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c01v7x | why does the US not officially recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state? What would happen if the US decided to? | It's because China says Taiwan is rightfully their territory, and that US has decided it's better to play along rather than risk relationships with China. Despite many disputes China continues to be a very important trade partner to the USA. Trade with Taiwan will pretty much never reach that of with China since Taiwan is much smaller and has less people.
If the US did decide to recognize Taiwan the Chinese would probably decide to veto any UN recognition of Taiwan. China would also probably get more hostile to the US and increase their military spending, something that the US doesn't want China to do.
It's also worth noting that the dispute between Taiwan and China comes from the Chinese Civil War. In the end there were two main factions, the communists and the right-wing KMT. The KMT were ultimately kicked out of China, except in Taiwan where they managed to survive. To this day Taiwan considers itself as the rightful government of all of China. The mainland Chinese government disagrees with this and considers Taiwan part of their territory. | 7dd6e7b6-d2fc-4c5e-a0bd-179416b7e180 |
c01yg2 | why does a Geiger Counter have that distinctive sound when detecting radiation instead of just beeping the intensity? | Radiation particles striking a gas filled vacuum tube create a "spark" (keeping it simple for a 5 year old). The tube is hooked up directly to a speaker so you're hearing the actual noise. By not introducing another layer of circuitry to transform the no3ose into a beep, you keep the cost and complexity down. First Geiger counters were early 1900s when technology was more limited so the simple but effective design has stuck. | c8d86223-b73d-4f4d-9a0e-1f35581b2787 |
c0216o | How does snoring affect the predator vs. prey dynamic in the Animal Kingdom? | Evolution does not favor snoring. If you have other protection, or lack predators, it won't select against you. Otherwise it's bad for you. | 6fa0b174-022c-4ab5-a23e-6fa9b9ca6864 |
c02a19 | How did the first person to create a watch know what time to set on ? | To begin with time was measured locally and in relation to the sun, using sundials: 12 hours of daytime whose length depended on latitude and season.
When mechanical clocks were introduced, their pendula were initially changed every morning and evening to keep in sync with sundials, but gradually they transitioned to 24 equal-hour days that no longer matched sunrise and sunset, so only needed to be corrected a few times a month to match midday. Later still clocks switched to measuring time using the mean solar day, where the days are all equal, which meant that they no longer needed regular adjustment.
The final stage was the move from locally measured time (eg London's noon was 10 minutes ahead of Bristol's) to standard time. This was first instigated by the railways (so called Railway Time) and gradually adopted by governments. From the start, many of these time zones were based off Greenwich Mean Time (the time at the observatory at Greenwich in London), though some initially used locally determined offsets. | 20ca3e59-0bbf-4638-9536-b8cb91813a42 |
c02mme | Why does sleeping with a fan on during hot summers reliably gives me symptoms similar to a chest cold the day after if colds are caused by viruses? | What symptoms are you talking about? Many things can cause symptoms similar to a chest cold. Allergies, dry air, dusty environments etc | 172a74bc-a3b7-40fb-a298-6220d6aa43e9 |
c02qa2 | How does a bionic arm work? | Myoelectric prosthesis are connected to your body by electrodes on the skin or in the remaining muscles of the limb you lost.
If you try to move your missing limb, your brain will still send an electric signal through nerves. The electrodes will sense and transmit the electric signals to your prosthetic arm whose electronic parts will « decypher » and make your prosthesis move according to what you wanted.
But it gets better ! If you completely lost your arm, for example, your nerves that would have gone in your arm can be surgically re-wired to you pectoral area, so that when you « move » your limb with your brain, the information goes in your pectoral muscle, where the electrodes of the bionic arm will catch it.
Technology is pretty sweet in the 21st century ! | e7d851a8-fd9a-4554-9375-d63b8a595168 |
c02r1j | Why does sound sound different when you move? | Do you mean after moving to another position, or during the movement ? Because the explanation is different.
If you mean after you moved, it’s likely because you are catching the sound differently, maybe you moved from something that was in the way of the sound and was changing it, the further you are to a sound, the more different it will sound because it bounces on all kinds of things.
If you meant during the movement, then that’s the Doppler effect, just like when a police car with sirens passes near you, the sound changes as it gets closer or further from you. If you move towards the source of a sound, there will be less time between each sound wave reaching you than if you had stayed still. As the frequency gets higher, so does the pitch. | e1ffcf74-cb00-4cae-9149-305e750bc624 |
c02va3 | What is the difference between sound and heat? | Sound is a wave. It means it's a perturbation that propagates over time and space without (in general) a macroscopical displacement of particles. If I talk to you, you'll ear me but none of the molecules I had in my lungs have made their way into your ear. A wave also has non-random properties : direction, etc.
In a hot gaz, particles move and their speed is linked to their temperatures. But, in average, at every moment (e.g. the average speed of all the particles at time t) and for every particles (that is, the average speed for ONE particle between time t and a bit later), this speed (accounting direction) is zero.
So they are two very different concepts.This : [_URL_2_](_URL_2_)
is a wave. You see that "something" moves from the left to the right (without the particles themselves following it).
This : [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)
is temperature (particles moving at random).
So, when a sound wave hits your tympanun, it vibrates, turns the vibration into an electrical signal that is sent to your brain.
\- > "Yeah, but the particles moving due to the temperature can also hit the tympanun, so why can't we ear that too ?". True, they do. But so do the ones on the other side, that ALSO make it vibrates, and they cancel each other (in average). | 46d80d90-c0cd-4d08-a5b6-d926b5e87e9e |
c02x3x | Why do men have nipples? | In the embrionary state of humans, women and men both are "girls". As the development continues it depends of several hormones like Mulleran hormone to develop the sexual organs on male or female depending the sex of the embrion. Nipples in men are just a vestige of our embrionary development when once we were "girls". | 4e14824f-62de-440f-9dcc-2aac19b0608d |
c030n7 | Why do some countries have visible electricity cables above ground whereas other countries have the cables underground? | The key issue is the expense. Installation is far less expense if above ground. Also if the cables are going to need regular access for repairs/junction boxes etc.
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Another factor with things like pylons is cooling. The cables stay relatively cool compared to burying them.
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There was an interesting mini series on UK TV a couple of years ago following the installation of some massive pylons across some hillsides etc. | b02e73da-ef3e-4ebb-8e64-e5a0e5f6ba70 |
c03p3i | Why do they protest in Hong Kong right now? | Recent events are banned in ELI5 so I expect this post to be deleted soon.
Ok so what happened is China is trying to pass a law in hongkong that allows political and business criminals to be extradited to the mainland. The definitions and extent to which the law could be enforced allows the Chinese government to potentially make anybody “disappear” from hongkong like they have done in the mainland against dissidents.
