Ig Nobel Awards

Ken

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Jan 1, 2002
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You've heard of the Nobel Prize, which is awarded for great
achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace. But have you heard about the IG NOBEL Prize? The Igs, which honor individuals whose achievements "cannot or should not be reproduced", are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and take a good-natured poke at some remarkably goofy things done in the name of science.

This year's Ig Nobel Prizes, sponsored by the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research", were just awarded at a gala ceremony at Harvard University and included:

PHYSICS: Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay.

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: Karl Kruszelnicki of The University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint -- who gets it, when, what color, and how much.

CHEMISTRY: Theo Gray of Wolfram Research, for gathering many elements of the periodic table, and assembling them into the form of a four-legged periodic table table.

MATHEMATICS: Researchers at Kerala Agricultural University, India, for their analytical report "Estimation of the Total Surface Area in Indian Elephants."

HYGEINE: Eduardo Segura, of Tarragona, Spain, for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.

You can read all about the IG NOBEL prizes, listen to highlights of
the ceremony, and peruse the archives of past winners here:

<A href="http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html">
http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-top.html </A>


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