2005 IgNobel Prize Awards

karvind writes "This week Nobel prizes in Chemistry, Physics and Medicine were announced. Keeping up with the tradition, the 15th Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held at Sander's Theater at Harvard University. Winners include: Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup? (Chemistry), Electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars" (Peace), The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers (Agricultural History) and many more. Interestingly Roy Glauber, who for ten years has humbly swept paper airplanes on the stage at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. Archived video of the live webcast is also available for those who couldn't attend the ceremony."

Comments

Don't Forget Literature!

[gbulmash]

My favorite is that the Nigerian Scammers won for Literature...

"...for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters -- General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others -- each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them."

LOVE IT!

- Greg

Re:Don't Forget Literature!

[DrEldarion]

Honestly, the creativity that scammers show is pretty amazing to see. Some of the stories/methods that they dream up in order to manipulate people into their scams are actually pretty amazing.

If they weren't such bastards, I'd admire them ;)

Re:Don't Forget Literature!

[truckaxle]

It is amazing that they are successful enough to warrant the amount of energy they spend in ah... marketing.

I actual know a guy who was suckered in for over $180,000 including a good portion of his 401k. This fellow had the balls to have his story written up and printed in the local newspaper. His employment at the time was a personal finance consultant - hard to believe but true.

He made 2 trips to France and the scammers just kept on milking him for money. First it was the very expensive solvent to remove the marks from the money. Then he actually got to see the big trunks of cash with NBS printed on the $100 dollar bills. From that point on - greed, centered in the old brain, took over and he paid for things like 15k for custom fees, 12k for bail, or 10k bribes, on and on until a he was wrung dry.

Re:Don't Forget Literature!

[MikeCapone]

I really liked the "swimming through sugar syrup vs water" experiment. I'd have been a volunteer swimmer for that one. The penguin poo velocity one was neat too. I didn't know about the phenomenon before reading about it there, so the awards are educational. I wonder if it's in that March of the Penguins movie...

I actually posted about it on TH earlier this morning:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/10/sciences_b est_f.php

Re:Don't Forget Literature!

[Hurricane78]

Ever seen this? *g*

http://www.419eater.com/

Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[fragmentate]

"Neuticles -- artificial replacement testicles for dogs, which are available in three sizes, and three degrees of firmness."

Okay, the size thing I can understand... It's the degrees of firmness I'm having trouble with.


"for electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie 'Star Wars.'"

If it was Episode I - III, that poor locust didn't have much left after this experiment.

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[RatBastard]

The reason they bother is that you can't enter neutured dogs in certain AKA dog shows. Neuticles need to look and feel real to fool the judges. I have friends that are dog show junkies and they hate the Neuticles guys with a passion.

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[jfengel]

Do they hate them more than having to feel a dog's testicles for a living?

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[jd_esguerra]

Do they hate them more than having to feel a dog's testicles for a living?

Yeah, their job is nuts.

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[WetSpot]

------>Well, I don't know about you...But, nothing will ruin my day quicker than an artificial nut that is just way too hard!

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[Mation]

Best in show? I can name all the nuts...

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[NanoGator]

"Yeah, their job is nuts."

My grumpy roommate had one of those jobs. He always came home all teste.

Re:Neuteriety or Notoriety?

[ameline]

My dog has neuticles, and while he thinks they feel the same, he doesn't think they taste the same as the real thing. :-)

Neuticles inventor also honored

[Anonymous Coward]

Gregg Miller mortgaged his home and maxed out his credit cards to mass produce his invention -- prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs.

What started 10 years ago with an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max has turned into a thriving mail-order business. And on Thursday night Miller's efforts earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/a rchive/2005/10/06/national/a165024D53.DTL&type=pri ntable

I'm shocked

[Frac]

Steve Ballmer didn't get the Physics Prize for his paper on "Measuring Projectile Trajectory of Flying Chairs towards Resigning Employees"?

Tux: The Third Option

[Tackhead]

> FLUID DYNAMICS: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu , Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation."

Now, with penguins, (cuddly such), "contented" means it has either just gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring. Take it from me, I'm an expert on penguins, those are really the only two options.

- Linus Torvalds on the design of Tux

No, Linus, apparently there was a third option.

And now I'll never say "Ooh, what a cuddly penguin, I bet he is just stuffed with herring" the same way again.

nope

[Douglas Simmons]

It's not pretty obvious because the swimmer's hands do not need to move as fast to "grip" the liquid. The question is, does that factor outweigh the poorer hydrodynamics from the increased density. That's why subs surface when they can to cruise faster

Re:nope

[rossdee]

" That's why subs surface when they can to cruise faster"

Not modern subs. (Since the late 60s (at least in the US) subs have been designed primarily for underwater manouvers. The propellers work better the deeper they are (less cavitation)

During WWII and before, subs were powered by diesel engines on the suface and electric motors when submerged (which also charged the batteries) so for long range cruise they surfaced. Nuke powered boats don;t need to surface for air, and they have the same amount of power available at 1500 feet deep as they do when surfsced.

Re:nope

[Daniel_Staal]

That's why subs surface when they can to cruise faster.

No they don't. Old-style diesel subs would surface to cruise faster, but that was because they could cruise faster on diesel power than on electric, and they had to have fresh air for the diesel engines. (And they needed to save the battery power for when they really needed it.)

Nuclear subs can actually cruise faster at depth: They have power, and the propellers can push harder against the denser water.

Full list for this year, plus past winners

[jangobongo]

Full list for this year, plus past winners.

One of my favorites:

"ECONOMICS: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday."

previously covered at here at slashdot.

Some other funny ones:

"PHYSICS: John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years."

and

"FLUID DYNAMICS: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu , Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, for using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin, as detailed in their report "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation."