Hong Kongers feel like this will be the end of their independence, and their civil liberties will be squashed by the central government. So they are protesting against the law in huge numbers. The Hong Kong police is attempting to stop the protests, sometimes through violent measures. | 4237ee2d-ca4e-43ca-a81a-f4bc1694d3ef |
c03pqp | How can polar or tropical animals live in ZOOs with completely different climate than they are accustomed to? | Many locations around the world actually experience extremes of temperature and weather that fit in with a temperate climate, for instance northern Siberia experienced a heat wave of 32C. So most animals are adapted to temperatures outside what you might expect. In addition small animals like lizards are provided with heat lamps and other features to make their areas more suitable alternatively polar bears are given pools to swim in to shed some excess heat. | e3d150d5-1d42-4c28-ba50-a2442b102992 |
c03t9e | when astronauts play with liquids in space aren't they worried about water damage to parts from all the floating liquid? | They have machines that filter the moisture from the air which then gets filtered and recycled for reuse. | 7c2c91a8-8e55-471f-9f5a-9c70bf9f3967 |
c03tpv | Why is it easier to eat more food if it is delicious? | Your brain decides non-tasty food is not food so it tries to get you to not eat it. It’s a survival mechanism. | 1998e1b5-3fa9-4bc5-ba5f-58e9abda7137 |
c03x06 | How do painkillers work | The three painkillers you're most probably the most familiar with -- aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen -- all work in roughly the same way, so I'll give a blanket explanation for all three.
In your body, there's a family of enzymes known as *cyclooxygenase* (COX). Their purpose is to create something called *prostaglandin,* a signaling compound. Prostaglandins, in turn, attach to nerves in your body at the site of injury and damage to signal pain.
What the painkillers I mentioned do is stop COX from working by changing its shape to the point where it can't do its job. If there's less COX doing its job, there's less prostaglandin to attach to nerves, and therefore you feel less pain.
To get ahead of a common followup question, painkillers don't know where the pain is. They simply stop COX from working everywhere, but since prostaglandins are only attaching to nerves where the pain is, that's why it seems like they must know. | 2740d20c-f6f0-4c6e-9d85-c5a064adda7e |
c03zic | Why do flies and other flying insects just fly around in circles seemingly without purpose? | This was actually explained perfectly on one of my physics books for school. Basically they have developed a biological system in order to be able to orientate themselves, using the only sure and fundamental source of light we have: the sun. Their brain is able to understand almost perfectly the geometrical angle between them and the solar light rays, and they can adjust their flight position to go towards the sun for example. Now, considering just our planet, the Sun can be considered to be at an infinite distance from us, therefore the light rays coming from it are all parallel, meaning that a bug can do its trick easily no matter where it's going, because, being parallel, the angle is always the same and every rays is equivalent to the others. If we consider now a different light source than the sun, specifically one that is not at infinite distance from us, that parallelism suddenly stops and it doesn't work anymore, because it now depends on your position relatively to the source of light we are now considering. On simpler terms, if you want to orientate yourself using a source of light which you know is, for example, East, you know that if you need to go east you can go towards that light, or if you want to go north you can keep the light on your right and just go ahead. The problem with a light that is at a FINITE distance from you is that, for example again, if the light is, let's say, a mile from you, in East direction, if you go east for more than a mile at a certain point you'll notice that the light is now behind you, in West direction. With the Sun, which as we said can be considered approximately at an infinite distance from us, that will never happen, because you clearly can't go so far east to go past the sun, wherever you are, the sun will rise east and fall west. Now a bug can do pretty impressive tricks calculating angles, but unfortunately it often does not understand the difference between solar light and a light bulbs light. For the reasons we analyzed before, if it's following the solar light related angle, as solar rays are parallel, it will fly following a straight line. Otherwise, the rays coming from a light bulb are radial (and look I'm trying to be as clear as possible, but I really need a drawing to explain you this), so if the bug wants to go in a direction (north for example) that needs a 90° angle with the "solar" light for every ray it meets it will adjust in order to go perpendicularly to it. If you draw it it will be really more clear, but anyway if rays are radial and you keep goin at 90°, you'll go around. And that is why bugs fly in circle around articifial sources of light! If it was not clear I can try to explain it better, and I apologize if there were language mistakes but English is not my first language, and I'm really not used to specific scientific talks lmao. Have a good day! | 2a459e0d-0d00-48d4-b340-c29f20927b38 |
c044ui | It's summer and I don't have AC at home. Why do my feet feel much hotter than the rest of my body? | Your feet are your main contact point with the ground. The transfer of energy / heat from or to the ground is most prominent at that point. They are effectively a heat sink. Incoming heat is dissipated through perspiration, while outgoing heat is distributed to the floor depending on which is cooler. In either case, they will feel warmer in general. | d2ce2112-0a10-43ff-849c-e4bf418ac14c |
c04kyi | radiation causes cancer, but radiation therapy is used to beat cancer? | Radiation causes DNA damage.
DNA damage causes mutations.
Mutations *can* cause cancer... but usually trigger apoptosis; cell suicide.
Tumors are a concentrated mass of cancerous cells.
In radiation therapy, *many* relatively weak beams of radiation are aimed at the tumor from all angles. They are aimed so that they ***only*** converge on the tumor; this means that the target tissues are affected tens of times more powerfully than the non-target tissues.
Essentially, you irradiate the tumor with such an absurd dose of radiation that the DNA damage goes beyond the realm of mutations, and into the realm of, "What the fuck is that molecule anymore? Certainly not DNA."
This kills the cancer cells. | 7add4d75-bd39-40c1-9533-01785965da2a |
c04olu | Why are armies able to get away unpunished with civilian kills, but if a civilian killed someone by accident, he would be punished? | I guess you can put a US vs anti-US spin on any issue if you want to ignore inconvenient facts.
A cynical but perhaps realistic view is that for the most part of humanity's history, "Might makes right". If you have the biggest force, the will to use it and the wealth to maintain it; you set the rules. This is still evident when you consider the number of military supported governments and authoritarian states, Russia annexing parts of Ukraine, stuff happening all over the world. If you are willing to use force and no one with sufficient force is willing to oppose you, you get your way.
Although we may declare matters of universal human rights and sanctity of life, these are just words unless they are backed with sufficient force. The reality is that when ideals meet reality, reality usually wins. If you want to enforce a moral viewpoint, it is very likely you'll have to violate that moral viewpoint in order to have it adopted broadly. Irony. | dce1135d-68ec-48e9-a345-862b0e1d5f4d |
c051l6 | Why do lips start to stick together when closed for long times? | We use our tongue to keep our lips moist and when we don't do that, lips lose their moisture- this also happens when we are dehydrated. So when the moisture on the lips dry up, the left over thin coating which is made up of a sticky substance which comes from the mucus of saliva makes lips to stick together. | 3666a189-fe23-46e2-b31e-71308e223e47 |
c0549j | Why do people sometimes say persons instead of people? Like “displaced persons”, instead of “displaced people”? | Both "people" and "persons" are plurals.
"Persons" is generally used when it is a group which is specified, in your case "the displaced persons". "People" is generally used when it is a generic group, like "people from France".
Note that I said "generally", because these definitions can be different based on the local culture. | 9a9afb28-3787-43a4-a991-97f813b7eac5 |
c0553z | How does human skin protect against and repair itself after sun damage? | To be precise, both are true.
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Our skin has many layers.
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The top one (the first facing the sun) has no living cells. The "damage" at this layer can thus be ignored. Like a bleaching T-shirt.
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Then there are active protective measures. Similar to sun cream, the body stores a substance (melanin) in the cells. (This makes you brown and over many generations it comes to the skin colors)
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Then there are active repair mechanisms. In the cells you have a blueprint (DNS). This may not be damaged, and there are many mechanisms in the cells that test whether this blueprint is damaged or not. Only if the damage is too big will these mechanisms kill the cell so that it can be replaced by a completely new one | 5a8e117c-982e-4733-98a3-d43044f556fc |
c056o5 | How do motorcyclists see through their helmet visors when riding in the rain? | Rain is see through. No different to a car driver. Except the wind caused by moving clears the visor. Or they wipe it.
