| koko |
Posted
on 04-Oct-02 09:22 AM
Interdisciplinary Research: Karl Kruszelnicki, of the University of Sydney, for performing a comprehensive survey of human belly button lint - who gets it, when, what colour, and how much.
Chemistry went to the Illinois researcher who gathered many elements of the periodic table, and then built a four-legged table on the theme of the periodic table.
Mathematics: Two Indian scientists came up with a new method for estimating the surface area of elephants.
Literature: Two US researchers wrote a colourful report on The Effects Of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting On Reading Comprehension.
Peace: A Japanese team got the prize for promoting peace and harmony between the species by inventing Bow-Lingual, a device that translates a dog's barks into Japanese.
Hygiene: Eduardo Segura, from Spain, won his IgNobel for inventing a washing machine for cats and dogs.
Economics: Twenty-eight companies shared this prize for "adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world".
Medicine: Chris McManus, of University College London, was able to show that ancient sculptures of men wrongly had a larger left testicle (in nature, the reverse is true, apparently!)
The physics IgNobel went to Arnd Leike, of the University of Munich, who was able to show that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay.
"He and a Nobel Laureate went out for a beer in Harvard Square before the ceremony to try to replicate the results," Mark Abrahams said.
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