Ig Nobels Feature Exploding Colonoscopies, Left Leaning Views of Eiffel Tower

alphadogg writes "The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony has honored a wide array of strange research and advancement over the years, from exploding pants to woodpecker headaches to aggressive parking enforcement, and Thursday night's ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., was no exception. Particular highlights included a Russian company that turns ammunition into trace amounts of diamond, Japanese engineers who developed a speech jamming device, and research into such critical topics as why coffee is so hard to carry without slopping and what makes a ponytail move the way it does."

Re:IgNobels are a disservice to basic research

[PolygamousRanchKid]

From the Ig Nobel FAQ:

Are you ridiculing science?

No. We are honoring achievements that make people laugh, then think. Good achievements can also be odd, funny, and even absurd; So can bad achievements. A lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity.

Re:IgNobels are a disservice to basic research

[Kidbro]

"The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

I think you have misunderstood the Ig Nobel Prize. It's not intended to mock the recipients. It's intended, partly, to reward basic (and sometimes not so basic) research into areas you'd otherwise forget might benefit from research.

"Are you ridiculing science?
No. We are honoring achievements that make people laugh, then think. Good achievements can also be odd, funny, and even absurd; So can bad achievements. A lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity."

http://www.improbable.com/ig/ [improbable.com]

Re:The double laureate

[maswan]

You mean 2010? That's when Andre Geim got the Nobel prize in physics (for graphene), having previously gotten the Ig Nobel for levitating frogs.

Re:Why coffee is so hard to carry without slopping

[chad_r]

Without reading the research, coffee is hard to carry while walking because the regular pace of your walking creates a resonant frequency that increases the sloshing until it spills over. If you take irregular steps or move your cup around in a random motion you can overcome this. However, you won't look cool doing either of these.