We can only hope that some of the weirder discoveries by humans were made by a complete mistake. There is some truth to the idea that many of the things we take for granted today were accidental discoveries. Humans are, of course, incredibly clever, but sometimes it’s as if the world simply hands us what we need when we’re not exactly intending such results.
Sometimes, those accidental discoveries are the coolest of them all. We’ve rounded up some of the most interesting DIY scientific “experiments” – and their results – in this slideshow.
Let’s start things off with an absolute classic: static on a trampoline. Even better, this person used their dog as the subject of their experiment, and his wild fur didn’t disappoint. Static usually builds up on a trampoline when the conditions are dry, especially if someone has been bouncing on it. Anyone who had a trampoline as a kid will know the absolute horror of touching a bit of exposed metal frame and being electric shocked.
2. Growing a pumpkin in a mold
This person grew a pumpkin in a plastic mold, and the fruit actually took to its shape. You’d expect it to burst through the plastic to take on the pumpkin’s classic round appearance, but instead, it simply conformed to the shape of the mold. Talk about DIY Halloween inspo.
It’s always slightly horrifying to find something that isn’t supposed to be in your bottled food or drinks. One person found a jelly-like substance hanging out in her bottle of vinegar, which looks a bit like those grow-your-own aliens that were all the range 20 years ago. As it turned out, the weird substance was something called “mother”, which is added to wine and cider to produce vinegar. Obviously, it doesn’t normally show up in vinegar randomly, but you can make your own mother by warming it with wine for a few weeks.
4. Creating your own universe
If you’ve never swung a stick of glow sticks around your head with burning steel wool, why ever not? You should also take a long exposure photo if you’re looking for a shot like this. We feel like we’ve fallen into a sci-fi-western mashup movie. Someone take the idea to a Hollywood director.
It takes a special person to be able to microwave something to the point of burning it, but with a bit of perseverance and the right foods to hand, it is possible. This person decided to microwave their McDonald’s fries for 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. There’s no way that this wasn’t unintentional, which leads us to question why it wasn’t treated as a genuine crime against fast food.
6. A cat touching a plasma ball
Plasma balls are very early 2000s, and belong in the category of “your mate’s cool bedroom accessories” with lava lamps and Hello Kitty alarm clocks. Either way, they’re still pretty cool today. If you’ve got a cat, and you happen to still have a plasma ball, pair the two together and see what happens.
This person’s friend is quite clearly an exceptional makeup artist. We’ve all been fascinated by making lipstick kisses on a bit of tissue, but this is something else. When he came to take off his makeup, this guy managed to make a self-portrait with a whole array of beautiful rainbow colors. Our makeup doesn’t even look this good when it’s on our face.
8. A mirrored desert house
Want to really trip people up? Instead of painting your home the colors of your surroundings, add mirrors instead. This mirrored desert house is practically invisible. We don’t think it would last half a second if there was a big animal population in the area. Things would quite literally run into it.
9. When gummy bears get hot
If you’re a fan of eating those gigantic novelty versions of gummy bears you find at souvenir shops, you can make your own with just a few simple steps. Simply place an unopened bag of gummy bears in a boiling hot car and let the heat do the work. You should return to find, in essence, one giant gummy bear – even if the shape isn’t spot on.
10. When a frog eats a firefly
Many of us find the glow of a firefly soothing. Back in the day, people would catch fireflies and put them in a jar for their cool glowing effect. But if jars are a bit too basic for you, find yourself a firefly eating frog and prepare to be dazzled. Bit depressing when the light goes out, though.
You wouldn’t imagine that shining a purple laser at glasses with transition lenses would do much, but this person must have had a better inkling than us, because they gave it a go. The lenses actually started turning purple, like they’d had pen ink split on them. Wonder if they managed to get them back to normal?
Marbles are pretty cool to look at, but aside from using them in Ker-plunk (anyone remember that beauty?), there’s not really a lot you can do with them. One person decided to get a bit more creative when they held a marble over a flame, then immediately dropped it into cold water, creating a shattered effect. Don’t try this at home, kids.
You might be mildly interested to know that the tomato on the right was harvested from seeds that are 150 years old. How was this age determined? And why were the seeds never used before now? How come they didn’t spontaneously grow a tomato plant while in storage, or die before they could be used? How on earth does this tomato look halfway edible? So many questions.
14. Water getting really cold
This can hardly be classed as a single person’s science experiment, but it’s pretty cool they were there to witness it. The water in this lake has frozen over in a pattern that looks a bit like the sorts of screensavers you got on Microsoft computers 15 years ago. Talk about chilly – we’re cold just looking at it.
15. A negative of a negative
Remember when taking negative pictures was all the range? There was something seriously cool about those futuristic blue and green hues. This person took things one step further by taking a negative photo of a negative photo, and our minds are blown. We’re dying to know just how accurate the phone’s photo colors are with a double negative.