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Source - Riding a motorbike. | 982c9c6c-5d68-4cb1-ab86-230a4f3809e0 |
c059yw | Why dont we use XLR outputs on guitars? | There's no advantage to switching to XLR (except maybe that it locks in).
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There is a pretty big disadvantage that guitars, amps, and pedals, are all designed to use 1/4" already.
Also lots of gear that uses XLR is meant to be used with microphones or at least mic-level devices. Guitars are not mic level, so mixing and matching guitars, amps, mics, and mixers, could end up causing some headaches because of mismatched levels.
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Some may argue that XLR means that the signal can be balanced instead of just regular mono and this might reduce noise in the cable. The thing is, 1/4" can be balanced too if you use the right cables and the right 1/4" connectors. | 8c9b89af-6603-4d56-9407-3afa9edc0ed4 |
c05el8 | Why don’t car manufacturers make cars that seat 3 up front anymore? | Seating 3 means a bench seat. Bench seats feel cheaper (and they are) and they're less comfortable. People want bucket seats that adjust 10 different ways. And without a center console there's less room for cupholders and phone chargers. | 027d33ba-4edf-49d8-a045-56e99b5c1da5 |
c05esi | What causes an allergy and why does it get stronger or weaker over time? | Your immune system is always looking for particles that do not belong to you. The main goal is to destroy outside particles like viruses and bacteria that cause disease.
Sometimes your immune system is over-sensitive to certain types of proteins or enzymes that are present in particles that aren’t really going to hurt you (pollen, dust, proteins in certain types of foods) and it responds to those things with typical immune responses.
Immune responses include swelling to increase the blood flow to the area (more white blood cells to do the immune system job of getting rid of the outside particle) (there are other responses but swelling is one of the most dangerous responses when it comes to an allergy).
I’m not perfectly sure on this part, but my understanding is that in the case of a real infection, when the immune response starts, your body can tell that it is successful in its goal, because the number of bacteria/viruses decrease.... but with an allergy, you are usually adding more to the system so your body flips out thinking that it’s not doing enough to get rid of the invader.... and a reaction occurs.
When it comes to the allergies getting stronger over time, this is due to how your immune system functions overall...
it gets better at fighting diseases the more it comes in contact with the particle that is causing the immune response.
Over time, you are exposed to the thing that causes the reaction more and more. Each time that happens, your immune system remembers its proteins and makes more anti-bodies (the things that help your immune system recognize the outside particle).
Since you make more anti-bodies every time you come in contact with an allergen, eventually, even a very small amount of that allergen will cause your immune system to start working (or over working). At this point, if you come in contact with a large amount of that allergen, it could be deadly because your body starts doing all of the immune response things, including swelling, which of it happens in the throat, will close off your air pipe. | 989feb82-e9b4-4224-adbd-7dc408f9f8ee |
c05f91 | What exactly is the Google Stadia? | Stadia isn't really a thing it's a service, some people describe it as Netflix for video games. You'll need to buy the controller from Google and pay a subscription fee and it will let you play video games without a console over the internet. Apparently you can play on any Chromecast enabled device, so a computer or TV with Chromecast will work equally as long as your connection is fast enough. | ebebb601-bf38-46b1-88b5-8728cb54495f |
c05gyp | Why are the protesters in Hong Kong carrying umbrellas? | It has been raining on and off for the last few days in Hong Kong. You can check the weather yourself on Google. | ed96a6ca-5b87-4a64-9108-1775b1b7681a |
c061f5 | How can one tell the difference between feeling guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed about doing or saying something? | The differences are kind of subtle and there's certainly a lot of overlap, but I feel guilt when my words/actions hurt or inconvenience someone other than myself; ashamed when I disappoint myself and my own personal standards, regardless of anyone else's involvement; and embarrassed when I do something publicly that I feel other people are judging me for. | afd8509f-d7da-4f2a-b8e8-1577a0f03dc9 |
c062ho | Why phone and laptop companies still use Li-ion batteries? | They’re all still in the development stage- not yet possible to mass produce efficiently, meaning they’d be quite pricey | c934c458-d679-40a1-b664-f91121ff5751 |
c06c9p | The difference between a Quantitative Finance researcher, analyst, developer, trader, and an Algorithmic Trader. | A Quant is trying to bring math and calculations to market data and asses risk of a portfolio based on a lot of numbers. He works together with a trader, who is responsible for timing trades, getting the right prices, manages the positions etc.
The analyst only analyses market data and gives recommendations, think analysts of Tesla shares. Developers are developing trading software based on what quants and traders tell them.
Algorithmic traders combine the Quant, analyst and developer role all in one person and are usually a self employed person.
Hit me up if you got more questions | a8f5a7d0-f59b-4a87-9de5-f940ee68f967 |
c06gbv | the idea of the universe being a projection? | There are two distinct concepts here: (1) simulation, and (2) projection.
First simulation. The theory is that what we experience (actually, what you experience) is not "real" but rather takes place as a sort of Sims situation. That is a massively powerful advanced computer of some sort is running a program of some sort and that we (you) are part of and created by and entirely within that program. The main reason to think this is (or at least could be) the case is because it stands to reason that any sufficiently advanced civilization will develop enormously powerful computers capable of running extremely detailed simulations (think of it like Minecraft x 1,000,000,000,...), and that these simulations will contain simulated beings, and that these simulated beings will not be told they're simulated by the programmers. While there can be only one fundamental "reality" there is no limit on the number of possible simulations that can exist. Given enough time, simulations will far, far, far outnumber the sole reality, and once that happens, what are the odds any individual being is in the one reality instead of the practically infinite simulations? The answer is somewhere close to zero, so the overwhelming odds are that we (you) are in a simulation.
Next, projection. The idea here is that there seems to be a mathematically complete way to represent our three spacial + 1 temporal dimension (3D+1) universe as a 2D+1 universe on a surface infinitely far away (whatever that means). In other words, if (and this is a big if) all physical laws and all interactions of any kind between any particles, forces, etc. in our 3D+1 universe can be expressed fully and completely in the mathematics describing a 2D+1 surface, which is the true "reality"? Take a hologram for example. A hologram is a 3D image constructed by passing light through/off of a 2D surface in the right way. The hologram is projected into 3D space from the 2D surface. Fundamentally, the 2D surface exists independent of the 3D projection, and in fact, would continue to exist even if the light source stopped and the 3D hologram went away. So which is more "real" then? In the hologram example, the surface is more real than the image in the sense that it exists regardless of whether the projection exists. By analogy, if we are a 3D+1 projection from a 2D+1 surface, which is more real?
Heady stuff, and check out PBS Spacetime series (especially the Holographic Universe series) on Youtube for some really nice layman-ish explanations. | 3048f931-8834-48f6-be6f-cb07f6e6739f |
c06s6b | How toilet systems were built. How on earth does a city withstand the amount of waste flushed down everyday? | A sewer system is a network of pipes that mostly flow down hill (your home's is above the sewerline which is above your neighborhood's sewer line which is above the major sewerlines, which is above the sewage treatment plant), which is a big tank that lets waste be digested by bacteria until the sewage is back to being water and nutrients where it's released.
