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c1hpb5 | How does wind feel cool on the skin even if the air itself isn’t a low temperature? | It’s actually because of evaporative cooling. Your body releases small water molecules through skin pores all the time. Even at the same temperature the dry wind sucks some of the fastest moving (hottest) H2O molecules thus cooling you down. That’s why hot dry air feels cool but humid hot air does not. | d54f2be1-7397-42fe-8470-4dcad7f744fb |
c1hvow | How does LSD do *that* to your brain? | LSD functions primarily through the neurotransmitter serotonin, and to a lesser extent dopamine. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter that, among other things, regulates mood, cognition, and memory, and triggers feelings of well-being and happiness. It's unclear exactly how LSD works on the serotonin receptors in the brain, but it's believed to excite areas responsible for though and consciousness, and block parts of the brain that suppress extraneous sensory processing. | f2319817-a115-4527-89ce-2484f1a632d5 |
c1i62d | Why does placing a wooden spoon across the top of a pot of boiling pasta prevent it from boiling over? | Boiling pasta produces bubbles. These bubbles will be pushed in a column out of the pot by the bubbles under it. Once they are above a certain height above the pot, the column of bubbles fall apart and slide onto the stove.
By putting something on top of the pot, a large part of that column of bubbles will pop and the column of bubbles will not reach the height where it will slide down on the stove. | 1452ea7e-eed6-4d29-a2e3-764bc63a4037 |
c1ih59 | Why have humans acclimatized themselves to spicy flavors better than bitter flavors? | Because bitterness is often a useful indicator that something is poisonous. Spiciness, by contrast, is not correlated with actual danger. | 7a28d37f-b620-4016-a21f-2380a33f639a |
c1infv | Why do printers make so much noise before and after actually producing a document? | Howdy there, printer technician here.
There are several parts in the machine that get "synced up" before pulling the paper through.
It's easy to get deep in the weeds on the types of printers and how they work, but the most common method is by using a laser to draw the image on a spinning tube, the toner attaches to that drum as it spins, and then the paper is pulled past the spinning drum and through a heated roller that melts the toner into the paper.
So, before the paper even gets picked up the machine has to
1. Spin the hexagonal mirror that the laser bounces off of to write to the drum--this is the initial high pitched whine you hear
2. Clean any leftover toner from the last print off of the drum--this part usually sounds more "rumbly"
3. Move new toner to the drum to be put on the next page
4. Make sure the heated roller is up to the exact temperature to melt the toner without burning the paper--most machines have ceramic heating elements that take a few seconds to warm up
...and on top of all that, there are anywhere from 4-10 ventilation fans that all turn on to make sure the above processes don't get too warm. | e3ba2d5d-b94e-4336-879d-ebf022cd5c05 |
c1io1j | How would a Dyson sphere actually work? | Let's get this out of the way, the "dyson sphere" that is a solid structure entirely encasing a star is almost certainly not going to work.
Even Dyson himself dismissed the idea.
He was talking about a Dyson swarm when he was talking about it.
As to how it would work, we don't know because we haven't seriously tried actually building a power plant in space that beamed down power to earth or any other remote object.
The current scientific best guess on how to start on that is a Space-based power satellite.
This is a satellite put in an orbit around Earth that's always in the sunlight (either sun-earth lagrange point 1 or a sun sync polar orbit).
The atmosphere soaks up alot of the sun's energy, so we can bypass it.
So we take the energy in space, turn it into a beam of microwaves, shoot the beam at a collecting station on Earth, the beam isn't as affected by the atmosphere, so more energy gets through to the collecting station.
Once we get a hang of that and aren't microwaving people to death accidentally. Then we can think of doing it long range.
Most likely we'll build a bunch of really simple mirrors in orbit around the sun.
Turning it at a more complicated solar power plant.
This is pretty much exactly like a [concentrated solar power plant](_URL_0_) on Earth, except it'll be using a microwave or something like it to beam power to where it's needed.
**TL:DR mirrors - > concentrated solar - > LASERS (well MASERS technically)** | 68330a92-c09b-4fce-8c74-adf062d33beb |
c1itfs | Why are women born with their eggs, but men produce sperm monthly? | Not sure where you get the figure of sperm production being monthly, I think it's a matter of hours/days... | 725818c7-5fe1-460b-ad92-93c1a52c0e57 |
c1iv0e | Company structure rules | You *can* just "run your company" as a sole proprietorship. Incorporation, however, gives you legal & financial advantages. If the government is going to grant you special privileges, they're allowed to put conditions on how you must run your business. | 30e80493-5225-4880-a61c-ec1939b3bbe4 |
c1iz1x | How do record players work? What does the needle do to produce sound? | The record has tiny divots in its grooves. The needle vibrates in these divots, and an amplifier then boosts the sound of these vibrations and broadcasts it through the speaker. | a9ba8a6c-dbe1-4cc3-9100-b248d13450f1 |
c1j4sv | why are processed meats Group 1 carcinogenic along cigarettes and plutonium? | Processed meats contain a class of compounds called nitrites that are toxic to bacteria. This prevents the meat from spoiling and prolongs its life. However, nitrites can equilibrate with nitrous acid in the body. The DNA bases cytosine and adenine can become oxidatively deaminated into uracil and hypoxanthine from the action of nitrous acid. In other words, nitrous acid can mutate your DNA by changing the bases in the DNA itself. Over time, when enough mutations in certain genes accumulate in a cell, it can become cancerous. | 6278125d-99b6-460b-a1a8-9e8f728218c7 |
c1j7e6 | How can one computer infected with a virus spread it over LAN? | If it spreads on its own, it would be called a worm, not a virus.
Home networking doesn't usually have particularly complicated configuration over the internal network. Your switch is just blindly shuffling data back and forth between devices on your network without caring what it is. You'd need more expensive & complex equipment to set things up safely. It would probably make more sense to unplug or upgrade the machine. | 441cff37-d61e-4eb6-a31a-0b089f498cf4 |
c1j89d | How does Dissociative Identity Disorder work? Are all the personalities conscious the same time? | It doesn't. It's not real. The theory came sbout in the 1970s after a psychiatrist met a schizophrenic and wrote a book claiming that this was a new psychiatric condition. | 135774ee-6298-43bd-b7c2-39f6b09bd793 |
c1jevt | What is Upregulation? | It is increasing stimulus to an action.
Kinda like you know fire is hot when you touch it, if you go to touch it later you know its going to be hot so you flinch.
Up regulating is that flinch, the preparedness for an action. Since running causes your body to be stressed your body releases the steroid cortisol for for running power. Exercise a lot and your body will release more because it expects you need more. | 8a22698f-afa4-4f21-ab21-fb0fe895b666 |
c1jls2 | How can apple trademark "apple" | The primary requirement for trademarks is that they be distinctive - they need to uniquely identify the product. Apple is the textbook example often used for "arbitrary" marks, the strongest category of mark. Apple makes computers. The word "apple" has nothing to do with computers. Therefore, there is no possibility that anybody else would need to describe a computer as an "apple", so the mark is extremely distinctive.
