An ultraviolet lighthole that kills the bacteria that cause the bad smell yielded a Nobel GI to two Indian scientists.
Almost all houses have at least one pair of shoes whose odor is impossible to ignore.
Multiply this by the number of family shoes, stack them in a shoe rack-a shelf for shoes-and will have a domestic problem as smelly as universal.
Two Indian researchers decided that this was a bigger problem than just a bad smell – it was a scientific challenge.
They set out to study how smelling shoes shape our experience of wearing a shoe rack and, in doing so, entered the pantheon of IG Nobel-a humorous prize for foolish but creative scientific discoveries.
Vikash Kumar, 42, assistant design professor at Shiv Nadar University, outside Sarthak Mittal, 29, undergraduate. It was at the university that the two had the idea of studying stinky shoes.
Mittal says he often noticed that the corridors of his accommodation were full of shoes, often left outside the rooms. The initial idea was simple: why not project an elegant and aesthetic shoe rack for students?
But as they deepened, the true culprit arose: it was not the disorder, but the bad smell that was taking the shoes out.
“It wasn’t a problem of space or lack of shoe racks – there was plenty of space. The problem was frequent sweat and constant use of shoes, which made them smelled,” says Mittal, who now works for a software company.
The two embarked on a research in university housing, asking a truly human question: if our tennis feed, does not it spoil the whole experience of using a shoe rack?
The research with 149 college students – 80% of them men – has confirmed what most of us already know, but rarely admits: more than half have already felt embarrassed by the very smell of their shoes or someone else. Almost everyone kept their shoes on shelves at home and almost no one had heard of products for the bad smell.
Homemade tricks – such as tea sachets in shoes, baking soda or spray deodorant – They were not working.
The two investigators then turned to science. The guilty, they knew for existing research, it was the Kytococcus sedentariusa bacteria that proliferates in sweaty shoes. His experiments showed that a short gust of ultraviolet light killed the microbes and ended the smell.
“In India, almost every house have a shoe rack of one type or another, and having a shoe rack that keeps the shoes without smell would be a great experience,” the authors noted in his article.
They saw “stinky shoes as an opportunity to redesign the traditional shoe rack for a better user experience.”
The result? An eccentric idea: a prototype of Equipped shoe rack with ultraviolet light that not only stores the shoes, but also sterilizes them.
For the experience, the investigators wore shoes worn by college athletes, who had an even worse odor. As the accumulation of bacteria is larger near the fingers, ultraviolet light was concentrated there.
The study measured odor levels in relation to exposure time and found that Only 2 to 3 minutes of UVC treatment They were enough to kill the bacteria and eliminate the stench. It was not simple: a lot of light generates a lot of heat, which ends up burning the rubber of the shoe.
The investigators measured every smell.
At first, the odor was described as “Strong, poignant, similar to rotten cheese“After two minutes, it fell to” smooth smell of burnt rubber. “In four minutes, the unpleasant stench had disappeared, replaced by a” normal rubber smell of burnt “.
Six minutes later, the shoe was still odorless and comfortably fresh. But if you exaggerate – from 10 to 15 minutes – the odor gives way to “strong burnt rubber”, proving that it is important to hit the exposure time.
In the end, the two proposed a shoe rack equipped with an UVC tubular lamp. The discovery There was no repercussion – Until the US -based IG Nobel Prize was aware and contacted them.
Organized by the journal Annals of Improbable Research and Copatrocinated by the Harvard-Radcliffe groups, the IG Nobel Prize has been around for 34 years. There are 10 awards granted per year, with the aim of “making people laugh and then think… celebrate the unusual, honor the creative”.
“We had no idea of the prize,” said Kumar. “It was an old article of 2022-we never sent him anywhere. The IG Nobel team simply found us, called us, and that in itself makes us laugh and reflect.”
“The prize is not intended to certify research, but to celebrate them-the Fun Side of Science. Most research is a ungrateful work done by passion, and this is also a way to popular them. ”
This year, the two Indians are in an eclectic company of winners.
There are Japanese biologists who painted cows to scare off flies, rainbow lizards in the togo with a four-cheese pizza, American pediatricians who found that the Garlic makes breast milk more attractive for babies and Dutch researchers who have found that alcohol enhances foreign languages skills-although letting bats get in the way of the flight. There is also a historian who accompanied the growth of his thumb nail for 35 years and physics researchers exploring the mysteries of pasta sauce.
The victory of stinky shoes, it seems, raised the pressure on Indian researchers.
“Beyond recognition, this puts us under pressure-now we need to research more about things that people usually don’t think. Asking questions,” says Kumar.
