The purpose of the Ig Nobel Prizes is to recognise the more peculiar scientific inventions that have been developed throughout the year and to honour the achievements of those in the science industry that have dabbled in a bit of improbable research. There are ten winners each year who attend a ceremony held at Harvard University and are then invited to give a public lecture on their invention at MIT. This year’s Ig Nobel Prize winners heralded from several different continents and were awarded their respective prizes by a group of bemused genuine Nobel Laureates.

Examples of such events include ‘Win a date with a Nobel Laureate’, a talk by the creator of the ‘Studmuffins of Science Calendar’ and 24/7 Lectures: where a number of the world’s top thinkers had to complete a technical description of one of their research topics within a time period of 24 seconds and then summarise their subject in a way that anyone would be able to understand in just seven words.

Previous years’ winning research topics include the effectiveness of Coca-Cola as a spermicide, sword swallowing and its side effects and digital rectal message as a cure for intractable hiccups. These hopefully give you an idea of just how bizarre the research that is recognised by these awards is. The research topics are sorted into ten categories and an Ig Nobel Prize is given to the winner of each category, below are some of the 2009 winners:

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, 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

PHYSICS PRIZE: Harvard University, USA, and University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over.

BIOLOGY PRIZE: Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Sagamihara, Japan, for demonstrating that kitchen refuse can be reduced more than 90% in mass by using bacteria extracted from the faeces of giant pandas.

VETERINARY MEDICINE PRIZE: Newcastle University, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, for showing that cows who have names give more milk than cows that are nameless

PEACE PRIZE: University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for creating diamonds from liquid — namely tequila

MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for over sixty years.