Sneeze vs Cough Operation Ouch!

-Are you ready for our Ouch-Snips?

-Snip!

-Ouch!

-Exactly!

It's time for the cough to take on the sneeze.

-Which will win?

-Let's head to the lab.

First up, the cough.

Time to see it like never before.

Now, this is a video of the inside of my head.

This was taken using a...

Now, the main difference between a cough

and simply breathing out hard is my favourite body part...

Its normal job is to stop food going into your lungs

when you swallow, but in a cough, it closes off the lungs

and allows pressure to build up in the lungs.

Xand, do the first part of a cough.

Now, Xand's closed his epiglottis, the pressure's rising in his chest,

so when he opens it...

..the air rushes out at...

But if a cough's that powerful, where does it go? And what's in it?

It's time for some...

I've put plates full of a special scientific gunk

called agar jelly on the faces of our cut-outs.

So if any bacteria happened to land on any of our plates,

they're going to multiply so much we can actually see them.

OK, Chris, are you ready? Three, two, one, cough!

We're doing two experiments,

one where the plates are ten centimetres away,

and another where they're 50 centimetres away.

-Well, all done.

-Not quite, Chris.

I want you to take this agar plate and hold it in front of your face

and I'm going to cough on it.

And this time I'm going to cover my mouth with my elbow,

the way you're supposed to, and hopefully no germs

should land on the plate.

OK, well, just make sure you do it properly.

HE COUGHS LOUDLY

We've given the bacteria a few days to grow. Time for the results.

So let's check out the cut-outs

that were 50 centimetres away first.

Eugh! Yuck!

This has worked really well.

All these bacteria have grown into thick,

furry, yucky blooms.

Euggh!

Well, let's have a look at mine.

Eeeugh! They're even worse than Xand's.

Mine are also growing in horrible, slimy, furry, green colonies.

Now for the cut-outs that were only ten centimetres away.

Oh! This is even worse!

There's loads of furry stuff in here.

Oh, that is disgusting!

Let's have a look at mine.

Euugh!

There's the huge bacterial splat in the middle of the plate.

I must've coughed up a lot of saliva with that one.

So this is like coughing into someone's face

when they're right next to you.

And that's bad news for them

when you realise that the average cough has 20,000 viruses in it.

Which brings me to our last result. Let's have a look at the plate

where I covered my mouth and coughed at Chris.

Two bacteria!

I knew you hadn't covered your mouth properly!

So a cough can spread illness by shooting out germs at 60mph.

That could spread germs even further.

Let's take a look...

This is a slow-mo video of my sneeze.

Here we go!

Did you notice how it's all coming out of my mouth and not my nose?

And look how far it travels.

Imagine if Chris had been ill when he sneezed.

Every single one of those droplets could have contained

disease-spreading germs.

And that's why it's so important to cover your mouth.

Now we're going to show you just how big and powerful

a sneeze can be.

We're going to create our own work of art.

We'll both drink different coloured liquids

then get a sneeze going to create our masterpiece.

Get ready for germ art!

OK, so are you going to go first?

Now you'll notice an amazing splatter effect.

And that's all down to the speed our sneezes are travelling.

100mph, to be precise.

And, remember, if we're ill, that would all be germs.

Now, with all this sneezing, look what's started to happen.

Yep, snot!

And that's the mucus our bodies have created

-to flush out what was making us sneeze.

-Yuck!

So we've shown you that both the cough and the sneeze

are your body's brilliant way of getting rid of unwanted stuff.

They're also both pretty good at spreading germs wherever they land.

So don't forget to cover your mouth!

-See you next time!

-Bye!

-Bye!

-Bye!

-Byee!

-Bye!

Byeee!

-THEY MOUTH:

-Bye.