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Young World
Dreams and discoveries
K.R. VISALAKSHI
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Dreams can work wonders — if only we knew how to understand and use them!
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More discoveries are realised in dreams than the “world could dream of!’”Do you know why? Dreams make use of our fullest knowledge and experience. They can make use of the facts, which we are not aware of, when awake.
Dreaming allows us to tap hidden knowledge when seeking a solution . People want “to sleep on a problem” before they make an important decision, since they are sure to find the answer in their dreams.
The story of the benzene ring is well known. Benzene is a clear, colourless, highly refractive and inflammable organic liquid. It is derived from pertoleum and is used in the manufacture of a number of chemical products.
It is an organic compound with six carbon and six hydrogen atoms, in its molecule. Carbon can form four chemical bonds while hydrogen can form only one bond. The structure of benzene eluded the scientist for a very long time…since they could not satisfy all chemical bonds, when they imagined the structure of benzene along a straight line.
German chemist Friedrich August Kekule spent sleepless nights over this problem. One night he dreamt of a snake. It went in circles for a while and suddenly grabbed its own tail in its mouth to form a ring.
The solution dawned immediately on Kekule that the structure of benzene was in the form of a ring and not along a straight line. A hexogonal diagram with a carbon atom in each vertex (attached to a hydrogen atom) and alternate single and double bonds between the six carbon atoms satisfied the rules. Thus the puzzle of the benzene ring was solved!
Russian chemist Dimitri Mandeleev found his “Periodic Table of the Elements” in a dream. The American inventor Elias Howe had worked hard for years to perfect the design of his sewing machine. But success came only after he dreamt that he had been ordered on pain of death — to finish his machine.
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