Me: Those scissors say they’re “half the work of regular scissors.”
Wife: So?
Me: Well, they’re spring-loaded. So by closing the scissors you compress a spring and then when you release pressure the spring returns the energy and opens them again. But springs aren’t 100% efficient. You have to put more energy into closing the scissors in the first place than you get out of them. And even if springs were 100% efficient (which is impossible) it still takes much more energy to close springy scissors than it does to close regular scissors.
Wife: It’s easier for your hand to close scissors than to open them again.
Me: That may be. But then they should say “easier to open” or “slightly easier cutting” or “now with built-in elastic potential energy storage device with k of 6 N/m.” They claim to be “half the work” but they’re actually more than half, probably much more depending on the spring. It’s false advertising.
Wife: Are you still talking?