搞笑诺贝尔INTRODUCTION

Last time, we talked about the Nobel prizes and the new

prize-winner in china----To youyou. Sure the real Nobel prizes get all

the intention, but have you heard about the funny version of it---- Ig

Nobel Prizes? Ig Nobel prize is an interesting imitation of the Nobel

Prize. The name is the combination of ignoble and Nobel Prize.

Science is busy finding answers for life's toughest questions: Can

you unboil an egg? How many children could one notorious emperor

have? What happens when you attach a weight to a chicken? And the

brave researchers who unlock such mysteries get honored every

year with the Ig Nobel Prize, a program celebrating improbable

research in chemistry, physics, literature, economics, medicine and

more. The 25th

annual IgNobels were presented at Harvard

University's Sanders Theatre Sept. 17.

"The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that make people LAUGH,

and then THINK. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual,

honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science,

medicine and technology," the Annals of Improbable

Research writes.

The first IgNobels were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams, editor

and co-founder of the Annals of Improbable Research. It is said that

he often received letters from their readers about hoping to be

helped earning nobel prizes. He wasn’t so influential as to deal with

such kinds of things, but those strange but thoughtful studies did

need attention and recognition. Then before long, the ig nobel

prizes came into the world followed with pros and cons.

Some people say the ceremony inherits the funny exterior as well as

the profound

inherence of the ig nobel prize. The annual awards

ceremony is set in October, right before the Nobel prizes take place.

It contains a number of running jokes, including a little

girl who

repeatedly cries out, "Please stop: I'm bored", in a high-pitched voice

if speakers go on too long. Throwing paper planes

onto the stage

is a long-standing tradition at the Ig Nobels, which entertains the

participators. In past years, physics professor Roy J.

Glauber swept the stage clean of the airplanes as the official

"Keeper of the Broom" for years. Glauber could not attend the 2005

awards because he was traveling to Stockholm to claim a

genuine Nobel Prize in Physics. Some other nobel prize winners, ig

nobel prize winners, as well as officials and athletes were included

in the judgers and guests.

Those who support the program declare that the awarded researches are genuinely scientific and practical, for most of the

prize winners are professional scientists with their articles on some

authoritative academic journals. One research on the friction

between shoe sole and banana skin found the lubricant from

banana is effective in the study of artificial joints. The research on

how do flies crawl on the conveyors may lead to the discovery of

new materials. Studying relations between raising cats and

psychological illnesses, scientists found the parasites on cats may

come to and damage brains. It means that the illness of brains has

something to do with psychological illnesses. Under these absurd

research titles are one and another serious scientific studies.

However, some people don’t seem highly of it. The English chief

scientific consultant required the program never present it to

Britain scientists. He said that this prize will degrade those serious

researches to be laughed at, even though the Britain scientific

community didn’t support him entirely.

Apart from that, on the other side of the earth, in china, an article

titled ”we couldn’t either get an ig nobel prize” became popular. But

Abrahams disagreed with the statement. He said that hundreds of

nominations were applied by Chinese researchers and the ig nobels

once decided to award some of them. Surprisingly, all the nominees

rejected it for some reasons.

Do you think science should be serious or not?

The ig nobel prize confirms that the boundary between serious and

funny studies are not so clear. the most typical example of it is the

ig nobel prize winner in biology in2000 won a genuine nobel prize

ten years later in physics. Though the two awarded researches are

in different fields, we couldn’t simply point which one is more

influential. So whether serous or not lies in people’s understanding

towards it.

The ig nobel prize derives from a campus activity and ends up being

a international scientific program. It may inspire us in our way of

thinking.