On Wednesday, a Mythbusters episode will air that reportedly tests the effects of swimming in syrup – with the help of Olympic gold medalist Nathan Adrian. The myth is based on the physics of swimming in a highly viscous medium where, while you are slowed by more drag, your strokes are also more effective at pulling you forward. In theory the two effects should cancel each other out.

This same theory was tested in a 2003 study by Ed Cussler, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota, and his student Brian Gettelfinger. According to an article by the University of Minnesota, the researchers filled a pool in Cooke Hall with guar – a thickening agent used in ice cream and shampoo – to turn the water into a giant vat of goop.

Study participants, including men and women of the University of Minnesota Gophers swim teams, swam each stroke in both a regular swimming pool, and the pool filled with 700 pounds of thickening guar. The results? Although it seams counter-intuitive, times in the thicker liquid were not signifficantly different from times in a regular pool across all strokes.

The experiment was so humorous and thought-provoking that the researchers were awarded the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the Nobel Prize, congratulates funny yet provocative research in different areas of science and medicine. These “tongue-in-cheek” awards have also recognized such studies as:

Physics 2008: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith, for proving that heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle.

Public Health 2004: Presented to Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the five-second rule about whether it’s safe to eat food that’s been dropped on the floor.

> List of Ig Nobel Prize winners dating back to 1991
> Original factoid from Twitter @LeDiva
> Read the University of Minnesota article about the Ig Nobel Prize
> Article about the study: Check One Item Off the “Honey-Do” List