The 'butter-side-down' school of science (BBC) {Ig Nobel Prizes}

[eppur_se_muova]

To mark National Science Week, past winners of the most infamous prize in academia are touring the country to explain, among other things, the logic of making locusts watch repeated highlights of Star Wars and how ostriches fancy humans.
***
Professor Edward Cussler proved as much in his academic paper, Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup? published in an esteemed periodical, which won him, and co-author Brian Gettelfinger, a 2005 Ig Nobel award for chemistry.
***
The Ig Nobels have been championing the "butter-side-down" school of human endeavour - so-called after all those experiments to discover whether a falling slice of toast is more likely to land on its buttered side than not - for 15 years. In university science labs the world over they have a legendary status.
***
Often the titles of the winning papers are masterpieces of scientific obscurity:

Salmonella Excretion in Joy-Riding Pigs
The Effects of Unilateral Forced Nostril Breathing on Cognition
The Effect of Country Music on Suicide
An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces.
All were genuine research papers published in academic journals. The Ig Nobels - the guiding principle of which is to reward research which makes people laugh and then think - celebrate the unsung highlights of academic research.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4801670.stm
tour schedule: http://improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/2006-ig-uk-tour/
Ig Nobel prizes: http://improbable.com/ig/


(Technical trivia: this event has little or nothing to do with raisins.)

[htuttle]

1. "An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces"

Damn! Somebody already published on that? Now I have to start all over again on my Doctorate...

[wryter2000]

3. Oh, gawd

That one is so freaking funny. :rofl:

[TheMadMonk]

11. Obviously you've never worked in a shearing shed mate.

n/t

[wryter2000]

17. Clearly not

But I'd take the word of an experienced shearer on the subject. :evilgrin:

[valerief]

2. Don't forget the Rationalization of Intelligent Design

[northzax]

6. that would be unnaceptable to the ignobels

they actually reward good science that makes you laugh, and then think.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Well, they did award the 1991 education prize to Dan Quayle, ...

"J. Danforth Quayle, consumer of time and occupier of space, for demonstrating, better than anyone else, the need for science education."

They also honored the Southern Baptist Church of Alabama for its county-by-county estimate of how many Alabamans were going to Hell if they didn't repent.

[northzax]

13. true, i'd forgotten about that

but that wasn't real science, obviously, I don't think they would want to give any props to the ID community by sharing a stage with them. but maybe they would.

[Richard Steele]

4. I LOVE the "Ig Nobels"; they make learning FUN!

They suck you in with wacky humor,
like the bastard child of Monty Python and The Onion...

And by the time you realize
that you are reading about REAL SCIENCE,
it's too late- you've already learned something!

[tatertop]

5. So, which way does the butter bread tend to land, they never tell us

[AllegroRondo]

7. Mythbusters tested this one

after building several contraptions that would make toast, butter it, and drop it, all in an assembly line procedure.

The verdict: from average "table" height (about 3 feet), there is no difference. from the top of a 2 story building, butter side actually landed up more often than not, but much more than statistical error would allow.

[tatertop]

8. thanks for that

[eppur_se_muova]

10. "Out of a total of 9821 drops, there were 6101 butter-down landings,...

a rate of 62%, which is 12% higher than the 50% rate expected if--as many scientists have claimed--toast is as likely to land butter-up as down, and its final state is random."

The tests were performed by just over 1,000 UK schoolchildren.

[tatertop]

15. If it lands buttered side down I will just pick it up and eat it anyway

I like toast dark and the butter still hard.
Be careful not to tear the toast!

[TheMadMonk]

12. Down,

It all has to do with the height of the table. With a normal table the bread only has time for a half rotation before it hits the floor. The table would have to be around 2m high for the bread to land butter side up.

So, so much for the BCA (Buttered Cat Array (Google it)) as an answer to global warming.

[northzax]

14. I had forgotten all about the BCA

I don't think the proponents of using it for intergalactic space travel ever really figured out the gravity exception, either. let alone the effect that potential rancidification of butter would have on the array.

[TechBear_Seattle]

16. I am reminded of Dr. John Murphy of UC Berkeley

Back in the 60s, he developed a field of study he called "psycho-situational dynamics," which investigated the general principles of how things go wrong. One famous experiment involved buttered slices of bread being tied on to the backs of cats, buttered side up, with the cats then pushed off the table.

The premise was that cats always land on their feet, and that buttered bread always falls butter side down. What happened in the experiment? Consistently, the cats suffered a heart attack and died mid-air, hitting the floor on their backs... buttered side down. From this, Dr. Murphy deduced his Fourth Principle of Psycho-Situational Dynamics: Steps taken to prevent something bad from happening will usually result in it happening anyway, along with something worse.

When animal rights activists learned of his experiments, they raided his labs one Friday night. Unfortunately, the group had somehow picked up a couple of drunken frat boys, who talked the activists in to freeing the cats into the Dean's office (thus demonstrating the Second Principle of Psycho-Situational Dynamics.) The brouhaha that resulted on the Dean walking in to a room with 20 very hungry cats did, however, bring Dr. Murphy's experiments to the attention of the school's administration, and the doctor was promptly fired.