A urinal shaped with the help of differential equations sent back as little as 1.4% of the splash produced by a common commercial model in laboratory tests. The work earned its creators the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Physics at a ceremony in Zurich on September 3, the first time the main Ig Nobel ceremony was held outside the United States.
Improbable Research, which runs the Ig Nobels, honored Randy Hurd, Zhao Pan, Tadd Truscott and Kaveeshan Thurairajah for theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal. The team's peer-reviewed paper appeared in April 2025 in PNAS Nexus, with sustainability and accessibility in its title.
