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IgNobel Awards
how_would_i_know writes: "I've always suspected there was a coconut conspiracy... now there's proof. :-)" We might as well follow-up on our earlier story with a list of the IgNobel Winners. Stalin World! A study of glee! And of course, a true breakthrough, the solution to the shower curtain mystery.
Funny, in 4th grade I remember having a science project that set out to solve the problem of "clinging shower curtains". The winner used velcro if memory serves correctly.
;)
Good to see the great mystery in life are always being pondered. Now lets try and figure out Dick Clarks true age.
Ok, I bet he only patented the ROUND wheel.
I'll patent the wheel composed of a high number
of flat sides arranged as a regular polygon.
That'll get him....
...and try this address for winners...
http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-2001-winners.html
All this time I've been thinking I was a freak, it turns out I'm just suffer from Rhinotillexomania. Gross activities seem so much more benign once you stick a scientific name on them. Now I just need to do something about all the crud stuck to the underside of my desk.
Just goes to show you that no matter what you say to people, they're going to walk around without crash helmets! If it were Canada, there would already be legislation, perimeter fences around the coconut trees, and big wind blocks to prevent the coconuts from being blown off the trees.
This is a preventable accident, and measures should be taken to halt these needless coconut injuries!
The Ig Nobel with the most cosmic impact was in Astrophysics, awarded to Michigan televangelist Jack Van Impe for discovering that black holes meet all the technical requirements for being the location of hell.
Great so judjing by the article Bill Gates now has a mnopoly to black holes too.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
We must move immediately to protect our children from the perils of falling coconuts! I hereby propose a law requiring saftey fencing at least ten feet larger in diameter of any tree bearing coconuts or similar fruits. Any owner of such a tree will blah, blah, blah...
</sarcasm>
Ok, if he can patent the wheel, I'm going to patent the use of "<sarcasm/>" notation to prevent the
"Group glee doesn't happen alone."
Gosh, how insightful! Never in a million years would I have known that group glee cannot happen when you're alone!
... That the guy who managed to prove Patent Offices will approve a freaking patent on the wheel deserves a real prize? I mean, what a better proof could you find that (while patents are inherently a good thing) the way they're being handled of late is, well, kinda bad...
:p
Bleah, maybe the guy who managed that just wanted to be funny, but I find it rather chilling myself...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Stalin, while relaxing in a tropical amusement park, picking his nose, was struck by a coconut, prompting a brilliant idea! He immediately dragged his car (he couldn't get any wheel's, because they were patented) to his workshop and made a set of airproof underpants. He considered using charcoal filter's to absorb fart's, but because it would have to be changed, he instead leveraged his recent singularity research to create a small, contained black hole.
To test them, knowing that adult's might be too polite to be honest or too dignified to participate, he gathered together a group of children. The test's were held in a shower to handle any accidents that might result from forced farting. It worked brilliantly. The children tried them in turn's, and not an unpleasant whiff escaped.
For a final test, Stalin tried them on himself and stepped into the shower and strained with all his strength. Unfortunately, his mighty blast destabilized the black hole, causing him and the shower curtain to be sucked into it. At first thinking it all part of the fun, the children were overjoyed at the spectacle.
He was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize posthumously, though this is likely no consolation as he is presumed to live in an eternal hell of contained fart's.
(I swear it sounded like a good idea when I started writing...)
I left out the part about how, because due to time dilation, he will not be truly dead for several million years at least, the usual inheritance tax was not levied on his estate.
There's a simple answer to the shower problem that doesn't need computer modeled renderings to comprehend. Showers use hot water. The water that is close to the shower head is hotter than the water just before it hits the shower floor (go ahead, try it, I'll wait!) So that means the hot water gives the air some of its heat. Now you have some hot air in one half of the bathroom. That air will rise and go over the shower curtain. That will push the cold air down, and into your shower from below, pushing the curtain in at you! I can't believe scientists didn't think of this.
"We're dealing with mental midgets here" - Clarence Tabar
Spiritual Remains
OK, where the hell is my grant???
