science

With all the political news around (which I am not touching in this particular forum, except to say that everyone needs to make sure they are duly registered and participate in the process), I was glad to see the 2008 Ig Nobel prizes awarded.  For those who aren’t familiar with them, the Ig Nobels are meant to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

I laughed.  Did I think?  Maybe.

My favorites this year:

• NUTRITION PRIZE. Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy and Charles Spence of Oxford University, UK, for electronically modifying the sound of a potato chip to make the person chewing the chip believe it to be crisper and fresher than it really is.
• BIOLOGY PRIZE. Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert,, and  Michel Franc of Ecole Nationale Veterinaire de Toulouse, France for discovering that the fleas that live on a dog can jump higher than the fleas that live on a cat.
• PHYSICS PRIZE. Dorian Raymer of the Ocean Observatories Initiative at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, USA, and Douglas Smith of the University of California, San Diego, USA, for proving mathematically that heaps of string or hair or almost anything else will inevitably tangle themselves up in knots.

The physics prize, in particular, is very relevant, as anyone who has ever handled a pair of headphones already knows.

I think the 2007 awards had more flair, but still.

I love Slashdot because it points me to things like The Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006, which highlights some truly extraordinary images. My favorite: the one of the space shuttle and International Space Station in front of the sun. Wow.

I love NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day (affectionately known as APOD) and was especially struck by today’s photo of galaxy M51 and its companion NGC 5195. The Hubble telescope has brought us some astonishing sights and I suppose we’ve gotten used to them — but every once in a while, one image just takes my breath away.

The IgNobel prizes each year recognize the truly ridiculous research in science. Honestly, who thinks this stuff up?

My personal favorites:

• ORNITHOLOGY: Ivan R. Schwab, of the University of California Davis, and the late Philip R.A. May of the University of California Los Angeles, for exploring and explaining why woodpeckers don’t get headaches.  If they can figure it out, I’ll stop banging my head against my desk.
• LITERATURE: Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University for his report “Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly.”  Personally, I think Chopper should read this report.
• CHEMISTRY: Antonio Mulet, José Javier Benedito and José Bon of the University of Valencia, Spain, and Carmen Rosselló of the University of Illes Balears, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for their study “Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature.” Now, I remember one holiday when Devin, Chopper, and I did something less scientific involving some leftover cheese fondue and my parents’ wooden fence …

I would love to see the grant proposals for these.

Chopper and I recently took the plunge and replaced almost all of the light bulbs in our house with slightly-odd looking compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs.  They don’t burn hot, use less energy, and last for years.  I spotted an article via Slashdot from FastCompany.com about the very real impact we can have with just one of these bulbs per household:

“What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.”

That’s an impact, with no more effort than screwing in a light bulb.