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2006-10-07 -Short Attention Span Theater-
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IgNobel prize winners celebrate the science of silliness
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IT IS a device with a variety of practical applications: an ingenious gadget that disperses gangs of loitering teenagers by emitting a piercing shriek only they can hear. Not the pinnacle of science, perhaps, but high enough to win the Welsh engineer who designed it an award from Harvard. Howard Stapleton has been awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel award for peace.
This year's winners were honoured or dishonoured at a raucous ceremony yesterday at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. They include a doctor who put his finger on a cure for hiccups; two men who think there is something to the adage that feet smell like cheese; and researchers who discovered that dung beetles won't tuck in to just any old pile of
well, dung.
Continued from Page 3
What started as a small event in 1991 to honour obscure and humorous scientific achievements has grown into an international happening, with some of this year's winners travelling from Australia, Kuwait and France.
Australian duo Nic Svenson and Dr Piers Barnes from the CSIRO won the mathematics category for calculating the chances of a blink-free photo. The pair travelled to Boston to receive their prize, described by the international science journal Nature as no cash, but much cachet. They are pleased to report that to ensure a photo with no one blinking, budding photographers need to shoot to the following criteria: For groups of fewer than 20, you divide the number of people by three when there is good light or a decent flash; divide by two if the light is bad. This will give you the number of photos needed to get a blink-free photo.
The Ig Nobels are given out by real Nobel laureates, including Harvard physics professor Roy Glauber, who stays behind afterwards to sweep up.
Mr Stapleton's device, called the Mosquito, emits a high-frequency, siren-like noise that is painful to the ears of teens and those in their early 20s, but inaudible to older adults. The invention grew out of his 15-year-old daughter's trip to the local store last year to buy milk. She came back empty-handed, having been intimidated by a group of teenage boys loitering outside the store.
Mr Stapleton, who has sold and installed security systems for more than two decades, thought back to when he was 12 years old and he visited his father at work. "I walked into this room with six people doing ultrasonic welding, and immediately ran right back out again, the noise was so painful," Mr Stapleton said. "I asked an adult: 'What's that noise?' And he said: 'What noise?' " 
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Posted by Fred 2006-10-07 00:00||
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Posted by CrazyFool 2006-10-07 00:43||
2006-10-07 00:43||
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