The more plausible it is that somebody would need to use your brand name in describing your product, the weaker your trademark is. The categories are:
1. **Arbitrary**: The word has no relation to the product. Amazon has no relation to a shopping website.
2. **Fanciful**: The word is made up. Kodak film
3. **Suggestive**: The word relates to the qualities of the product. Greyhound bus lines - A fast animal suggests a fast bus line.
4. **Descriptive**: The word directly describes the product. Cold Ice Cream. These are generally not trademarkable, but long-term unchallenged use can make it more distinctive. Names are generally in this category too.
Trademarks acquire or lose distinctiveness based on how closely consumers identify the product with the brand. McDonalds is a descriptive trademark, but it is extremely strong because of the prevalence of their brand in the public eye. Kleenex is a fanciful mark, but fairly weak because consumers habitually use their brand to refer to other company's products.
Trademarks can overlap it it's not likely to cause confusion; Smith Auto Body in Des Moines is not likely to get confused with Smith Auto Body in Anchorage. Nor is Smith Auto Body likely to get confused with Smith Ice Cream, even if they're in the same town.
Some trademarks are considered so distinctive that the existence of any other meaning, even ones that don't overlap would still weaken the trademark and are thus disallowed - Coke and McDonalds are examples. If you're named McDonald, you can't name your business after yourself. The Mc(thing) branding is so strong that you generally can't even use Mc(thing McDonalds doesn't sell). | ac9a28fa-bce9-4f0d-a9c9-2583de45dbd3 |
c1jq4q | what is the point of truck weighing stations? | There are laws/restrictions in place that pertain directly to a vehicles weight. Some roads are restricted to certain weights, to reduce wear on the roads.
Commercial vehicles have a weight limit, meaning that any weight over that limit could cause mechanical failure to the vehicle. Causing damage/harm to the driver, other motorists, buildings, pedestrians etc the scale stations exist to monitor commercial vehicles to insure they are within their weight limits. | 958739f1-8725-4cc1-9e23-26f2572d20e2 |
c1jt3r | How does the human body generate the heat to stay on about the same temperature all the time? | It's got something to do with homeostasis; the process of keeping a relatively balanced and stable internal environment.
Basically, the human body generates heat, and that heat is either added to or reduced by the external environment and activities of the body. This can range from temperatures and wind factor, to exercise and sleep.
The body needs to stick to around 37.5°, I'm pretty sure the number is. So if the body temperature drops, the receptors pick this up and send signals to the effectors (for example, muscles) to vibrate and generate extra heat, thus causing shivering and hopefully returning your body temperature to normal. Conversely, if the temperature rises, the receptors will send signals to other effectors (for example, the sweat glands) and cause sweating, which cools down the body.
When the body has a foreign disease that it needs to get rid of, it often tries heating itself up to get rid of it. A lot of bacteria can't survive above a certain temperature, and the body attempts to achieve that, often causing fevers.
That's how I remember it, anyway. I could be wrong or inaccurate on some things, but that's the general gist of how it goes.
Edit: Holy wow, thanks for the gold, stranger! | 230b8d64-83f8-48aa-b34e-ea4868d6f133 |
c1jx1v | How are LEDs brighter and more powerful, yet use so little energy? | You know a lot of light is invisible, right? Infrared, for example. You can't see it, but you can feel it on your skin with your eyes closed when you're standing near something really hot.
Take two lightbulbs that consume exactly the same amount of electric energy, but one produces only visible light, and the other products half visible light and half invisible. The second one will look much dimmer.
The old-timey incandescent filament lightbulbs, the ones that burn your fingers to the touch, they produce mostly infrareds! To the tune of 90%!
That's why so much progress has been done. Because there was so much room for progress.
LED lights produce mostly visible light. Do this is it. There won't be much progress anymore. We're there. We can focus on other things now. Cool, hey? | 6f3377e0-42bf-45f8-97b0-554ee19d792e |
c1k0bz | Why does it only take a hundred times ten to make a thousand but a thousand times a thousand to get a million, millionxmillion = a billion etc. | One thousand times a million will equal a billion. Simplest way to look at it is add the number of zeroes of what you're multiplying and keep the one at the front. 10x10 = 100 (2 zeroes after the 1). 1,000x1,000 = 1,000,000 (6 zeroes). 1,000x1,000,000= 1,000,000,000 (9 zeroes total) | 33211fda-591f-42c5-b9a3-025cd4ddd07d |
c1kbuo | How can I use the touchscreen of my phone even after putting on a screen guard or a protective mirror on meaning I’m not directly touching the touch screen? | There are 2 types of touch screens, 1 of them works by touch, the other one is more complicated one.
Phones use the more complicated solution, as this allows you to use a nice looking glass screen.
Multiple times a second, your phone sends an electric signal on an layer behind the screen, starting in an corner, and then detects it at the other corners.\*
Since electricity is predictable, the signal always comes in at the same voltage and time.
This changes when you hold your finger near the the touchscreen, because your finger will alter the electric field, and change the voltages received at the other ends of the screen, then the device applies a smart calculation to see where you touched the screen.
& #x200B;
\* In most phones, the way this gets done is even more complicated, as most phones support multi touch, see [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) | 8ee8d390-adf4-4721-ada3-ad3c122d49a7 |
c1kfvp | what are the needs of capacitors in many electronic circuits ? | Basically, signals are noisy, there’s lot of things that can cause noise, so we use capacitors to keep the noise down.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for many of the capacitors in electronic circuits.
There is a relationship between current flowing through a wire and magnetic fields. This is essentially how electromagnets are made, by taking advantage of this effect and magnifying it. This is called inductance.
In a perfect world, wires are perfect conductors meaning they don’t have any resistance and they don’t have any inductance. But in reality they do have a bit of both these things. So when signals are changing (especially at high speeds) the inductance causes more and more issues, because the magnetic field keeps developing (stores some energy) and going away (releases energy).
This is where most applications for capacitors come in. Capacitors store energy as well, but to put it simply they behave opposite to inductors. So if we put the capacitors at the end points of a signal, it will make a shorter path for the electrons to flow and lower the resistance and inductance.
Without capacitors, this “parasitic” inductance and resistances can cause noise (variations in the signal that we don’t want). In digital circuits, If it’s big enough, it can even make it so that one transition between 0s and 1s be read as multiple.
We also use different size and value capacitors on one signal line because different capacitors can reduce different frequencies of noise, which is why we can’t just stick one big on on there and call it a day. Also if the capacitance is too high, the signal might not be able to transition at all because the capacitor stored too much energy.
The noise doesn’t always just come from the inductance of a wire. For example, wires that run next to each other can create noise in the other one because of the magnetic field that it creates when current runs through it. Radio waves (electromagnetic waves), and even tapping (piezoelectric effect) can introduce noise into a signal. | d135b965-c92e-4ba1-b7e9-0f983b284e7d |
c1kg4i | how do subsidies work, such as fossil fuel or farm subsidies? What benefits do they provide and/or what harm would result from stopping them? | Subsidies are a form of government intervention in the market to create a distortion. Loosely defined, a market distortion is a deviation from what a "free market" would predict in terms of the equilibrium of supply and demand at a price point. \[The theory being that with no distortion, producers and buyers will naturally converge to a price that balances supply and demand\]
Many/most subsidies involve reducing the cost of production, thereby increasing the incentive for producers. Subsidies like this can come in the form of direct payments, government guaranteed loans, guaranteed purchases.
