Post by Danny Angbashim (@db_angbashim)

ACCIDENTAL SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

In a science lab in 2012 a ten-year-old Clara Lazen, a 5th grader in Kansas, Missouri, while joggling with different models of atoms and molecules assembled a ball-and-stick model of atoms (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) which she showed her teacher, Kenneth Boeher and asked if she had come up a molecule.

The teacher, seeing that the structure was unique sent the picture to a chemist, Robert Zoellner at Humboldt State University for further analysis. Indeed the chemist confirmed it as a valid new molecule that had never been documented.

It's Tetranitratoxycarbon; though it can only be synthesized in a lab because it's too unstable to exist naturally.

It has applications in explosives and energy storage.

See what curiosity by a child led to a great scientific feat.
So if you're a parent or teacher with children around you, take interest in their drawings or models they build with their toys. You can never tell.

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