this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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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?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Oh, I see.

Car steering wheels work that way because of the convention. Change the side that the steering column's pinion meets the rack and the wheel would work the opposite way. From the mathematical perspective, there's two ways to continuously map an arc of the steering wheel to an arc of the wheels, and since they aren't in the same plane neither is "wrong".

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

i know you can make the wheel work the opposite way, jesus christ. the circle motion the path of the car makes when you turn left is the same as when you turn the wheel to the conventional left. imagine, instead you steered "left" by a joystick. the car would still draw the same circular path the same fucking way, because turning left makes an anticlockwise circle, every time, in every situation.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah, so the car isn't even important. You're one of the people imagining standing on the screw. As long as you have a convention about which way is "up" on it, that does work.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You have to have a convention about Up to usefully describe a rotational direction at all. I don't see how that's relevant. Left implies an Up.

[โ€“] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes, it's true, you do. Left doesn't really imply an up so much as it comes as a package with one, though. I'm not OP, but historically I had the same issue. I just didn't automatically jump to "in is down, and I'm on the rim", and instead was thinking about my actual physical left and right at that moment.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

You don't really need to visualize yourself on the rim, either. Just turn left in any context and you will trace the path of an anticlockwise circle. It's really more about establishing why there's a link between left and anticlockwise. Picture and remember whatever works best for you, I'm just annoyed by the people stubbornly insisting the link between them doesn't make perfect sense.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

One of them is "wrong" and would kill many people