Some subsidies like education can come in the form of reducing cost to the buyers. In this case, government guaranteed loans, scholarships, etc to students.
In either case, the idea of the subsidy is to increase supply and demand of a particular product. Subsidies are not free, of course, and much of the cost of that subsidy will be borne by the taxpayer.
There are many (policy) reasons that subsidies are created. (list is not exhaustive below ELI5)
1) Infant industry protection. The most recent examples are solar panels/solar power. The idea is that some product with desirable characteristics (no CO2 emission) but is new and still costly relative to their competition (e.g. fossil fuel power). For prices of solar power to drop, the industry needs to grow but to grow, it needs customers, but cost is too high. Therefore (temporary) subsidies serve to give the opportunity for the smaller but "better" product to compete and grow.
2) Provision of a public good. Education is seen as a public good - benefiting society as a whole. But left to the free market, the supply of education will be less than optimal (perhaps only the middle class and wealthy) or poorer quality schools. Healthcare, law enforcement, defense are other examples. Governments can subsidize (or sometimes just takeover in the case of armies) the industry to better serve the general public.
3) Government policy. For example, "food security" or "support rural population". The free market is indifferent. So, new technologies, imports etc can displace employment, favoring urban employment for example. This may not be seen as a good thing (large rural poverty/unemployment) and subsidies are one tool that can be used to support a desired policy outcome.
Whether subsidies are "fair", "effective" or "beneficial" is not easy to gauge. Some are not so controversial (general public education - although even this has come under fire in the US) while others perhaps are highly debated. Fuel subsidies, for example, can fall partly into the "public good" as well as "government policy" argument. Without subsidies, fuel prices will increase. From a policy perspective, this hurts the poor much more than the wealthy. Fuel is also energy and if energy prices rise, inflation increases and employment decreases. You can argue that an adequate supply of energy is also a public good.
Even when there is little controversy on the need for intervention, economists, politicians and the general public can argue over what form of intervention is preferred. Subsidies, tariffs, nationalization are all forms of intervention. What someone believes is the "best method/outcome" is often a complicated mixture of their political, philosophical and other contextual influences. | a8ecc7ba-e01f-4f57-bf72-3f9afff16e72 |
c1l1av | What exactly happens when someone regains consciousness? | Doctor (with anaesthetic/ICU training) here.
We don't really know what consciousness is, therefore it's pretty difficult to answer this.
The best explanation we have is that neurons in the brain either work or don't. The more that aren't working, the more likely you are to be unconscious. Conversely anything that increases the amount of nerves firing will result in agitation and hyperactivity.
The most common reason for bothering of these is drugs, both therapeutic and illicit. "Uppers" make you hyperactive, whereas "downers" calm you down. Most general anaesthetics, for example, work by reducing the number of nerves firing and making you unconscious. We don't even really know how general anaesthetics work at the molecular level.
The other main reasons for unconsciousness are sleep and brain injury.
Regaining consciousness therefore is the number of neurons firing (properly) increasing to a point where you can process to the point of consciousness.
The Glasgow coma score ranks 3 different domains giving a total from 3 (totally unconscious) to 15 (totally conscious) which demonstrates that consciousness isn't black or white but a spectrum between one and the other. | 1e59935e-2c58-458d-a29a-98ab98873c7d |
c1lakx | Why do things that seem big and detailed suddenly turn out to be so small when you take a picture of it? (Ex. Moon, Mountain in the background, etc) | It depends on the lens on your camera. It also is because of the design of your eye.
Take a picture of a moon with a long telephoto lens, and you will see it as being incredibly detailed and big. But if you use a wide-angle phone camera, it will seem small, because the camera is taking a picture of everything, and the moon is just a small part of everything.
Your eye manages to be both a wide-angle and telephoto camera in one. It has a detailed patch in the middle packed with lots of light sensing cells all individual connected to single nerves, that allow you to see what you are focussing on in fine detail. It also has a large retina filled more sparse cells, with a number of cells driving each single nerve, giving less detailed wide-angle vision.
Lastly, your brain is not just taking pictures like a camera. It is analysing the scene and pulling from it the information you want, by turns extracting the detail from different parts of the scene, and delivering to your consciousness the image it has built up by parts over several seconds. | ff8a50ea-4730-4474-97cc-ba6675092daf |
c1lb7t | What is the difference between a 2 in 1 shampoo/shower gel and the separate soaps? Is it just a mix of both? And is there any danger in washing my body with shampoo or the other way around? | They typically use the same soap bases, but with slightly different ratios of ingredients. It really varies by manufacturer and you'll find alot of variety in the preparation, ingredients, and concentration. It is definitely not dangerous to use body wash on your hair or vise versa. Back in the day people would just use soap bars to wash their hair until some marketing genius(can't remember his name, someone please remind me) decided that people enjoyed washing themselves alot more once a foaming agent was added and thus modern shampoo was born.
(Disclaimer: I found this out from casual research a long time ago, their may be discrepancies so if anyone sees any please let me know! Hope this is helpful to someone!) | 29b4f48c-e20b-4a16-9de4-2c01891ebac2 |
c1lwej | How come studios can't make movies with IP they don't hold the rights to, but shows like Robot Chicken can have any characters they want show up? | Copyright law provides exceptions for satire/comedy... basically, you're not stealing content and using that content for your own benefit directly, you're making fun of it, laughing at it, or otherwise commentating on it in a way that doesn't preserve it's aspects that the copyright protects... more or less. A similar concept is 'transformative' works | 4e926285-9fec-4329-b716-0b3e225b1bc8 |
c1m4nk | When you have a blocked nostril, what happens when you hold both nostrils and blow hard that causes them to unblock for a brief second? | You pressurise your nostril cavity causing it to expand under the pressure giving the feeling of being unblocked untill you release the pressure. If you need a visual example then put a marble into the neck of a balloon that is larger than the neck, you will have to stretch it to fit, then blow the balloon up and the marble will roll into the balloon as the neck expands under the pressure. | b663f922-d5d6-4e0d-b7c8-4bc8aee5ea66 |
c1m64d | Why is it a fact that if a person were to look at a person they love, their pupils dilate? | As far as I know, because it puts the body into a sympathetic nervous state. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for the four f’s: fight, flee, feed and f***!
You’re in this sympathetic state when looking at someone you love because of the evolutionary drive to mate, or the fourth f.
