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Ig Nobel achievements distilled into limerick form
by Martin Eiger, Improbable Research Limerick Laureate
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people LAUGH, then make them THINK. For details of all the Ig Nobel Prizewinning achievements, see each year’s special Ig Nobel issue of the magazine, and also see the list of winners at Improbable Research.
2015 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize
The prize was awarded to Callum Ormonde and Colin Raston, and Tom Yuan, Stephan Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin Pugliese, Tivoli Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, and Gregory Weiss, for inventing a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg.
Professor Colin Raston (Image credit: Flinders University)
(The research is documented in the study “Shear-Stress-Mediated Refolding of Proteins from Aggregates and Inclusion Bodies,” Tom Z. Yuan, Callum F. G. Ormonde, Stephan T. Kudlacek, Sameeran Kunche, Joshua N. Smith, William A. Brown, Kaitlin M. Pugliese, Tivoli J. Olsen, Mariam Iftikhar, Colin L. Raston, and Gregory A. Weiss, ChemBioChem, vol. 16, no. 3, February 9, 2015, pp. 393–396.)
No matter how strongly I toiled,
My efforts were constantly foiled.
There’s a recipe now.
Ormonde has shown how
2015 Ig Nobel Economics Prize
“@KhaosodEnglish: Policeman Rewarded 10,000 Baht For Declining Bribe http://t.co/Ys2LqeVdEL pic.twitter.com/V8a226VdSV”< *slow clap*
— the grugq (@thegrugq) October 9, 2014
The prize was awarded to the Bangkok [Thailand] Metropolitan Police, for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes.
In Bangkok, the crime is eternal.
It’s brutal, ferocious, infernal.
Policemen fight crime
On the streets all the time,
But keep bribery strictly internal.
_____________________
This article is republished with permission from the March-April 2016 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
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