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but, 'That's funny ... '"

Take Carlos Jared, for example. One time, he was doing fieldwork in the jungles of southwest Brazil and picked up a harmless-looking frog. The frog twisted and thrashed, butting Jared's hand with his head. Excruciating pain spread up Jared's arm, and for the next five hours, he remained in agony.

He had inadvertently discovered that frogs can be venomous.

Even though many amphibians secrete toxins through their skin, the frog Jared picked up — Greening's frog — was the first discovered to actually force those toxins into a predator's bloodstream. When attacked, it retracts the skin around its upper lip, revealing bony spines; Jared and collaborator Edmund Brodie discovered that a gland at the base of each spine produces toxic mucus that is twice as potent as the venom of a Brazilian pit viper.

Also, did you know that blue is a notoriously tricky pigment? Turns out, the stone originally used to produce blue paint was once worth more than gold. So naturally, humans tried to manufacture the blues they needed ... and got mixed results. The dyes and paints they came up with often turned out to be poisonous, expensive, impermanent — or all three.

Mas Subramanian wasn't at all interested in all of this. In the department of chemistry at Oregon State University, he was looking for materials with novel magnetic properties to use in advanced computer hard drives. He would mix up likely chemicals and bake them in a furnace at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (around 1093 degrees Celsius). However, when he added manganese oxide to the recipe, he got a colorful surprise — a pile of bright blue powder.

The new pigment is stable and nontoxic. It reflects infrared radiation, so it might help keep buildings and vehicles cool. Subramanian is working with paint manufacturers and energy conservation companies to develop the product.

In the book Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger argue that surprise, whether good or bad, is important for bringing vitality to our lives.

Turns out, surprise works on the dopamine system in our brains, helping us to focus our attention and inspiring us to look at our situation in new ways. Luna and Renninger highlight four stages of the surprise response:

• Freeze—when we are stopped in our tracks because of the unexpected;
• Find—when we get hooked into trying to understand what’s going on/how this happened;
• Shift—when we begin to shift our perspectives, based on conflicting findings;
• Share—when we feel the pull to share our surprises with others.

We can even “hack” each stage to encourage more surprise in our lives. For example, when we are in the “find” phase, it can help us to adopt a stance of curiosity, asking questions rather than looking for answers right away, which can lead to worldview shifts.

Yes, negative surprises are much more challenging than positive ones, but Luna and Renninger believe that we can avoid them—they are a natural part of life. So it is better to find ways to cope with these negative surprises than to resist them.

Being open to uncertainty, learning how to reframe negative experiences in more positive ways, and nurturing stable relationships are all tools we can use to recover from life's curveballs more easily.

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