Part of a sympathetic nervous response is pupils dilating to allow as much light into the eye as possible, and better vision in this aroused (as in physiologically aroused, not sexually aroused) state. | a2a492cd-a3b8-402d-916f-81538f54ac8f |
c1mbub | Bir Tawil is the only abitable place that is not claimed by a country. What does stop me to create my own nation? | Mostly the same thing that prevents all sorts of people from creating their own nation: nobody would take you seriously. There's no governmental body that maintains a registry of the nations of the world and you can make a new one by meeting some requirements and filling out some paperwork, nations exist by general agreement among the rest of the world as to their statehood. A person going out into uninhabited desert and proclaiming a new nation isn't going to get anyone to give them the time of day, so their new "nation" wouldn't actually be a state in any meaningful sense. | f76e3ef6-c029-4dc0-ba8f-f59ec455b37e |
c1mxkv | The current situation in Hong Kong, what is the 'extradition law'? | Currently, Hong Kong has formal agreements with only about 20 countries with respect to extradition. If you are not one of these countries, then cannot request extradition of your citizen from Hong Kong. This law can be interpreted as a blanket extradition agreement, granting extradition from Hong Kong anyone where there is no current agreement.
There is currently no formal extradition agreement between Hong Kong and China, so this law would allow extradition of people from Hong Kong to China. The history between these two is long and complicated and very, very contentious. In short, a lot of Hong Kong citizens don't want China to have the ability to extradite people from Hong Kong. | 3fbb9be6-91d3-4fba-8065-34bb5447b000 |
c1ngdh | Why do cities have riots when their teams lose or win a game/tournament? Is there a psychologic explanation to it? | Usually alcohol is a driving factor.
For the losing side there is the theory that the cheering during the game builds up testosterone, then at the end of the game the cheering suddenly ends and hormone levels drop quickly wich often causes aggression. | 7578bba4-1c8e-4fcb-8994-10bb8fac2754 |
c1o6yz | Why are old movies being constantly remade nowadays? | This applies to both movies and video games,
& #x200B;
They're so expensive to make, they require financial backing. Both are high risk investments, and investors want to see a return. They hedge their bets by remaking old IP because if it sold well before, it will probably sell well again.
& #x200B;
I used to be a game developer, and I've been out of touch. I found out a couple weeks ago that not only are they remaking Final Fantasy VII, but that the whole game community thinks remakes are a good idea! The very suggestion would have gotten you laughed out of the industry before, and it's disappointing to hear. | 9d55c892-874b-485a-9399-9fc4edebfb52 |
c1ogue | What do professional fighters do differently compared to average people that allow them to knockout people so quickly? | Mechanics, first, precision second.
Power from a punch doesnt come from pure physical strength, it comes from leveraging mechanics to produce power.
Precision in that they place their punches well. A well placed punch behind the ear, or squarely on the jaw will normally daze/knock someone out. They call this hitting them on "the button". | aa95adae-bd27-4ebc-966f-6ad952db6b5b |
c1oq8s | why tea stains my cup but not coffee? | Tea contains tannins, or tannic acid, that leaves stains. Coffee doesn’t have tannins. Red wine would stain a ceramic mug for the same reason. | 5401da8a-80b7-4b75-ac8a-33fd0d6c855f |
c1ouvc | Why do eyes water when nervous? | Our bodies respond to most stresses with some degree of what is called the ‘fight or flight’ response. During this period, our heart beats faster and we breath more deeply or quickly to increase the oxygen in our blood to fuel running if need be, or to heighten reflex’s in case of a fight. Feelings of anxiety, tears, and shakiness are all symptoms of this response as well, as your nervous system is in overdrive. Hormone levels such as adrenaline are also increased to heighten senses and dull potential pain. | 76e8f819-6a46-4c84-9187-e8effab812f4 |
c1ovu4 | Why haven’t we gone to a specific screw type yet? | Different screws are needed for different applications. Some are designed to be "security" screws, some are designed for higher torque, others are made just to be cheap, and some are made for convience. | 4666953e-c6c2-4b27-b7aa-0cc80649f4bd |
c1p4ce | Why does the method of cooking change the taste of food so drastically? | When they are fried they are infused with the oil you fried with, when boiled they are more filled with water, when baked they are as they are minus the burnt juices (speaking of onions as the example given) | 6b0d5f1d-060c-46e6-ba74-900ef5fcf8f5 |
c1p7sl | Why is Doug Ford so obsessed with having beer sold from convenience stores? | Y'all can't buy beer from a convenience store? That must suck. Do you just have a ton of liquor stores everywhere? | c030af17-dab3-4e10-8847-0591a8ad62d0 |
c1pgs5 | How do peanut allergies work? | If you're allergic to peanuts, then as soon as you eat them your immune system looks at them and says, "What the @#!% is this nonsense?" and attacks it. Certain immune cells, called mast cells, store a compound called histamine that basically acts as a flag for the immune system and says, "Hey, all y'all get up here and eat this stuff." When your immune system freaks out from the peanuts, your mast cells dump ALL their histamine into your system. Well... that's not so good, because histamine also causes swelling. The bump you get from a mosquito bite is caused by histamine making the area around the bite swell up. However, when your mast cells dump all their histamine, it can cause swelling in places you really don't want it, specifically your throat. When someone dies from an allergic reaction, it's usually because all the histamine made their throat swell shut and they couldn't breathe. So that's how a peanut allergy works. Cheers! | d86e21f2-adf4-476d-9dca-dc9a82fccba8 |
c1pkz4 | what was the Berlin Wall | A wall that separated the east and west side of Berlin, Germany around the time of the Cold War. | fe0e53a7-b359-4510-8050-7f1fa832ea39 |
c1pnyp | What exactly is glass? | Think of it like ice cubes. Most ice cubes you see aren't clear, they're white. This has to do with impurities and bubbles while solidifying. But there is a way to make completely clear ice cubes (many companies are in business to provide clear ice), and it's done using a specific process. In this process, when water crystalizes, the water crystals form in such a way that light doesn't diffuse while passing through. The silica crystals that are made into clear glass do the same. the light passes all in the same direction (I don't say pass through, because in both water and glass, the light gets refracted, but all in the same direction). | ab311f7a-82bb-409b-a04a-73be83c90bd4 |
c1pr6h | How a chicken can stabilize their head and why ? | Chicken have very big eyes compared to their relatively small skull. The size and shape of the eyes means that can't turn their eyes like we do.
As a human you can keep you skull pointed in one direction and move your eyes to point them to another.
Chicken and other birds need to turn their whole head if they want to look at something.
This is one part of the puzzle.
The second issue is that our eyes don't really work well when we are changing what we look at. Our brain sort of covers this lack of sight up quite cleverly, but still there is a definite need to keep our eyes pointed in the same direction, to keep from constantly going blind monetarily.
in humans this is worked around by ensuring that our eyes move in counterpoint to the rest of our body to make up for that.
Chicken can't move their eyes like that and instead of moving their eyeballs like we do they move their entire head.
It is the same mechanism we have only instead of applying it to automatically moving our eyes as we move our head and body around, chicken and other birds have an automatism that moves their head. | 5849b558-8866-4af6-b501-a3426bf919b6 |
c1q2ys | Is the solar system flat the way it is depicted in images or is it spherical? If it is flat, why? | It's a disc. The tldr of it is that the solar system formed from a cloud of particles that slowly drew together into an accretion disc. The distribution of particles and thus the motion along one axis cancels out, jamming them more and more towards a 2d plane in rotation around a fixed axis. Due to conservation of angular momentum this orientation and spin remained even as the disc coalesced into planets | 0d824d49-8484-4c66-b764-791b18d8e1f2 |
c1q3xx | How is war profitable | War is profitable to specific people/institutions. It comes with a commensurate loss by others (ex: taxpayers).
