Cornellians, the alumni magazine of Cornell University, celebrates some of the alumni who have been awarded Ig Nobel Prizes. The 2021 Ig Nobel Transportation Prize winners are just the latest: “When you see a rhino hanging upside down, it’s a little bit comical,” he admits. “But it makes you wonder, and then you start to […]
Tag: Upside-Down
Side Effects of Inversion Tables (tables that turn people upside-down)
A company called The Back Pain Relief Center looks (perhaps ruefully?) at some research on “Side Effects of Inversion Tables“.
20 questions answered by the man who looked at the world upside-down
Atsuki Higashiyama, winner of the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize for perception, answers 20 questions, in the Japan Times. It begins: Ig Nobel perception prize winner Atsuki Higashiyama: ‘Psychology teaches us to be scientific and skeptical’ BY J.J. O’DONOGHUE SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES Name: Atsuki Higashiyama Age: 65 Nationality: Japanese Occupation: Professor of psychology, Ritsumeikan University […]
Upside-down crotch-peeping tourists in Japan
“The observatory crotch peep platform is being installed, a lot of tourists to experience the crotch peeping.” — one highlight from NHK Zero’s TV report about the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize winners. The image you see here, from the TV program, shows how people have been influenced by the winner of the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize […]
Overturned rhinoceros beetles – how do they get back on their feet? (study)
No matter how careful a beetle might be, there’s a fair chance that, sooner or later, it’ll find itself on its back. Raising the question, how does it right itself, i.e. get onto its feet again? For current beetle-righting research turn to volume 28, Issue 2, 2016, of the journal Ecological Psychology where researchers professor […]
Upside-down male/female swimwear/underwear picture recognition differences
Are there differences in the rapid-recognition (viz. 250 ms) of photos of men and women in swimsuits (or underwear) when they are presented upside-down? A 2011 paper in the prestige journal Psychological Science suggests the answer maybe yes. Inspired (in part) by a 1969 study from Dr. Robert K. Yin, which was entitled ‘Looking at […]
Bicycling (side-swapped, or upside-down) on the brain
This experimental attempt to ride a left-right-swapped bicycle raises a big fat question about how the human brain works. Destin, he of the Smarter Every Day video series, tells and shows what he did, and why he did it, and wonders about what it means: Is it the same big, fat question raised by the Erismann-Koehler […]
Improbable on Science Friday today: upside-down vision
I’m going to be on NPR’s Science Friday program today. We’ll talk about the series of experiments that forced people to see the world upside down, left-right reversed, and other unusual ways. This segment will be at the start of hour 2 of the program. Here’s film from that experiment:
Experiments show we quickly adjust to seeing everything upside-down
In the middle of the 20th century, an Austrian professor turned a man’s eyesight exactly upside-down. After a short time, the man took this completely in his stride. Professor Theodor Erismann, of the University of Innsbruck, devised the experiment, performing it upon his assistant and student, Ivo Kohler. Kohler later wrote about it. The two of […]
Upside-down view of extreme sports
Neatorama alerts us to this photo of group skydiving, seen upside down from the (relatively) usual way of looking at such things: It’s from a gallery of unusual perspective photos of extreme sports, on the Unreality magazine site.