I find there’s three types of hand dryers: the standard kind that blows really hot air to evaporate the water, the ones that blow strongly to push the water off the hands, and the ones that are supposed to do one of these but don’t. At my university almost all of the hand dryers fall into the third category.
Why are hand dryers like this, and am I somehow drying my hands wrong?
Grandpa taught me this as a child. Shake hell out of your hands in the sink. (This TED Talk caught some laughs, but he’s demonstrating how useful memes can spread.)
Shake dry, hit the dryer. Spread your fingers wide, rub vigorously, flipping one side to the other and in between your fingers. The idea is to splat the water droplets, break their surface tension, flatten them out. You can get dry in 15-20 seconds.