& #x200B;
That money being spent goes to defense contractors like Blackwater, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, and they get rich. When government spends money, that money goes into the economy, usually boosting it because there's more money floating around. Is there a lot of debt? Yes.
& #x200B;
War is costly for some and profitable for others. The US military makes its money back by asking for more spending by the government into the defense budget. | 39191a33-7984-441a-baf1-bbd5f01f394a |
c1q81w | How does replanting rainforest differ from regular forest? | They’re vastly different. Regular forest is “old growth forest”—it’s a vast ecosystem that has existed for perhaps millions of years. Thousands or millions of species have evolved to coexist in that environment. But then loggers come and clear cut the forest, chopping down the trees and destroying the habitats of all of those species that lived together in the forest—the animals that lives in the trees, the smaller plants that lived on the ground and were trampled by the tree’s destroyers, and then all of the smaller plants, animals, and fungi that lived in the ecosystem. If they then plant new trees,that doesn’t help all of the species killed off by the destruction of the whole ecosystem. | bf65da43-6500-41d8-b6a5-41fe03ea2847 |
c1q980 | Why does aluminum foil never get hot to the touch. You can leave it in the oven and touch it directly out of the oven without it feeling hot. Why is this? | Aluminum has a very low specific heat capacity and foil is very thin, these combine together to get it a very low thermal mass (it cannot hold a lot of heat). It also has a very high surface area to volume ratio and a very high thermal conductivity. This means that the heat that it can store can move in and out of it very very fast.
When you combine these, Aluminum foil can go from red hot to room temperature in a matter of seconds. The very low thermal mass means that with very thin foil it might be 400 degrees, but putting that heat into your finger only raises your finger by 20 degrees, and results in no burn. | 9bf827c2-1e2c-4eb9-936a-b4379263efac |
c1qb7w | When you move your hand in front of a screen or light, why does it look like your hand is moving at a “lower frame rate” so to speak? | Just a quip because I’m not sure if I’m allowed to add text to the post, I noticed this cuz I was moving my fingers underneath the scanner at my retail job. | 39bdcf3a-a63e-4261-ad55-e0112e937475 |
c1qgea | paint colour codes | Not at all an expert, but here's what I've been able to find:
The first line is the list of colorants (CLRNT). In all the lists I've found, your code uses lamp black (BL), yellow oxide (CL), and raw umber (LL). (Apparently lamp black acts like a dark blue)
The amounts are in 1/384th of an ounce. So, 246/384 oz of black, 50/384 oz of yellow oxide, and 106/384 oz of raw umber.
Edit: That second line might mean that there's also an additional entire oz of raw umber. Making an educated guess based on a forum thread I found. | a062c6e5-e40b-4f16-88f8-5e9df81f1f58 |
c1qr2y | Is there a scientific reason that an alarm always sounds bad when awakening you? No matter what sound/song it is? | Imprinting. You associate getting up with that noise, and the sound of that is then associated with having to do stuff you don’t want to do. Which essentially makes you hear that noise and remind you off stress/ whatever that task entails.
It’s why you shouldn’t set a song as your alarm as you will end up hating it. | dbc1bc7a-e04d-488a-bf17-50b9dc6f7275 |
c1qs0s | sorry of this seems really stupid to ask but I'm not the best at understanding politics, let alone foreign politics. What's the Hong Kong protest about? | The HK government wants to enter into an extradition treaty with China.
To break it down more, HK is TECHNICALLY a part of China, but it is ruled by its' own government and is relatively autonomous.
Because of that relationship, a lot of embarrassing media is coming out of HK regarding China. China wants HK to extradite offenders to China for prosecution.
They also want to be able to have other countries extradite citizens for breaking Chinese laws overseas. So say a Chinese family vacations to Sweden and posts on twitter something that China doesnt like. They want to be able to tell Sweden "Arrest them, and ship them to us for prosecution.".
The real tricky part here, is that if you MOVE out of China, without planning on coming BACK to China, China can charge you, and via this extradition treaty, force the country to either give you asylum and piss of China, or send you packing in handcuffs. | f963822f-53cf-4e2c-8e52-f75d8e0884b7 |
c1qtwo | What is the origin of the US-American "gun culture"? | 1) Settlers in an untamed region need to hunt for a lot of their food, at least for a time. It takes months if not years to get agriculture going strong enough to support a community. This means that our early settlers were all hunters and this cultural habit carried on as we pushed west.
2) One of the tactics that the British Empire used to subjugate the US colonies in the lead up to the Revolutionary war, and during it was to confiscate all firearms from the local citizenry. This lead the founding fathers to feel the need to specifically protect the right to bear arms.
3) The extremely strong streak of self sufficiency in the population. It is believed that you should be capable of defending yourself. This is particularly true in suburban and rural areas where police response time can be 10min to 30min and sometimes longer.
4) General familial tradition. We have a lot of families who bond by hunting, sport shooting, etc. | 3f8e1f66-3a22-41eb-bc43-c3d0dfba05c3 |
c1r8um | What causes metals to become magnetically charged? And can you force a metal to have its north or south poles on certain sides? | There are actually (at least) _four_ types of material with respect to magnetic properties, and neither of the types described by the other response explain permanent magnetism which is what the OP is referring to. Diamagnetism and paramagnetism only result in a magnetisation within a magnetic field - as soon as the field is removed, the materials are demagnetised.
Permanent magnetism is a property of certain materials where the material retains its magnetisation even after an external field is removed. This property arises because of something known as 'long-range order' - essentially, certain metal ions have unpaired electrons in d orbitals that are so large that they can interact with electrons in neighbouring atoms. This means that, rather than atoms acting as individual magnets (as is the case in diamagnetism and paramagnetism), changes in the magnetisation of one atom affects the magnetisation of other atoms, and the result of these interactions beteen atomic magnetic fields results in large-range order. When the magnetic field is removed, individual atoms are no longer able to go back to having a random magnetisation because the interactions with the magnetisations of neighbouring atoms constrains them. There are a number of different subtypes of permanent magnetism which depend on the way the magnetic fields of different atoms interact, including ferromagnetism (where the magnetisations of all magnetic atoms are aligned) and ferrimagnetism (where the magnetisations are not aligned, but there is a dominant alignment), antiferromagnetism (where the magnetisations are not aligned and there is no dominant alignment), and canted antiferromagnetism (where the magnetisations are theoretically not aligned and have no dominant alignment, but crystal-field effects result in a small alignment). | ee2dfd6a-feeb-43ce-922c-ee798328383f |
c1rhnl | why don’t women ‘save up’ their eggs when they take the pill which stops periods? | In fact when a woman reaches menopause, whether she took the pill or not, she isn't "out of eggs." It's a hormonal thing, not a lack of eggs thing. | e6ccdd1a-9ad3-4b93-a402-31db732ef2be |
c1rr65 | How is a word created? How does it become a generally accepted term by a population? | I feel like this phenomenon is a bit too complicated to eli5 but here's the best I've got.
