How don’t and do pedestrians collide? Ig Nobel Prize winner Alessandro Corbetta, a physicist based at Eindhoven University of Technology, explains, in this short video. The 2021 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Alessandro Corbetta, Jasper Meeusen, Chung-min Lee, Roberto Benzi, and Federico Toschi, for conducting experiments to learn why pedestrians do not […]
Tag: walk
The Reason You Will Spill Coffee, No Matter How Careful You Are
When a person walks while carrying a full cup (with no lid) of coffee, it is almost inevitable that some coffee will spill. Two Ig Nobel Prizes have honored research that analyzed why. Small Expedition Room produced this video news report [in Korean] about the phenomenon: Those Two Coffee-Spill Ig Nobel Prizes The 2012 Ig […]
How to Spill a Cup of Coffee
“How to Spill a Cup of Coffee” is a featured article in the special Coffee, and Tea issue (volume 26, number 4) of the Annals of Improbable Research. It looks at two studies—each of which led to an Ig Nobel Prize—about the physics of how and why anyone who walks with a full cup of […]
Is This True? “The Liar’s Walk—Detecting Deception with Gait and Gesture”
A new study about walking and liars and computers is bountiful for teachers who want their students to decide whether to believe bold claims. See if you can count the bold claims made in the study. “The Liar’s Walk—Detecting Deception with Gait and Gesture,” Tanmay Randhavane, Uttaran Bhattacharya, Kyra Kapsaskis, Kurt Gray, Aniket Bera, Dinesh […]
Optimising one’s arm-swing whilst walking – a cost/benefit analysis [new study]
“Humans tend to swing their arms when they walk, a curious behaviour since the arms play no obvious role in bipedal gait. It might be costly to use muscles to swing the arms, and it is unclear whether potential benefits elsewhere in the body would justify such costs.” If you’re a living thing, energy is […]
A Drunkard’s Walk Around Nice (with a mathematical solution)
“An inebriated person in Nice (see Figure 1) takes a walk, each step in one of the four cardinal directions, north (N), south (S), east (E), and west (W). We are interested in those walks beginning at the center of the Promenade des Anglais (at the southern end of town) and ending anywhere on the […]
Pet Dogs Synchronize Walking Pace With Owners [research study]
Further progress in the study of whether and how pet dogs synchronize their walking pace with that of their owners: “Pet Dogs Synchronize Their Walking Pace With That of Their Owners In Open Outdoor Areas,” Charlotte Duranton, Thierry Bedossa, and Florence Gaunet, Animal Cognition, epub 2017. The authors, at Aix-Marseille University, AVA Association [Cuy-Saint-Fiacre], and […]
Umbrella Progress on a Crowded Sidewalk (podcast #96)
What happens when lots of people with umbrellas walk in opposite directions on a crowded sidewalk? 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 lotsa-people-walking-with-umbrellas study. Melissa Franklin, a Harvard physics professor who designed parts of the Large […]
Unresolvable human mental states (based on a parallel universe theory)
“A mental state with respect to a situation composed by multiplying two situations equals the sum of mental states for each situation. A mental state with respect to a situation composed by dividing two situations equals the difference between mental states for each situation.” So explain professor Changsoo Shin and colleagues at the Department of […]
Hip Squeaks
Unfortunately, Ceramic-on-Ceramic (CoC) implants used in Total Hip Arthroplasty (THA) can sometimes squeak. The problem has been examined by an Australian team led by Dr. David Owen from the Department of Orthopaedics and Trauma, The Canberra Hospital, Australia. They report in the European Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery & Traumatology, 2014 Jan;24(1):57-61. ‘The natural history of […]