Ambidexterity

[pop-pop]

I am not a skilled turner but do piddle on my lathe, lately practicing “skewing” including using both hands. I noticed when doing other tasks like wrenching and screw driving, the skew practice seems to have improved my overall ambidexterity. Anyone else noticed this?

 

[Mike Davis]

When I painted signs and billboards it was often at the top of a ladder. Being able to switch hands midletter. Saved a lot of climbing up and down. When you are 30 feet off the ground that is a lot of time. Naturally the ability to use both hands somewhat equally carries over to other tasks. And I practice as much as possible. But when I cut my left hand I lost a great deal of function.

 

[Henry W]

When I painted signs and billboards it was often at the top of a ladder. Being able to switch hands midletter. Saved a lot of climbing up and down. When you are 30 feet off the ground that is a lot of time. Naturally the ability to use both hands somewhat equally carries over to other tasks. And I practice as much as possible. But when I cut my left hand I lost a great deal of function.

Agree with Mike and Pop-pop. Exercising the use of your non-dominant hand makes it easier to do. Top of the ladder is a great example - sometimes in a repair you can only really place you ladder in one spot, and then have to work both left and right. I can even paint (cut in) with my left hand; admittedly not nearly as well, but who can tell that if you are far enough off the ground to need a ladder! Sometime with repetitive work it is good to switch hands just for the change (i.e. screwing down deck boards).

 

[Berta]

Being left handed made being able to use both hands necessary. Some things are just easier if you can use your other hand.

 

[Oka]

Like Berta said, being left handed you learn to use things with both hands..... it is, after all, a right handed world

 

[Keye]

I have no idea how many hours I spent dribbling a basketball left handed. The coach actually gave me a key so he would stop getting calls about a kid breaking into the gym at midnight. Decades ago this was acceptable but not in today's world, also a very small town.

It did not help me get more playing time but I sure have found it to be very helpful my whole life.

 

[mike_wood]

My wife is ambidextrous. Not equally adept in both hands but almost. One amazing thing she can do is take a pen in both hands and write her name both backwards and forwards at the same time in cursive. You have to see to believe.

 

[holcombej]

Made all A’s in 1st thru 6th grade except for B in writing in 2nd grade 3rd quarter. Broke my arm and had to write left handed for 6 weeks. She could have at least given me an E for effort!

 

[Mike Davis]

My wife is ambidextrous. Not equally adept in both hands but almost. One amazing thing she can do is take a pen in both hands and write her name both backwards and forwards at the same time in cursive. You have to see to believe.

That would actually be impossible since matter cannot be in two places at once. But she could take a pen in each hand and write two things at once.

 

[bob vaughan]

When working as a pair doing lifting and moving things, having a left hand person opposite you makes the work so much easier.
I've known some left handed woodturners and I have the greatest respect for them. If I had to use a left handed lathe, I'd not fare very well (not that I do so well on a right handed lathe).

 

[mike_wood]

That would actually be impossible since matter cannot be in two places at once. But she could take a pen in each hand and write two things at once.

Not according to quantum physics. Always good to get a composition lesson.

 

[petebucy4638]

I am not a skilled turner but do piddle on my lathe, lately practicing “skewing” including using both hands. I noticed when doing other tasks like wrenching and screw driving, the skew practice seems to have improved my overall ambidexterity. Anyone else noticed this?

I think that you are correct. One of the first things that I made myself do when I started turning was to switch hands when doing spindle work. I was surprised at how easy it was to switch hands when turning from left to right and how well that worked out for some cuts.

 

[Mike Davis]

Not according to quantum physics. Always good to get a composition lesson.

An elementary particle can indeed be in multiple places at the same time, except when it interacts with something “classical”: an instrument, a cat, a video camera, a human, a rock, something that confines that particle to a “position eigenstate”.
But which position eigenstate? Well, that’s where the wavefunction comes in: every one of those places that the particle can be gets assigned a probability.
Now if one particle can be in two places at once, so can a system consisting of a pair of particles. Or a system of a hundred particles. But when we work out the probability of this hundred-particle system being in a “position eigenstate,” we find that nearly all positions will have vanishingly small probabilities.
And when we increase the number of particles further, for instance, to the insane number of particles that a human being consists of, we find that apart from the one-and-only position of that human being that classical physics predicts, all other positions will have probabilities so tiny, you will never observe them.
In fact, such a multiparticle system behaves in a way that is itself indistinguishable from something “classical”: So not only will a human being (or a cat, or an instrument, anything that consists of a large number of uncorrelated quantum particles) always be in a position eigenstate, things that human being or object interacts with will also be, most of the time.
And thus the classical world is born, because all that quantum-ness gets averaged out, so to speak, when very large numbers of particles are involved. The principle is still there, but the probabilities assigned to anything not predicted by the classical theory are so astronomically small, it is a dangerous understatement to say that it will never happen in the lifetime of the universe or even the lifetime of a zillion universes.

 

[petebucy4638]

An elementary particle can indeed be in multiple places at the same time, except when it interacts with something “classical”: an instrument, a cat, a video camera, a human, a rock, something that confines that particle to a “position eigenstate”.
But which position eigenstate? Well, that’s where the wavefunction comes in: every one of those places that the particle can be gets assigned a probability.
Now if one particle can be in two places at once, so can a system consisting of a pair of particles. Or a system of a hundred particles. But when we work out the probability of this hundred-particle system being in a “position eigenstate,” we find that nearly all positions will have vanishingly small probabilities.
And when we increase the number of particles further, for instance, to the insane number of particles that a human being consists of, we find that apart from the one-and-only position of that human being that classical physics predicts, all other positions will have probabilities so tiny, you will never observe them.
In fact, such a multiparticle system behaves in a way that is itself indistinguishable from something “classical”: So not only will a human being (or a cat, or an instrument, anything that consists of a large number of uncorrelated quantum particles) always be in a position eigenstate, things that human being or object interacts with will also be, most of the time.
And thus the classical world is born, because all that quantum-ness gets averaged out, so to speak, when very large numbers of particles are involved. The principle is still there, but the probabilities assigned to anything not predicted by the classical theory are so astronomically small, it is a dangerous understatement to say that it will never happen in the lifetime of the universe or even the lifetime of a zillion universes.

In summary, you are saying that a quantum skew can perform peeling and planing cuts in over zillion universes at the same time, if it is being held by a cat, standing on a rock, while being filed by a video camera? This adds a totally new dimension, possibly zillions of quantum dimensions, to woodturning.

 

[Mike Davis]

Obviously you didn’t read the article. While a single particle may occupy two spaces at the same time the number of particles in a given object or animal such as a human being is so great that the likelihood of all those billions particles occupying the same two sets of spaces at the same time is beyond astronomical.

 

[petebucy4638]

Does this mean that I should try to find Schrödinger's cat and return it to him?

 

[Mike Davis]

Maybe… maybe not.