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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In Dutch we have DROL, Dicht recht, open links. So close right, open left as a very strict translation. But DROL is also Dutch for turd.
Never heard of that, I just remembered from my dad that clockwise is tight and counterclockwise is loose.
Huh, I always say links los, rechts rotsvast
Edit: or, this: links verlost, rechts rekent in
You know this has always confused the fuck out of me. You are going around a circle, how is there left and right? There is up-and-left, down-and-left, either way is left. If I am starting on the right of the circle (assuming I’m looking at it) which way is right? Up or down?
Imagine it like a car steering wheel.
You’d say turning the wheel to the right turns the car right.
Think of it like this. Like your hand is holding on the top of the steering wheel.
ok but what is behind this picture? I see fur and old matted flesh? a paw with no nails or an old dogs snout?!?!
The starting point is on the top.
Clockwise = Righty
Or imagine a bottle cap instead of a screw… Muscle memory kicks in.
Thank you! Clockwise looking down at a bottlecap makes sense!
It’s the top part. So if you imagine a little dot at the top (12h) position it would move to the right/clockwise or left/anti-clockwise
Finnish doesn’t have one. We just learn it by instinct and use the time saved to warm up the sauna.
“warm up the sauna”
I get slapped when I try that sort of thing on with Sauna.
The Right Hand Rule (RHR). Point the thumb of your right hand in the direction you want something to go. Curl your fingers. That is the direction of rotation. Translate to any language which has hands.
I guess I’m an idiot because I don’t understand lmao
Your thumb is an arrow pointing at where you want the screw to go. After you curl your fingers, your fingers are arrows showing the direction to turn the screw
Got it!
I know how to turn a wrench. Knowing the direction is the difficult part. Especially on toilets.
The only thing I don’t like about this is the implication of a left hand rule for left hand threads, which makes my E&M physics brain sad
Multliply bu -1. Same as with negative charge
Right, for a paper physics problem. Try telling someone to multiply their hand by -1.
Flip your hand over
pysic
The German version as actually survived its original time frame: “So lang das Deutsche Reich besteht, wird Schraube fest nach rechts gedreht” - “As long as the German Reich exists, a screw is tightened by turning right”
I’m German, and I’ve never heard that before. I’d be seriously weirded out by someone saying that or teaching it to their kids
I have to admit that this is rather old. So old, in fact, that it does not refer to the Third Reich but the Kaiserreich.
That’s better but not that by much. A few years ago Germany raided some very rich and very well-armed wackos who wanted to bring back the Kaiserreich.
Just like a number of very rich and well armed wackos want to bring back Trump in the US.
German conspiracy wackos and American ones have a lot in common.
During COVID their bullshit ven diagram was a flat circle.
So … shouldn’t German screws now turn to the left?
See!!! This is why communism is bad!! Since you’ve started turning everything to the left, it’s all come apart!!
Not for screwing/unscrewing but in France we have a satire mnemonic for remembering right and left:
The right hand is the one with the thumb pointing left.
Works only if you look at the back of your hands, and obviously not useful. We use it mainly to mock someone who mix right and left
In English we’ll say, “Your other <right/left>”, depending on which direction the person is messing up.
I think that one is universal
We got that one in Germany as well
I’ve never heard something like this
Dad? Is that you ?
Are there lots of French who can’t easily tell left from right? I feel like one of the few sad Americans who can’t. Would love to know why. I always chalked it up to a lack of coordination.
I’d say as many as in other countries
“Lefty Loosey righty tighty”
One arrow points up to the left, one points down to the left.
I can’t think of an equivalent phrase in Bulgarian for that, but it’s known that [most] threads tighten when turning clockwise… and if you don’t know what direction the clock goes, what are you even doing with screws or bolts…
And again there are special cases even outside of threads - for example in plumbing there are some valves that are open when the handle is parallel to the pipe and closed when the handle is perpendicular - and it might just happen that the closing motion happens counterclockwise.
reverse threads are also found on things like bicycles and cars which have parts that spin counter clockwise
Yep, I’m familiar with those - on almost any bycicle the left pedal would tighten to the crank counterclockwise.
Gas valves famously use the opposite direction
DROL: Dicht Rechts, Open Links.
I think I just prefer Links Los, which implies that the other way tightens.
Dutch, BTW.
It depends which bicycle pedal you’re screwing in. They have opposite threads, designed where they’re self tightening on each side.
Please tell Tongshen, who manufactures the popular TSDZ2 motor. The pedal keeps coming loose because they don’t do this. I keep a key on me to tighten it when it starts to loosen.
Oof, that’s some piss poor engineering right there.
And remember folks, pedal wrenches are for taking pedals off, not installing them. Except for that commenter with the e-bike.
“Eins og kókflaska” or “Same as a Coca Cola bottle”, not universal in Iceland though
I don’t think we have a Swedish one. But we call clockwise “medsols” and counterclockwise “motsols”. Meaning “with the sun” or “against the sun” Does everyone have reversed threads on plumbing or is that a Nordic/Swedish thing? All plumbing has the reversed rule, left tightens and right loosens.
I remember it as right hand screw rule
Gas pipes. All gas fittings are reversed threaded. So it is virtually impossible to connect one to the other.
