Counting Nobel Prizes

Karen Kaplan of the LA Times writes in A Nobel Prize for Creativity about the differing ways that universities count Nobel Prizes.

"Renowned physicists Hans Bethe and Werner Heisenberg and economics guru Paul A. Samuelson are all counted among Chicago's Nobel brethren.

Wait a minute.

Didn't Bethe spend virtually his entire career at Cornell University? Isn't Samuelson considered the heart and soul of MIT economics? Did Heisenberg even spend more than a few months in Chicago?"

Hooray! I am a student at the University of Chicago, and ever since I saw Heisenberg's name on a "Nobel Prize" t-shirt I bought four years ago, I've been worried about the ridiculous way it counts Nobel Prizes.

Wolfgang Schoellhammer's 1997 survey counts prizes a lot better, and places Chicago at Number Five (instead of Two) on the list with 14 prizes (of which 8 are in Economics). MIT's probably long since overtaken it, which is a good thing. On the other hand, Harvard's got twice as many Nobels as MIT on this list, which seems rather ridiculous, even for 1997.

Words to in/exclude in application essays

Karen Pine and others of the University of Hertfordshire Psychology Department have published a list of words to include and exclude from university admissions essays.

Best words: achievement, active, developed, evidence, experience, impact, individual, involved, planning, transferable skills

Worst words: always, awful, bad, fault, hate, mistake, never, nothing, panic, problems.

[Reported in Liz Ford's article Say the magic words in the Guardian.]

Penguin Poo Projection

The Ig Nobel prize for Fluid Dynamics was awarded yesterday to Victor B. Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal for their 2003 paper on Pressures produced when penguins pooh - calculations on avian defecation. This three page paper was published in the journal Polar Biology as a short note.

Picture from VBM-R & JG's penguin pooh paper

Suppose you have a penguin. Specifically, an Adelie or Chinstrap penguin. Penguins, like other higher vertebrates, do doo-doo. However, they are not turd-makers, i.e. don't drop shit. Instead, they shoot it about 40cm. (Why they do so is unclear - the authors suggest that this is to avoid "soil[ing] their plumage".)

Penguin shit is a semi-liquid/solid goo whose viscosity is -- by assumption of the authors -- about that of olive oil. You can think of viscosity as `resistance to flow' -- ketchup is far more viscous than water, for instance. If

1. penguin shit is like water i.e. not viscous,
   
2. a penguin's asshole is horizontal while firing (see picture above), and
   
3. the shitting is instantaneous (it actually takes about half a second)
   

then the pressure required to shoot it 40cm across the ground, from a height of 20cm, is around 34 mmHg or 4600 Pascals, about a third of human blood pressure.

The authors use the Instantaneous Shitting Assumption to avoid having to know the shape of the penguin's rear nozzle while firing. Having said that, they manage to cite a paper from 1883; they make use of the observation by one of the scientists on the Challenger Expedition that a penguin's cloaca (a fancy word for assholes in birds). It is normally a horizontal slit. But before you start thinking of how a possibly short-sighted cameraless 19th century ornithologist might determine this, bear in mind that they also cite a 1981 book chapter devoted to cloaca.

As mentioned earlier, fresh penguin guano is more viscous, i.e. flows less freely than, water. When this is taken into consideration, the pressure required is over twice as much. Under certain conditions it can even be as much as 60 000 Pascals.

The authors finally note that further trips to Antarctica are required to determine if penguins take into account wind direction while firing, as shitting into the wind would presumably be sub-optimal.