Penguins’ pooping power scoops Ig Nobel prize
00:30 07 October 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Jeff Hecht

How far penguins can poop and whether people can swim faster in syrup
than water were among the sticky questions answered by winners of the 2005
Ig Nobel prizes.

The spoof awards, organised by the science humour journal, the Annals
of Improbable Research, honour scientific achievements that "make people
laugh – then think". They were presented at Harvard University's otherwise
distinguished Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, on
Thursday.

Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger, at the University of Minnesota,
US, received the Chemistry Ig Nobel for resolving whether people can swim
faster in syrup than water. The question arose as Gettelfinger, a student,
wondered how to increase his speed as he trained for Olympic swimming trials.

So the pair set up an experiment in two 25-yard swimming pools on
campus – requiring 22 separate levels of approval. They were offered 20 train
cars’ worth of corn syrup to mix with water, but the city of Minneapolis
ended that plan by demanding $20,000 since draining the syrup would overload
the sewage system.

Instead, they stirred 310 kilograms of guar gum powder into one pool.
"It wasn't pretty when we came in the next morning," Cussler told New
Scientist. "It looked like diluted snot."

But that did not stop 16 volunteer swimmers. All swam two lengths in
each pool, showering as they went from the syrupy pool to clean water.
Timing the swimmers, Cussler found that the thicker liquid increased the power of
their strokes as much as it increased the drag on their bodies, so it made no
difference. "It was fun," he says, but in the end it was "totally
useless".

Poopal velocity
An Ig Nobel for fluid dynamics was awarded for a theoretical analysis
of penguin poop propulsion, conducted by Benno Meyer-Rochow of the
International University of Bremen in Germany and Oulu University in
Finland, and Jozsef Gal of Lorand Eötvös University in Hungary.

When nature calls, brooding chinstrap and Adélie penguins are reluctant
to leave their nests and expose their eggs to the cold. Instead, they
simply point their rear outward, lift their tail, and fire. The departing
excreta typically reaches distances of about 40 centimetres.

Accounting for the bird's height, anal anatomy, and poopal velocity and
viscosity, the researchers calculated that the internal pressures reach
10 to 60 kilopascals (0.1 to 0.6 atmospheres), well above the highest
pressures humans can put to the task.

But is this not a rather trivial matter for serious scientists?
"Actually, only a few people felt this," Meyer-Rochow told New Scientist. "And
when we explained the responses from zookeepers, palaeontologists, engineers,
human physiologists and so on, everybody understood that examining the
physical properties of the release of fluids through small orifices was
something of general importance."

Other prizes included:
• Literature – This celebrated the bold visions of the New Age
story-tellers of Nigeria – purveyors of the so-called 419 email scam. Their vivid
tales promise handsome rewards for assistance in recovering a great treasure
that is rightfully theirs – or one that they stole fair and square.

• Economics – Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
was lauded for her contribution to workplace productivity. She invented
Clocky, a padded alarm clock that runs away on a pair of wheels and hides when
its snooze alarm is pressed. By actually getting people out of bed, Clocky
should add many productive hours to the workday – at least
theoretically – the Ig Nobel committee says.

• Physics – This honours movement at a much slower pace – the “pitch
drop” experiment which the late Thomas Parnell began at the University of
Queensland in 1927, and which John Mainstone now continues. Pitch is a
thick black tar which in theory is liquid, but seems to behave like a solid.
To show it was a liquid, Parnell melted some into a funnel, where it
cooled. Then he waited, and waited, and waited. The first drop took 8 years to
fall, and the second took another nine. The eighth drop fell in 2000...