Improbable Research

Ig Nobel Prize winner Scott Carver, at the University of Tasmania, and colleagues demonstrate and explain the wombot—their wombat-sized robot for wombat research—in action, in this ABC News report:

The 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.

That prize-winning research is documented in these studies:

• “How Do Wombats Make Cubed Poo?” Patricia J. Yang, Miles Chan, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, paper presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, Abstract: E19.0000, November 18–20, 2018
• “Intestines of Non-Uniform Stiffness Mold the Corners of Wombat Feces,” Patricia J. Yang, Alexander B. Lee, Miles Chan, Michael Kowalski, Kelly Qiu, Christopher Waid, Gabriel Cervantes Benjamin Magondu, Morgan Biagioni, Larry Vogelnest, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, Soft Matter, vol. 3, 2021

Was something wrong with Beethoven’s metronome? Well, was something wrong? Well? A fair number of people have tried hard to find out. Four of them produced this mathematics-based analysis:

“Was Something Wrong with Beethoven’s Metronome?” Sture Forsén, Harry B. Gray, L.K. Olof Lindgren, and Shirley B. Gray, Notices of the AMS, vol. 60, no. 9, 2013. The authors explain:

The pianist and musicologist Peter Stadlen (1910–1996), who devoted many years to studies of Beethoven’s markings, regarded sixty-six out of a total of 135 important markings as absurdly fast and thus possibly wrong. Indeed, many if not most of Beethoven’s markings have been ignored by latter day conductors and recording artists….

We investigate possible sources of error as to why Beethoven may not have been able to correctly note reliable and transferable time measures. We hope to demonstrate that there are possible mathematical explanations for the “curious” tempo markings—explanations that hitherto have not been considered except perhaps by Stadlen, who even went so far as to locate Beethoven’s own metronome.

Here is video of one of Beethoven’s composition being played, possibly with incorrect timing, by someone other than Beethoven:

What Are “mainly triggered by soap handling and random jerks“? That is the question.

A clean answer may, perhaps, appear in the study: “A Robust Device for Large-Scale Monitoring of Bar Soap Usage in Free-Living Conditions,” Rüdiger Zillmer, Richard Wright, Susan Bates, and Ian Mahers, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 18, no. 8, 2014, pp. 2057-2064. The authors explain:

“False activations are mainly triggered by soap handling and random jerks…”

It’s known that if you wear overly pointy shoes for long periods, you’re likely to damage your feet How long has this been going on? Was it prevalent in, say, medieval Cambridge, UK?

To find out, researchers examined the human remains of 177 adult individuals (11th > 15th century) from four cemeteries located in Cambridge, England, to check their toes for shoe damage.

18% had Hallux valgus (deformed big-toes) caused, very probably, by wearing overly pointy shoes (see dwg). The researchers also noted that many of the individuals who had apparently been wearing painfully fashionable shoes also had fractures consistent with falling over – especially so-called FOOSH injuries (Falls On OutStretched Hand ).

Ref : Fancy shoes and painful feet: Hallux valgus and fracture risk in medieval Cambridge, England 

BONUS :

This B&W photo, courtesy Kamstein @ Wikipedia, shoes a pair of modern-day(ish) Winkle Pickers. 

Random jerks fascinate some people, a few of whom, at least, might be captivated by the study “On the Seismic Jerk,” Ramiro Sofronie, Journal of Geological Resource and Engineering, vol. 4, 2017, pp. 147-52. The author reports:

“In the year 1936, only with four years before the strong earthquake that occurred in Romania, on November 10, 1940, the late Professor Aurel A. Beleș (1891-1976), published a paper about the role of jerk in dynamics. Then in 1941, after the earthquake, in his quality of official expert for analyzing the collapse of Carlton Hotel in Bucharest, the same professor published two extended papers together in a book entitled The Earthquake and the Buildings. In that original scientific document an earthquake is defined as a succession of random jerks…”