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andydp
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Joined: 23 Sep 2003
Posts: 8122
Location: Upstate NY near Albany
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 Posted: 10/09/05 - 14:28 Post subject: Exploding Pants, Nigerian Scams, Fake Testicles
I bet you thought the Nobel Prize was a big deal...These are probably bigger. Investigating exploding pants ?
Less serious 'Nobels' mark research against all the odds...
08 October 2005
The Ig Nobel prizes announced at Harvard University this week highlighted research which answered questions many people had never thought to ask.
In addition to New Zealand research which probed why the trousers and other clothing of some dairy farmers began exploding in the 1930s, a wide range of other unlikely-sounding research was canvassed. (REFERENCE: "The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers: Reflections on an Aspect of Technological Change in New Zealand Dairy-Farming between the World Wars," James Watson, Agricultural History, vol. 78, no. 3, Summer 2004, pp. 346-60.)
New Scientist reported the prize for physics - and patience - went to John Mainstone of Queensland University for continuing an experiment begun by the late Thomas Parnell in 1927, watching a glob of congealed black tar slowly dripping through a funnel.
One drop falls about every nine years, but Dr Parnell died sometime after the second drop. Dr Maidstone is now waiting for the ninth drop to fall. Other awards:
Medicine: Greg Miller of Missouri for inventing artificial replacement testicles for neutered dogs.
Literature: Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, using e-mail to distribute short stories full of characters, each of whom requires just a small amount of money so as to obtain access to the great wealth they will share with the reader.
Peace: Claire Rind and Peter Simmons of Newcastle University for electrically monitoring the activity of a locust's brain cell while it was watching selected highlights from the film Star Wars.
Biology: An international team of scientists and perfumiers for smelling and cataloguing the peculiar odours - cashews, licorice, mint or rotting fish - produced under stress by 131 different species of frogs.
Economics: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing Clocky, an alarm clock that runs away and hides while it rings, ensuring that people get out of bed.
Nutrition: Yoshiro Nakamats of Tokyo for photographing and then analysing every meal he has eaten over 34 years.
Chemistry: Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger of Minnesota University, for settling the scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?
Fluid dynamics: Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany, and Jozsef Gal of Lorand Eotvos University, Hungary, for using basic physics to analyse "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh - Calculations on Avian Defecation".
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