Are you still pretending to be calm when you watch horror movies? The air has already betrayed you!

(another year's Ig Nobel Prize, one of my favorite studies won this year, so let's write about it)

in the cinema, a good show is on. The audience watched the screen quietly, fearing that they would miss the next show, and the air in the screening hall became tense.

"tense air" is not just an old-fashioned figure of speech, but a real phenomenon: when people's emotions rise and fall, the chemical composition of the air around them changes subtly. By measuring the air in the cinema, a group of "unprofessional" chemists discovered this-and now they have won this year's Ig Noel Chemistry Award.

(secrets of emotions in the air | pixabay)

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people release gas molecules into the surrounding air all the time-including carbon dioxide produced by breathing, as well as organic volatiles of other small molecules.

scientists study the relationship between these chemical molecules and people's emotions in the cinema. The screening hall has a closed environment and a fixed way of ventilation, and people sit quietly and receive the same "emotional stimulation" (movie), which can be said to be an excellent sampling place. They took a pipe from the ventilation system of the cinema and sent the air in the screening hall to the instrument for real-time detection, sampling every 30 seconds.

(researcher Thomas Kl ü Apfel picks up the tube from the cinema ventilation system and leads the air sample to the measuring instrument (why does it feel like stealing gas)

the researchers found that the analysis of cinema air does reflect people's mood: every tense or moving scene in the movie corresponds to a small fluctuation in the chemical molecular curve. Among the more than 100 molecules they tested, carbon dioxide and isoprene changed particularly with the plot of the movie: their levels peaked when the plot was tense. This should be because the nervous mood makes the breathing and heartbeat faster, the muscles tense, and the amount of exhaled metabolites increases [1].

(during the screening of Hunger Games 2, the change curves of carbon dioxide (black), isoprene (green), and acetone (blue) in cinema air, the two red lines correspond to important plot developments. Jonathan Williams et al.)

the mastermind of the study is Jonathan Williams (Jonathan Williams), who is behind the study of "Christmas part-time"

. I work at the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry. The job of Williams and his colleagues is not to measure people, but to measure trees-to be exact, to measure the volatiles produced by plants in the forest and their effects on the atmosphere.

(measuring the cinema is just a sideline, and the researchers' job is to measure the air in the rainforest.)

as for the study of measuring the air in the cinema, it was an after-fun show for them during the Christmas holiday-when the mass spectrometer for measuring plant volatiles happened to be idle and had nothing to do.

in addition to emotion, there are other interesting rules hidden in the test results. For example, the air alcohol level in cinemas on Saturday nights is always higher than that on Mondays. The amount of siloxane molecules in the air rises both before and after the opening of the movie because it's an addition to underarm deodorant, which floats more into the air when people take off their coats and move their arms [2].

(Jonathan Williams and experimental equipment. His team used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to analyze volatile molecules in the air. MaxPlanckResearch)

although they fully mastered the "atmosphere" in the field, scientists did not take advantage of the opportunity to watch movies in the experiment. Instead of sitting in the screening hall, they hid in a hidden passage and stared at the equipment connected to the exhaust duct, and even when the film would end depends on observation data.

this. What's the use?

in addition to satisfying curiosity, Williams also tries to find practical value for his research.

for example, in a follow-up study in 2018, he and his colleagues tested the feasibility of using air to rate movies [3]. The study found that the isoprene molecules mentioned above are related to the film rating, which may provide some objective basis when the judges argue.

(using chemistry to guide movie grading? This is a new way of thinking. | pixabay)

in addition, air chemical analysis may also help cinemas understand how audiences feel about the movie and when they will consume more drinks and snacks.

but I don't expect filmmakers to take these suggestions-after all, researchers measure air using proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry, which costs millions per device.