Quantifying the hazards of falling coconuts and patenting the wheel are just two of the achievements recognized by the 20001 Ig Nobel Prizes. These are awarded each year for achievements that 鈥渃annot or should not be reproduced鈥�.
Falling coconuts may look funny in children鈥檚 cartoons. However, Peter Barss of McGill University earned the Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine for pointing out that the real thing can pack a metric tonne of force when it drops from a 35-metre palm tree.
He had an astronomer relative calculate the force after seeing victims arrive at the hospital where he worked in Papua New Guinea. Falling coconuts can produce 鈥渞eally severe, sometimes fatal neural injuries鈥� by hitting an artery and causing bleeding inside the skull, he told 快猫短视频.
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Falling coconuts caused 2.5 per cent of all trauma admissions, he reported in a 1984 paper in the Journal of Trauma (vol 21, p 990), but he admits that 鈥渕ore injuries come from people falling out of trees than from falling coconuts鈥� landing on them.
Inventing the wheel
Suspecting that Australia had made it entirely too easy to obtain one of its new Innovation Patents, John Keogh, an attorney in Hawthorn, Victoria, filed for a patent on a 鈥渃ircular transportation facilitation device鈥�, as 快猫短视频 reported at the time.
He duly obtained Innovation Patent #2001100012 on the device 鈥� otherwise known as the wheel. He shares the Ig Nobel Prize for Technology with the Australian Patent Office.
The Ig Nobel with the most cosmic impact was in Astrophysics, awarded to Michigan televangelist Jack Van Impe for discovering that black holes meet all the technical requirements for being the location of hell.
Air-tight defence
Buck Weimer of Pueblo, Colorado earned the Ig Nobel Prize in biology for inventing 鈥渦nder-ease,鈥� air-tight underpants that kill the odour of foul-smelling flatulence. He told 快猫短视频 the idea came to him while lying in bed after enjoying a rich dinner with his wife of 33 years, who suffers from gas-producing Crohn鈥檚 disease.
鈥淭he gas comes up around your nose for a reason,鈥� because it鈥檚 trapped by the bed covers, he says. He decided to apply the same principle to trap the gas in tight-fitting underwear, then pass it through a replacable deodorising filter made of layers of felt, fabric, and charcoal.
He and his wife began selling them in March, and their website is now rich with testimonials. 鈥淲ear them for the ones you love,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e ahead of the civility movement.鈥�
Larry Sherman of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio received the Ig Nobel in Psychology for his 1975 paper 鈥淎n ecological study of glee in small groups of pre-school children.鈥� (Child Development, vol 46, p 53).
鈥淕roup glee doesn鈥檛 happen alone,鈥� he said. He was an organizer of the International Society of Humor Studies. 鈥淲e study humor and we do it seriously, and there鈥檚 a paradox there,鈥� he told 快猫短视频.