We know there are different shades of red. For a long time though, we only had one way to describe the different shades so they were all red. The some day, some one said something like "burgundy" or "crimson".
We find a new way to describe something so that ideas become more robust and easier to picture for others. | 7e908caf-cb01-43cf-87e5-7ea0c73d019c |
c1rt43 | how do guarantors for apartment leases work? | A guarantor is basically someone vouching for the lease. In most cases, it’s just like they applied themselves.
For a lease, it means they guarantee that they’re responsible if you can’t keep up. If you stick to everything you need, they never have to think about it. If you don’t pay, they’re required to do so and it will reflect on their credit if the payment doesn’t happen.
They’re saying “I guarantee this will be paid, one way or the other”. If you pay everything, all is well, and you could use that as evidence to the next lease that you can do it on your own. As above, if you don’t they’ll be required to take care of it or deal with the consequences.
Basically, if you don’t have any credit (or have poor credit), a place might not want to rent to you. So I step in and say “I have good credit, and I’ll put it on the line to guarantee the lease won’t be abused, and will be honored completely.” Now they feel better, because if something goes wrong they can always call me. I have good credit and a good history, so they’re confident I can take care of it.
Edit: removed part about loans because this is about leases. | 441365e5-6ffa-411a-8070-2369a10725f1 |
c1rtu2 | Why is there a big brother figure being mentioned and who or what is it referring to? | He represents the government conducting constant surveillance. A figure from the famous novel *1984* by George Orwell.
_URL_0_ | e94c927a-c095-4906-938a-e5c9c3173886 |
c1rz9m | what makes our eyes feel heavy and burn when we wake up or are very very tired and only closing them give us relief from this burn? | Optometrist here! Your eyelids basically ooze really moisturizing oil whenever you blink. So the less you blink/the longer your eyes stay open, the tears on your eye are literally evaporating and exposing your eye to the air which causes that burning feeling! Super common these days the more you're on your phone or computer and forgetting to blink
Edit: sorry for only answering part of the question -- I just got really excited to share some eye knowledge. Idk the process of why our eyes are heavy after being really tired. But if your eyes burn after waking up, lots of people sleep with their eyes slightly open which can make them feel dry or burn when you wake up. Especially if you sleep with the fan on | e170eb07-5efc-455f-a5f1-fabf5c06cfa3 |
c1se91 | Why does stuff turn dark when wet? | Water makes things less reflective, and whatever thing that gets wet absorbs more light so it appears darker. | 9d3411c2-9db3-464a-99f4-5aff835bfd51 |
c1sk48 | why lifting weights/resistance exercise one time a week won’t build muscle? | It will build muscle but some people do that and wonder why they dont look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. | 173154dc-a6a5-4b6a-8a0c-ce769e4a5357 |
c1so13 | How does an average earner afford a house in a high valued area | There are always people who are any of the following (or even a combination):
1. Inherited money
2. Came into money through some other means (settlement, won it, receive high alimony, etc.)
3. Bought a long time ago when the house cost half what it does now
4. Earn way more than the average. If 60k is the average, then 50% of people earn more than that, and there is your buyer pool. | 7261bc86-29e4-4237-84f2-c5984cdc92a5 |
c1szay | How do people (not in cars) get stuck on train tracks? | I suspect you're misinterpreting the stories.
It feasibly could be possible that someone could get their foot jammed between a rail and a tie and not be able to extricate themselves, but I imagine that is extremely rare.
When people not in vehicles are killed by trains it's almost always because either
1. they were trying to cross the tracks in front of a train and misjudged the trains speed
1. they were trying to stand too close to the train as it passed
1. they were between two trains going in opposite directions on parallel tracks (that one's a particularly brutal variation on #2)
1. they were incapacitated on or too near the tracks for some reason, e.g intoxication
1. some combination of the above, e.g. intoxication can certainly help lead to 1-3 | 8c7ab631-3ca0-49e5-a7b4-f1cc36634b90 |
c1t2ug | How did Elton John do that horizontal jump from the piano? | There are a lot of photos of him jumping while playing piano. (Examples: [here](_URL_2_), [here](_URL_0_), and [here](_URL_1_).) He's just kicking back his feet and being in the air for a few seconds. The movie stretches the idea of it. | bb8ba24a-be1c-42dc-bd91-51e4c9ba2665 |
c1t6tc | How does the flash in cameras damage paintings in museums? | Flashes used to emit a lot of UV which damages dyes and paint. Flashes no longer emit UV so they don’t do any damage.
Museums have kept this rule for two reasons:
1. Flashes are really annoying for everyone else.
2. They have a higher chance of selling their book to you if you can’t take good photos yourself. | 2a1f553c-4b77-4684-a47a-6f04d65c2a80 |
c1taxk | Why does water taste different after freeze and thaw? Like if you take the same water and make ice cubes with it, melt it in a glass and do a side by side comparison. | Ice has a lower capacity to dissolve things, including gases, than liquid water. As a result, when you freeze water some of these solutes (the things dissolved in the water) come out of solution and are deposited as either solids or gases. This is why when you make ice it can have tiny bubbles in it and appear cloudy; the gases dissolved in the liquid water are forced out of solution and get trapped by the ice. It's also why, if you have hard/limescale-y water, when ice cubes melt they can leave flaky deposits of limescale/other minerals in your glass.
These solutes impact the flavour of the water, which is why distilled water tastes different from tap water, bottled water, boiled & cooled water, or frozen & melted water.
Also worth noting that other flavours from your freezer can contaminate the ice so it may pick up some strange tastes if it's not kept in its own container/ other ingredients aren't frozen in airtight containers. | 0dbef6c8-c93d-43cf-9f19-d07829766f2a |
c1tgih | How does a gas station manage to serve thousands of cars multiple gallons of gas a day when the gas tanker trucks that deliver gas don’t look like they hold that much? How do gas stations manage to keep up with their demand? | Gas hauler here.
Generally the stations get multiple deliveries per day. I usually do 4 loads per night. Sometimes to the same station, but not often. We generally try to keep the stations topped off, so we take a load when they need it.
There's also a system that our dispatchers use that can ping the tanks to see when a delivery is needed, and sotware can assist in planning by reading trends.
For example, say a busy station in Los Angeles sells a total of 12000 gallons of regular, 4000 gallons of premium and 1700 gallons of diesel every day during the week (which is actually quite normal for most of my stations). Then on the weekend, the sales drop. The software would read that trend and generate orders to keep the station full. If that station had 20000 gallon tanks, the typical order would be 8600 regular on one load, then the 2nd load would be something like 4000 gallons of regular, 2300 gallons of premium and 2000 gallons of diesel. Sometimes there's an event that throws the trends off, and we do our best to cope with it, usually by running an extra load.
Edit: My truck can hold 8800 gallons.
