Science for fun
趣味科学
Though it's almost certain that you'll have heard of the Nobel Prizes, it's a fair guess that you won't have heard of the Ig Nobel Prizes.
虽然你们肯定听说过诺贝尔奖，但是你也许没听说过搞笑诺贝尔奖。
For while a Nobel Prize is awarded for work of world importance and is worth about $1.4 million,
诺贝尔奖是奖励给世界重量级的成就，且价值约十四万美元，
an Ig Nobel Prize is awarded for research that makes us laugh and then think.
而搞笑诺贝尔奖是颁发给让我们开怀大笑，进而引发思考的研究。
It's a game, based on the idea that no question in science is too silly to be asked, and no answer is evident enough to be accepted without question.
这是基于这么一种想法的游戏：科学中没有什么问题是傻到不能问的，也没有任何的答案充足到能够被毫无疑问的接受。
As Sherlock Holmes pointed out, once you have proved that everything else is impossible, what remains must be the truth.
如夏洛克·福尔摩斯所说，一旦排除了任何其他可能性，剩下的必定是真相。
This year's Ig Nobel Prize show will be taking place at London University next week.
今年的搞笑诺贝尔奖秀将于下周在伦敦大学上演。
Everybody's hoping that it will be as imaginative and amusing as the previous ones.
每个人都希望今年的能像去年的一样充满想象力和惊奇。
One of the funniest past presentations showed that if you give a cow a name, it will produce more milk than a cow without a name.
过去最搞笑的展示之一是，如果你给一头奶牛取名字的话，这头奶牛就会比那些没有名字的奶牛产更多的奶。
Last year, a scientist discussed the question of which comes first: the chicken or the egg?
去年，一名科学家讨论了先来后到的问题：鸡还是蛋？
His results proved that if you send the chicken first, it will usually arrive first, though there are some variations,
他的结果证明，如果你先派出鸡，那么鸡通常先到，虽然其中还有很多变量，
because some postal services are less reliable than others. A few years ago, a researcher asked whether it's true that cats always land on their feet.
因为一些邮政服务没有其他的邮政服务那么可靠。几年前，一名研究人员问猫总是脚先着地是否是真的。
By dropping cats upside down from various heights,
通过从不同高度将猫落下，
the scientist proved that a cat will always land on its feet if it's dropped from a height greater than thirty centimetres.
科学家证实，如果从高于30厘米的地方往下抛，那么猫总是脚先着地的。
She noted however that her experiment should be repeated with different cats.
然后，她注意到她的试验应该使用不同猫进行重复。