LEDs will flicker without smoothing circuits too. Great circuits will have capacitors to smooth out the ac cycling and diode rectifiers to get power in both halves of the phase. But for $50c less, they can skip that and trust that the customer won’t make a purchase decision based on an indicator light. If the item or your eyes move quickly, you’ll likely catch them blinking like stop motion at 50/60hz
I definitely remember a specific neon light over my head in class giving me a headache once, but I think it had a problem at was flickering a bit slower than normal
I can understand why people make this mistake. The word sure seems like a place where we’d use “hyper” instead of “hypo,” because it’s an above average sense of being unhealthy, and “hypo” tends to indicate below average.
However, the word “hypochondriac” comes from a Greek word meaning “under the cartilage (of the breastbone),” referring to the upper area of the abdomen, which in old school medicinal thought was where we kept our anxiety about our health.
Hence the “hypo” in “hypochondriac” has nothing to do with the amount of anxiety, but rather the imaginary location of that anxiety.
This has been Etymology Corner. Subscribe now for more pedantic nonsense about language and you’ll get a free bookmark with a rant about how “podium” and “lectern” mean different things!
LEDs will flicker without smoothing circuits too. Great circuits will have capacitors to smooth out the ac cycling and diode rectifiers to get power in both halves of the phase. But for $50c less, they can skip that and trust that the customer won’t make a purchase decision based on an indicator light. If the item or your eyes move quickly, you’ll likely catch them blinking like stop motion at 50/60hz
Convinced these give me a headache but I feel like a hypercondriac for saying so…
I definitely remember a specific neon light over my head in class giving me a headache once, but I think it had a problem at was flickering a bit slower than normal
I can understand why people make this mistake. The word sure seems like a place where we’d use “hyper” instead of “hypo,” because it’s an above average sense of being unhealthy, and “hypo” tends to indicate below average.
However, the word “hypochondriac” comes from a Greek word meaning “under the cartilage (of the breastbone),” referring to the upper area of the abdomen, which in old school medicinal thought was where we kept our anxiety about our health.
Hence the “hypo” in “hypochondriac” has nothing to do with the amount of anxiety, but rather the imaginary location of that anxiety.
This has been Etymology Corner. Subscribe now for more pedantic nonsense about language and you’ll get a free bookmark with a rant about how “podium” and “lectern” mean different things!