system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do touchscreens "know" when skin is touching them, and/or how do they know it's just a conductive glove?
gpt
Touch screens typically detect capacitance. A metal glove will have way more capacitance than your finger, and so the screen knows that something is not right. Capacitance is basically an object's ability to hold electric charge. Large, conductive things have the best capacitance. If you picture the big dome on top of a van de graaf generator, that's meant to have a lot of capacitance. Our bodies have a sort of mid-tier capacitance.