Ig Nobel prize
Marc-Antoine Fardin has been awarded the 2017 Ig Nobel prize in physics for using fluid dynamics to probe the question "Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?".
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology. Every year, in a gala ceremony in Harvard's Sanders Theatre, 1200 splendidly eccentric spectators watch the winners step forward to accept their Prizes. These are physically handed out by genuinely bemused genuine Nobel laureates.
Marc-Antoine Fardin: "I highlight some of the recent developments around the rheology of Felis catus, with potential applications for other species of the felidae family. In the linear rheology regime many factors can enter the determination of the characteristic time of cats: from surface effects to yield stress. In the nonlinear rheology regime flow instabilities can emerge. Nonetheless, the flow rate, which is the usual dimensional control parameter, can be hard to compute because cats are active rheological materials."
Reference: On the rheology of cats, Marc-Antoine Fardin, Rheology Bulletin, vol. 83, 2, July 2014, pp. 16-17 and 30.