A Noble Spirit Embiggens the Smallest Man

On the eve of the Nobel Prize announcements, last week the people over at Improbable Research handed out their annual Ig Nobel Prizes to recognize some peculiar scientific achievements. If you’re unfamiliar with the group or the prize, their stated criterion for winning this award is, “For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK.” Examples of award worthy research from this year include: finding out how our decision process is affected when we have a strong urge to urinate, discovering a type of beetle that mates with a certain type of beer bottle, and a special Peace Prize to the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for running over illegally parked luxury cars with a tank. This tongue-in-cheek approach may put the Ig Nobel on par with something like the Razzies, except that the Improbable Research group isn’t (usually) mocking their recipients as many Ig Nobel winners are highly respected leaders in their fields. In fact, Andre Geim has the unique honor of having received both an Ig Nobel prize (In 2000, for using magnets to levitate a frog), and an actual Nobel Prize (In 2010, for his experiments with graphene). You can check out the full list of recipients here, or if you just want to watch the video of a mayor running over a car in a tank, you can do that too).