“That paper, published in Elsevier’s Physica A, remains the most popular of any paper in the journal on social media, according to the data analytics company Altmetric…. In September 2010, the paper also won the Ig Nobel Prize for Management, and after that it became increasingly popular.” So says the journal’s publisher, also saying: in […]
Tag: Physics
A physics discovery: Why Clothes Don’t Fall Apart
The UK-based team that shared an Ig Nobel Physics Prize in 2012 for exploring the physics of why ponytails (the hair style) are shaped like pony tails, has now looked into a different question from everyday life: Why clothes don’t fall apart. They published a study about it: “Why Clothes Don’t Fall Apart: Tension Transmission […]
Sad news: Dick Taylor is gone
A news report from Stanford University says that Dick Taylor died today. We had a good time back in 1998 at an Ig Nobel show at Stanford University. Lila Guterman, writing in the Stanford Report, described part of that evening: Theories of improbability: Gum-chewing Nobelists talk silly science A paper airplane whizzed through the air […]
Modelling heat loss from a semi-spherical cow udder
Theoretical physicists are sometimes accused of making over-simplifications for mathematical models. This has lead to many variations on the spherical cow story, where a physicist claims to be able to cure a sick cow, but only if it is a spherical cow in a vacuum. Oddly, most iterations of this tale ignore heat radiated from […]
Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces
“An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep over Various Surfaces” is a research study that won the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize in physics for its co-authors — Jack Harvey, John Culvenor, Warren Payne, Steve Cowley, Michael Lawrance, David Stuart, and Robyn Williams, of Australia. John Culvenor, one of the authors, has just boarded an airplane (that’s him, there, […]
Soap Film Opera, fluid dynamically, in France
A series of musico-visual treats — in a new genre called “soap film opera” — are being produced by Florence Elias and her colleagues at Laboratoire Matière et Sytèmes Complexes, Université Paris Diderot and at CNRS. The genre marries soap film, fluid dynamics, music, and videography. Here are three samples — “Habañera” from Carmen, “Lucilla”, and […]
Obsessing about light, in a song
If you obsess about light, as many obsessive people do, and as many people who are fascinated by light do, and if you are prone to break into song and then explain without singing what you have just sung about, you might find yourself singing a song such as Sabine Hossenfelder sings here, and then […]
Is a Slowly-Rolling Car Not Dangerous?
Physics can help a person realize that it’s not always good to be hit by a slowly rolling car, even if the ground appears to be flat. This medical report gives details: “Pedestrian accident analysis with a silicone dummy block,” Youngnae Lee, Sungji Park, Seokhyun Yoon, Youngsu Kong, and Jae-Mo Goh, Forensic Science International, vol. 220, […]
Do Frogs in Helium Get Squeaky Voices? (Podcast #94)
Do frogs get all high-voiced when they breathe in some helium, the way people do? A research study explores that very question, and we explore that study, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams discusses a published helium-filled study, with dramatic readings from Dany Adams, a biology professor at Tufts University […]
Blais sings, in parallel, of quantum gravity
Timothy Blais acted out his master’s thesis (which is called “A new quantization condition for parity-violating three-dimensional gravity“) in a manner unusual for a physicist. He sang it, in n-part harmony, to the tune of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”: (Thanks to Andrea Rapisarda for bringing this to our attention.) BONUS: An older, printer-performed version of the song, which […]