HAVING been an office worker, a rural teacher, a charity organization volunteer, a sex and relationship columnist and a marketing director, Wang Yami finally found her niche in the world of science — though it seems that her previous career path has little to do with science.

In 2008, Wang joined Songshuhui and guokr.com, two associations of science lovers and experts that try to promote all things scientific in a fun, easy way.

She was first invited to write articles about human emotions, but gradually became fascinated by the “charm of science.”

“When I’m with those scientists, it’s like I’m seeing the world from an entirely new angle,” says the 37-year-old, now the boss of a start-up company.

“Their way of thinking is totally different from mine.”

In 2012, Wang jointly founded the Pineapple Science Prize — rather like a Chinese version of the Ig Nobel Prizes which go to unusual achievements in scientific researches — to arouse public enthusiasm for the sciences.

Last weekend, the Pineapple Science Prize honored imaginative research in Hangzhou, capital city of east China’s Zhejiang Province.

Prizes went to fun findings such as “why aren’t mosquitoes splattered by heavy raindrops,” “how many licks does it take to finish a lollipop” and “how much does a piece of meat rot in a year.”

“The Pineapple Prize is so named because of the difficulty of peeling the fruit, its inexpensiveness and popularity among ordinary people,” says Wang, who is based in Beijing.

All this science changes your perspective too, says Wang.

For her and her scientifically minded friends, potato chips are not simply crunchy goodies, but a bag of cornstarch, fats, calories, food coloring, maltodextrin, salt and nitrogen

And these days she can’t look at a tree without trying to discover its species, possible age and growth condition, adds Wang.

“Science provides me with a bigger and clearer perspective, and the world is more concrete and meaningful for me,” she says.

This is particularly appealing to Wang as she admits that she has been searching for meaning in her life for many years.

In 2005, she quit her job as a sales manager because she felt it was “meaningless.”

“I like to share things of good quality with people — not things with good packaging,” she explains.

So Wang gave up climbing the corporate ladder and started to write agony aunt columns on love and sex for magazines, offering advice to unhappy housewives and angst-ridden teenage girls.

It was also during that time she began reading scientific papers in the library and on the Internet as research for other writing work.

In 2008, she ventured into a remote mountainous region in Sichuan Province and became a teacher.

“Looking back on those days in the countryside, I don’t think it was the right decision,” Wang recalls.

“It was all about searching for meaning in my life, not about giving real help to those children. It just satisfied my own moral sense. It was selfish,” she adds.

Six months later, she came back from the mountains and became an official member of Songshuhui club, while working as a volunteer for a Hong Kong education charity foundation.

Wang helped the club organize various scientific trips, such as visits to nuclear power stations, science labs and even autopsy rooms.

She gained followers on guokr.com, receiving questions varying from “what can I do if I’m locked outside from my house” to “why can we still see the galaxy when we are in the galaxy.”

At the end of 2011, during a chat with Ji Shisan, Songshuhui’s founder, they discussed the Ig Nobel Prizes and decided to launch the Pineapple Science Prize.

The idea received support from Li Ruihong, director of Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Museum, who invited the pair to Hangzhou.

“Li is a pioneer promoting science among the public and he has tried many new, imaginative ways to arouse people’s enthusiasm for the science over the years,” Wang says. “We hit it off.”

They decided that the awards should honor interesting yet serious scientific research.

Since 2012, they have honored papers on topics such as “counting money can ease physical pains,” “clay-oven-stewed chicken soup is more delicious than soup made in the ordinary way” and “the mathematical model of boys chasing girls,” among others.

“As a matter of fact, these are all very serious scientific research,” Wang insists. “The scientists don’t do it for fun — even though it looks like fun.”

Take the clay-oven chicken soup, for example. While on first impression it might sound trivial, the research inspired the catering industry as the scientists analyzed the materials generated during the heating process in the clay oven, Wang explains.

The research papers are mostly picked by Wang’s team from authoritative science magazines and their databases, only a small number of essays are contributed by scientists themselves.

“We have a huge database and sometimes Songshuhui will recommend some interesting papers,” she says.

But the founding principle that science comes first and being interesting will follow still guides their selections.

“We are working to present difficult scientific knowledge in easy-to-understand language, which will be accessible to everyone who reads it,” Wang says.

“For many years I’ve been searching for meaning in my life, and now I think I’ve found it,” she concludes.

Some of the Pineapple Prize winners

Why aren’t mosquitoes splattered by heavy raindrops, which weigh more than 50 times its weight?

David Hu, from the Georgia Institute of Technology

Hu and his colleagues spent years solving the mystery. By observing mosquito-raindrop collisions with high-speed cameras, they found the mosquito is protected by a strong exoskeleton and can perform a dive upon impact with a raindrop to lighten its force.

 

How many licks does it take to finish a lollipop?

Huang Jinzi and his team from New York University

It was initially an experiment on how water currents dissolve solids, using candy as a subject, but the theory developed from the experiment was later used to answer the lollipop conundrum — a lollipop with a diameter of a centimeter can be licked 1,000 times.

 

Most inquisitive cities

The Pineapple Science Prize this year also ranks China’s most inquisitive cities by using an imaginative way of surveying them. Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin are the top three in the curiosity stakes.

The team put a big pineapple-shaped box with a green handle on the street of 10 cities and observed how people there reacted to the box.

The final result was calculated by the number counters installed on the green handle.

Some people simply watched, some turned the handle, some took selfies with the box and some turned the box upside down to study inside. Interestingly, most were children.