Or you could just be like me and not bathe at all
All this time I've had two questions about our modern world: 1. Where are the flying cars? 2. Where are the gas-masking ass shields? Finally, one has been answered. If only these were available 15 years ago. I shudder to think back to that night...the night that officially ended all roleplaying acitivites in my life. After years of nasal abuse at the hands (asses?) of the other role-players in the group, I finally had had enough. I remember going on a twenty minute tirade about what I referred to as "common, everyday, ass-hygienics and socially acceptable levels of ass-orchestration". I left the game and have never gone back. Even thinking about it now, my mind is assualted by olfactory memories of past-gas. Now, however, I know that there is hope for others, like me, who would like to play a game with a group of friends or just jaunt down to the local hobby store for a look around without being assaulted by free-floating-vaporous-ass-emissions. I think I'll make some flyers up about these drawers and strategically place them in various books at my local game shop. Maybe, in some small way, I can make a difference. The horror, the horror...
i still say nothing beats a nice large anvil when hitting people
The shameful misuse of the apostrophe is being fought by others as well.
Bob must be ... um ... more irate!
otherwise it redirects to a 404 page.
sulli
RTFJ.
The truly comic touch to this comes from IP Australian (the federal government agency which granted the patent in the first place) says...
"Don't reinvent the wheel. Searching worldwide patent information can help you avoid wasting time and money duplicating work done elsewhere"
(from here)
Candygram for Mongo!
I'm just glad the man who put the Crazy in Crazy religious right and his wife Rexella (King of all monsters) finally won recognition for all their hard work
2001-10-05 12:35:56 Ig Nobel prize 2001 (articles,humor) (rejected)
Now give me credit, damnit!
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
Peter Barss of McGill University earned the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine for pointing out that the real thing can pack a metric tonne of force when it drops from a 35-metre palm tree.
He had an astronomer relative calculate the force after seeing victims arrive at the hospital where he worked in Papua New Guinea.
How exactly do you calculate something like this? I'm one of those geeks who remember just enough physics to be confused. It seems to me that the force is dependent on the mass of the coconut and its acelleration, which is determined by the rigidity of what is being hit (e.g. a steel plate vs. a foam mat).
It also seems to me that as devestating as a coconut impact might be, it would not be as reliably deadly as carefully placing over two thousand pounds on somebody's head.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The IG INFORMAL LECTURES will beheld at MIT room 26-100 on Saturday, October 6, 1 pm.
A half-afternoon of improbably funny, informative, brief (10-15 minutes each), high-spirited public lectures:
- David Jones (Nature magazine's "Daedalus") will delight and confound everyone and everything.
- The 2001 Ig Nobel Prize winners in the fields of Biology, Medicine, Public Health, Economics, and Peace will attempt to explain why they've done what they've done.
This free event is organized in cooperation with the MIT Press Bookstore."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Enough with the "shower curtain" stories, Michael. You yourself originally posted the same story back in July. Out of the hundreds of submissions for stories given to Slashdot, you picked this one? Come on..
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
I've seen shower curtains with magnets in the bottom! So if you have a regular tub/stall, they act as weights. If you have an old steel tub, they stick to the walls. Genius!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
My roommate and I have a long history of debating all sorts of esoteric subjects. He's an ex-Born Again, and I'm an atheist, so of course the subject of Hell came up. =-> He and I were actually arguing about whether Hell was endothermic or exothermic. (yes, we're bored, overeducated college kids) Then we moved on to its location, and we ended up coming to the same conclusion - if Hell exists and is bound by the same physics as the rest of the universe, it's a Black Hole. (the big tipoff was the whole heat without light bit... radiation! Or, alternately, heat from extreme pressure)
This one is great. Some of you might have seen it before:
>The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington
>Chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the
>professor shared it with his colleagues. Bonus Question: Is Hell
>exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the
>students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off
>when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One
>student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the
>mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls
>are moving into Hell and the rate they are leaving. I think that we can
>safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore,
>no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, lets look
>at the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these
>religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will
>go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since
>people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all
>souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect
>the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the
>rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in
>order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the
>volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This
>gives two possibilities: 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the
>rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell
>will increase until all Hell breaks loose. 2. If Hell is expanding at a
>rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and
>pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept
>the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year, "that it will
>be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the
>fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her,
>then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and
>will not freeze. The student received the only "A."
