Eli5: Why is it almost impossible to use scissors with your less dexterous hand, especially for cutting items such as plastics and rubber?
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It is incredible that how many RH people also do not know how to hold the scissors. Self included. My mother would keep correcting me until I got it.
It isn’t I’ve always used regular scissors in my left hand and had no trouble, in fact left handed scissors never work for me.
When you use right handed scissors with your right hand, there’s a torsional force you put on the handles while you squeeze. This actually forces the shears together, closing any gap between them.
That’s why scissors will usually still work even if they’re loose.
When you use them left handed, the force actually spreads the shears apart, creating a bigger gap between them, which fails to cut and instead just twists the material.
As a lot of others have said, scissors need you to put pressure on the blades in a certain way, and most scissors you’ll ever find are right-handed. I cut my nails with scissors (I was taught that way and clippers make me cringe), and … well cutting the nails of my right hand requires me to sort of hold the things backwards in my left hand so that the pressure goes in the right place.
It’s not almost impossible. It’s not even really very difficult, you simply haven’t practiced enough.
I don’t recognise the problem you’re describing. I guess there are upsides to being left-handed in a world where majority is right-handed.
When you cut right handed with right handed scissors, the upper blade is pulled to your right, while the lower blade is held in place by your thumb. This pivots upper blade so that it meets the lower blade very sharply.
If you transfer the scissors to the other hand, the same type of motions actually pull the two blades away from each other, so that they don’t form a sharp edge.
One trick is to turn the scissors upside down when using them in the left hand. The problem is that the holes for the fingers will be somewhat uncomfortable.
Some well made scissors can be used with either hand, not depending on the user to provide the tiny pivot that causes the edges to come together sharply.
As a lefty I can tell you that it is totally possible, you just need lifelong necessity to do it that way.
True. It’s a righty world, so lefties learn to do a lot of things right-handed. I can use righty scissors, but my best pair is lefty. When the right-handed tech guy tries to use my left side mouse he is paralyzed. Lefties rule!
In high jump and long jump it always puzzled me why I preferred jumping off my weaker left leg. The high jump one can probably be explained by the fact that the shoulder bias when approaching the bar dominates over the leg bias. That is, my urge to approach the bar with my right shoulder is more dominant than the need to jump off my right leg. So naturally to approach the bar with my right shoulder means I can only do so by jumping off my left leg.
But I really can’t explain it for long jump.
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