Can you engineer a yawn to become perfectly contagious?
A number of studies found that a medley of ordinary yawns on video played to a classroom for five minutes would induce a responsive yawn in 55 percent of the audience. So that was his starting point: could he design a yawn powerful enough to move from a 55 percent response right up to Total Yawn-ness?
He tried.
Our story (just push on the icon up above and cover your mouth) describes what happened next.
Listen to the whole thing. And yes, studying the spread of yawning has a real practical application.
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Well.
It was a strange event. Kittywhumpus and Greg Laden have good detailed breakdowns of the debate, so you can always read those for the audience perspective. As for me, I've learned that you can never prepare for a debate.
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I've personally always wondered about it. Why is there always someone yawning while I am yawning? Thanks for bring up this article.