Last Thursday, 17th March, I celebrated St Patrick’s day by attending an event at Imperial College London: the Ig Nobel Awards tour.
The show was presented by Marc Abrahams, organiser of the Ig Nobel prizes, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research. It featured some Ig Nobel Prize winners and other ‘improbable’ researchers.
Matija Strlic, from UCL, talked about “the Smell of Old Books“.
Elena Bodnar, 2009 Ig Nobel Prize winner in public health, presented her emergency brassiere, which can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. She demonstrated this invention and the idea was a also to introduce a device worn by males. However the “prototype” disappeared and a bit of improvisation had to be done…
Dan Bebber, one of the winners of the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize for Transportation, talked about using slime mould to model an effective railway network. In the experiment, cities were represented by porridge oats that were linked to one another as the slime mould grew.
John Hoyland, editor of the “Feedback” column in New Scientist Magazine talked about some interesting oddities.
An enjoyable evening full of geekiness!
