Yomiuri: Pupils told to take part in hot classroom test
Thirty-seven students were made to sit in a classroom with the windows closed and only electric fans working in the height of summer in a "human experiment" to see if they could endure the summer heat, it has been learned. The Omura, Nagasaki Prefecture, board of education wanted to see how the students coped with the heat with just five electric fans to keep them cool in the meeting room at the municipal Nishi-Omura Middle School. The students entered the room at about 1:50 p.m. on Aug. 8. With the windows closed due to ongoing earthquake-resistance work on the school's buildings, one student complained she found it difficult to breathe in temperatures that hit 36 C. The scheduled 50-minute experiment was abandoned after about half an hour.