It was built slowly, neighborhood by neighborhood. Once you get the treatment plant location built, and lay the major sewer lines, it's not that hard to plan for a new connection from a neighborhood and build the neighborhood lines and lines from each home into that.
Part of the permitting process will be approval from the local sanitation department that will approve of the system to handle the planned additional load. | 5842320b-9b29-4f17-b023-ed2d052e955d |
c06s7g | When you lay down on your side (w/ your head sideways), why do you see with a slightly redder hue out of the lower eye and a greener hue out of the upper eye? | This is caused by pressure differences in your eyes changing the functionality of the cones (color receptors). I had an in depth discussion with an optometrist about this once. | 8ea48c4a-16c0-418d-a361-cdb5248e0d98 |
c06xu7 | What exactly do Nvidia developers update when they release drivers for a game? | Former game developer,
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Driver developers work with studios to develop custom driver profiles so those games run optimally. Often enough the studio is doing the wrong thing, and at that point in development, it's often easier to fix it in the driver than tell the studio to do something right. | 5e730712-9f59-44f3-92e3-aee33f840f4a |
c0701h | What are T cells and B cells in medical or anatomy terms and how are they different when dealing with viruses | B cells and T cells are part of the adaptive immune system. They are lymphocytes with different roles and are activated to fight an infection. T cells can be divided into three main kinds: cytotoxic T cells, which recognize and kill infected cells, T helper cells, which produce molecules called cytokines to control the immune response to a pathogen, and T reg cells, which inhibit the immune response. B cells instead only produce antibodies, which can neutralize a pathogen and help macrophages in killing it.
When it comes to viruses, usually all of these cells are involved and many more (Th1, T cytotoxic, Treg, B lymphocytes, Natural Killer cells, Macrophages, Dendritic Cells). Some of these belong to innate immunity, others belong to the adaptive immunity, while others allow an intersection between the two.
The human immune system is really fascinating, so, if you are interested, i suggest you pick up a short book about it and give it a quick read. There are actually a ton of different cells involved in different mechanisms, it would definitely be a worthwhile read. I’m gonna leave a link here of what i just found with a quick google search.
_URL_0_ | e972ed08-27d1-4606-a534-7fa54fab0958 |
c07121 | Why isn’t light noisy? It’s going faster than the speed of sound, so why doesn’t it make a sonic boom? | Because it is not made of atoms, or indeed any particles that have any mass. Most of the photons (light particles) zoom between the air molecules rather than pushing against them. | c8477802-76ce-465b-9a8c-450f65391377 |
c079mw | Why do rocket launches not take place from high altitudes? (ex. the point of Mt. Everest) | Mount Everest isn’t actually that tall compared to how high up space “starts” and the atmosphere “ends”. Everest is about 5.5 miles tall and many people think that space “starts” at around 50 miles. All rockets go way beyond the 50 mile boundary anyway, satellites orbit at lowest 200 miles.
Also it is really difficult to get an entire rocket launch facility on top of Everest, it is much easier to do it at sea level, it’s cheaper and safer as well. Also Everest is in Nepal/China so these countries probably wouldn’t appreciate defacing their landmark for rocket science, on a political and geographical/tourism/economical basis. | e376e605-8ecc-4e31-bde4-651f32bc1423 |
c07aar | What is the difference between hydrocarbons and carbohydrates? | Oxygen. Hydrocarbons are pure carbon + hydrogen, while carbohydrates contain oxygen as well. Hydrocarbons are also *engine* fuel and used in industry, while carbohydrates are *people* fuel (i.e. food) and used in biochemistry. Also, to be considered a carbohydrate, the molecule must have 2x or more the amount of hydrogen as oxygen. | bf437029-6c12-459e-8196-a82dea20f6b0 |
c07get | Why does anxiety cause such frequent lavatory trips? Even without being anxious at the very moment? | It’s your fight or flight reaction kicking in. Your body is getting rid of anything it doesn’t need in preparation to fight or flee out the situation causing you anxiety. | bd5e729d-0621-4220-ab45-b2a366d6756e |
c07l4c | How much influence do large banks have on government laws, and why? | Anyone with large amounts of money can have influence. You can't specifically say "Vote for this law and I'll give you a bunch of money" but you can make large contributions to the politicians campaign funds or let them know that after their political career is done that they have a really good chance of having a high-paying job at your company. So, if you're a politician and Bob's Bait Store and Bank & Trust has given you a shit load of money over the past years, when Bob comes up to and says "Hey, I think you should vote for this law that lets us charge %900000 interest compounded every hour", you'll probably vote for it because you don't want to stop the flow of campaign funds. | 9681ee8f-6c4c-4aca-933a-ac2037b3d2f2 |
c07lu6 | How do babies have thoughts or react to language when they have no concept of language? | I studied brain science in university.
Very little human thought takes place using language. Most of our brain can't use language at all, and the part that can is way too limited and slow to handle most of what we do. | 0ca036a4-cc6b-4513-a4d6-d29ec67fb02a |
c07v7q | How can antibiotics mask symptoms? If you're feeling better, doesn't that mean they're working? | In a bacterial infection, symptoms are caused by things like toxins and the immune system working to fight the bacteria. Antibiotics assist the immune system by targeting the bacteria and kill them. Therefore there are fewer toxins being secreted by the bacteria, and your body's immune system doesn't need to work as heavily. So the symptoms aren't masked, but the thing causing the symptoms is gotten rid of. | dfca3f0b-a879-4e8d-b2bf-e936fab65f67 |
c07y4k | Why chefs and cooks won't use pans with heat insulated handles? | It's safer, and some do.
But non-insulated ones are cheaper, and they can go in the oven, so you can cook more dishes with them.
& #x200B;
Would you, in a hurry, as a chef, prefer a pan that can be used for everything but you have to remember to grab it with a towel or prefer to have to sift to find 'just the right pan for the job' every time you need one? Industry prefers the former. | 61d3bf5e-2e34-4797-954d-e2d3e96ba6be |
c087ns | How did credit card limits work when those carbon paper slider machines were used? | The card provider would pay sometimes, and sometimes they would screw the merchant.
Either way the cardholder would be charged for exceeding their limit; in some cases their credit limit would be increased to not have to deal with it.
Mostly for big purchases the merchant would call and make sure you were allowed to spend that much.
Initially the credit limits were predatory, it was often described as 'giving sugar to diabetics'. People near their limit would spend, and pay just enough to stay under their limit, and be entrapped by the debt and rising limit. Those who paid off their credit card every month were (and still are) known as 'deadbeats', because they pay no interest to the company issuing the card and hence are getting credit services for free.
& #x200B;
The era of carbon copies of your credit cards and phone transactions wasn't too long ago, and still is a thing. Ever been asked your credit card number over the phone? Like when buying car insurance or something? It's not safe, but it's also not completely unsafe.
Credit card companies just handle so much money that losing a bit here or there to fraud isn't a huge deal, they have whole departments to hunt down and cancel those transactions, along with sophisticated digital assets that handle a lot of it automatically.
