Gravity-assisted unlocking on the handicapped stall?
Yes, it’s another post about public restrooms!
Just a silly thing I noticed recently, and since I had a camera handy, I took a few pictures. The lock on the handicapped stall door in the bathroom at my work is the type that you rotate counterclockwise or clockwise to lock or unlock it, respectively. The other stalls have similar locks, but the handicapped one has a bigger handle part.
Anyways, the funny thing is that when it’s in the locked position, the big handle is just loosely balanced, there, such that its extra weight (and therefore gravity) is giving it potential energy in the downward (unlocked) direction.
Not only that, but when any of the other stall doors are opened or closed, it shakes this stall door enough to make the lock fall down and half-unlock. I haven’t sat in there long enough to see if it could eventually become completely unlocked without ever touching it directly, but I am curious. :)
See pictures below… Yes, I know the locked one is not latched. The pictures were taken to make it easy to tell which is locked and unlocked. But I labeled them anyway:
| locked | unlocked |
|---|---|
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March 13th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Mediocrity … it’s EVERYWHERE!!