Mechanic? I’m guessing that the orientation of use of nuts and bolts favors a right handed spanner wielder? Of course, that implies that either tightening or loosening presents a bigger challenge.
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You know, I think you’re right. It’s certainly true that the higher pitches allow greater harmonic complexity because the lower pitches/longer wavelengths get muddled when played too close together. To put the higher notes on the right would then be a logical choice to favor the much larger number of righties better able to play a lot of notes up there.
Still: incredibly complex, rapid, and virtuosic passages work perfectly well the left hand / lower pitch range, provided they are articulated. I want to think more about how a “melody” in the left/lower range differs fundamentally from the much more common melodies of the right/upper range.
Perhaps no backwards piano was ever developed, but I’m sure someone has programmed an electronic keyboard this way and learned to play it. If I find an example I’ll come post it.
I think it’s also true that higher frequencies will allow greater temporal resolution, right? There should probably be an “other things being equal” in there.
I suppose so, but I’ve never heard a musician talk about this and don’t know much at all. How much would it come into play at the speed a human hand can play an instrument (relatively slow, compared with the what the ear and brain can perceive)? I think you are suggesting that if I’m playing 32nd notes / 64th notes / whatever at the fastest possible human speed, I might bump into a limit of what could be rhythmically perceived in the lower registers, but not in the upper. Maybe! But I’m hijacking.
I’m a fixed wing pilot, spent a lot of time as an instructor and I’ve always been interested in handedness when it comes to flying. In my experience it doesn’t matter that much in fixed wing aircraft (took just one helo lesson, so I can’t really speak to that).
Among my students there were a few lefties and they seemed to have no trouble. But consider…
There are a few kinds of configurations for aircraft controls:
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In your typical Piper / Cessna / Mooney you have the yoke in your left hand and throttle in your right if you’re sitting in the traditional left seat. This is probably the most common, and feels very natural to me as a right-hander.
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In planes with sticks rather than yokes (Piper Cub, Decathlons etc) you usually have the stick in the right hand and throttle in the left. Interestingly, this also feels perfectly natural to me as a right-hander. Mostly, these are tandem seat aircraft, meaning there is a front / back, but no left / right seat.
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There are some side-by-side aircraft that have sticks rather than yokes, such as the Katana. So now, sitting in the left seat, you have the stick in your left hand and throttle on the right. I found that felt a bit odd, but perfectly doable. After a while I didn’t think about it.
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Then you have the Cirrus, et al, which have sidesticks. I don’t care for that very much, but again, you get used to it.
I’ve instructed in all of those situations and my sense is that the hands matter much less than which seat you’re occupying. The “sight picture” in an airplane can be somewhat different on the left / right, and VERY different in tandem seat aircraft.
When I became an instructor and had to fly from the right seat, I had no trouble changing hands. But it took me some time to adapt to the sight picture. After a while it didn’t matter, and in my current career in jets I can fly from either seat without thinking about it very much. Most other pilots I work with seem to feel the same. The exception is usually not hands, but when certain functions can ONLY be performed from one seat or the other and that dictates our actions and roles.
I have less time in fixed wing, but I think you are certainly correct that difference in coordination required between left & right hands is usually not so significant for fixed wing. Although I have no idea if that’s still true in difficult aerobatic maneuvers?
Whereas in a heli without autopilot, you really cannot ever take your hands of the cyclic for more than a few seconds even in cruise, and absolutely never in the hover. Cyclic control is by far the most difficult thing to learn. It has one more dimension than collective or yaw, and is less stable.
That’s the reason that PIC or single pilot ops is right seat in a heli. With your hand on the cyclic, you can release the collective and reach forward with the left hand to the instrument panel.
Somewhere I have a catalog ca 1974 from “The Left Hand” store. The catalog stated that their most-requested item was their left-handed can opener.
Among other things, they sold left handed cameras (shutter button on the other side), left handed wristwatches (to be worn on the right wrist, with the winding/setting crown on the other side), and left handed spiral notebooks (so the spiral would not dig into one’s hand). I believe that the oddest thing was a left-handed micrometer.
The old “one-arm bandit” slot machines were set up for right-handed people.
I wonder if left-handed typists were actually benefited by the odd placement of keys - with some of the most-used letters at the left side.
As a lefty, most of those seem bizarre to me. Why would I want a left-handed can opener? The wristwatch I can see, and the spiral notebook, but the rest of it seems just pointless. Course, I don’t even bother with left-handed scissors, not because using right-handed scissors with your left hand isn’t a giant pain, but because using scissors with your off-hand isn’t remotely difficult.
