The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) museum recently held a special celebration: it’s the annual Ig Nobel ceremony, an award dedicated to highlighting the most extravagant scientific investigations of the year. However, and although the subject of his study may a priori be laughable and seem of little use, Their findings are somehow relevant to science.
The awards, which are celebrating their 34th year this year, were born as a parody of the Swedish Academy’s renowned Nobel Prize winners. hosted by a satirical magazine Annals of Improbable Research.
The ceremony began in a way as unusual as the works it honors: all the participants They threw paper airplanes onto the stagewhich is a tradition that has not been repeated since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the gala evenings began to be held online.
Back to the personal format, celebrating the theme of Murphy’s Law under the slogan “If something can go wrong, it will”. This year’s winners have been announced. We present to you some of the most original prizes.
HEMISPHERIC INFLUENCE ON CAPILLARY EDDS
The Ig Nobel Prize in Anatomy was awarded to a group of researchers from the University Hospital of Montpellier in France and the Clinica Universitad de los Andes in Chile, for his studies the direction of hair growth according to the hemispheric origin of people: Do all Northern Hemisphere residents’ hair eddies spin in the same direction? And from the southern hemisphere? Do they do it clockwise or counterclockwise?
Similar questions are answered in the work entitled “Genetic determinism and the influence of the hemisphere on the formation of capillary vortices” (Willems, et al.), originally published in a scientific journal Journal of Stomatology, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.
The observations made indicate this The formation of vortices, as well as the craniocerebral development of individuals, are processes determined by genetics, but Environmental factors such as geographic influences may be affected.
Will the coins land on the same side they started spinning?
A total of 350,757 experiments were used as evidence to show that when a coin is tossed in the air, it tends to land on the same side it started spinning. It is neither more nor less 350,757 coin flips.
There’s a lot to this relatively easy-to-do process physical and statistical complexities. In 2007, a study by Diaconis, Holmes and Montgomery showed that the probability of resulting in a fall on the same side is about 51%. no deviation between head and tail.
Current research František Bartoš et al., who earned the IG Nobel Prize in 2024, supported this estimate with new evidence and further determined that works with any type of currencyand that the more rolls the same person makes, the more stable these results are. Will this fact change the way this famous gambling game is used forever?
cats ON COWS AND REPORTING THEIR MILK
The Ig Nobel Prize in Biology was awarded to an American research named “Factors involved in milk ejection” published in the scientific journal Journal of Dairy Sciencedue to an unusual empirical method that was used to obtain evidence for the study: the explosion of a paper bag near a cat that was placed on the back of a cow.
Using this technique, scientists Fordyce Ely and William E. Petersen sought a way to distinguish between secretions and milk ejections, and on the other hand to determine what neural control of ejaculation is indirectcaused by an established balance between adrenaline naturally produced by the adrenal glands and oxytocin produced by the pituitary gland.
So they observed that after the shock caused by the explosion or the injection of adrenaline at the beginning of the milking, no milk came out. However, by injecting oxytocin immediately after, milk After a short period of thirty seconds, he was fired.