Edit 2: Holy hell, this got big. Thanks for the gold, kind stranger! | 3baa1297-38e0-4a57-9568-d8e24d724d7b |
c1tkth | Why does our body begs for junk food (sugar, ice cream, chocolate, etc.) when we are sad? | From prior research so this might be wrong. The compounds in them make our brain release oxytocin, the chemical that is responsible for happiness | 2bc75546-e899-4659-a818-acb2f55e9053 |
c1tnfm | Why is it difficult to let a liquid run down your throat without having the urge to swallow? | I think it’s because breathing is the default option for your throat. Your body would think you are drowning. | e8d65bd8-2631-4d22-a14f-0ac53e58b33d |
c1tv5a | What are the differences between Trademark and copyright? (R) and (C) | It's in the name: a copyright is your "right" not to have someone else "copy" your art. A trademark is a "mark" you use to distinguish your goods from your competitors in your trade.
The movie "Incredibles 2" is subject to copyright, because its an artistic work. No one can copy the movie itself or any artistic aspects of the movie.
"Pixar" is a trademark. It tells you who made the movie, so that if you like it you might see more Pixar movies. No one else can make movies using the name "Pixar" because it might confuse moviegoers, but you can probably start a coffee shop called "Pixar Coffee" because one one will think the same people are making animation and brewing lattes.
(C) is just a shorthand notation that means "copyright." It's used to alert people that something is subject to a copyright. (R) means "Registered," which means the person who owns the trademark went through the extra step of "registering" it with the federal government. | 4a3d7bc4-f853-43ba-9a06-b2474bb44d32 |
c1ulg9 | When someone eats something that doesn't agree with their digestive system and it causes sudden diarrhea (ex: dairy), is it really that food (ex: ice cream) that is excreted, along with all the other digesting good that they ate? | Your digestive system is one set of railway tracks from your mouth to your anus. Trains of food moves in one direction along the tracks.
If you need to quickly remove one train, there is really no way to get the train off the tracks without forcing all the trains in front to move. There are no side tracks or pit stops. They will all need to move through the tracks for that one train to plow through without more harm. Therefore, everything ahead must be excreted before what disagrees with you gets excreted.
There are some exceptions. If problems are detected at the mouth, you can spit out the food before it enters the tracks. At the stomach, some trains can go backwards before starting the long one-way journey (throwing up). | e5017d79-8816-45e7-bc52-683e5fcf595e |
c1utog | Why is the snooze setting on alarm clocks set at 9 minutes? Why not 8, or 10 or 15? I’m sure it has to do with what stages of sleep we reach at that point, but why is 9 minutes the sweet spot? | Clocks were mechanical, and the internals were mostly standard.
9 minutes happened to work with the internal components that were already being manufactured for clocks. 5 minutes its too short, but 15 starts to become too long. So perhaps 10 minutes would be better, but exactly 10 minutes wouldn't have worked on a mechanical clock, without redesigning other internal componets.
Then it just became the norm. When digital alarm clocks were invented, a lot just stuck with 9 minutes, as it is what people were used to. | 0e8a8eef-4902-4925-bd31-003e5b2ed6f9 |
c1uvaj | How does a computer shows the correct time even after we shut it down and pull out the power cord? | There's a battery, the CMOS battery, that keeps the internal clock running and manages the BIOS settings. When the battery dies the settings and clock get reset. | d45390d3-d7e8-4960-a4c1-ec10b8ad6bb5 |
c1uzvl | Why do package contents makes mail rates so different, even if weight is similar? | there's a special rate for books called media mail. its cheaper than the regular rate.
but if you are using the same class of service, ie usps priority mail, express mail, flat rate, package, etc whatever. then similar size and similar weight will be similar price. but likely the books were media mail and the other one was priority mail. | d1e62de3-f29f-4eb5-b40c-704c81e9052d |
c1vatt | if we can absorb things through the rectum (e.g. alcohol), what prevents us from getting sick from the fecal matter passing through it? | We can only absorb stuff that can be absorbed through the lining of the intestines. The stuff in faeces that make you sick is generally bacteria, which comes from the conon in the first place. Waste products excreted faecally are secreted into the colon and most of them aren't reabsorbed. | d24e51f9-f33f-4b40-8592-4c60895eeee1 |
c1vicr | How and why is the wasp's stinger area still actively moving despite the wasp already killed? | Death twitches. Most animals, humans included, will continue to twitch even after death. This is caused by the body's muscles expanding and contracting on their own, adjusting to the built up tension from normal use as well as the blood and energy settling. It usually stops after a minute or two. | 485a0069-b59d-4fa3-9db4-5f9fd5ebeadf |
c1vj51 | How come when my child rolls down the back window my ear drums start to pulsate and hurt? | It’s called the Helmholtz resonance or ‘buffeting’. It’s “irregular oscillation of part of an aircraft, caused by turbulence”. Or your window when one window is open. If you open two windows this won’t happen.
ELI5? You got it. Every talk into a fan to make your voice sound funny?That’s because the air from the fan is being chopped up. It’s not like when you blow air out if your mouth.
When you drive, you’re driving into ‘chopped up air. Wind blows in all sorts of directions. You’re driving into different wind streams.
Now, imagine your car is full of jello, And a big fan is in front of it blowing at it. That air is going to be chopped up and push the jello in and out really fast. Not a lot, just enough for the jello to jiggle a little. So the car jello is jiggling back and fourth now really fast.
Just imagine the air in your car is like jello. When you open a window, the air in the car ‘jiggles’ like jello. Which makes your ears jiggle to. When you open a second window, this offsets the effect. | fd4e2b1a-4397-4c21-8fef-9b67e160bccf |
c1vvwr | What the heck does that third prong on a Western Hemisphere power plug do (the "ground") if it isn't necessary for all electronics? | It's a safety feature on electronics that have a metal exterior, to prevent people from getting shocked, in case the wiring inside gets messed up and touches the case. It grounds the actual metal exterior. I guess it's only necessary if you value your safety, LOL.
How and why it works is actually really interesting!
_URL_0_ | f97073e1-25af-4d9e-9924-1ec74e13b00f |
c1w63q | What does it mean for a living thing to share the same ancestor? Like how do humans and lobsters have a common ancestor? | Well, all life started as a single cell organism. From there it took different route. Some stayed at sea, some grew roots some ate other things. So yes if we trace life back to this cell we all have that common ancestor. And some can he closer related than others. Such humans and primates, or hourses and donkeys, or cats and tigers. | 371063f3-1718-468f-838c-1966e632a91d |
c1w7h7 | If the teardrop shape, blunt end forward, has the least aerodynamic drag of all shapes, why should I haul my boat on a car roof rack, mounted bow forward? | A teardrop has no drag, but it still presses against the air. The bow of your boat slices the air, reducing the pressure in front of it.
Also, teardrops aren’t as aerodynamic as you think. The most mathematically aerodynamic shape looks like a teardrop with two points, opposite of each other. | 39c7a1ef-239a-4bca-bc4f-de23dc5f10ca |
c1w82z | Why is it so popular in Japan to have regional / seasonal limited edition goods? | Lots of places have this. It's marketing. It boosts sales to have something limited, so most places have a rotation.
Pumpkin spice, mint are big coffee drink flavors limited in the us.
