Ig Nobel Prize Facts for Kids

In 2000, Andre Geim won an Ig Nobel Prize for making a frog float using magnets. Ten years later, he won a real Nobel Prize for his work on graphene!

The Ig Nobel Prize is a funny award given out every year since 1991. It celebrates scientific discoveries that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The name "Ig Nobel" sounds like "ignoble," which means not honorable, and it's a playful twist on the famous Nobel Prize.

These awards are organized by a science humor magazine called Annals of Improbable Research. Real Nobel Prize winners often present the Ig Nobel awards at a special ceremony. Winners even get a special "prize" – a 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar banknote, which is mostly a collector's item!

What Are the Ig Nobel Prizes?
- How the Awards Started
- Why These Awards Matter
The Award Ceremony
Sharing the Fun
Why These "Funny" Discoveries Matter
See also

What Are the Ig Nobel Prizes?

How the Awards Started

The Ig Nobel Prizes were created in 1991 by Marc Abrahams. He is the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research magazine and has hosted every award ceremony. The awards were first given for discoveries that "cannot, or should not, be reproduced."

Each year, ten prizes are given in different fields. These include categories like physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, economics, and peace, just like the Nobel Prizes. They also have other fun categories such as public health or biology.

Why These Awards Matter

Most of the time, the Ig Nobel Prizes highlight real scientific studies that have a funny or surprising side. For example, one award went to research about the "five-second rule." This is the silly idea that food dropped on the floor is safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds.

Sometimes, the awards are also a way to playfully criticize certain ideas. For instance, some awards have been given for homeopathy research or for decisions about teaching evolution in schools.

A cool fact is that Sir Andre Geim won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for making a frog float with magnets. Then, in 2010, he won a real Nobel Prize in physics for his work on graphene. As of 2025, he is the only person to have won both an Ig Nobel and a Nobel Prize!

The Award Ceremony

Ig Nobel Prize winners receive a banknote worth 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.

Real Nobel Prize winners usually present the Ig Nobel awards. The ceremony used to be at MIT and then moved to Sanders Theater at Harvard University for many years. From 2020 to 2023, the event was held online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2024, the ceremony returned to MIT.

The event has many funny traditions. One is "Miss Sweetie Poo," a little girl who shouts, "Please stop: I'm bored!" if speakers talk for too long. The ceremony always ends with a funny message: "If you didn't win a prize—and especially if you did—better luck next year!"

Another long-standing tradition is throwing paper planes onto the stage. For many years, Professor Roy J. Glauber was the "Keeper of the Broom." He would sweep the stage clean of all the paper airplanes. In 2005, he couldn't attend because he was traveling to Stockholm to accept his real Nobel Prize in Physics!

Sharing the Fun

The Ig Nobel ceremony is recorded and broadcast on National Public Radio in the US. It's also shown live on the Internet. The recording is played every year on the Friday after US Thanksgiving on a radio show called Science Friday. The audience often chants the name of the show's host, Ira Flatow.

Two books have been published about some of the winners: The Ig Nobel Prize and The Ig Nobel Prize 2. The second book was later renamed The Man Who Tried to Clone Himself.

Since 2003, an Ig Nobel Tour has been a yearly part of National Science Week in the United Kingdom. The tour has also visited Australia, Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Why These "Funny" Discoveries Matter

An article in The National in 2009 said that even though Ig Nobel Awards seem to make fun of silly research, sometimes this "silly" research leads to important discoveries.

For example, in 2006, a study won an Ig Nobel Prize for showing that a mosquito that carries malaria (Anopheles gambiae) is attracted to the smell of Limburger cheese and human feet. Because of this finding, scientists were able to use cheese-baited traps to help fight malaria in Africa.

Also, Andre Geim, who won an Ig Nobel for making a frog float, later won a real Nobel Prize for his work on graphene. His frog levitation research even helped inspire a lunar gravity research facility in China by 2022. This shows that even funny experiments can lead to big scientific ideas!

Ig Nobel Prize facts for kids

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