Here is the Ig Informal Lecture by the winners of the 2020 Ig Nobel Acoustics Prize. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH, then THINK. In the Ig Informal Lectures, some days after the ceremony, the new Ig Nobel Prize winners attempt to explain what they did, and why they did it. [In non-pandemic years, […]
Category: Research News
Research — on any and all subjects — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
Smiling and grimacing can reduce needle injection pain [study]
Bearing in mind that the number of medical injections might soon be increasing, and that some find them painful, a question can arise – ‘What are the options for minimizing the pain of a medical injection?’ Have you considered holding a chopstick in your mouth (to induce a fake smile) or maybe grimacing? Sarah Pressman, […]
Cold Shrinkage
Sometimes things shrink, and sometimes this is a problem, as reported in this 1997 study: “Ice Cream Shrinkage: A Problem for the Ice Cream Industry,” U.K. Dubey and C.H. White, Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 80, no. 12, 1997, pp. 3439-3444. The authors, at Mississippi State University, report: When ice cream is shipped from one […]
The Enduring Appeal of Crunchiness
“Outside the academy, the paper [“The Role of Auditory Cues in Modulating the Perceived Crispness and Staleness of Potato Chips“] failed to generate any interest until 2008, when its authors were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for Nutrition. The Ig Nobels are intended to “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then think,” but media […]