(Roughly) Daily

Thanks to two of this year’s winners, the Wasabi Silent Fire Alarm (Chemistry Prize)…

…and Vilnius’ young Mayor’s novel solution to parking problems (Peace Prize)…

…this year’s Ig Nobel Awards have happily gotten rather more attention than usual.  But lest one miss the full range of achievement celebrated, one should visit the complete list of 2011 winners, where one will find less-widely reported, but equally-educational winners like:

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Darryl Gwynne (of CANADA and AUSTRALIA and the UK and the USA) and David Rentz (of AUSTRALIA and the USA) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle

REFERENCE: “Beetles on the Bottle: Male Buprestids Mistake Stubbies for Females (Coleoptera),” D.T. Gwynne, and D.C.F. Rentz, Journal of the Australian Entomological Society, vol. 22, , no. 1, 1983, pp. 79-80

REFERENCE: “Beetles on the Bottle,” D.T. Gwynne and D.C.F. Rentz, Antenna: Proceedings (A) of the Royal Entomological Society London, vol. 8, no. 3, 1984, pp. 116-7.

As we cue up those old episodes of Mr. Wizard, we might recall that it was on this date in 1866 that J. Osterhoudt patented the tin can with a key opener (“Method of Opening Tin Cans,” U.S. Patent No. 58,554).  An ancestor of the “pop top” and “pull tab,” the “key” was used to roll a thin top from a can. The approach survives to this day, notably with canned meat products.

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