Even as a boy, Marc Abrahams had a calling: to collect funny, unexpected and generally weird examples of science.
Now he's the editor of the Annals of Improbable Research, the world's preeminent journal of strange scientific findings and sponsor of the infamous Ig Nobel Prizes. Recipients have studied such phenomena as contagious yawning in turtles, sword-swallowing's side effects and the results of cracking knuckles in one hand but not the other for 50 years.
"Everything I'm doing now, I was doing one way or another when I was 10, though not in such an organized way," Abrahams said. "I started cutting things out of newspapers and science magazines -- the odd little things, not what appeared on the front page, that struck me as being funny. I don't know why I did that, but it never really stopped."
Abrahams also writes a weekly column on oddball research for British newspaper The Guardian, and this summer his vast trove of weirdness was gathered in This is Improbable: Cheese String Theory, Magnetic Chickens, and Other WTF Research.
The research described veers between the silly and obvious, both of which Abrahams embraces. What seems obvious is often wrong, or so self-evident that it obscures a deeper truth. What seems silly may later prove important. "The question that's interesting to me is, 'What did they hope to learn?'" he said.
On the following pages, Wired talks to Abrahams about some of his favorite science.
Above:"Which weighs more: a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?" is a familiar riddle, intended to trick the hasty listener -- yet when put to the test, it turns out that a pound of lead really does feel like it weighs more. Weight, or at least its perception, isn't just a function of mass and gravity, but ergonomics too.
"This is all about things that make people laugh, and then think," Abrahams said of his book. "The big thing about everything in there is that there's something unexpected about it. And that's the history of science and technology. The way science is usually taught is as a list of breakthroughs that changed the world -- but none of those things would have been called a breakthrough if it hadn't seemed really unexpected, and maybe even crazy."
Images: 1) Marcel Oosterwijk/Flickr 2) storebukkebruse/Flickr
Spencer Ackerman 18 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/gsQBk1A4DKY/
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