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Comment by UltraSane

10 hours ago

Using one of these to snap a perfect reference line is extremely satisfying.

"Perfect" is doing some heavy lifting here. The string is always a non-straight catenary curve, unless infinite force is used to pull an indestructable string.

A laser beam* across the room will show the defect in the string straightness. It's more than good enough to fool human eyes, which are not good at judging slow gradients (such as all the touristy "mystical anti-gravity locations" where balls roll apparently uphill). Therefore, the snap-line is good enough. But not perfect.

* Gravity of course still affects the laser beam's straightness, but on a level good enough to fool electron microscopes, so we can give that a pass.