3
   

Draw! The neuroscience behind Hollywood shoot-outs

 
 
Reply Tue 2 Feb, 2010 08:15 pm

Hi native English speakers, please tell me whether you've got the meaning of the word "draw" in the title with first glance /with your intuition.

More context is as follows. Obviously, the word "draw" refers to "draw your gun". But can you get it as your eyes touch the word in the title? I didn;t get it.

Context:
Niels Bohr once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns. It was simple: the bad guy always drew first. That left the good guy to react unthinkingly " and therefore faster. When Bohr tested his hypothesis with toy pistols and colleagues who drew first, he always won.

Andrew Welchman of the University of Birmingham, UK, has now taken this a step further. Bohr may have won a Nobel prize for his work on quantum mechanics, but it turns out the answer to this puzzle is more complicated than he thought.

Welchman pitted pairs of people against each other. The task? Lift your hand off a button, push two other buttons, then return to the first. There was no start bell. "Eventually one decides it's time to move," Welchman says. "The other player will then try to move as fast as possible."
  • Topic Stats
  • Top Replies
  • Link to this Topic
Type: Question • Score: 3 • Views: 819 • Replies: 6
No top replies

 
DrewDad
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Feb, 2010 08:42 pm
@oristarA,
I didn't what "draw" meant until I read "shoot-out".

Quote:
Niels Bohr once had a theory on why the good guy always won shoot-outs in Hollywood westerns.

Niels Bohr was a pretty smart fellow, but apparently he missed the whole "fiction" thing. Good guys won because the author(s) decided for it to go that way.
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Feb, 2010 08:55 pm
@DrewDad,
Thank you.

And awaiting more guys to come here and give me the answer. Very Happy
0 Replies
 
boomerang
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Feb, 2010 09:34 pm
I got it immediately within the context of the full title.

It also gave me an indication that the story would not be some dry science item but something fun to read.
0 Replies
 
Merry Andrew
 
  1  
Reply Tue 2 Feb, 2010 10:56 pm
The intended meaning was clear to me immediately, especially with the exclamation mark (!) after the word.
0 Replies
 
dadpad
 
  1  
Reply Wed 3 Feb, 2010 12:06 am
I got it from the exclamation mark but then needed to read the full title to confirm. "shoot out" confirmed my immediate assesment.
0 Replies
 
oristarA
 
  1  
Reply Wed 3 Feb, 2010 07:23 am
How useful!
Thank you all.
0 Replies
 
 

Related Topics

deal - Question by WBYeats
Let pupils abandon spelling rules, says academic - Discussion by Robert Gentel
Please, I need help. - Question by imsak
Is this sentence grammatically correct? - Question by Sydney-Strock
"come from" - Question by mcook
concentrated - Question by WBYeats
 
  1. Forums
  2. » Draw! The neuroscience behind Hollywood shoot-outs
Copyright © 2024 MadLab, LLC :: Terms of Service :: Privacy Policy :: Page generated in 0.07 seconds on 05/02/2024 at 11:48:43