SPOILERS

[cgenman]

They balance out. You swim at the same speed... at least according to the winner.

Re:SImple viscosity?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a question of Reynolds Number. For humans (slow swimmers) in syrup (high viscosity) the Reynolds Number is going to be very low. It will be, essentially, the same problem that bacteria are up against in water. And if they swam like we do, they'd go nowhere.
      In low Reynolds Number situations, trying to swim by (for example), bringing one's hands forward slowly, then swishing them back quickly, would get you a distance of exactly zero from where you started, after one ( or N, where N is an integer) cycle. You'd be shoved backwards during the bringing up of the hands the same amount you're pushed forwards during the fast swish.
      Bacteria get around this by breaking the time-reversal symmetry of their swimming -- they use things that rotate, like flagella, or things that have different phases along a "squirmy" motion, like cilia. Our motions simply wouldn't work at that scale.
      It's always struck me as kind of silly that this particular paper was called worthy of an IgNobel. The authors apparently wanted to make it a fun paper, and get some interest by making people think. Hopefully, people can look past the IgNobel award and see that it's an interesting, valid question.
      Now, where're the hot grits and Natalie Portman? Hopefully she wouldn't get very far in those.

Re:SImple viscosity?

[truckaxle]

Since alcohol has a lower viscosity than water I wonder how fast a human swimmer could swim in vat of alcohol. Any takers? Now that I got thinking about this if you had an ideal fluid with no viscosity could you swim at all?

Actually this research should team up with the Australian and see how fast a swimmer could swim in a tub of congealed black tar

Regret of Mr. Nobel.

[88NoSoup4U88]

I find the (hi)story of the Nobel Prize quite interesting :

Imagine, this guy was shocked to see people using his invention, dynamite, for violent purposes (naive as he was ;) ) : So after he dies, the capital he leaves behind is invested in giving out yearly prizes to people who shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.

I always wondered what motivations (his conscience , religion, a nagging wife telling him every night he was a dumb man for inventing dynamite) were behind this price.

Re:Regret of Mr. Nobel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alfred Nobel had a brother who was also in his line of work, but not associated with his research into dynamite. Upon the death of his brother, newspapers wrote scathing epitaphs, calling Alfred (whom they thought had died) a monster to society, whose inventions had resulted in the deaths of many more men than previously possible (partially due to the fact that he had sold dynamite to both sides in the Franco-Prussian War). He was so shocked and affected by these reports that he set forth in his will to reward those who had done good to society.

Im one of those eccentric people who attended...

[technoextreme]

Unfortnately, the video stream has been slashdotted but I can go into details about some of the parts of the Ignobel Awards. The night started with a pianist playing a song called Infinite Chopsticks. This was a song that must have involved 100 differnt versions of chopsticks in fifteen minutes (As the host said infinity doesn't last very long). Next was the general introduction of the guests. These people ranged from Miss Sweetie Poo (A girl who's sole purpose is to get people from babling on about their subjects) to people who have actually won Nobel Prizes. Then there was a general discussion and opera based on the concept of infinity (the ceremonies theme). The opera was about an ocd ruler of the land ofinfinity who needs to count everything in order to get married. There are also two moments of science where there are two demonstrations of science. The 24/7 lectures are a 24 second technical descussion of something and then a seven word summary that everyone can understand. Also, you can win a date with a Nobel Prize winner. It's a really nice way to attract people to the world of science by showing that we are not upstuck individuals. I can answer more questions if you guys have more questions about the ceremony. I believe the that it will be rebroadcast on NPR. The greatest quote of the evening has to be,"Well I can recite the number e to you but I've decided to tell you everything I know."- A Nobel Prize winner in relation to the concept of infinity. Ps. After reading this. I now know I have no life.

The Most Important Part of the Ceremony

[Jazzer_Techie]

I had the privilage of attending the awards last night for the first time. It was a ton of fun. My friends and I threw about a half ream of paper airplanes from the balcony and of course got some good laughs from the prizes that others have mentioned. But by far the most disturbing event of the night was the 2003 Biology Prize winner again showing his (first ever) documentation of of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck. http://www.nmr.nl/deins815.htm

If any one is in the Cambridge/Boston area this Saturday there is a free lecture at MIT during which the laureates will describe more about their research.

Note: This may well be the only time that "homosexual necrophilia" has been used in a non-troll /. post.

Re:The Most Important Part of the Ceremony

[Jazzer_Techie]

More info on the lecture

MIT (77 Massachusetts Ave.)
Room 10-250
1:00 PM


http://web.mit.edu/bookstore/www/events/#ig

"Timecube" not even nominated?

[Hao Wu]

Surely "TIME CUBE" deserves Ig-recognition....

"Recognition and application of this Cubic
simultaneous 4 day rotation of Earth,
will change all math, science and societies
from the begining of human existence.
You have to be evil to ignore this math."

Re:SImple viscosity?

[mrchaotica]

Now that I got thinking about this if you had an ideal fluid with no viscosity could you swim at all?

Think about this: can astronauts swim through the air in their spacecraft?

Re:BFirs7

[SharpFang]

You guys are likely to get IgNobel in Anatomy next year.

Re:Confirmation?

[The Meeper]

He won a NOBEL prize. He literally swept the IgNobels, though.

the exploding trousers

[xpatiate]

The story behind Mr Buckley's exploding trousers is actually kind of a good one. Back in the 30s farmers in New Zealand needed a way to control ragwort, a weed that is toxic to livestock. Sodium chlorate seemed like a miraculous solution at first, but what they didn't know was that it is a strong oxidising agent and can become explosive when mixed with organic material. So spraying it hither and yon while wearing cotton trousers is not the best idea. There followed a nationwide epidemic of exploding trousers - on the clothes line, in front of the fire, even while being worn - before the connection was figured out.