Microscopic Baklava: Making Beautiful Mistakes

The image you’re looking at, captured using an electron microscope, is beautiful (at least I think so). But it represents a mistake. Instead of these delicate layers of gold (like layers of filo pastry in a tiny, microscopic baklava) you should be seeing an array of holes. Instead of these wonderfully organic curves and twists (like the petals of the world’s smallest rose), you should be seeing something orderly and neat... and boring. I messed up my experiment. I was trying to encourage a particular type of polymer, a long chain-like molecule, to organise itself into an intricate, three-dimensional, network similar to structures we find in the wings of some butterflies. These polymer structures are then used to create replicas made of gold which interact with light in new and interesting ways. But I got my experimental conditions wrong, and forced the polymer to assemble itself too quickly, leading to these disordered flakes you can see.
Mistakes like this happen pretty often in science, and they can be discouraging and down heartening. But everyday now and then a mistake is beautiful, or can point you in an unexplored direction. And when that happens, it more than makes up for it.