[brmgb]

If it makes you sleep better, most household fans are designed to not severe fingers. They use plastic blades (please don't buy household fans with steel blades) which are both light and dull. You might break it but a major cut is highly unlikely.

[saurik]

Yeah... if anything I would have said the opposite: I remember when fans were made of metal or at least had sharp plastic blades. Now, everything's designed for some combination of cheap construction and liability reduction. (And, also, feels a bit more "disposable"... the fans my parents had when I was a kid were designed to be taken apart to fully clean, and I do remember taking them apart and running them without the covers as I was "one of those" kids ;P but I think I'm just expected to throw these plastic fans I have away if they get dusty?...) I just purposefully stuck my pinky finger into my fan on fully speed and it didn't even hurt. (I guess I'll admit that the Vornado on the other side of the room looks a bit more intimidating, but I'm not sure I could actually get my finger into it anyway... the one where I succeeded was actually really hard as, despite my fingers being pretty slender and long, I could barely find an angle where I could touch the blade.)

[StillBored]

Ever stuck your finger in a fan with a metal blade?

I have, know what happened? Nothing.

I have a couple 80-100 year old GE fans. Putting your finger in the front doesn't do anything but push it out. Which makes sense if you look at the shape of the blades. The side and back are a little scarier, but i'm guessing unless you really jab it in fast, or get unlucky in some way the worse that will happen is some scraped up skin. They are definitely not _designed_ to sever fingers, for that you need a tablesaw. And none of them have enough rotating mass or HP that you can't stick your finger in the back and actually stop them by keeping your finger against the blades as they try and push your finger.

So, I'm not saying it cant happen, but your kid probably has a greater chance of losing a finger in your car door, or various other places like that before you have to worry about the fans. If you want to experiment with this find something approximating a finger and give it a try, maybe the woody bits of a leftover piece of asparagus.

[finnh]

I have a scar from a poorly-stitched cut on my finger from a "vintage" fan. I wasn't trying to stick my finger in it; i was absentmindedly directing it away from me and my finger apparently missed the cage and interacted instead with the blade!

Glad I still have that finger. It didn't feel particularly close to being severed, it just cut to the bone and then pushed my finger out of the way. Kinda NBD, but ER visits to teaching hospitals are always annoyingly slow...

[kwdc]

> designed to not sever fingers

Where is the fun in that? I say sharpen the blades and make it a real teaching moment.

[tremon]

Only the worst teachers teach by maiming.

[flak]

This is debatable I think

[efreak]

As a side effect, it's probably also more efficient.

[alasdair_]

At least at learning the lesson "did my teacher have anything at all to do with this? If they did, I'm not getting anywhere near it because that person is a fucking psycho."