Scientific trivial

Once a month on Friday, we young researchers in the institute will hold a special seminar which is called “scientific trivial” - you only have three minutes to tell something which make people laugh, then make them think. The only rule is that it must be relevant to science. So we tried various crazy and mad things, either absolutely truth or totally wrong. It includes nuclear reactors made by bacteria (which is a serious research published on Physics Review ), entropy study of modern painting, complexity analysis of rock and country music, experiments on healing effecting of pray, network modeling of love to build rules to find your soul-mates etc. I even presented Yahui’s flying basin there. With all these crazy ideas and surprises, people laugh a lot and have lots of fun. One day, we heard the news that Michael Berry is coming to the institute and will present us his If Nobel Prize winning experiment: a flying frog alive.

Fig. 1 A live frog is levitated in a magnetic field

Michael Berry and his Ig Nobel Prize

The introduction of Ig Nobel Prizes from Wiki: “The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early October — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), they are presented by a group that includes genuine Nobel Laureates at a ceremony at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater. ”

This really drives some serious guys crazy. Robert May, Baron May of Oxford, the chief scientific adviser to the British government, requested that the organizers no longer award Ig Nobel prizes to British scientists, claiming that the awards risked bringing “genuine” experiments into ridicule. But the majority of scientists dismiss this denouncement as simply a square-faced attitude. You can laugh and have fun. You can also do the first-rate cutting edge science.

Fig. 2 Michael Berry

Michael Berry used a very strong magnetic field to lift a living frog and make it flying. With this fun of experiment, he won the 2000 Ig Nobel Prize in physics. Ironically, he is actually a candidate from the genuine Nobel Prize in physics. The introduction of him can be found in Wiki.

A inspiring scientist and his speech about Tsunami

Unfortunately, Michael Berry came on Monday and could not participate our scientific trivial on Friday. Instead, he gave a speech of his latest research on wave propagation of Tsunami. It is really amazing how much a well-trained physicist can do even in a brand-new field. With his beautiful mathematical skills, he showed that the same phenomenon could be explained by his analytical solutions while the professional oceanographers usually run large computer simulation to get the answer. It is quite a blessing to listen to the physics which is explained by a master who really understand and love it.

Fig. 3 The same wave equation for a ship sailing wave propagation