Eli5: what is happening when old school box televisions mess up and you slap em’ up to fix them?
In: Technology
Good old percussive maintenance!
A connection gets loose or otherwise degrades. Giving it a jolt can sometimes reestablish those connections. They’re big and flexible, which is why they got loose in the first place.
Why doesn’t it work now? The connections are less likely to get loose or degrade. They sometimes break, but slapping won’t help that.
Why? Less heat, so damage is less likely. Different kinds of connections – modern electronics have small, rigid chips soldered, at several points, to rigid circuit boards. If a solder point breaks, it’s because something is pulled it apart. A slap won’t stop the pulling.
Plus, in a high-speed system, an imperfect connection may not work at all because of capacitance; it’s often not enough for the metal to just be touching, it needs a clean enough connection that charge doesn’t build up around it. So even if an angry right hook could make the pieces touch, they would fail anyway.
Older TVs had more electrical connections that were susceptible to oxidation resulting in poor contact. Smacking the TV created small movements that would break through the oxide barrier or otherwise help restore solid electrical connections.
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