All mammals take about 21 seconds to pee, you can partially unboil an egg, and the universality of the word ‘huh?’ were the scientific discoveries among this year’s winners of the Ig Nobel prizes.
The irreverent awards, organized by the science journal ‘Annals of Improbable Research’, honor achievements that “first make people laugh and then make them think.”
A group of physicists from the U.S. and Taiwan discovered a “law of urination” which found that mammals over 3 kg all take about the same time to pee.
While the chemistry prize went to a team that put together a recipe that can partially un-boil an egg, and another noted that the word ‘huh?’ appears to be universal to all languages, although the researchers couldn’t conclude why.
The ceremony took place Thursday at Harvard University where genuine Nobel laureates handed out the prizes. Each winning team also received cash — a ten-trillion dollar bill from Zimbabwe.
If there was a ‘best effort’ award among the group, it surely would go to Michael L. Smith, who had honey bees sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body to test which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip and penis shaft). He and his partner took home the physiology and entomology prize
Others are unknowingly nominated for the awards. The Bangkok Metropolitan Police won the economics prize, for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.
One researcher even personally, and very enthusiastically, demonstrated their experiment, which involved attaching a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken so it walks in a manner similar to the way dinosaurs did.