SearchResearch Challenge (8/28/24): How can you find search phrases beyond your own brain's power to imagine?

 A real challenge... 

The "Walkie Talkie" building in central London has a giant unanticipated consequence. At certain times of day, the windows reflect the sun's rays to a point creating a hot spot that can damage cars unlucky enough to be parked at the focus.
  ... for doing online research (what we call SRS) is figuring out what to use for the search terms and phrases.

For most people and for most research questions, figuring out what search terms to use is not a huge problem--in truth, people mostly look up fairly simple things.  (What's the phone number of my local pharmacy?  When is the swimming pool open?  Is there a grocery store near me?)  The vast majority of online searches are like that--straightforward requests for information.  

But then every so often you land in a really difficult research swamp, and it's tough to figure out how other people would write about the very concepts you're interested in learning about. 

As you no doubt know by now, I'm working on a new book about Unanticipated Consequences (see my earlier post about this).  And even though I'm a full couple of years into the project, I find myself STILL trying to figure out how to find books, articles, web pages, podcasts, news stories (etc.) on the topic. 

That's why today's SRS Challenge is all about how to deal with this kind of problem.  

Suppose you're doing research on a topic that's big, complicated, and difficult to render in just a few words.  How do you start to search for such a beast? More particularly: 

1. What can a researcher do to find other words and phrases that would help in doing online searching for such a topic?  Let's consider my topic--unanticipated consequences--how can we find other helpful search terms and phrases to seek out and understand this topic?  Ideas?  

2. Same question, except this time I want to search for books on the topic of unanticipated consequences.  (Yes, I know I can go to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, AbeBooks, Google Books, or the Internet Archive.)  What's the best way to find the top 10 books on the topic? 

Note that we want to learn HOW you'd find such search terms or books.  What process did you follow to come up with search terms that work for your last big, complex, and tricky search?  

Tell us in the comments! 

Keep searching.