Everybody knows that banana peels are slippery, but perhaps a real study may further convince us to look at the floor each time we walk.
A team of Japanese researchers had recently won the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics having completed a study that established the level of friction of banana peel and the shoe, as well as that of the shoe and the floor.
The actual study was later published in Tribology Online, a journal website of Japanese Society of Tribologists, last September 12, 2014. Entitled "Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin," the researchers including Kiyoshi Mabuchi, who attended the award ceremonies, tested the level of friction by rubbing the soles of shoes to a linoleum floor. They also measured the friction of the shoe and different types of fruit such as apple and banana.
Their analyses of results revealed that banana peels are indeed slippery. The friction between the banana peels and the shoe are less than that of the shoe and the floor by about 1/6. Meanwhile, the friction between the shoe and the banana peel is at least 50% lower than a shoe and an apple peel that is around 2 mm in thickness.
They also discovered that the reason for the banana's high level of slipperiness is the presence of a certain type of gel in its skin.
Ig Nobel Prize is an annual awards ceremony held every October at Sands Theater in Harvard University. A parody of the Nobel Prize, Ig Nobel pays tribute to unusual and sometimes fun accomplishments and studies that still make people think or add knowledge.
Aside from the banana peel study, other winners included an experiment that studied the brain reaction of people who see Jesus's face on a toast, which won the prize for neuroscience, or how cats are generally hazardous to a person's mental health. It eventually won the Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health.