How smelly shoes in India inspired Ig Nobel prize-winning study

There are at least one pair of shoes that are impossible to ignore the smell in almost every house.

Multiply this with the shoes of a family, stack them on a shelf, and you have a sharp domestic design problem as it is universal.

The two Indian researchers decided that it was not just about the smell – it was about science.

They began to examine how bad smelling shoes shape our experience of using a shoe shelf, and in doing so, he stepped into the holy and funny halls of the IG Nobel Prize, a language award on the cheek for stupid but creative scientific effort.

42 -year -old Vikash Kumar taught Sarthak Mittal during his 29 -year -old deputy design professor at Shiv Nadar University, except Delhi. Two of the first fragrant shoes in the university hit the idea of ​​studying.

Mr. Mittal, often noticed that the hostel corridors are covered with shoes, he usually remained outside the twin sharing rooms, he said. The first idea was simple: Why don’t you design a stylish, aesthetic shoe shelf for students? But as he landed deeper, the real criminal appeared – he wasn’t messy, but the smell of fouls that extended out of shoes outside.

“This was not a lack of shoes or shoes shelves – there was plenty of places.

In other words, two of them really started a questionnaire in university pensions: Do our sneakers ruin the experience of using a shoe shelf again?

149 university students – 80% of them confirmed what most of us knew, but rarely admitted: more than half felt ashamed of their shoes or someone else’s smell, almost all of them kept their shoes on the shelves at home, and almost no one had heard of deodization products. HomeGrown Hacks – shoes – tea bags, baking soda spreading, deodorant spray – did not cut.

The two researchers later returned to science. They knew from the current research, Kytococcus Sedentarius, a bacteria that developed with sweaty shoes. His experiments showed that a short ultraviolet light explosion killed germs and smells.

“In India, almost every house has a type or the other, and it will give you a great experience to have a shelf that makes the shoes smell free.”

“They saw fragrant shoes as the opportunity to redesign the traditional shoe shelf for a better user experience.”

Conclusion? Your average ergonomics paper is not just a kind of pleasant strange idea: a prototype for a shoe shelf that is not only hiding shoes, but also sterilized them. (UV covers a spectrum, but only C tape has germisdal features.)

For the experiment, the researchers used shoes worn by university athletes with a distinctive smell. Since the bacterial accumulation was the largest near the toe, the UVC light focused there.

The study measured odor levels against exposure time and found that only 2-3-minute UVC treatment was enough to kill bacteria and eliminate the bad odor. It was not simple: too much light meant too much heat that burned the shoe rubber.

Researchers not only pointed to a UVC tube light on shoes and hoped the best – they measured every smell.

Initially, the smell was described as “strong, sharp, rotten cheese”. Within two minutes, he fell into the “extremely low, slightly burned rubber smell”. Four minutes, the smell of foul went, instead of “average burnt rubber” smell took.

Six minutes later, the shoes remained odorless and remained cool comfortably. But very far – 10 to 15 minutes – and the smell led to “strong burnt rubber”.

Eventually, two suggested a shoe shelf equipped with an UVC tube light. The US -based IG Nobel Prize attracted attention and never came to contact.

Organized by the magazine supported by Annals of Replyless Research and Harvard-Radcliffe groups, 34-year-old Ig Nobel, 10 awards per year, ındaki to laugh people, then think… celebrate unusual, honor to dream ”.

Dik We had no idea about the award, Mr Mr. Kumar said. “This was an old 2022 paper – we didn’t send anywhere. IG Nobel team found us, called us, and that makes you laugh and think.”

“The award is not about to approve the research, not about celebrating – the fun side of science. Most research is a passionate ungrateful business, which is also a way to popularize it.”

Keeping the two Indian companies this year is exquisitely eclectic casting winners.

Japanese biologists painting the cows to prevent flies, the rainbow lizard in Togo with a love for four cheese pizza, the US childish who finds garlic, makes breast milk more attractive for infants and sharpened foreign language skills, leaving fruit bats on the flight. There are also a historian who watches small painting growth for 35 years and physics researchers who investigate the mysteries of pasta sauce.

Winning for stinky shoes raised the bar only for Indian researchers.

“Beyond recognition, it brings us a burden – now we have to do more research about things that people don’t think of often think. Ask questions,” says Mr. Kumar. In other words, today’s fragrant sneakers can be the groundbreaking science of tomorrow.

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