Chemistry

Stories filed under Chemistry in the Weird Science History archive — 19 stories from the strange edge of science.

• The Teenager Who Tried to Make Malaria Medicine and Accidentally Invented Purple
• The Weak Glue That Took Six Years to Find a Job — and Became the Post-it Note
• The Weedkiller That Made New Zealand's Trousers Explode
• Spontaneous Human Combustion: The Myth That Refused to Burn Out
• The Oil-Well Gunk Drillers Hated That Became Vaseline
• The Roman Cup That Was Accidentally Nanotechnology
• The Secret Rubber Substitute That Became Silly Putty
• The Hot Stove Accident That Invented Modern Rubber
• The Beetle That Explodes Inside a Predator's Stomach — and Walks Away
• The Billiard Ball Prize That Invented Plastic
• The Blank Squares That Predicted Three Undiscovered Elements
• The Chemist Who Fed the World and Gassed the Trenches
• The Chemist Who Forgot to Wash His Hands and Discovered Saccharin
• The Chemist Who Put Lead in Gasoline and Holes in the Ozone
• The Cylinder That Weighed Too Much and Became Teflon
• From Frog Legs to Lithium: A Short History of the Battery
• Polywater: The New Form of Water That Almost Ate the World
• Starlite: The Fireproof Plastic a Hairdresser Invented and Took to His Grave
• The Alchemist Who Boiled Urine Looking for Gold and Found Phosphorus

Other categories: Archaeology · Biology · Engineering · Medicine · Physics · Space