Экзаменационный (типовой) материал ЕГЭ / Английский / 10 задание / 08

A. Important discoveries and brilliant inventions often require years of hard work and sleepless nights. It is not unusual for scientists to devote their whole lives to solving a difficult problem. But sometimes discoveries are made by accident, as a by-product of another project people are working on, or even when somebody is doing something completely unrelated to anything remotely serious.
 

B. One of the most well-known discoveries that was made like that is the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. While trying to find the shortest way to India, Christopher Columbus stumbled upon a new continent. His discovery completely changed people’s understanding of the world as well as the cuisine of his native country! Today it is hard to even imagine what Italians ate when they didn’t have tomatoes.
 

C. Another iconic discovery made by accident is Isaac Newton’s Law of Gravity. It happened when he was having tea in his garden and watched an apple fall off a tree. He had already been in a philosophical mood, and the falling of a bright object triggered the thought that had already been forming in his mind. This was how the incident was recorded by his biographers, but later a more dramatic story of him sleeping under the tree and being hit on the head by an apple was invented.
 

D. Discoveries can be made thanks to bad habits. Alexander Fleming was known for being an untidy person as much as a talented scientist. His lab was never in perfect order, and things easily got lost. Once he forgot about some cups with bacteria and went on vacation. When he returned and found them, he noticed that mold had grown in one of the cups and killed the bacteria. This mold known to us now as penicillin keeps saving many lives.
 

E. Some of the discoveries were made during WWII. Percy Spencer was an American physicist working in the early 1940s on military radar equipment that used microwave radio signals. Once he was standing in front of the working radar and noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. At the time, he continued working on the radars, but after the war he created a microwave oven based on this discovery.
 

F. Harry Coover was another American scientist working during WWII. He was trying to create transparent plastic for clear plastic gun sights used for aiming. The formula he invented produced plastic that was so sticky that it stuck to everything it touched. Coover was sad that his formula was a complete disaster, but several years later realized that it could be used as glue. This was how superglue was invented.
 

G. In the summer of 1904, the World Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, was in full swing, when Arnold Fornachou, an ice-cream vendor, ran out of paper cups. Not to lose any business, Formachou bought some waffles from the waffle vendor whose booth was standing next to his, and rolled them into cones. The improvised cups were a great success and later became known as ice-cream cones!