Friday 14 March, 2025

Wasabi, yawning, and needing to pee: the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel prizes

The alternative annual prizes – honouring science that makes us laugh and think – are as off-the-wall as ever.

Oct 5th 2011, 3:56 PM 1,236 Views 2 Comments

IT’S NOBEL PRIZE WEEK – with the world’s scientific communities coming together to honour those who have made landmark contributions to their respective noble fields.

Alongside those prizes, however, come a much more fun category – the Ig Nobel Prizes – which honour those who contribute to the sciences in ways that make us laugh, as well as ways that make us think.

Here’s a selection of the ten winners from this year’s prizes – and the reasons for their widely-hailed success. Among them: the perfect consistency of wasabi in order to use it as an ‘alarm’, and how needing to pee changes the way you think.

Wasabi, yawning, and needing to pee: the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel prizes

Previous 1 / 10Next

Medicine Prize
Biology Prize
Physiology Prize
Public Safety Prize
Chemistry Prize
Psychology Prize
Literature Prize
Mathematics Prize
Physics Prize
Peace Prize

More details on the Ig Nobel winners, and links to their published research, can be found at the Ig Nobel website.

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About the author

Gavan Reilly

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gavan@thejournal.ie

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Wasabi, yawning, and needing to pee: the winners of the 2011 Ig Nobel prizes

The alternative annual prizes – honouring science that makes us laugh and think – are as off-the-wall as ever.

Medicine Prize

Biology Prize

Physiology Prize

Public Safety Prize

Chemistry Prize

Psychology Prize

Literature Prize

Mathematics Prize

Physics Prize