Coconuts are known for being a bit rough and ready. If they were characters in a women’s fiction book, they’d be the rugged, handsome stranger, slightly intimidating on the outside, but actually pretty soft when you break through his tough outer shell. Perhaps all he needs is a good shave, because this person polished all the hairy stuff off a coconut and it looks surprisingly bare and Easter egg-like.
It seems that some fabric is no match for 180 mph winds, as this person found out themselves. Their shirt sleeves resemble nothing more than a cleaning rag. What we want to know is how this person ended up in 180 mph winds – even winds of 30 mph are difficult to walk in.
Again, this can’t be classed as a human science experiment, but it’s a cool discovery to make. Apparently it happens when lightning hits sand that’s high in silica or quartz and the temperature exceeds 1800 Celsius (in other words, hot). The sand quite literally fuses into silica glass, which is rock-hard to touch and hollow in the middle.
19. Cookie dough ice cream… cookie
This person baked a cookie out of all the individual globs of cookie dough in their ice cream. Okay, we all know that the cookie dough is the best bit of the ice cream, but that doesn’t explain why anyone would bother to do this. Surely the easier option is simply to buy some of that pre-made raw cookie dough stuff from the shop?
20. Frozen waterfall mist
As the temperature drops around a waterfall, “ice walls” are created out of the water’s mist. As more water falls, more ice walls are produced. This spectacular frozen waterfall looks like something out of the Chronicles of Narnia.
Taking a photo doesn’t always feel as impressive as it is nowadays. But this person took a photo with their iPhone at the same time that someone else took a photo with the flash, and this is what they ended up with. It looks to be something to do with the rolling shutter, which explains why only half of the image is lit up by the flash, and half is flash-less.
22. A cabbage growing a cabbage
If you’ve ever left a fruit or veggie in your fridge or kitchen cupboards for too long, you probably know of the horrors that await. Your fruits rot away to nothingness, but your veggies can often become more adventurous. It’s not uncommon for the likes of potatoes to attempt to grow into a plant after they’ve been left for so long. It seems that cabbages are no exception – this person now has their very own cabbage tree.
23. Freeze dried gummy worms
Freeze dried fruit is a particularly handy healthy snack if you’re not a fan of fresh fruit’s texture. But some people out there have made it their mission to freeze dry other random foods, and we love them for it. These freeze dried gummy worms look like they’ve tripled in size, and we’re incredibly curious about their texture. Do they taste like fruity Cheetos? Someone let us know.
This person’s house was hit by hurricane winds, icy temperatures and Lake Erie. The effect? A full beard. We’re not sure whether we’d prefer being inside or out…
You could be trying to edit a photo of a dollar bill for any reason on Photoshop, but in all instances, it’s not allowed. Of course, there are ways to get past this particular problem, and the internet is awash with tips, tricks and guides if you’re desperate to edit your own dollar note. Just don’t use it to counterfeit bills, obviously.
26. Burned high-voltage wood
When wood is burned by high-voltage electricity and a conductive solution, something called fractal burning takes place. The resulting pictures are really quite beautiful, like this one, which looks a bit like a bonsai tree. Unfortunately, some people have found themselves seriously injured (and even dead) from fractal burning, so this is definitely one best left to the experts.
27. Sprouting bean sprouts
There’s something disgustingly fascinating about this person’s sprouting spring roll. The fact that this only happened after four days makes us fear for our own digestive systems in the way that we used to when our mates convinced us that if you ate an apple seed, it’d grow inside you. Hopefully the person in question didn’t then eat their spring roll – bean sprouts are notorious for accumulating bacteria like salmonella and E. coli if they’re left out in the warm.
We’ve covered some pretty heavy stuff in this slideshow, and if you want something you can genuinely do at home without fearing for your life, here’s your answer. All you need are a handful of M&Ms you’re willing to sacrifice. When you put them in water, they create diffusion force barriers. This keeps them in a circle of their own color, unable to merge with their mates.
Some plants are really difficult to grow. Others, like this lettuce head, just want to grow and grow and grow forever. You don’t need to do much to keep them alive – once they’ve popped out of the soil, they’re thriving. If a “Worlds Tallest Lettuce” competition doesn’t currently exist, it’s time it did. This one looks as tall as a sunflower.
30. Driving over chalk paint
If you’re planning to use chalk paint on your front yard, you’ll either love or hate the effect it has on your car tires when you drive over it. To us, it looks like a delicate work of art, almost intentional. If you try this yourself, just a warning – there’s no guarantee it’ll look this pretty.
Even today, our cameras aren’t always on hand to take the crystal clear photographs that we expect of them. This person must have had theirs on a funny setting when they decided to try and snap a pic of their aeroplane’s propeller. The question is, which is the real propeller and which are the past and present illusions? Or are they all technically real?
32. Lightning-struck flag
We’ve seen lightning-struck sand, and now, here’s what happens when lightning strikes a flag on a golf course. A metal flagpole, even the tiny ones found at golf courses, can conduct electricity just as easily as a tree or any other wooden pole. In this case, it appears that lightning struck the flagpole, then made its way down the hole and spread out underneath the ground. Looks kinda scary.
