Considering the Factors

Considering the factors

that tempt students in the library to fall asleep

740073E Shoken Lee

In the library of the University of Tokyo, a number of students are seen to be sleeping, and there was thought to be some factors except for fatigue that tempt students to sleep. In order to determine whether this hypothesis was true or not, students sleeping in the library were investigated. As a result, there was a relationship between the percentage of sleeping students and such factors as time, the place, and the surrounding atmosphere. This suggests that those factors have a significant influence on whether students fall asleep or not.

In general, humans sleep in order to get well when they are tired, but there may be many other factors that make them sleepy and tempt them to fall asleep. For example, it is known that humans feel sleepy when they are on full stomachs. Moreover, temperature, weather, and time are known to affect humans’ mood, and the mood which has been made in that way might influence on whether they sleep or not. In the library of the University of Tokyo, many students often fall asleep in spite of their determination to study hard, and it remains to be unknown whether there are some significant factors that cause them to sleep.

In this study, the number of the students studying in the library and that of the students sleeping there were counted in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th period and lunch time to determine when they are likely to fall asleep. Moreover, the places where the students are sleeping were examined in order to determine whether there is a good place for sleeping and find out where the place is. The weather was also recorded for the relationship between students’ sleeping and the weather and the temperature. The investigation was conducted over 10 days.

As shown in Table 1, the percentage of the students sleeping in the library is highest in the 3rd period, and there is no remarkable difference between the 2nd and 4th period and lunch time. The students are on full stomachs in the 3rd period because most students have lunch in lunch time, and the result suggests the relationship between meal and humans’ sleeping. Moreover, as shown in Table 2, it is revealed that students prefer the seats in the middle or in the corners of the floor to those by the windows. This indicates that the seats in the middle or in the corner are more suitable for sleeping with the sunshine comparatively weak than those by the window where the sunshine is stronger. Also, it is showed that students do not necessarily prefer the corner which does not stand out, and this indicates that students are not ashamed of being seen to be sleeping. In addition, as Table 3 shows, there is no significant difference between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floor and the basement. It was expected that the 2nd floor and basement would be preferred to the 3rd and 4th floor because students who feel sleepy might be tired enough to dislike going upstairs, but that expectation was proved to be wrong.

It is notable that it was often observed during the investigation that students were sleeping making a group; there were more than 5 sleeping students in a certain place while there was no or 1 sleeping student in another place. This indicates that students tend to be tempted to fall asleep by others’ sleeping.

The result Table 1 shows reconfirms the theory that a human on full stomach feel sleepy. Also, the result that students do not necessarily like the corner may have to do with the Japanese tendency to be indifferent to being seen to be sleeping, for example, in trains. Moreover, the tendency that students sleep making a group shows how strong an influence others’ behavior has upon one’s behavior. The factors which could not be examined such as weather and the time other than 2nd, 3rd, and 4th period and lunch time need to be examined in the future. Of course, the investigation excludes the possibility that there are some students who came to the library only to sleep, and the result may need to be interpreted with caution. Nevertheless, it is sure that students’ sleeping has much to do with many conditions and general tendencies of people.

Acknowledgements

I thank the staff of the library for giving the data about the number of the seats in every floor. I am also grateful to Mr. Shikata for helping me with going over this paper. Finally, I appreciate Professor Gally for giving a lot of great advice and great lectures.