Brilliant Blunders

Find out how inventors play around with failed ideas and mistakes to create some of our favourite products such as Velcro, Post-It notes, and Silly Putty. There are fascinating stories behind potato chips, corn flakes, Coca Cola, and tea bags, but perhaps the most brilliant blunders of all are the medical ones which have led to the invention of life-saving products like aspirin and penicillin – in the Connectors series for younger readers.

I like the idea of playing around with something like a recipe and that failure first time around can be turned into something successful but different - with some observation skills, imagination and ingenuity. It’s possible that our favourite inventions could have been missed completely if someone hadn’t noticed important features of their products and thought to trial them in different ways. Imagine if we didn’t have jeans. I like my jeans. It also makes me feel better to think that when I have a cooking disaster in the kitchen, I could magically transform it into a product that millions of people want.

•	Have a look at your favourite board games. Invent a new one by changing some simple things. Design and make the board and the accessories that accompany it.
•	Play around with old clothes that you don’t like anymore and change something about them. Try to find an alternative for a zipper, buttons or ties. Use dye to change the colour, change the length or shape, chop bits off or add accessories.
•	Look closely at things in nature. Like with the burrs that led to the invention of Velcro, there will be other things in nature that will give you ideas for great inventions. Write things down in a notebook and think about how things could be useful to solve everyday problems.
•	Invent something to make with the things that you throw out as rubbish. Used plastic shopping bags have been broken down into small pieces of plastic and made into trendy handbags. What else could you do with them?
•	Read true and fictional books about science experiments, inventions, and making things.

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Brilliant Blunders
Connectors series
Scholastic, 2007
ISBN 978-1-877453-27-4