I'm a bit upset because I was fooled today

Dimple in being a fool shocker. When you start to hold something wider with your arms you are engaging different, and less frequently used, muscles.

My manual handling training has consisted of once watching a video, and other times an online learning package for refreshing.

It normally involves clicking next a lot, looking at any pictures of interest, next next next end test, guess, pass or fail who gives a ****. Box ticked. Lifted or not I couldn't say..

What gets me is yearly DSE assessments even when nothing has actually changed, have to do it anyway. It is very quick, but still. Lets all tick boxes!
 
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Defy Belief said:
Fooled many a people with that, the amount of people that say ' but bricks are heavier than feathers?!' :rolleyes:
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Obviously a ton of feathers is lighter.

A ton of feathers weigh less than a ton of bricks, you tell me the density of feathers but a ton of bricks will weigh somewhere around 5 metric tons.
 
cm1179 said:
yeh until you put your back out, claim sick and your employer looks at your course tutor notes that read ''seemed uninterested and distracted. don't be surprised if he puts his back out.''
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Exactly and working in the Medico Legal Claims Department of a Trust I know exactly how many come in and then we go looking for the Manual Handling attendance lists.
 
Ahh you're NHS aren't you Dimple. I did this a couple of years back although it was mainly a sit-down Powerpoint presentation for us lot. Your course sounded more interesting :-) Some of our other courses are pretty interesting though, especially Fire Training, Communication Skills, Assertiveness and MS Excel Advanced Formulas. Oh, and Conflict Resolution too which is a kinda self defence course :-D
 
Biohazard said:
Dimple in being a fool shocker. When you start to hold something wider with your arms you are engaging different, and less frequently used, muscles.
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You miss the point because I think you are saying the wider your arms and the further out your arms, the heavier it feels (which is 100% logical).
This was exactly the opposite - the smallest box felt the heaviest to all 12 people who held the the objects differently and the lightest was the one where our arms were open the widest and furthest from our bodies.
We were also asked nicely not to tell other staff members because not one person has got the correct answer yet and we have 7000 people who have to go through this.

Monserrat said:
AOh, and Conflict Resolution too which is a kinda self defence course :-D
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our Conflict Resolution is the worst course I've EVER attended.
 
Dimple said:
I went along to a Manual Handling course this morning along with 11 other people and we were split into two groups.
There were 4 items on the table and we were asked to identify the one that was 7kg, 6kg, 5kg and 4 kg.
It just so happened that the small white box was the heaviest, followed by the second smallest box, then a bowl of water and then the lightest being a large flat pack containing a weight.
I had done the 'holding my arms out straight with the weight' trick to see how long I could hold each item and all 12 people agreed the order of weight.
The answer was a shock because all 4 items were 5kg each :eek:
I even stayed behind a bit holding the lightest & heaviest and they were definitely different but the scales in the room proved me wrong.

So what is the thought/science process behind this?
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Was that an educational or team building sort of course?
Only asking since you laid out the context.

Sorry - read the title!
 
Dimple said:
our Conflict Resolution is the worst course I've EVER attended.
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Aww, what happened in your Conflict Res course? When I went, the room was kitted out with gym mats. We first watched the 2 instructors act out various attacks, one being the attacker, the other being the victim, then we had to have a go at it as well :-D

You get the more advanced MAPPA courses as well, but I just went on the 1-day course.
 
I'm not entirely sure but I believe that while you can make an effort to put aside any conscious assessment in an attempt to be impartial, there is also an autonomic response which would mean that even if someone was aware of a massive box being the same in weight as a tiny one, they would burn more joules of energy in lifting it, more than would be accounted for by any ergonomic difference, and that this involuntary exertion skews the perception in evaluating weight.

They had something on this at the Science Museum (I think) many years ago and I was too young (and too dumb) to take it all in. I wonder if there is still anything like it today.
 
platinum87 said:
Obviously a ton of feathers is lighter.

A ton of feathers weigh less than a ton of bricks, you tell me the density of feathers but a ton of bricks will weigh somewhere around 5 metric tons.
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Never change. Please. You are an amazing creature.
 
Dimple said:
It just so happened that the small white box was the heaviest, followed by the second smallest box, then a bowl of water and then the lightest being a large flat pack containing a weight.


...

So what is the thought/science process behind this?
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It's due to density.

Your skin feels the pressure upon it, which increases with increasing density (greater force per unit area of skin-contact for the smaller objects). The natural assumption is that the denser object (which presses more firmly on your skin) is heavier.


As for the "arms stretched out" test - it's purely psychosomatic. Your mind has a tendency to validate the preconceptions you have already formed (see confirmation bias). The confirmation bias, in this case, is strengthened by the *implication* that the objects weigh different amounts - the question is posed in such a way as to make you assume that the one of the objects weighs 4Kg, one weights 5kg, one weighs 6kg and one weighs 7kg.
 
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I have been a Health and Safety Professional for nearly 19 years and I can tell you now that the Manual Handling, Display Screen Equipment and Hand Arm Vibration Regulations are all a huge pile of ********.

That's not to say that they are not there for a purpose - they are - its just the manner in which they are constructed is frankly - ****.

Thankfully the UK is about to go through a huge phase of deregulation relating to low risk workplaces, offices in particular so lets hope at least some of the red tape rubbish is eradicated from this legislatively obtuse isle - most of it is due to over interpretation of the bloomin EU directives which none of the other EU states give a **** about..

I principally work in Construction - an industry where people get run over by heavy plant, skewered by scaffold poles, buried alive in excavations, exposed to asbestos, fall through roofs and are electrocuted by HV cables no-one knew were there. Asking office workers to PAT test printers every few months, pick up a ream of A4 correctly and re-do DSE assessments ad-infinitum seems a waste of resources to me.
 
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platinum87 said:
As the initial question said ton, and did not elaborate the definition, the only logical conclusion would be to assume it is referring to volume and not weight. In which case feathers are the correct answer.
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No, the logical conclusion would be to use the principle definition of a measure of weight, not the more obscure definition of a measure of volume.
 
Sin_Chase said:
Easier to hold a heavier smaller item as you can keep it closer to your body. Things become harder to hold the further away the weight becomes from you so perhaps just the different format of the weights made it feel like one was heavier than the other due to the methods in which you held them?
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This, and perhaps where the centre of mavity is?
 
Monserrat said:
Aww, what happened in your Conflict Res course?
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It consisted of a woman talking for 4 hours - seriously.
Everybody sat there looking at each other thinking 'obvious' and we never got out of our seats for anything practical.
For my first two years at the Trust I designed Lesson Plans to make them interesting and facilitated with trainers who were very knowledgeable but this woman has been running this exact same lesson for years.
I ended up writing an anonymous letter to her saying how boring I thought the lesson was and if she looked at people she would also see it.
In fact I can't remember a single thing from it.
 
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