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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.
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!
"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.
OK, where the hell is my grant???
....dogh!!
Keeping
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!
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
Yes, generally things that beat a nice large anvil are, in fact, hitting a nice large anvil.
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."
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!
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
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.