Richard
B. Kaner and Alan G. MacDiannid, in Scientific American (Feb. 1988), 415 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.10017.
During the early 1970s, a student at the Tokyo Institute of Technology erred in an attempt to synthesize a polymer called polyacetylene. He used 1,000 times more catalyst than he was supposed to.
The result was a new land of plastic, a silvery film that looked like aluminum foil, stretched like Saran Wrap, and overturned an idea that had persisted since such synthetics were introduced...