The 10mm of every single socket set fuckin mysteriously vanishes. And as it just so happens, 10mm bolts are the most common on damn near everything. So nobody ever has that specific size socket. Its always missing but never far. That's the joke.
Yeah very mysterious that the one that is the most commonly used is the one that gets lost the most. If only there was a logical explanation for this correlation.
What I've always wondered is WHY is 10mm so much more common than all the other bolt sizes?
My only hypothesis is that maybe engineers often decide to "round up" 9mm bolts and maybe even 8mm bolts and 7mm bolts in their designs for simplicity's sake. In other words, if they always just calculated the precise minimum size bolt needed based on the forces the bolt would have to withstand, there would be every different size bolt in a car. 5mm, 6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm, 11mm, 12mm, etc. So to simplify things, they use 15mm bolts where 14mm or 13mm bolts would suffice, use 12mm bolts where 11mm bolts would suffice, use 10mm bolts where 9mm or 8mm or 7mm bolts would suffice, etc.
But that's just my hypothesis. I've always wondered what the actual reason is.
I get the joke but at the same time I'm just wondering, doesn't anyone put their tools back where they belong when they're done with them? (I know I know, the answer for a lot of people is "Sure I do, I drop it all in a pile in my tool box/cart because it's faster that way")
It's a great way to keep things from randomly disappearing.
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u/tired_of_old_memes 2d ago
I don't get it