Asklemmy

44151 readers

728 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

478

Does each language have "lefty loosey righty tighty"? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

311 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The world has a lot of different standards for a lot of things, but I have never heard of a place with the default screw thread direction being opposite.

So does each language have a fun mnemonic?

Photo credit: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Giy8OrYJTjw/Tfm9Ne5o5hI/AAAAAAAAAB4/c7uBLwjkl9c/s1600/scan0002.jpg

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I'm Norwegian. I never learned a rule in my language and always just went by instinct. Until ~3rd year of university in physics where someone told me tha the right-hand-rule applies to screws. Now I use that everywhere for screws in strange positions.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

Well, this was a life-changing comment.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Can you elaborate? I googled the right hand rule, but I'm not seeing how it applies to screws.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Grab around a screw with your right hand and extend your thumb (like a thumbs up). Then rotating the screw in the direction which your fingers are pointing will result in the screw moving in the direction your thumb is pointing.

Thumbs up for lifting the screw upwards, thumbs down for screwing the screw downwards. And you can move your hand around to figure out screwing directions for any tricky spots.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Beware the left handed screws, they're around but rare. My last encounter was inside a vacuum cleaner motor assembly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Propane and propane accessories also use left-handed threading. It can be really weird to get used to after a lifetime of righty tighty.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Great explanation, thanks

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Right hand rule applied to torque.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I'm indian and learns right hand screw rule in high school physics

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I've heard the right hand rule regarding magnetism and current direction (because it's useful to illustrate correlation between vectors), but never about screws. Now that I think of it, it makes perfect sense there too, only that you have to imagine a thumb pointing down most of the time...