Wow, that chart was enlightening. I would definitely have assumed that this was at least in part driven by males refusing to admit they can’t open something and therefore being more willing to go to extreme lengths risking personal injury, or resorting to different tricks. Which in hindsight translates to “women don’t try as hard” which I’m not proud of!
OK, so can we fix this? In my experience the jars I (a male) have been asked to open are typically wide mouth glass jars with metal twist on lids. As others have noted a lot of the struggle with the initial opening comes from the vacuum (or at least pressure differential) within the jar sucking it down and making it harder to overcome the friction of the seal in the lid sliding against the top of the jar.
Decreasing the pressure differential seems like it would be detrimental to preservation so doesn’t seem viable, but it seems likely that moving to a narrower mouth jar might help. I’m too lazy to do the math right now, so I’ll just wave my hands around and maybe someone will come do it for me: the smaller diameter lid would have a smaller circumference which means less area of seal touching the jar, so less friction. Less surface area for the lid would also mean the pressure differential would generate less force pushing the lid against the jar. You also have less leverage now of course, but I think since area decreases faster than circumference we end up with less pressure for each given unit area of friction generating surface so maybe this doesn’t matter?
Wow, that chart was enlightening. I would definitely have assumed that this was at least in part driven by males refusing to admit they can’t open something and therefore being more willing to go to extreme lengths risking personal injury, or resorting to different tricks. Which in hindsight translates to “women don’t try as hard” which I’m not proud of!
OK, so can we fix this? In my experience the jars I (a male) have been asked to open are typically wide mouth glass jars with metal twist on lids. As others have noted a lot of the struggle with the initial opening comes from the vacuum (or at least pressure differential) within the jar sucking it down and making it harder to overcome the friction of the seal in the lid sliding against the top of the jar.
Decreasing the pressure differential seems like it would be detrimental to preservation so doesn’t seem viable, but it seems likely that moving to a narrower mouth jar might help. I’m too lazy to do the math right now, so I’ll just wave my hands around and maybe someone will come do it for me: the smaller diameter lid would have a smaller circumference which means less area of seal touching the jar, so less friction. Less surface area for the lid would also mean the pressure differential would generate less force pushing the lid against the jar. You also have less leverage now of course, but I think since area decreases faster than circumference we end up with less pressure for each given unit area of friction generating surface so maybe this doesn’t matter?