The company that owns your card, they know where you live, and they know how reasonably far you can travel between one transaction and another. If they can predict that it takes 10 hours to fly from NY to CA, and you use your card in NYC, then suddenly there's 3 transactions in CA two hours later for small amounts on your card, they get auto declined, or approved but don't show up on your card statement at all in order to catch the fraudsters. | 386868e7-898a-4eea-822a-f179b1ea876b |
c08d8n | Why does every language contain pairs words that mean the opposite of each other (e.g. "add" and "subtract"), when a negative prefix like "un-" could just be added to one of them instead? | Well in English at least, "un" implies that you are reversing an effect that you have already applied. So, to "un-add" something would imply that you have added the thing already, where "subtract" simply means "take away". | 6eda1c86-2407-4e4a-a8d2-7d694be882f2 |
c08j0e | Why do inmates spend years, and most times decades on death-row? | Under American law, the death sentence carries with it several automatic appeal processes that start immediately upon sentencing.
That means that these cases take an unusually long amount of time to drag through the legal system as they're reviewed by multiple legal teams and multiple judges for bias and errors.
Unlike other sentences, you can't turn up new exonerating information later and say "oops" so the states subject these cases to very rigorous review.
Some defendants have been known to decline the reviews and get it over with, but that's rare. | cedea130-602d-42b2-9218-22ec94d1c178 |
c08ps6 | Why does the sun never set in Alaska during the summer? | So the earth is roughly a sphere. Go grab a ball of some sort. or an orange or apple. Hold it in front of you with your thumb on the bottom, and your finger on the top, and rotate it so that it spins under your fingers. You can only see half of it at any given time. That means only half the earth can see the sun at any given time. If you were the sun, that would mean it was daylight on half of the earth.
But now, tilt the top of sphere toward yourself and rotate it, still so that it spins under your fingers. You see how the area around your top finger is always visible now? That's the area inside the arctic circle during summer. Because the north pole of Earth is tilted toward the sun in summer, as the earth spins, the top part of it is always facing toward the sun, so it's always day.
Conversely, you can't see the bottom at all anymore. It's always night there when it's always day in the arctic. During winter, it's always night in the arctic and always day in the Antarctic.
Note, not all of Alaska is within the arctic circle so this doesn't apply to all of Alaska. | ff721095-02b7-4f49-a517-28a169aba6b3 |
c09gnz | How do you measure and describe "direction" when standing at the North or South Pole? | Latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates can be used to describe a location regardless of position on Earth. They are unique points. If you want to tell someone where to go *relative* to you, you could always use degrees from a reference. | 1e991562-9d90-458b-9a04-acbbef3d11c0 |
c09nyw | Why don’t you need to wear a seatbelt on public transportation? | For one thing, busses are much heavier than cars, so in a collision they will usually experience much less deceleration. But if you drive into a tree or wall that won't help you. | dea27c58-1412-4711-beda-2d73a0dd0f10 |
c09wgm | Why is it during or after a traumatic event does our brain tend to deny what is actually happening? What are the things that trigger Denial? | A way of make-believe, the version of denial is simpler and easier to comprehend.
Small version: When you are at the dentist and you get some painful treatment, you try to focus on something else to ease the situation. You might think of your shipping list, the last episode of your favorite series or something more joyful. That is all natural and rather harmless. When asked you will be fully aware that you are at the dentist, acknowledge most of the situation, but you are literally denying your dentist is cutting around your mouth while you stare at him.
For larger trauma this mechanism seems to work the same way, except the episode is much much longer. | ad46b538-1513-4ac7-9bd5-522cc79871d1 |
c09wqw | How is there liquid water drops in cirrus clouds, where temperatures can be 30 below freezing | Freezing and boiling temperatures change with pressure. At low pressures such as way up in the atmosphere the freezing temperature is much lower. Also even though the ambient temperature is so low, there still a lot of movement which helps prevent things from solidifying. | 98bd8d86-478c-43d9-b143-dc50e627e9d4 |
c0afwm | What's the dealt with all the "Nobody:" memes? | Nobody:
Not a single soul on the world:
u/59ezswpmm: "What's the deal with all the" Nobody:" memes?" | 84e14b29-b211-42b2-ad0e-9e9693a900f5 |
c0azpw | why MRI machines make so much noise. | because on the inside of the machine, the large metal coils are vibrating when electricity passes through rapidly, creating a magnetic field, which causes the banging noise. the louder the bang, the more the vibration, the more detailed the scan. | e552ebc9-ed4a-4902-b3be-695167d48bab |
c0b7qf | what is light made of? | Light is made of photons. Photons are really interesting in that they have some properties of matter and some properties of wave. This makes light act differently in different situations. | ed1f8d03-d454-4b05-b461-cdec4688e40d |
c0b9pp | If a DNA sample is not available, can a close determination of a DNA profile be made of that person if there are DNA samples of blood relatives? | Yes. That's how they caught the golden state killer.
Police collected DNA from the crime scenes but didn't have a suspect to collect a sample from for comparison. Eventually, they tried comparing the DNA evidence against a database of people who had voluntarily published the results of a home DNA test (like ancestry or 23 and me).
Police got a hit from this database, and upon further investigation determined that the person in the database was not the killer, but was a close blood relative. | 843f581d-0350-46e5-b6fe-53ad88cf79dc |
c0bb7v | How do rats’ eyes work? | The work surprisingly like other mammal eyes [(sample paper)](_URL_0_ ). They stick out because of how they are mounted, the eye itself is still spherical. They are ultra wide angle, which is more common in prey species than the narrow field stereo vision in a predator (like cats or humans). | 6044c6f0-dabe-46be-8d71-44bd63fada36 |
c0bcvt | Why do works of fiction usually use acid instead of alkali to depict corrosive substances? | Because most people understand what you mean when you say acid but would have to question what an alkali is. It keeps it simple for the majority audience | f654d0c9-645d-49bf-9d61-94fcb16d64eb |
c0bd1s | How come ants can take so much damage and survive ? | ants (and most other insects) are pretty simple organisms, whose bodies do not have many of the same critical organs we have.
They can't suffer a punctured lung for example, because they don't have lungs: they 'breathe' by absorbing oxygen through their abdomen. If they lose a limb they can probably get by on the other five. Even if their head/brain is destroyed or damaged, enough of their nervous system is distributed around their body that they'll still move around and respond to stimuli, at least for a while. | 80fa5ef8-3b09-443a-8822-853cccabe052 |
c0boqj | Why is it so hard to permanently cure allergies? | Because allergies aren't caused by some external factor like viruses or cancer that can be killed/removed from your body they're caused by your own immune system being oversensitive. We are theoretically perfeclty capable of curing allergies but it would entail destroying your entire immune system, which, needless to say, is a bit worse than hay-fever. | d17f5bb9-69a0-4257-b00b-b3972a87a146 |
c0bqhm | What causes the sensation of having a water droplet hit your arm or sometimes other areas when you are outside or more specifically indoors? | Not sure what you're asking.
Are you wanting to know how your body sends signals of touch to your brain? Or are you saying that you feel water droplets hitting you when there isn't an actual droplet, and you want to know why?
If it's the latter, I'm guessing there actually was a water droplet just so tiny you didn't see it. | bb6b2476-5314-48d1-98f7-4cd82c2fa0dd |
c0bsmy | Why is space black? | Region in space millions of miles wide with no host star/s to illuminate that region ?
Lots of subs that explain a lot about astronomy/cosmology (science part. These guys do magical stuff with numbers. Real life human calculators in short) that can help all of us wannabe nerds. r/space. r/spaceporn r/astronomy r/astrophotography is just handful.
