Some people think scientists are a dour, serious lot. For proof they are nothing of the sort, look no further than the scientific awards ceremony held last week at Harvard University.
The most famous scientific awards are, of course, the Nobel Prizes. These were not those. These were the Ig Nobel Prizes, which annually honors individuals whose achievements “cannot or should not be reproduced.” They’re sponsored by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research, and co-sponsored by the Harvard Computer Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association.
And now, if I may have the envelope, please:
The 1999 Ig Nobel Prize in Sociology went to Steve Penfold of York University in Toronto, for his PhD thesis, “Tim Horton of Hamilton: Suburban Culture and the Donut Store, 1950-1985.”
The prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Dr. Len Fisher of Bath, England, for calculating the optimal way to dunk a biscuit, and to Professor Jean-Marc Vanden-Brock of the University of East Anglia, England, for calculating how to make a teapot spout that doesn’t drip.
A biscuit consists of lumps of starch glued together with sugar. Hot tea or coffee melts the sugar, eventually causing bits of biscuit to fall in. Dr. Fishe discovered the best strategy for dunking an iced chocolate biscuit is to place it flat in the tea with the icing on top. That way the icing doesn’t melt, instead remaining strong enough to hold the biscuit together longer. How long a given biscuit will last can be determined mathematically. This may lead to longer-lasting biscuits.
Professor Vanden-Brock’s 20-page mathematical treatise, the result of 17 years of government-funded research, shows that all teapots have the potential for both a neat pour into the cup or dribbling down the spout–but it’s impossible to predict which is going to happen at any given time. His formulae may point the way to new designs that make dribbling a thing of the past (and may also improve the efficiency of ship hulls, but never mind about that).
Speaking of tea, the British Standards Institutions won the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature for its six-page specification (BS-6008) on the proper way to make a cup of tea.
The Science Education Prize went to the Kansas State Board of Education and the Colorado State Board of Education, for mandating that children should not believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution any more than they should believe in, say, Newton’s theory of gravitation.
Dr. Arvid Vatle of Stord, Norway, won the prize in Medicine for carefully collecting, classifying, and contemplating the different containers his patients use for submitting urine samples.
The prize in Chemistry, meanwhile, went to Takeshi Makino, president of the Safety Detective Agency in Osaka, Japan. The agency sells a pair of chemical sprays, called “S-check,” that wives can spray on their husband’s underwear to see if they’ve been unfaithful. The sprays turn traces of semen bright green. The company sells 200 sets a month, at $350 each.
Paul Bosland of The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico, won the prize in Biology for breeding a spiceless jalapeno chile pepper. (Why anyone would want a spiceless jalapeno, I couldn’t discover.)
Hyuk-ho Kwon of Kolon Company of Seoul, Korea, won the Environmental Protection prize for inventing the self-perfuming business suit (which is probably not particularly popular in scent-free offices).
The late George and Charlotte Blonsky of the U.S. received the prize for Managed Health Care for inventing a device to aid women in giving birth. The woman is strapped onto a circular table which is then rotated at high speed, the theory being that centrifugal force will help expel the baby from the womb. Oddly enough, although the device was patented in 1965, it has yet to catch on.
Finally, the prize for Peace went to Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong of Johannesburg, South Africa, for inventing an automobile burglar alarm that squirts liquefied gas from a bottle in the trunk through two nozzles, located under the front doors, then ignites the gas. While this would no doubt deter a thief, it flames from both sides at once, which is kind of hard on innocent passers-by and street-side floral displays.
More than a thousand people attended the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, which you can view on the Web at its home page, www.improbable.com/ig/.
It may not be the Academy Awards, but at least it doesn’t have any dumb production numbers.
Not yet, anyway.
