Beyond Snap Ratio

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Methods paper · data descriptor · exploratory pilot

Reproducible Force–Travel Measurement and Exploratory Perceptual Correlates of Weight and Collapse Sharpness in Electrocapacitive Domes

Published 29 August 2026 Preprint 2.0 Not independently peer reviewed CC BY 4.0 manuscript

Preprint DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22167065
Compendium DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22167047

25physical dome specimens in the pilot
3fixed-order rating sessions
68dome baselines in the reference fleet

Plain-language summary

What this paper adds.

A dome's nominal force does not describe the full shape of its force-travel curve. This paper defines a reproducible way to measure the collapse, descent, recovery, and detected force-wall onset, then connects the released objective evidence to one author's repeated ratings of perceived weight and collapse sharpness.

In this 25-dome pilot, collapse force had the strongest observed rank association with perceived weight, while force Drop had the strongest observed rank association with tactility sharpness. Those findings motivated two fleet-percentile presentation indices in Force Curve Bench fc-3.4.

Perceived weight

Collapse force led the tested metrics

Observed Spearman ρ = 0.951745 across the 25 three-session dome means. Weight Index therefore reports collapse-force position within the released 68-dome fleet.

Tactility sharpness

Force Drop led the tested metrics

Observed Spearman ρ = 0.930200 across the same panel. Tactility Index therefore reports force-Drop position within the same reference fleet.

Claim boundary: these are exploratory, single-rater, post-hoc, in-sample associations. They do not establish causation, population validity, inter-rater validity, independent metric contributions, or prediction for unseen users, assemblies, or domes.

How to read the indices

Percentiles, not predicted feelings.

Weight Index

Where a dome's collapse force ranks inside the frozen 68-dome reference fleet, from the lightest fleet endpoint to the heaviest.

Tactility Index

Where its measured force Drop ranks inside the same fleet, from the least-sharp fleet endpoint to the sharpest.

  • An index of 80 is not twice an index of 40.
  • The values are not universal human ratings or ratio scales.
  • Detected force-wall onset remains separate from both indices.
  • A future fleet revision may change percentile positions even when an underlying measurement does not change.

Citation and reuse

Link to the DOI record.

Use the version-specific DOI below when citing the exact August 29 release. Zenodo supplies the PDF, DOCX, Markdown source, figures, citation exports, checksums, rights records, and version history.

Gebo, Brian. (2026). Beyond Snap Ratio: Reproducible Force–Travel Measurement and Exploratory Perceptual Correlates of Weight and Collapse Sharpness in Electrocapacitive Domes (Preprint 2.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22167065

License boundary: the manuscript and original paper figures are licensed CC BY 4.0. That license does not automatically relicense Force Curve Bench, the generator, test-imp, raw or canonical evidence, third-party material, or every file in the compendium. The compendium's included rights manifest controls file-by-file CC BY 4.0, MIT, and not-relicensed scopes.