Family mode

Watch this one together

~5 min · materials: a phone or tablet, a wool or fabric glove, and a metal spoon to test (optional).

How does a glass screen know exactly where your finger is?

Trying to tap your phone with winter gloves on and it ignores you — then bare-finger and it works instantly. Also a rain-wet screen tapping itself (ghost touches) on a drizzly day.

Talk about it

  • Guess first: does the screen feel your press, or sense something invisible about your finger?
  • Why do special winter gloves work on phones when regular ones don't? What's different in the fingertips?
  • When the screen taps itself in the rain, what do you think the water is doing to the grid?
Watch it together

no login · nothing saved · pass the phone around

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