2019 Ig Nobel Prizes

Abstract

2019 Ig Nobel Prizes Scientific reports about a 5-year-old’s saliva production, a machine that changes diapers, and wombat poop took top honors at the 29th Ig Nobel Prize ceremony. The peculiar but popular prizes, which “honor achievements that make people LAUGH, and then THINK,” were awarded on Sept. 12 at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre. Mirthful master of ceremonies Marc Abrahams and the other entertaining editors of the Annals of Improbable Research produced the event. This year’s Chemistry Prize went to a team of pediatric dentists at Hokkaido University for determining how much saliva a 5-year-old produces. The study of 30 kindergartners showed that each generates about 500 mL of spit each day (Arch. Oral Biol. 1995, DOI: 10.1016/0003-9969(95)00026-L). Iman Farahbakhsh, a mechanical engineering professor at Islamic Azad University, won the Engineering Prize for inventing a machine that changes babies’ diapers. The combination washer and diaper-changing apparatus “includes a main chamber,