I am a huge fan of the Ig Nobel Prize.

For the uninitiated, Ig Nobel Prize is a satiric award awarded to the top 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research and its stated aim is to honor achievements that ‘first make people laugh and then make them think‘

Ms. Elena N Bodnar won the Ig Nobel in 2009 for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. And we laughed at this idea in 2009.

Did I hear someone ask for contact less service? The 2019 Engineering Ig Nobel Prize went to a scientist from Iran for inventing a diaper changing machine for use on infants.

Habip Gedik, Timothy A. Voss, and Andreas Voss won the Economics Ig Nobel for studying which country’s paper money is best at transmitting bacteria.

The 2018 Ig Nobel Nutrition Prize winner, James Cole concluded that calorific intake from human-cannibalism diet is significantly lower than the intake from most traditional meat diets. Thankfully grocery, vegetable and meat stores were open throughout the lock-down.

If you uttered a swear word, after reading this article and felt better after doing that. The 2010 Ig Nobel Peace Prize winners proved just this – swearing relieves pain.

However, if you sighed reading through this, the 2011 Ig Nobel Psychology winner concluded that sighs are unintentional expressions of an activity that is about to conclude, creating a pause before it is replaced by another activity.

OK, you may move on now.