Laughing as we learn

The internet.  Internal combustion.  Crisps. Just three things that we on the Science Lite desk are constantly disappointed we didn’t invent. Not being computer scientists, engineers or food production experts we can, however, forgive ourselves to some extent.

But there is one thing for which we have absolutely no such excuse. At the end of September the world’s scientific elite meet to celebrate and recognise some of the year’s most important research. Well, perhaps ‘important’ is overstating it slightly – ‘improbable’, yes, that’s more apt.

And that should give some clue as to what we are talking about. Yes, it’s the 22nd annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony - organised by the excellent Annals of Improbable Research. All year we scope-out obscure journals, indulge crack-pot scientists and scour forums all in the name of teasing out a few smirks at the wonderful world of research – then the Igs come along and a smorgasbord of hilarity pours forth all at once. A smorgasbord that we – with our task of using science to tickle funny bones – should have been responsible for, but alas once again our ability fails to quite reach the lofty levels set by our Editor’s ambition.

But enough of this bitterness – time to sit back and enjoy the awards aiming to “first make people laugh and then make them think”.

So, first up is a piece of research that goes some way to explain why not a single one of the science lite team can make it from the kitchen to their desks without looking as if they have attempted to embalm themselves in whatever beverage it is they have prepared. The Fluid Dynamics prize went to Rouslan Krechetnikov and Hans Mayer for studying the dynamics of liquid-sloshing, to learn what happens when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee. Physical Review E was the lucky journal to pick up their seminal paper Walking with Coffee: Why Does It Spill?

In a year that really has been a golden one for physics; we were especially anticipating the physics prize. Would it go to work on the mysterious world of dark energy? Or a new brain-busting insight into quantum physics? No, this year’s Physics Prize went to Joseph Keller and Raymond Goldstein, Patrick Warren, and Robin Ball, for calculating the balance of forces that shape and move the hair in a human ponytail. Unfortunately, unlike the work on the slopping coffee, this is of limited direct relevance for us – when it comes to matters of the scalp, the science lite desk is a barren, stark wasteland.

To the Medicine Prize now, and we have to confess this one scared us a little. You see, it went to work solving a problem that we didn’t know even existed. We’d wager that if you were unfortunate enough to have to undergo an investigative gastroenterological procedure you’d be anxious enough – but what if you thought you could explode whilst you were indignantly bent double? Well – to those people we “worry ye not” - Emmanuel Ben-Soussan and Michel Antonietti have advised doctors who perform colonoscopies how to minimize the chance that their patients will explode – and for their troubles they win an Ignobel!

And so we come to the Neuroscience Prize. Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, Michael Miller, and George Wolford were the lucky winners for demonstrating that brain researchers, by using complicated instruments and simple statistics, can see meaningful brain activity anywhere — even in a dead salmon. This is, to say the least, disconcerting – we shall never look at our salmon encroute, or indeed neuroscience research papers in quite the same way again.