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Education

2005 Ig Nobel Prizes

by Bethany Halford
October 10, 2005 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 83, Issue 41

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Credit: Photo By Eric Workman
Credit: Photo By Eric Workman

On Oct. 6, as this year's Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were beginning to make their travel plans to Sweden, winners of the 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes gathered at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., for the 15th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony-awards honoring achievements that first make people LAUGH, and then make them THINK.

The event was produced by the Annals of Improbable Research, and AIR's editor, Marc Abrahams, served as the Ig Nobel's version of the King of Sweden. This year's prizewinners traveled to Harvard at their own expense to receive the prizes, which were handed off, as always, by genuine Nobel Laureates.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, professor Edward L. Cussler Jr. and his former student, Brian Gettelfinger, planned to appear at the ceremony wearing Speedos to claim the Chemistry Ig Nobel for conducting a careful experiment to settle the long-standing scientific question: Can people swim faster in syrup or in water? The controversial matter was even a source of debate between Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens.

Cussler and Gettelfinger convinced 16 competitive and recreational swimmers to swim a few laps in a pool thickened with more than 300 kg of guar gum. Although the snotlike liquid was about twice as thick as water, the researchers found it influenced the swimmers' speeds by no more than 4%. While the swimmers experience more viscous drag in syrup than in water, they also generate more forward force with each stroke. The two effects basically cancel one another out (Am. Inst. Chem. Eng. J. 2004, 50, 2646). Cussler told Newscripts, The important thing about this work is that it has no practical value whatsoever.

Chemistry played a role in several other 2005 Ig Nobels. James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, garnered the Agricultural History Prize for his scholarly study, The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers (Agric. Hist. 2004, 78, 346). Buckley was one of many New Zealand farmers who were stricken by that country's 1931 epidemic of exploding trousers. The farmers soon learned that the source of their detonating dungarees was the sodium chlorate herbicide they were using to fight ragwort. When the compound mixed with the cotton and wool in the farmers' trousers, it produced pants that exploded on clotheslines, in front of fireplaces, and even on some unlucky farmers.

Researchers in Australia, Benjamin P. C. Smith of the University of Adelaide and Craig R. Williams of James Cook University, accepted the Biology Prize for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed (Appl. Herpetol. 2004, 2, 47), an effort they carried out as part of an international research team. Cappucino-like and similar to toilet freshener are among the many descriptors in the report.

The Physics Prize went to John S. Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of Australia's University of Queensland 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 (Eur. J. Phys. 1984, 198). The eighth and most recent drop fell on Nov. 28, 2000.

The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria won the Literature Prize 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., Mr. Moses Odiaka, Mrs. Stella Sigcau, 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.

Finally, at the risk of offending our readers' delicate sensibilities, the Newscripts gang believes it would be remiss of us to not mention Victor B. Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal's Ig Nobel Prize in Fluid Dynamics. The International University Bremen, Germany, researchers were honored for their paper Pressures produced when penguins pooh-calculations on avian defaecation (Polar Biol. 2003, 27, 56).

A recording of the ceremony can be viewed at www.improbable.com, and an edited version of the event will be broadcast on Friday, Nov. 25, as part of National Public Radio's Science Friday.


This week's column was written by Bethany Halford. Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.

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