Even Michael Jordan would have to be impressed with this dunk. The athlete (?) in this very popular video clip apparently breaks the world-record for a trampoline-aided, long-distance dunk, soaring more than 20 feet before slamming it through. That's outside the college three-point line, MJ.

The secret to his success, according to physicist Len Fisher, an Ig Nobel winner who runs a website focused on the science of everyday life, is the leap forward towards the front of the trampoline, right before he flies to the hoop. He's not merely closing the gap here. In the middle of the trampoline, he's stretching all the springs on the outside equally, but once he moves to the edge, he really only stretches the springs closest to him. "The closer to the edge," Fisher says, "the more effective the recoil is going to be." And since he tilts his body forward, that recoil throws him horizontally.

The amazing thing, Fisher adds, is that he doesn't slip when he pulls off this switch between vertical and horizontal motion. You'd need incredibly high friction between your feet and the trampoline. Fisher wonders if he had some sort of resin that gave him a better grip. And the look of tension on the face of that guy with the glasses? Sorry, we can't explain that one. But it might just be the highlight of the whole clip.—Gregory Mone

Why plow through years of graduate school, labor nights and weekends, abandon your family in the name of science? Because one day, if you're very lucky, your work may be recognized by some prestigious international award committee. If you're only kind of lucky, though, you still might be able to snag an Ig Nobel.

This year's esteemed spoof awards went to a range of research, papers and patents that met the tight criteria: "First make people laugh, and then make them think." Among the winners was the Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, which swept the Peace category for its research into a harmless, but doubtless hilarious, "gay bomb." The weapon, laden with aphrodisiac chemicals, would presumably make enemy soldiers so irresistible to one another that they would drop their weapons in favor of dropping trou. Oddly, no one attended to accept the prize.

Other winners ran the gamut from food science (who knew you could extract vanilla from cow dung?) to medicine (who knew sword swallowing could cause a sore throat?). For the full list of science winners,
launch the gallery. But to get you in the right frame of mind, you may first want to check out the highly informative keynote speech below.—Abby Seiff and John Mahoney

Launch the gallery for a list of this year's winners