Watch a Christmas display light up thanks to kissing

London’s iconic Southwark market wanted to do something special to mark its 1,000th Christmas season. In a unprecedented social experiment, organizers staged a “kiss-in” to get shoppers kissing under the mistletoe. The energy harnessed from the 1,000 lucky kissers was then used to light the market’s sizable Christmas display.

Talk about spreading joy this holiday season. Happy spirits were all around as the as the display lit up and was powered for almost 11 minutes – quite possibly a world record. Check out the science behind this unique feat below.

Each member of the couple held one end of a conducting cable.

via the Telegraph

Which helped harness the energy that was expanded.

As they kissed, the energy was transferred to the light display.

via Youtube/Borough Market

According to physicist David Farmer from Royal Holloway University, “We worked out that an average kiss on the cheek burns two calories per minute, which converts into approximately 150 watts…Christmas LED lights only use about 7 watts so we found that the total amount of energy generated by 1,000 one-second kisses could theoretically power Borough’s Christmas display.”

Their hard work paid off.

via Youtube/Borough Market

Watch the whole experiment here.

Photo via Walt Stoneburner/Flickr (CC By 2.o)