Edited because I’m thick :p
AU: Astronomical Unit.
Astronomers, physicists , etc use the term “AU” and “light years” etc instead of miles/Km. Both AU + LY are not the same length.
[AU explained](_URL_0_)
[Light seconds, years, etc explained a bit more in depth](_URL_1_) | 1671e4ac-afbd-4ef6-9742-c6e96aa8f258 |
c0bzd8 | What causes glitched videos? | I'm assuming someone can answer better than me. To make the file size of videos smaller, we do what's called compression. I think in most compression formats, instead of saving the data for the red, blue, and green for pixels, the data is saved as the difference between the pixel in one frame to the same pixel in the previous frame. For pixels that don't change much, this can save a lot of space. In this particular instance, the base frame has been corrupted, so the difference in frames is being applied to the wrong rgb values. | d71bdc31-bc1d-4cf7-9460-5a862cd4a833 |
c0cfpm | How does brushing too hard, acidic foods, etc damage your teeth but getting scraped mercilessly by a sharp piece of metal doesn’t? | It's done infrequently, by someone who knows exactly what they're doing. Think of the amount of time the average person has been under the dental pick in their lifetime. For the vast majority of people it's not going to be more than, what an hour maybe? I'm not counting the water jet (the high pitched one used most of the time), the pick itself is barely used. The water jet will be all you get if you go regularly.
And the pick is mainly being used to remove plaque. As brutal as that feels they're not attacking the teeth themselves if they can help it. | fa1e034c-1f1f-4eed-b83d-d6a3e2ff1fea |
c0d8hs | how Vitamin A, B, and C work | Can't really ELI5 the question you way you asked since you specifically asked a biochem question about several very different things at once.
But guessing what you're actually asking, what they do/why they're needed, they are gears that play a part in your bodies machinery. They all have very different roles and anybody explaining them in a few sentences is compressing what they do too much - each vitamin literally has hundreds, thousands of different (sometimes contradictory) individual functions let alone the byproducts produced after these vitamins go through their first use.
Something is called a vitamin when you must eat it in it's exact form (or one or two steps away) in your diet. If your body is able to make it from several different things, then it's not considered to be a vitamin.
Lutein for example is required by your body but not considered to be a vitamin because your body is able to make it from a few different sources, only under pretty severe circumstances would it in theory be necessary and at that point you're more than likely starving and need a bunch of other things too. | 6a1ccf2d-824d-4b4a-aca6-a81f0bac5dc4 |
c0dvgz | How does a combo drive work, and can I choose where data is stored? | It is really strange phrasing but I would believe it is a 1tb ssd separate from a 2tb hard drive. They are two separate pieces inside the computer case
They will appear as two separate folders on your computer so the SSD would be C: and the HDD would be D: for example. When installing things it will have a path
ex. C:/users/downloads/thinguoureinstalling
If you want it on the D: then you hit browse and go to where you want in that folder/drive.
Suggestions: Pictures, videos, games that don't have long load times on the 2tb HDD and everything you need to load fast on the SSD | 102c917a-f564-4b6d-b712-3b3e03b90d58 |
c0e0b8 | how does the action of scrubbing your hands (often with soap) help kill off bacteria? | It won't necessary kill the bacteria, but it will remove them from your hands: Soap is slippery and a slippery surface will prevent the bacteria to stick on. | b4324e17-ff44-4ee6-aa85-bb87da68cb77 |
c0e2wg | What is antimatter, and has there been any real-life examples in existence or is it only a theoretical substance? | Antimatter is basically the same as regular matter except with the opposite charge. For instance, the anti-electron is called a positron. Also, when matter meets antimatter they annihilate each other in a large explosion.
Antimatter has absolutely been observed. Radioactive decay gives off both positrons and electrons. This is even used in medicine with PET scans (positron emitting tomography).
When new matter is created using high energy collisions it appears to have about a 50 percent chance of being either matter or antimatter. Because of this, one of the great mysteries in science is why the universe appears to be almost entirely regular matter. | 94db886a-837b-4120-9613-dbd38a30baed |
c0edky | Why do job applications in the U.S. always separate "Hispanic or Latino" from everyone else in the ethnic background section? | Hispanic/Latino heritage overlaps skin color, as there are White, Mestizo, and Black Hispanics. They are a separate ethnic group that the US measures in the census, and they have unique issues with racism and discrimination, so Hispanic/Latino is separated out from the other questions to help with measurements and statistics. | 1562651c-77c0-41be-81cf-908fdacd6dcb |
c0eep2 | Why does water evaporate even if ambience temp is less than its boiling point? | ELI5 - think of liquid water molecules like birds standing on the ground at a park. to get all of the birds to get scared and fly into the air (become water vapor), a loud enough sound needs to be made (temperature). If that loud sound gets made, they all fly away (evaporate). However, even if a loud sound isn't made, some of the birds are going to get restless and fly off on their own. Eventually, even if a loud sound isn't made, enough birds will get restless and fly away that none will be left
More sciencey - whether H20 is in the liquid state (water) or gas state (vapor) depends on the energy of the H20 molecules. Heating them up imparts energy onto them, and they shake more and get spread apart and evaporate as a gas. However, individual H20 water molecules can randomly escape as a gas without heat. Basically, if you have a bowl of water, individual water molecules at the top are escaping/evaporating into gas. Eventually, they all evaporate. Try to think of it as a constant process. At the top of the bowl of water, some molecules are changing into gas while some are changing into liquid. At room temp, the process favors gas formation, so it eventually all becomes gas. | ac97b558-2def-43da-ba8d-946d9ab8725f |
c0egit | With a parliament system with elected officials in the UK, what purpose does the Royal Family serve? | IIRC,Nothing much, they exist due to tradition. So while technically they are in charge of the military and country they just follow what parliament wants. They can use their powers to stop certain proceedings, but it’s almost never done as interfering with the politicos can cause massive backlash.
Some links that go more in depth: [Today I Found Out](_URL_0_) they do a good job of making it simple and providing sources in description. | 930fce8a-0006-4060-ba3a-0894b273fafa |
c0egng | How do countries with multiple official languages (like Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium) organize their military. | Usually you can be pretty sure that the officers will speak the main language of the country. Speaking the language is most likely a requirement to be accepted at the Military Academy and if it's not, it's likely a requirement to get a promotion to higher rank. The officer are usually the one that coordinate between different units with the help of veteran NCO. The vast majority of soldier on the field will mostly talk only without their own unit. In that situation the people speaking a secondary language will all be put in same or several specific unit where everyone speak that secondary language, while the upper leadership of that unit will be billingual.
& #x200B;
So for example in the Royal Canadian Air Force they have the 3 Wing Bagotville which is a unit located in Quebec and speak french. The leadership, communications and pilots are bilingual, but for most of the ground personel are not obligated to be bilingual. About half of the population of the Province of Quebec speak both language, so it give you an idea. | 706fa361-3460-40bb-8d9c-c8e6cc0656ef |
c0es9w | Can someone please breakdown why/what they are protesting in Hong Kong? | Right now Hong Kong and China operate under different legal systems with different laws, despite in concept both being part of China. What the proposed change would do is allow people to be arrested and extradited to China from Hong Kong, meaning for example the bookseller who distributes literature critical of the Communist Party won't need to be kidnapped but would instead simply be arrested by Hong Kong police and turned over to Chinese police to be tortured and imprisoned forever.
