The comment about holding one hand on your head reminded me of my
graduate work at a cyclotron laboratory in which instrument signals from
all over the lab came together in the control room where they eventually
got patched into a central data-acquistion computer.
There were many, many coaxial cables being patched into panels and each
into other using BNC connectors. If you were holding a BNC connector in
one hand and grabbed another from another part of the lab, ground-loop
potential differences could give you quite a jolt. So we needed to do
everything one handed. It was customary for us to grab our belt with
our left hand behind our back. It was an interesting sight to see a
bunch of physicists all with their left hands grabbing their belts
behind their backs and connecting cables to patch-panels with their
rights hands. Talk about nerds.
This is better than holding your hand on your head because you are
actually grasping your belt and it takes a little more mental action to
let it go.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu