It’s still rare when someone writes fan fiction about a scientist who did Ig Nobel Prize-winning work. Here’s an example of what it looks like:
Parnell’s experiment, the only one he achieved notoriety for before his death in 1948, involved placing a similar chunk of pitch into a funnel and setting a graduated cylinder below. His intention was to show the force of gravity on this very very viscous object. Over time, Parnell theorized the pitch would first conform to the shape of the funnel before dripping its way – ever so slowly – into the graduated cylinder. And he was correct. Eleven years later, in 1938, the hardened chunk of pitch deformed and the first drop of pitch separated itself from the wellspring and thus, Parnell’s hypothesis was validated. All solids are, really, just very highly viscous fluids. Nothing is absolute. (Unless you happen to be a Bingham and require a lot of force, but then, even still, you will deform under the necessary conditions.)
Parnell conducted his experiment (which received an Ig-Nobel in 2005) under the auspices of science. But what he really wanted to prove, to himself, is that certain people could change if given time. For months Parnell had chased his love, an ecologist at the University of Queensland, but to no avail. She, Professor Sheril Konigsberg, had recently ended a long-term relationship with another geologist in the department, a Professor Max Rahemian….