Hong Kong residents are protesting because they don't want to be subjected to the oppression of the Chinese legal system, much preferring the Western style rights and freedoms they currently have. | 3b3cd297-e084-40e1-a2b5-6bccf67b112d |
c0etee | how is it possible people can create things like working internet and computers in unmodded Minecraft? Also, since they can make computers, is there any limit to what they can create in Minecraft? | Minecraft provides the fundamental elements required to build a computer: circuits (wires), logic gates, memory and a clock, as well as mechanisms for input (programming) and output. With these basic building blocks you can theoretically simulate a functioning computer, though there are practical limits to how easy it is to build it and how fast it can process instructions. | e1d517ac-beea-4552-b4ec-e3450851f379 |
c0euk8 | What is the difference between normal sensation and pleasurable sensation | we are evolved to enjoy the sensations experienced by sexual organs so that we (the human race, as well as other animals) will want to do things with them that feel good and lead to babies.
arms dont make babies | c14952f6-f62f-4b91-b22c-095a733e202f |
c0evni | Why does pouring a beer result in more foam than pouring a soda? | Beer is made with grain. The grain contains proteins That contribute to the foaming you see. Soda only contains sugar and flavorings that do not foam as much. | 1466a1cb-5ec1-4fba-83ec-df1fb8789e6e |
c0exnq | How are people in the military credited with a certain amount of kills? | I can't speak for all militaries, but for the US fighter aircraft have had a gun camera in them since just before WW2. When the trigger is pulled a camera takes pictures and often the damage to the enemy aircraft is recorded.
After the war, records were compared, adjustments made
Now a days we have HUD cameras that record both the heads up display and the radar display, as well as air borne tracking aircraft and ground radar to confirm destruction of an aircraft.
Snipers generally operate with a spotter who is also a qualified sniper and something snipers do is to record every shot they take in a log book. If the Shooter records a kill and the Spotter records the shooter getting a kill, it's a kill. | 85d92563-b296-485d-ad23-bd28845f3fc8 |
c0f4k1 | How do crayons get their pigment? | Both of your answers are correct. Some colours can be produced naturally by things found in nature, but more often then not, they use chemicals. Iron for example is naturally red and so can be used to colour things red or orange. Different chemical compounds form with different colours and can therefore be used to colour. Lead iodide for example is bright yellow and iron permanganate is a gentle light pink colour. I hope this helps! | 71848075-d0fe-4540-b90d-c6ba0d231027 |
c0folc | . Why can the stomach/colon be empty and yet within minutes of eating corn it passes through undigested? What’s the point of eating corn? Apart from the delicious factor. | The shell of the corn kernel goes through your digestive system undigested but the soft inner parts are readily digested. | 2d309e51-2f1a-49f2-98a6-eed4486bb7a4 |
c0g8lj | Does anything exist on a 2 dimensional level? | There is no truly 2-Dimensional thing in the world. At least nothing that has been proven yet. (I think the string theory has "branes" that are, but that is far from experimental confirmation
While any 'object' in our world has 3 spatial dimensions there are concepts that are. A surface is 2D, but it's a philosophical question if the mathematical surface (infinitely thin) is really a thing that exists | 7ec164dd-da51-4d93-96fb-897f2b496606 |
c0gev8 | Why are many fantasy creatures depicted with narrower eyes than their real life counterpart? | I think you pretty much answered your own question. Humans anthropomorphize things, it's kinda our defining trait.
So naturally in any depiction of any kind of creature that is supposed to read as "formidable" or "crafty", you're gonna see human specific facial postures that read that way to other humans. Because they're depictions, not things that actually occur naturally in nature. | a7551ee1-ebee-4315-8064-385a77d10742 |
c0ggti | Why do foods that are hard get soft when they go stale, but foods that are soft get hard when they go stale? | Because the moisture content of the food item is balancing out with the moisture content of the surrounding air.
Hard foods tend to be dry and will therefore absorb moisture and end up softer. On the other hand, soft foods will lose moisture and end up dryer and therefore harder. | b2660443-74cc-4dfa-95e9-aabe061729b2 |
c0gsxw | Why is it so hard to recover from an Achilles Rupture? but can 100% recover from a Torn ACL, which is considered the second worst injury an NBA player could have. | You don’t recover from ACL. You undergo a restorative surgery where they replace torn ACL with another ligament (most commonly either part that connects kneecap or the one that connects hamstring). If that is a recovery then sure 100% recovery it is. Oh and even with surgery it is far not 100% same. I still feel uncomfortable in my knee when overload it.
Add: ACL does not recover because it is always 100% of time under a tension. So if it is torn the ends can not reach each other to grow back together. Achilles same time can grow back if the foot is fixed in position when there’s no tension on it. Meantime ACL injuries are often compensated by building surrounding muscles. With Achilles there’s no really such option and it is more important for stability than ACL. | 99e422ad-5751-4262-918b-faebd7668f61 |
c0h0ee | What are the effects of tearing one's ACL and why is it regarded as a career ender in sports? | Well, ligaments are the tissue that attach bones to other bones. The ACL, and MCL, are important because they're connecting the top and bottom halves of the leg. With a torn ACL, your leg has veeeeeery little support at the knee. Its difficult to put weight on it, and even more difficult to apply any force to push up or change direction.
Its particularly bad in Basketball where bounce and change of direction are so critical.
The other issue with tendon and ligament injuries is that, unlike muscle injuries (which will heal over time unless they're torn completely apart), they don't heal naturally if torn. This means surgery, and a long period of time where you can't work out that part if your body.
It's not a guaranteed career injury like it used to be, but for players who rely on athleticism these injuries are brutal. Kevin Durant's injury was even worse.
Source: years of physio and an athletic career cut short bc of these injuries. | 9bbbcebf-2da2-40bb-8d61-b3f83a24cbf5 |
c0hd3h | Why do open and shut murder cases take so long to prosecute and reach sentencing? | due process.
& #x200B;
the prosecutors need to determine what to charge him with. ie first degree murder. the prosecutors then need to meet the standards of first degree murder, criminal charges in america are very specific as what requirements need to be fulfilled in order to convict on that charge and if a single requirement is not met then that charge will not stick. ie premeditation/deliberation(planned in advance and considered his actions), willful (intention to kill the target, and not accidental). so if the prosecutors just showed up to court with a video showing that he killed someone. that alone doesn't meet the requirements of first degree murder. and of course the defense will try to poke holes in the prosecution as well. even though he clearly killed someone, the defense can't slack off and needs to provide counter arguments against the prosecution. if the prosecution doesn't carefully prepare it's case for first degree murder, they can't just up and decide to charge him with second/third/manslaughter instead. the prosecution has one shot at this and they can't screw it up. but in this case, he plead guilty just recently. but without a guilty plea, the prosecution has to prove each and single point "beyond a shadow of a doubt" ie 99% certainty. | 5fa9ae04-77fb-4020-8b74-20e1408e7226 |
c0hmhu | why are football (soccer) fields checkered with grass of different shades of green? | The grass is cut before the match, the roller on the mower pushes the grass in one direction or the other depending upon which direction the mower is travelling. The groundsman can come up with creative patterns created by the roller effect and some take pride in doing some innovative patterns. | c082093f-84d2-4fb1-ae80-5d555dd45f7d |
c0hmqz | What creates a person's musical preference? | I can only explain this based on my own experience - me and my younger brother (two years younger) both also grew up in the same house, shared our CD's and MP3's, listened to what our parents played and we had a lot of common childhood friends.
