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."

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 [sfgate.com]

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.

Full list for this year, plus past winners

[jangobongo]

Full list [improb.com] 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 [slashdot.org] 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."

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: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.

Regret of Mr. Nobel.

[88NoSoup4U88]

I find the (hi)story of the Nobel Prize [wikipedia.org] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 [mit.edu]