An Improbable Event at CHF 4/23
Posted on | April 13, 2008 | Comments Off
| April 23, 2008 | ||
| 12:00 pm |
Marc Abrahams, he of the Annals of Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Awards, will be presenting at noon on Wednesday, April 23 at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut St., Phila. He’s a Boston phenomenon that is rarely experienced here.
Also, the talk is part of the CHF’s Brown Bag Lunch series, so bring your own.
Since the Ig Nobels have gained attention across the globe, attracting up to 7,000 nominations each year. Attendees at the Harvard ceremony range from Nobel Prize winners who fly paper airplanes, to the engineer who did a stress analysis of the strapless evening gown back in the 1960s.
Ig Nobel winners include researchers who examined the multisegmental dynamics of hula-dancing, the courtship behavior of ostriches toward humans under farming conditions in Great Britain and the effect of ale, garlic and sour cream on the appetite of leeches.
Some scientists explored why woodpeckers don’t get headaches and what would happen if clams went on Prozac.
Now, you might be tempted to think that the Ig Nobels go to “bad” scientists. This could not be further from the truth. The awards celebrate the unlikely and the silly — legitimate science that, on the surface, sounds goofy, but can make you think. That and grizzly bear armor.