So now I wonder if I can qualify for benefits under the American Disabilities Act if I claim that I'm suffering from Rhinotillexomania?
From the Australian government patent site Searching patent information page:
"Don't reinvent the wheel. Searching worldwide patent information can help you avoid wasting time and money duplicating work done elsewhere."
dUtCh OvEn!!!
Except that they did, and your answer is incorrect. For proof, try taking a very cold shower. Same effect occurs. It's a meteorologically-related phenomenon, not just "hot air rises".
"This message is composed of 100% recycled electrons."
I'll patent fire!
Claim 1: A process for the production of heat by the chemical combination of oxygen with solid, liquid, or gaseous substances.
Claim 2: The reduction in volume or weight of waste material by chemical combination with oxygen.
Is available here. The guy who built the place has one *seriously* twisted sense of humor.... my hat goes off to him!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
So, who were you with, Saturday October 06, @12:23AM?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
will someone PLEASE suck my god damn motherfucking cock?
-- Yours Truly, Captain "Cocksucker" Picard
Water is wet. Really. You can go check if you want.
Now the funny thing about all this wet stuff all over the inside of the shower is that water vapor (H2O) is lighter than air (N2, O2, etc.). Yes, H2O (molecular weight of 2*1+16=18) is about 36% lighter than N2, O2 (molecular weight of 2*14=28, 2*16=32 etc.) This fact is well known by pilots, who have to deal with less lift when flying over large bodies of water and such. I, for one, dismiss the "tornado" theory based on the fact that the shower curtain still pulls in when the shower is hitting my head.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
what's that patent again? the web site I searched only accepts 9 digit numbers 2001100012 has one extra. Maybe someone can post the patent here for reference...
Watching TV is being alone.
I've been wondering about it ever since it was posted... I've done some tests in my shower, and I'm not so sure that what he says is true. Or at least it's not entirely responsible.
I tried the cold shower thing, and the curtain only moved inwards slightly. Not nearly as much as with a hot shower.
And after the water was turned off, the curtains were STILL pulled inwards. As soon as I opened the side a little (to let the air mix) they immediately stopped pulling inwards (hence it would appear to be a temperature difference, not a mysterious mini cyclone effect)
Anyone else tried it?
If God gave us curiosity
Quantifying the hazards of falling coconuts and patenting the wheel are just two of the achievements recognized by the 20001 Ig Nobel Prizes. These are awarded each year for achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced".
I believe that lead the Scorpions to update their song to "Rock You Like My Mother-in-Law's Virtual Shower Simulator"
AC's cheerfully ignored
No, but I can imagine a Boeing 767 of them.
Oh, and if you visit New Guinea and there's a storm -- don't take shelter beneath a palm tree.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
No, really. A square wheel will ride over a surface made of a series of half-circles (think: one long string of speedbumps) as if it were a round wheel going across a flat surface.
Let's assume the coconut weighs 1kg.
And our unfortunate victim's head is 1.5m off the ground (thus making the distance the coconut falls 33.5m.
After having falling 33.5m, the coconut will be moving at sqrt(2*9.8*33.5), or 25.6 m/s.
If the person's head stops the coconut instantly, the deceleration will be infinite, meaning infinite force. Let's hope this is the case, because our hapless victim will likely die too quickly to feel the pain.
Sadly, the world does not work this way, so let's assume it takes 1/2 cm for the coconut to fully decelerate after hitting his/her head. (It's a soft head.)
Using the equation used above, v^2 = v0^2 + 2a(x - x0), we know that the acceleration will be 656.6m/s/s.
With a 1 kg coconut, that means 656.6 newtons of force into your head. And that's assuming you have a truly soft head.
It's nice for us living in Edmonton; See Magazine (a weekly entertainment/alternate newspaper) carries it. (Again.)
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
If you accelerate a square wheel over a surface made of series of half-circles with a constant torque, the acceleration will have a wave pattern in it. Thus, it is more practical to have round wheels and enjoy from constant acceleration.
-- Imperial units must die --