Lesson 3 Laugh First and Then Think
The Ig Nobel Prize
“What happens when you walk backward while you are ____ a cup of coffee?”
Han Jiwon, a Korean ____ school student, did research on this topic in 2015.
Is this research project ____ enough to win a Nobel Prize?
Maybe not. But how about an Ig ____ Prize?
He ____ one in 2017 for this fun research.
The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for ____ that “first make one laugh and then think.”
They were started in 1991 by AIR magazine to increase people’s interest in science by honoring the ____ and the imaginative.
The prizes are presented
The prizes are presented by real Nobel ____ in Sanders Theater at Harvard University.
The ____ is usually filled with people who are eager to cheer for the brave scientists with their “laughable” research.
The U.K. Navy won the Ig Nobel ____ for Peace in 2000.
To save money, the Navy made its sailors shout, “Bang!” instead of using ____ bombs.
Is that funny enough for you to laugh out ____?
____ Geim also won an award that year.
He succeeded in floating a ____ frog in the air by using magnets.
“In my experience, if people don’t have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists,” he said ____ he accepted his award.
If that still does not bring a smile to your face, ____ about this?
In 2005,
In 2005, Gauri Nanda won the Ig Nobel Prize in ____ for inventing an alarm clock.
It keeps running ____ until the sleeper finally gets out of bed.
Not only the winners’ fun studies but also the ceremony for the Ig Nobel Prizes makes people ____.
____ are a number of interesting things that keep people from getting bored.
The opening and closing speeches are just two words each: “Welcome. Welcome.” and “Goodbye. ____.”
If someone talks for too long, an eight-year-old girl called Miss Sweetie Poo shouts ____, “Please stop! I’m bored.”
Each winner receives ten trillion Zimbabwean ____, which is worth less than one U.S. dollar.
Throwing paper ____ is another fun tradition.
The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony ends with the words, “If you didn’t ____ a prize—and if you did—better luck next year!”
The winners do not ____ lots of money.
And the awards are not great honors like the Nobel ____.
But the Ig Nobel Prizes make ____ a lot more fun!