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Genius or Goofball? The 2009 Ig Nobel Award Winners
The 2009 Ig Nobel Awards honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative—and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. Here, our take on the fun contest's winners.
- Before your next bar brawl, think back to the pioneering work of five researchers from the University of Bern in Switzerland. Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali, and Beat Kneubuehl set out to analyze the fracture threshold of the human skull, and whether empty or full beer bottles are more likely to do the most damage.read moreAPShare
- What's keeping pregnant actress Ashley Jensen upright? Or translated into physics-speak, how has fetal load played a part in the evolution of lumbar lordosis in bipedal hominins? That's the weighty mystery Katherine K. Whitcome, Liza J. Shapiro, and Daniel E. Lieberman set out to unravel.read moreReutersShare
- Challenging economic times cause for ingenious solutions. Enter Gideon Gono, governor of Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank, who was feted for "giving people a simple, everyday way to cope with a wide range of numbers—from very small to very big—by having his bank print notes with denominations ranging from one cent to one hundred trillion dollars."read moreAndrew EricsonShare
- Traditionally, miners painstakingly dig up diamonds like the gigantic, 507-carat monster found earlier this week. Some scientists think that's too much work. Javier Morlaes, Miguel Apatiga, and Victor M. Castano of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico instead devised a process for creating diamonds from liquids—in particular, tequila.read moreAPShare
- Careful with those knuckles, boys! After all, cracking your knuckles can lead to arthritis....or does it? That's what Donald L. Unger of Thousand Oaks, California, set out to definitely discover. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand (but never his right hand) every day for more than 60 years.read moreAPShare
- Published10 Images
Genius or Goofball? The 2009 Ig Nobel Award Winners
The 2009 Ig Nobel Awards honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative—and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. Here, our take on the fun contest's winners.
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- Genius or Goofball? The 2009 Ig Nobel Award Winners
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