FEEDBACK’S favourite awards, the Ig Nobel Prizes, were handed out on 30
September at Harvard University. The awards are given each year by the editors
of the Annals of Improbable Research for achievements that “cannot or
should not be reproduced”.
HAVING spent long hours in deep and soggy contemplation of the problem,
Feedback was delighted to see Len Fisher accept an Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for
determining the optimum way to dunk a biscuit (or cookie, if you prefer) without
it crumbling into your coffee. He devised a formula to calculate optimum dunking
time, using average biscuit pore size and the viscosity of the hot liquid to
predict the distance the liquid rises into the biscuit. He reports that hot
moist biscuits release up to 10 times more flavour into the mouth than dry ones.
Feedback hastens to add that Fisher’s work is not mere idle curiosity, but is
sponsored by the biscuit company McVitie’s.
SIMONE, who cleans Feedback’s office, eagerly awaits inventions based on the
work of Jean-Marc Vanden-Broeck, a mathematician at the University of East
Anglia, who shared the Ig Nobel Physics prize for calculating how to make a
teapot spout that doesn’t drip. No such thing exists today, but if theory can be
translated into practice no one will have to mop up puddles of tea on the
kitchen counter.
SPOUTS are among the few details not mentioned in the six-page specification
for the proper way to make a cup of tea that earned the British Standards
Institution the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature. BSI developed the standard to help
the tea industry quantify its taste tests. At £20 a copy, standard
BS-6008:1980/ISO-3103:1980 is pricey, but it is brimful of detail. “Fill the pot
containing the tea with freshly boiling water to within 4 to 6 millimetres of
the brim… Allow the tea to brew for 6 minutes, and then, holding the lid
in place so that the infused leaf is held back, pour the liquid through the
serrations into the bowl…”Nowhere, however, is there mention of the ritual of
warming the pot, central to the mystical British Tea Ceremony. That aside,
Feedback recommends keeping copies on hand to distribute to airline flight
attendants and others whose idea of brewing tea is dropping a tea bag into a cup
of lukewarm water.
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COOL chillies may sound as silly as non alcoholic wine, but that’s the point
according to Paul Bosland of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, who won
the Ig Nobel Biology prize for breeding some. Fire may be the first sensation,
but the taste has more subtle nuances. Bosland thinks his chilly chillies will
be more popular than the real thing. But after years of working with the scary
spice, he has developed tolerance: “I don’t like the really hot kind, but I need
something at least medium and approaching hot.”
AN UNUSUAL posthumous Ig Nobel Prize for Managed Health Care went to George
and Charlotte Blonsky of New York City for a device to speed childbirth. Their
circular table is covered by US patent 3 216 423. A woman about to give birth is
strapped to the table, with her legs pointing outward. Rotating the table at
high speed is supposed to give the baby an added push, as you can see at
http://colitz.com/site/3216423/3216423.htm. The Blonskys were inspired by
watching elephants give birth in the Bronx Zoo near their home, but a relative
says they never tried it themselves—they were childless when they died in
their nineties.
HAVING mentioned teapots, Feedback must pass on an observation from
12-year-old Paul Burkitt Gray. In the shop of a Channel ferry en route to France
he found inside a teapot in the shape of Fawlty Towers, the appalling hotel run
by John Cleese in the 1970s BBC comedy series, this label: “VERY
IMPORTANT—This is an ornamental product for decorative purposes only. It
must not be used as a teapot.” Nice to see tat imitating the art of the famous
Belgian René Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”.
FEEDBACK is already nostalgic for the English summer and the sauna that was
London’s Underground. Reader Sam Crawley, on the other hand, lodged a complaint
with London Transport, the body in charge of the ancient Underground, about the
high temperatures and humidity he encountered on the Hammersmith and City line
during the morning rush hour. Rather than providing him with a cool sanctuary
from the summer heat, it was stickier than the street above.
In reply, a spokeswoman explained wearily that while LT was aware of the
uncomfortable conditions, “other projects throughout the system have a higher
priority”. What’s more, when it had looked into air-conditioning systems in the
past, its unhappy conclusion was that the operation of such a system would
generate even more heat, and that machinery to remove that heat was beyond LT’s
overstretched means.
New York learnt about the essential thermodynamics the very, very sticky way.
There, you step from icy air-conditioned subway trains into stations which
(surprise!) swelter in all the heat pumped out, and then some.
