Research led by PhD student Kaveeshan Thurairaj and Dr. Zhao Pan has won an Ig Nobel Physics Prize for their splash-free urinal designs.
The Ig Nobels are a fun parody of the Nobel Prize and celebrate some of the most unusual, fun, and imaginative research in academia.
The awards took place in Zurich, Switzerland, where the team wore yellow raincoats as couture at the ceremony and collected their strange but memorable foot-mushroom statue and a ten-trillion-dollar bill from Zimbabwe, which is worth 15 to 30 Canadian dollars.
The team won the award by using the magic of physics to research and design a splash-free urinal. The team’s final and best working design was named Nautilus (Nauti-loo), which is a long shape that stops urine from splattering on floors, shoes, pants – anywhere you don’t want urine to be.
Their work was previously published in PNAS Nexus and was highlighted in Mathy urinal designs solve a messy problem in MME’s department news. Get more of the story in With a pinch of art and humour in Waterloo News. Plus, see national coverage about the win in Canadian who helped design splash-free urinals is proud of his weird science award in CBC News.