This article is from WeChat official account:one (ID: yitiaotv), narrator: Hu Lide, editor: Yu Xuan, original title: “Why do mammals take 21 seconds to urinate? He won the Ig Nobel Prize for this discovery”, head picture from: New York Times, photography: Melissa Golden< /p>
Hu Lide, scientist, Chinese descent.
His research is very “alternative”: human and animal urine, wombat poop, cat tongue, dog throwing water…
In 2016, three of his studies were included in the list of “the 20 most wasteful science projects in the United States”.
At the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony
However, he has twice won the “Immortal Nobel Prize” awarded at Harvard University twice, and the presenters are all genuine Nobel Prize winners.
In addition, he also won the “Chinese Version of Funny Nobel Prize”-Pineapple Science Prize 3 times.
Hu Lide’s parents are first-generation immigrants, and the most they say to him is to be curious about everything.
The background of Chinese culture, the guidance of his parents, and his love for nature all brought him different ideas, doing research that is different from others, and taking a path that no one else has traveled.
In mid-September, a video link with Hu Lide, chatting about what seemed to beFunny, deep research, and curiosity education have a long-term impact on a person.
Wasting scientist Hu Lide
(Picture from New York Times, Photography: Melissa Golden)
Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the three major universities of science and technology in the United States. Hu Lide is the only professor in the school who crosses the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Biology.
However, he looked neither dignified nor cold. He went to class on slippers, took pictures with students, and even turned somersaults on stage to accept awards. His favorite game is Super Mario.
Because of the research on bionics, there are many animals in the laboratory: fire ants, snakes, mosquitoes, wombats… Sometimes if you don’t go to the laboratory for several days, the snake will break the glass cabinet and get out of the door. Go out downstream from the bottom of the seam. “There are some colleagues who are afraid of death. They will shout when they see snakes when they walk outside: Wow! This is Hu Lide’s research. Then I will get them back.”
Speaking of snakes, Hu Lide’s wife Fan Jia still remembers that the two of them went to a friend’s party. He brought a snake that was more than 2 meters away, hung it around his neck, and walked in swaggering: Twokind. “
Hu Lide at the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony. The Ig Nobel Prize has a history of nearly 30 years. It is selected once a year and awarded at Harvard University. The slogan is: “Research first makes you laugh, then think.”
Hu Lide also had long hair and would go out wearing the same croissant braids as his daughter. “Scientists should do experiments everywhere, even hairstyles.” Now that he has just passed the unconfused year, although his hairline is receding, he still maintains the curiosity he had when he was a teenager.
His two recent academic papers are about the poop of wombats…: “Why are wombat poops square?” This discovery earned him the Ig Nobel Prize again in 2019. At the awards meeting, Professor Hu and his teammates declared with a serious face: “It is finally proved that a circular channel can also produce a square object!” Everyone laughed.
Wombat and its square poop. ResearchNow, wombat’s large intestine has uneven intestinal wall thickness, and two of them are harder, and the feces will be squeezed out of corners when passing by.
Now, Hu Lide lives with Fan Jia and one son and one daughter in the southern United States. One recently had a video connection with them.
During the interview, the family of four was there. My brother also showed off a cicada shell he found at the door of his house, and Hu Lide grabbed the insects in the kimchi jar from the tomato tree. Fan Jia said that the children grew up watching their father’s unthinkable behavior and were full of curiosity about everything.
The following is Hu Lide’s narrative.
Inspiration provided by changing diapers
I am Hu Lide. I usually teach, do research, write popular science books, and play chess and fencing with my two children on weekends.
Imitating dog, human and rhino steak urine experiments
One day 9 years ago, I was changing my son’s diaper, and he suddenly started to pee. So I measured the time for him to urinate and the time for myself to urinate. It was almost the same. I continued to go to the zoo to see, and found that from puppy to elephant, the average time for mammals to urinate was 21 seconds, even if the size of the bladder was 100 times different!
“Why the urination time of mammals is 21 seconds”-this discovery made me win the Ig Nobel Prize for the first time.
A Japanese urologist said after seeing it, oh this is very powerful. Usually they use a very expensive machine to measure the speed of a person’s urine, but now they can judge whether a person’s bladder is healthy from the time of urination.
When I first met my wife, she brought a Valentine’s Day gift from her ex-boyfriend-a brown poodle.
Although I don’t like it with each other, its ability to sling water surprised me. I began to use high-speed cameras to study the speed of dogs throwing water and the ability of other animals of different sizes to throw water, and then extended to thinking about washing clothes drying in daily life.
Mosquitoes hit by raindrops. Because the mosquitoes tilt their body or fall with the raindrops, they will not be killed by the raindrops.
SometimesI will watch the rain outside with my son and he will be bitten by mosquitoes. In my opinion, it is very strange that mosquitoes fly on rainy days. Because a mosquito is about the same size as a raindrop, but raindrops are 50 times heavier than mosquitoes, and their speed is very fast.
Mosquitoes hit by raindrops are like people hit by a car, but in most cases they are unharmed. So I started to study why mosquitoes are not killed by raindrops.
A lot of my research is inspired by life. These findings can affect different areas.
The research of mosquitoes contributes to the development of micro-aircraft (picture from Harvard University)
When I was undergraduate, I naively thought that almost all scientific questions have been answered. Later, when I read a Ph.D., I discovered that humans have only solved a small part of nature’s mysteries. Many seemingly simple questions are often the most difficult to answer. Behind the natural behaviors and body shapes of animals, there are often deep scientific principles.
If you want to study animals, who is the most powerful thing to do? In terms of cleaning, cats are the best. Cats sleep 16 hours a day, but they spend 3 hours cleaning their bodies. So we started to study the cat’s tongue.
Camping with family as a teenager
When I was young, my family often went camping and fishing.
Once on the highway, my father saw a deer lying next to him. The deer’s body was still warm and might be hit at night. He wanted to take the deer home for anatomy, so the whole family could eat deer. Later, we worked so hard to finally put the deer in the car and let it “sit” next to my sister for 3 hours. That was the first time I dissected such a large animal.
My father spent 20 years planting 24 fruit trees in the yard. He uses various strange methods to raise the tree, such as putting a little soap on the tree to prevent deer from chewing the tree, and also “feeding” the food waste to his tree.
I am especially grateful to my parents for keeping me curiosity, not making me feel that curiosity is not profitable.