Tag: IgNobel

Present and future

Earbuds must tangle!

We’ve all been through it: we want to listen to some music, take our earbuds out of our bag only to find—THE HORROR!—an impossibly tangled mess. Can’t anyone assuage this terrible scourge? According to physics… nope, not really. As it turns out, earbuds tangle up because of a simple but deep reason. Namely, there are  precious few ways for a chord to register as “tidy”, … Continue reading Earbuds must tangle!

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Present and future, Understanding science

What the eff is an fMRI?

Some parts of the brain “light up” when we feel certain feelings, or listen to music, or tackle math problems. Certainly you’ve stumbled upon such news, given how frequently they end up in mainstream media. The technique used for these studies (and many others in neurosciences) is called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (or fMRI), which is an amazing thing, but also seems to have a … Continue reading What the eff is an fMRI?

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