In the sport of fencing, it’s generally felt that left-handed competitors have an advantage. What seems to be less clear is to exactly why – it may be simply a matter of righties getting to spar against lefties more often (whereas lefties spar against righties most of the time).
I wish we had known about that. Mom was a lefty and us kids were the ones who usually opened cans, jars or other things she struggled with. She was very happy the year Dad gave her an electric can opener for her birthday.
I am probably very wrong about this, adults lie to kids all the time, but when I was learning to type (on a manual typewriter while I was in Jr. High) I was told that the key placement was to slow typists down. Manual typewriter keys tended to start jamming if the typist struck the adjacent keys too quickly. We had a metronome in the class that was supposed to help, but you couldn’t hear it over the typewriters.
I’ve got to ask, how much sewing do you do? What do you cut, how often do you cut it and how precise do you need to be? Have you ever actually tried to cut enough fabric to sew a shirt using your off hand? When I mentioned scissors, I specifically said “sewing scissors” because I know I can use my cheap scissors with either hand when I’m cutting paper or a piece of string.
ETA because this made me remember doing embroidery or needlepoint. All thread has a twist. All stitchers spin their needles as they stitch, it’s just how the mechanics work. Lefties are constantly having to stop and re-twist their thread because they unwind it as they work.
I would imagine that aircraft that have the joystick on one side, such as the F-16 (as opposed to in the center, such as the MiG-29) would heavily affect pilots that are left-handed. IIRC, Lockheed Martin made every 13th such F-16 a left-handed jet, to account for this.
I wonder why Airbus put the control stick on the left side in the left seat of their jets, as opposed to on the center panel (which would be the right hand of the pilot sitting in the left seat.)
It is the same as the problem with left hander boxers. Usually in boxing the best trainers are the best with either conventional or southpaw fighters but occasionally left handed boxers say a particular trainer is better with left handers. Right handed fighters are likely to turn to a specialist trainer also, they need it more, they will make adjustments to their style for facing a leftie, and to throw off that leftie in the same manner of presenting him something unusual. I don’t know if it works the same way in fencing as far as training.
Is the piano a two handed instrument? I know there is music than can be played with one hand but isn’t there much more specifically for the piano requiring both hands? I know large organs may require both hands and even both feet to play some pieces.
Granted, my piano experience is limited mostly to classical stuff like Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, etc. but I would question this. ISTM that the majority of the time, the difficult stuff gets assigned to the right hand while the left hand is usually merely in the “supporting role” of playing chords or other things to make the RH stuff sound fuller or better. And this becomes especially prevalent with modern church-worship or pop music, where I’d guesstimate that 90% of such music is just the right hand carrying the main melody while the left hand provides supporting chord stuff.
Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu is a prime example of this. Most of the piece consists of the right hand doing incredibly tiring, arm-aching stuff while the left hand just chills.
The control force is small, so flying with non-dominant hand is okay, and keeping it out of the way of the center panel was probably seen as more important. Putting it right next to the throttles seems like a bad idea. You don’t want dual throttle controls, so they need to stay in the center. And in any case, I think it’s true that the FO in the right seat is usually going to be pilot flying more often than the captain in the left seat.
Not really. Because the action is around, the spanner can be at any angle. Whatever your handedness it can be accommodated by simply by fitting the tool within the 360 degrees.
Of course there is commonly not room to do so but this could equally affect either handedness.
I’ve never flown an Airbus, so maybe there’s something I don’t know. But generally, the captain and FO fly the same number of legs, usually switching off.
I’m doubting that it gives lefties much trouble, for the reasons I mentioned earlier. Anyone who gets to the point of flying an F-16 can probably learn it regardless of handedness.
But can I ask for a cite on the left handed F-16s? I’ve never heard of that, and a quick Google search shows nothing. If true, that would be very interesting.
Contrary to popular opinion, what the right (bow) hand needs to do is equally as complicated as what the left (fingers) hand does. Plus, the bowing arm provides the power for the sounds to be produced. Remember that it’s the bow that creates the sound; all the fingers do is establish pitch.
As a player of three string instruments, I can’t imagine what it’s like for a lefty.
Unfortunately, I can’t recall the cite for the left-handed F-16. It may have been Reddit, and we all know how reliable that website is.
But if Lockheed did make every 13th Viper a lefty, it would make statistical sense.
Ah, no, it’s just that I didn’t know that. I had thought the Captain might tend to give the less experienced FO more hands-on flying time.