33. Ultimate finger wrinkles
If you’ve ever had a long bath, you’ll know that the palms and your hands and the soles of your feet go all weird and wrinkly. There’s actually a purpose for this – wrinkly hands and feet give us better grip on objects, channelling the water away from us a bit like the treads you see on car tires. We still wouldn’t want to be this person, who fell asleep in the bath and experienced ultimate finger wrinkledom.
Fog is something that we have very little control over. Once it descends, that’s that – it’s staying there until it decides to move on. But this shot of a cluster of wind turbines in a foggy area show that it is possible to move fog in a certain path. Imagine trying to drive through that.
35. Frozen water on a spinning wheel
We’ve already established by this point that frozen water is seriously cool (both figuratively and literally) in all scenarios. But we’re particularly transfixed by this cosmic ice star that formed when water froze on a spinning wheel. If only this was a permanent tire accessory – we’re sure lots of people would go for it. Perhaps without the mud, though.
36. When nature takes over
Have you ever stopped to consider what would happen if we stopped cutting down trees, pruning back bushes, mowing our lawns? It’s actually quite a daunting thought. Nature might look quite innocent, but as this picture proves, it’s also pretty relentless. Nobody was using this boat, so it reclaimed it back as its own.
If you have a freezer with an automatic ice maker, this person’s mistake should serve as a warning. Take your ice tray out, and you’ll end up with a mini ice avalanche. Cool? Yes. Practical? No. We somehow don’t think auto-defrost will work on this one…
38. Triple foam explosion
If you’ve ever wondered what happens when the triple foam breaks at the car wash (and why would you not?), it’s this. Is it a portal leading back to the eighties? Is it the secret recipe for the new Starbucks frappe flavor? Or is it the most exciting foam party foam ever invented? A mixture of the three sounds about right.
39. Trash can light party
We all remember learning about light reflection in high school, but let’s face it, we still don’t
really know why this person’s trash can decided to share the light from the window with the rest of the room. It’s still a pretty cool effect, though – imagine how multiple trash cans might look. Wonder if WiFi works best in the middle of the light circle?
This isn’t just a trippy optical illusion – the pipes really did burst underneath this person’s basketball court and created a sort of wavy skateboard park for the players. This actually serves as inspiration for a brand new basketball phase 2: adventureball. But we suspect that injuries would almost be unavoidable.
This candle is the actual definition of “deflated”. Turns out someone left it on their hot patio, and it was just too much for the wax. Interestingly, the candle chose to flop sideways rather than simply melt from the ground up. The end result is kind of comical.
42. Mesh furniture in an ice storm
If you have mesh patio furniture, take a look at it after an ice storm has passed. You’ll probably find that frozen droplets of water have made their way through the furniture’s tiny holes and have created an icicle chandelier effect. It’s almost a shame for it to melt.
43. Lightning-struck asphalt
Just when you thought you’d seen all there was to see with lightning strikes, we present to you: lightning-struck asphalt. Asphalt is fire-resistant, but it can still melt, crumble and form entirely unique boulders when hit by lightning. This person has found a piece of asphalt that looks more like an obscure statue than a piece of the ground.
44. Carrot “get-together”
Planting carrots is an art. If you seed them too close together, they won’t be able to grow to maturity. That’s why you’re supposed to remove some of the baby plants in a row to let them grow bigger, or you could end up with something really bizarre-looking, like this. Probably still taste okay, though.
45. Microwaved highlighter
For some people, microwaves, and what you can and can’t put in them, are just too tempting. We’ve all seen the videos of what happens when you microwave tin foil, but how about highlighters? If you want to create a miniature paint party, you know what to do. Just be aware that your microwave will never quite be cleaned of its technicolor hues.
46. Human hand petri dish
An agar plate, like the one in this pic, is a petri dish containing agar and nutrients. It’s used to culture microorganisms, which can then be used for lab experiments. In this instance, an 8-year-old put his hand in the petri dish, and it turns out he had plenty of bacteria to contribute to the experiment. If this doesn’t make you get up and wash your hands, nothing will.
This is why you don’t leave juice out on the side for too long. As cool as the rippled top coating looks on this person’s beet juice looks, imagine having to drink it. It’s almost like the juice has developed a protective skin. *Shudder*.
We all know by this point that nature is pretty intimidating when it’s left to do its thing. Let’s hope this person had given in on the idea of riding their bike again, because moss has started creeping in on their bike seat. Might make a springy cushion, to be fair. If not slightly damp.
If you’re a fan of reading tea leaves, you’ll want to give coffee a try too. This person left their coffee cup sideways and an image of sorts appeared on the bottom. Whether you think it’s a Bob Ross piece or an omen of the future, we’ll leave that to your interpretation. We can personally see houses and trees on a hillside.
Not many of us would sign up to this experiment, purely because it means hanging out in Antarctica at -94°f/-70°c. Luckily, someone did it for us, so we can enjoy the photos from our cozy bedrooms. They poured food onto their plate in the cold, but before it even made it fully onto there, it solidified in an ice block, creating something that looks almost like an illusion trick.
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