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 […]
Tag: Physics
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 […]