Finding bacteria on currency notes, a diaper-changing machine: Unique research that won Ig Nobel awards

The annual Ig Nobel awards celebrated scientists for interesting if decidedly odd research: From checking if pizza could ward off illness, to quantifying the pleasurability of scratching an itch.

Anatomy award


The top honour in the anatomy category went to Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa who were determined to find the answer to the most perplexing of problems: Are men’s left testicle hotter in temperature than the right? The subjects they chose for this research, for no conceivable purpose, were French postmen aged between 20 and 52 years.

At the end of long and presumably awkward research, they found that there is indeed a difference in the scrotal temperatures. We would have never guessed.


Chemistry award
We have all, at different points in time, wondered how much saliva the human body produces, or for that matter, do adults produce more saliva than children? Japanese researchers set about quantifying the saliva produced by a typical five-year-old child, and also if this is impacted by the presence of delicious looking food items placed before one. The findings? The saliva produced by children was roughly half of what a normal adult managed. Do feel free to use this information whichever way you deem fit.

Peace Prize
This is our favourite. Who here hasn’t suffered an incredible bout of itching, and upon scratching the affected areas, felt incomparable bliss? A group of scientists, sacrificing personal comforts in the interests of science, decided to use a legume to induce itching all over the body, then decreed that the itch was most severe on parts of the body that were hardest to reach, like backs and ankles.

However, they also found that the pleasurability from scratching these parts was also the highest.

Psychology award
Scientist Fritz Strack of the University of Wurzburg won the psychology prize for discovering that “holding a pen in one’s mouth makes one smile, which makes one happier, and for then discovering that it does not”. Sounds complicated? It really isn’t.

The findings disproved Strack’s own theory from 1998, when he and fellow researchers said the easiest way to look happy is by holding a pen in one’s mouth, which would appear like one is smiling. Revisiting that study after two decades, he found that smiling didn’t really impact a person’s happiness. And so, he was awarded.

Economics award
Money changes hands, and that’s just an unavoidable fact of life. Some of these hands might not even be washed. But have you ever wondered which specific currency note carries the highest levels of bacteria? Habip Gedik, and Timothy and Andreas Voss did. And they decided to get their (presumably well-washed) hands on various currencies: Euro, US Dollar, Canadian Dollar, Croatian Luna, Romanian Leu, Moroccan Dirham, and the Indian Rupee. They tested them for strains of ‘Staphylococcus aureus’ and ‘Escherichia coli’, and found that only the Romanian Leu carried both bacterial strains. The next time you’re in Romania, you may want to use a glove.

Engineering award

Iman Farahbakhsh of Iran won the engineering award for his machine that changes babies’ diapers. The machine looks like a dishwasher, works like a dishwasher, except that it does its magic with babies and their diapers. “Once the infant is placed inside the apparatus, various steps may be carried out automatically without needing the operator to touch the infant or interact manually with the diaper,” the machine’s patent states. It doesn’t, however, mention what might happen if one mistakes it for an actual dishwasher.