Go boffins!
Don't you just love serendipity?
(excuse me while I go and take my penicillin)
IBM says its research arm accidentally invented the first new class of polymers the world has known for decades. Detailed here in a paper titled Recyclable, Strong Thermosets and Organogels via Paraformaldehyde Condensation with Diamines, the newly-discovered polymers were the result of an accident that saw IBM researcher …
Fantastic book. Loved the part when he talks about interviewing new candidates to work in the propulsion chem labs, and how he always made sure to make something explode during their interview to see how the candidate would react...had to filter out the jumpy ones!
From "The Long Earth" with Stephen Baxter:
"He was after all the founder of the first 'serendipital laboratory'. The logic was that since so many important new discoveries in science were made by accident, then the process would be speeded up if you set up a situation in which a very large number of accidents happened and watched the results carefully."
Kudos though to the researcher who at least thought "that's interesting..."
Not quite. It's not just sticky. If you place bits togeter and heat them, it forms a solid bit with the same properties as if you'd never riped the bits from one another in the first place. This is what makes metal such a usefull material and something plastics have a VERY hard time doing, because they just get sticky, as you say.
Still, another nail in the coffin of the wish bosses have that boffins should never ever concentrate on anything but exactly the usefull stuff the boss wants.