🌅 The “Perfect” Urinal Won the Ig Nobel Physics Prize

SOURCE

Thurairajah et al. (2025)

WHAT TO KNOW

• Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada developed two new urinals that reduce splashback to just 1.4% of the splash from traditional models. The researchers say the urinals, one called “Nautilus” (pronounced naughty-LOO) and the other “Cornucopia” (pronounced corno-co-PEE-ah), could help the approximately 56 million non-residential bathrooms in the U.S. keep 1 million liters of urine off the floor. Urine droplets are breeding grounds for bacteria, contributing to the characteristic odors of unclean bathrooms and requiring vast amounts of water and human hours to clean.

WHY IT MATTERS

• The team found the key factor in reducing splashback is the angle of impact, i.e., the angle at which the stream of urine hits the surface. Testing revealed that when a stream hits the surface below a critical angle of 30°, splashback is reduced by about 95% compared to perpendicular impact. Both the low and slender Nautilus and the high and angular Cornucopia are designed so a stream’s angle of impact is less than 30° no matter where it hits the urinal. That said, the researchers say Nautilus is the ideal design of the two, as it’s easier to clean, more accessible to children and wheelchair users, and more accepting of poor aim.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• The new urinals earned the research team the Ig Nobel Physics Prize earlier this month, joining other winning work on the evolutionary origins of kissing, the correlation between wealth and willingness to take candy from children, and how parents think teenagers smell worse than babies. The Ig Nobel Prizes are organized each year by Improbable Research to “celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people’s interest in science, medicine, and technology.” This year’s ceremony was held in Zurich, Switzerland, marking the first time in the awards’ 36-year history the ceremony took place outside of the U.S. The decision was made after nearly half of last year’s winners chose not to attend the ceremony in Boston over concerns about traveling to the U.S.