We both may have listened to Radiohead album for example, but my brother and I almost always liked different songs, even from the same album. It had most to do with slightly different personalities - he has always been a more introverted and aloof type, while I have always been a more neurotic and slightly more outgoing type. While I don't listen to mainstream pop per se, I have always been drawn to more pop-like, upbeat music like pop punk, drum and bass, indie rock etc. while my brother kind of despises that stuff (except only for some indie rock) and likes experimental music the most, like Velvet Underground, PiL, Death Grips, George Harrison solo albums etc.
It's fascinating how we have both had the same upbringing, but we like very different type of music. We have had a lot of arguments about it, but eventually, we learned to respect each other's taste. | 88c7cbb6-e25d-49bc-8dae-939dd5beb3be |
c0htmn | - Why kitchen sinks take more time to get hot or cold than bathroom sinks? | Has nothing to do with kitchen or bathroom, only depends on the distance the water has to travel from the heater to the output. | b45d0d9a-0745-4c47-802e-f502746a4e9e |
c0ic2s | The difference between a Story, Saga, Epic, Cycle, Novel, etc. | Story, novella and novel are single works of literature in ascending order of length and complexity. A cycle is several novels united by a common setting and protagonists. Epic and saga are cooler words for a cycle. However, epics and sagas tend to be more monolithic than "normal" cycles. For example, several novels about Alice and Bob in the world of Mediocre Earth are always a cycle, but if they have a common overarching plot like Lord of the Rings or A Song of Earth and Fire, they are a saga or an epic. | 0a5f6c07-5b0e-469b-8b33-b11f1b8d6ed0 |
c0iswb | Why do toys with dying batteries sound weird? | Batteries will operate at the correct voltage when they are full or partially filled, but at the very low end the voltage will drop a little and current will also be limited.
Most electronics are designed to work at a specific supply voltage, when this is not given all kinds of effects can happen (even destruction of hardware in some Special circuits). The typical sound amplifier will "cut off" peaks of the wave that later becomes the soundwave. The same effect occurs when you try to turn the volume up higher than it can be supported (and this is done on purpose in guitar distorters) | d6e5f444-ecf2-4c95-ac60-9ca18dc4ec18 |
c0iwz7 | How tendons connect to the bone? | By way of something called sharpeys fibers. Their type 1 collagen(type 1 collagen is designed for tensile loads, meaning it can withstand great amounts of force when pulled on) | 68419f12-07bf-49f5-96f7-843ebbccc4a6 |
c0j3yf | statistical significance. | Simply put: something is statistically significant when you can be more certain than not that the result actually represents reality, and wasn't just unlucky coincidence.
Imagine I have a ball pit. Exactly one of every three balls is red, the rest blue.
If I pull out balls at random I might very well be unlucky and pull out 6 red balls in a row. This might lead me to the false conclusion that *all* the balls in the ball pit are red. If I pull out enough balls however, the ratio starts to balance, and I'll end up with a *roughly* 1:3 ratio. That's when I've a statistically significant result, because the odds I have an outlier becomes very small. | 7ce7c177-e597-467c-a5af-8a75323b8087 |
c0j66g | Eye Gunk/Sleep | I'm not a massive expert on this, but as I understand it your eye is lubricated with mucus as well as saline. That eye gunk is from some of that mucus drying up and congealing. | 6ef52a35-25b3-4b5f-9271-d0852595b560 |
c0j98q | Why can't we truly delete pictures and documents from a cellhpone or a computer ? | Computer storage is designed to be stable for a long period of time. Some technologies, like flash memory, have a limited number of changes and a long storage life.
When you "delete" something, the storage is just marked as "unused". Actually erasing it is bad for 2 reasons: a) it takes more time, and slow is annoying; and b) it might shorten the life of some storage.
When you fill the storage back up again, those storage blocks are filled with something new. Until then, they just sit there with their old information. Recovery programs read through this "unused" storage, looking for the patterns that define file structures it recognizes. When it finds storage blocks matching the pattern, it can restore, at least part, of the file.
You can get a "security erase" program that erases the blocks before it deletes the file, it's just not the default behavior. | 60c208bd-4335-4923-b806-da993dba216f |
c0jb1k | How does a Nintendo 3DS produce its 3d effect? | It has two screens on top of one another and the light projects at different angles to trick your eye into believing it’s 3D. If you move the 3DS too far to one side, the effect will disappear. | cc93184e-bacf-4657-a1b1-08893b11e89c |
c0jeke | what is Synchronous Data Link Control (SDLC) ? | It's an old way for devices to talk to one another through wired connections, created by IBM and pretty much only used by IBM.
At one point, there were a lot of competing standards (SCSI, Ethernet, Econet, Token Ring, LocalTalk, RS-232, IEEE 488), but most of these standards have died out, and most devices today talk to each other using Ethernet, or new standards like Wi-Fi (802.11) or ZigBee.
SDLC lives on in a small niche of connecting industrial devices and sensors to their controllers, as part of the BITBUS standard. | 1b89b8aa-0842-40e9-aff9-e027e9ba6055 |
c0jgdl | What does "support/maintenance" for software mean? What is part of it, why do companies pay money for it instead of foregoing it to save money? | It's like buying a really nice warranty for your phone.
If your phone breaks, and you don't have the warranty, then you better hope you know how to fix it.
But, if you bought the nice warranty, then you get 24/7 support from the manufacturer who will answer any questions you have, will fly a guy over to your house to fix it for you, and will check on your phone regularly to make sure its working right. | 92a829d0-5342-44b0-aa7e-61bf879ce09c |
c0jir8 | Labor Unions | Yes. Union bashing is still a thing in some companies.
As an engineer you are less likely to really need support by a union to get paid well and have fair worktimes because you can simply leave the company if you feel treated unfair and easily find a new job.
I have no exact idea about the situation in (your country here) but here the unions sadly turned into a second management and sell their members wage increases as something good they fought for when they actually don't even cover the inflation rate.
And we'd really need good unions these days, companies slowly degrade state guaranteed workers rights by finding loopholes or making the change for worse slow enough to be really noticed.
The Unions job is basically organizing strikes and they will pay your wage in those cases. | 5abe94e1-f2c8-41a3-8ab0-1547385b03ff |
c0jn8u | how do periods work? How do our bodies know when to start/stop bleeding and how much to let loose on each day? | So, the blood is the lining of the uterus shedding. It builds up throughout the month in case of pregnancy, as a place for the fetus to anchor to basically. At a certain place in the hormone cycle the body realizes "oh, I dont need this" and sheds it. Its not regular blood abd body parts, its that extra "in case of pregnancy" uterine lining that comes out. Basically pretty much as fast as it can, which is not very fast. And then when that extra lining is completely expelled, the period ends and the whole cycle starts over. | 675a742b-e9ec-408b-b9b2-603dfd477744 |
c0kk27 | Why is the iris of an eye colorful? | The pigment in the iris (called melanin) is what makes the iris opaque. Most membranes in the body that are as thin as the iris are translucent and what wouldn't keep the light out (aka work). Different people have different mutations in genes which influence the production of melanin, and that results in eyes of different colors. | 92585351-298a-464e-a4da-524681dd7d46 |
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