Lesson 3 Laugh First and Then Think
The Ig Nobel Prize
“What happens when ____ walk backward while you are carrying a cup of coffee?”
____ Jiwon, a Korean high school student, did research on this topic in 2015.
Is ____ research project good enough to win a Nobel Prize?
Maybe not. But how ____ an Ig Nobel Prize?
He won one in 2017 for this fun ____
The Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded for discoveries that “first make one laugh ____ then think.”
They were ____ in 1991 by AIR magazine to increase people’s interest in science by honoring the unusual and the imaginative.
The prizes are presented
The prizes are ____ by real Nobel winners in Sanders Theater at Harvard University.
The room is usually filled with people who are eager ____ 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 ____ “Bang!” instead of using real bombs.
Is that funny enough for you ____ laugh out loud?
____ Geim also won an award that year.
He succeeded in floating a live ____ in the air by using magnets.
“In my experience, ____ people don’t 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 Prize in Economics for inventing an alarm ____
It keeps running away until ____ sleeper finally gets out of bed.
Not only the winners’ fun studies but also the ____ for the Ig Nobel Prizes makes people laugh.
There are a number of interesting things that keep people from ____ bored.
The opening and closing ____ are just two words each: “Welcome. Welcome.” and “Goodbye. Goodbye.”
If someone ____ for too long, an eight-year-old girl called Miss Sweetie Poo shouts repeatedly, “Please stop! I’m bored.”
Each winner receives ten trillion ____ dollars, 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 ____ not receive lots of money.
____ the awards are not great honors like the Nobel Prizes.
____ the Ig Nobel Prizes make science a lot more fun!