Lesson 3 Laugh First and Then Think
The Ig Nobel Prize
“What happens when you walk backward while you are carrying a cup of ____?”
Han Jiwon, a Korean high school ____, did research on this topic in 2015.
Is this research project good enough to win a ____ Prize?
Maybe not. But how about an Ig ____ Prize?
He won one in ____ for this fun research.
The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for discoveries that “first make one ____ and then think.”
They were started in 1991 by AIR magazine to increase people’s interest in science by ____ the unusual and the imaginative.
The prizes are presented
The prizes are presented by real Nobel winners in Sanders ____ at Harvard University.
The room is usually filled with people who are eager to cheer for the ____ scientists with their “laughable” research.
The U.K. Navy won the Ig Nobel ____ for Peace in 2000.
To save ____, the Navy made its sailors shout, “Bang!” instead of using real bombs.
Is that funny enough for you to laugh out ____?
Andre Geim also won an award that ____.
He succeeded in ____ a live frog in the air by using magnets.
“In my experience, if people ____ have a sense of humor, they are usually not very good scientists,” he said when he accepted his award.
If that still ____ not bring a smile to your face, how about this?
In 2005,
In 2005, Gauri Nanda won the Ig Nobel ____ in Economics for inventing an alarm clock.
It ____ running away until the sleeper finally gets out of bed.
Not only the ____’ fun studies but also the ceremony for the Ig Nobel Prizes makes people laugh.
There are a number of interesting things that keep people from getting ____.
The opening and closing speeches are just two words each: “Welcome. ____.” and “Goodbye. 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 dollars, which is ____ less than one U.S. dollar.
Throwing ____ planes is another fun tradition.
The Ig Nobel Prize ceremony ends with the words, “If you didn’t win a prize—and if you did—better ____ next year!”
The winners do not receive lots of ____.
And the awards are not great honors like the Nobel ____.
But the Ig Nobel ____ make science a lot more fun!