McDonald's has the mcrib, holiday pie, strawberry cream pie, strawberry lemonade and a fucking billion other things constantly rolling in and out.
Regional applies as well. Lobster rolls at McDonald's in the NE US, one has pizza, southern style chicken biscuit sandwich mostly, guessed it, in the south.
It's hardly a Japanese thing, but universally it's a drive sales thing. | d896793b-b305-4699-ac8f-678b1a79dd6e |
c1w9q9 | today I accidently sniffed Chlorine and it immediately made the back of my head hurt like when you get water up my nose, Why? | I'm not sure about the back of your head, but it would have burned inside your nasal cavity. You've basically bleached the inside of your face.
& #x200B;
I know, cause I've done the same. | c7455f25-9fb5-47f0-b415-62a6e32d9bc6 |
c1wakz | What do pilots do when they find air turbulence? Is the only option to wait it out, or are they able to escape it somehow? | They can try to fly around it or change altitudes to fly below or above it, but that's not always possible if the airspace is crowded or the area of the turbulence is too large to avoid. Otherwise, they just fly thought it. Turbulence isn't a danger to the plane so avoiding it is for passenger comfort; avoid it if possible but not strictly necessary. | 73493666-134e-4e73-b6f9-52b37f2384bc |
c1wkbe | How does “heat lightning” work? Why doesn’t it make thunder? | Heat lightning is lightning that is very far away, but conditions like overcast let you see the flash over great distances, up to 100 miles away. It makes thunder, but sound doesn't carry anywhere near as far as light so you can't hear it. But anyone who was nearby to the actual lightning strike would've heard thunder.
Edit: Oh, and it doesn't actually have anything to do with heat. The name's a misnomer. | 2ebf86ea-4117-4bc2-a8e0-73ba1de18a2f |
c1wn4s | Why do so many baseball players wear those rediculously large gold necklaces when playing the game? They have to keep tucking it back in their shirt. Wouldn't that be a distraction? | Many professional athletes are very superstitious and have weird routines they do to do well... and they're paid a lot of money. | 36399345-4880-459a-9f85-251683eca0cb |
c1wogr | Why does the sun make you sneeze? | It has to do with your genes, the medical term is Autosomal Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst. Theres sensors in your eyes and because of your Gene's you body reacts by sneezing. | dbdbd33e-010b-48c4-804b-3025c10336be |
c1wp9w | How does inflammation contribute to cancer? | The body's inflammation response is effectively military intervention.
In a well ordered city of cells, the inflammation response brings in an army of soldiers and tanks ready to attack anything foreign. However, the deployment causes damage to the surrounding cells. Roads are cracked, buildings are wrecked in the military rollout against possible invaders.
The city of cells has to repair itself by dividing and copying. More inflammation causes more damage which needs more repair. Continue over and over (chronic inflammation) can cause those cells to divide improperly using wornout blueprints. Too much damage can result in the city producing cancer cells that continue to divide uncontrolled. | deccd758-d7b7-4783-a675-7467dcf9e8a8 |
c1wqi9 | Why do things turn black when they burn? | Your samples are all carbon based and elemental carbon is black. Also a lot of what we use to burn things uses fuels that are also made with carbons and leave black residue when burning. Burning is a fast chemical process that generally breaks down molecules into more basic elements, in this case black carbon. | b83d34a5-c607-41a4-a64b-8acf0bcdd3a8 |
c1wxhf | I keep reading that Mitch McConnell won't "let" certain things move forward or be brought up for discussion/a vote. How can one man have that kind of power, especially if there are a number of others in Congress who want to advance it? | The party with the most seats in the Senate elect a leader who then decides how the schedule of discussions will happen within the Senate. There are far more things to talk about and vote on than there is actually time for, so the leader can end up kicking things they don't want to bother with off the schedule entirely.
As for why they have that much power, it is generally a way to try to streamline the operation of the Senate into something that actually gets things done. Otherwise how would they decide on what to discuss, vote on it? The party with the most votes would tend to always win out anyway so why not just let them choose across the board? That is what the senate majority leader is doing already. | 7a14323c-797b-4b4e-b2a8-680d3606386b |
c1x51a | What does it mean chemically to be "high"? | "High" can mean many different things. In terms of the chemical interactions happening in the brain, "high" is different for opiods (morphine, heroin, oxycontin, etc.), amphetamines (methamphetamine, various substituted amphetamines like pharmaceuticals, etc.), cannabinoids (THC is our star here), dissociatives (ketamine, DPH, dextromethorphan, etc.). For most drugs that have significant effects on the way you experience the world, the specific way in which those effects occur will be at least a bit different depending on the drug.
At the ELI5 core of it, though, is that drugs change the way your body either produces, uses, or disposes of various chemicals. Some drugs take the place of normal chemicals (alcohol, for example, substitutes for a relaxant/depressive chemical called GABA that your brain makes). Some drugs prevent your body from getting rid of chemicals it makes, increasing the effects of that natural production simply because more accumulates than under normal circumstances (SSRI antidepressants do this for serotonin).
Depending on the drug, the underlying body chemical and the way your body uses it will vary. "High" tends to mean that, when this happens, the change the drug creates has a significant impact on how you experience the world. High doses of alchohol tend to be very feel-good, relaxing, and eventually can impair thinking and movement (or, in extreme cases, impair automatic processes like breathing). Amphetamines tend to make everything very pleasurable, keep you awake, add motivation because of those properties. Opiods change your body's operation in a way that feels very comfortable, relieves pain, makes things sublimely "okay."
Ultimately, though, it's just a matter of something you take altering how you normally work such that you *notice a difference*. That's all "high" is, in varying forms and degrees. | 3faf7ae9-8a1f-4193-bbb8-a4291c913697 |
c1xfd8 | Why do elevators have an up and down button? | Very old ones have just that, a single button.
Basically 2 buttons is better than one button because the elevator can plan where to take people.
Imagine you are in a 20 story building, and you are going from the 6th floor to the 9th floor to visit a friend.
Now if there are two buttons you hit “up” and the next elevator going up picks you up. You travel 3 floors with potentially 3 stops.
Lets say there is only one button. You get picked up by the next elevator to go by your floor. In it is someone from the 20th floor going to the basement. You are now travelling 7 floors down (its not gonna turn around and screw him over), and then 10 floors up. You could potentially make 17 stops on your 3 floor journey.
Thats why they put two buttons. | e5271b16-397d-4b92-8843-69892415a088 |
c1xi3h | Why do your eyes water after you yawn? | I don’t think it happens to everyone, or all the time, but i have heard two things. One: it’s because your yawn stretches your face and contorts your eye sockets, essentially squeezing out tears from the ducts. And two: it’s a reflex because when you’re tired you don’t blink as much and your eyes dry out | 871e4d0f-6b84-4f52-b474-6c3d217c531e |
c1xqms | Why can't people with hypertension or even those that have elevated blood pressure donate blood? Doesn't the reduction in blood volume in the body decrease blood pressure, why's that bad or dangerous? | You have to be generally healthy. Uncontrolled high blood pressure is not healthy, as you're at risk for heart attacks, strokes, etc. You CAN donate if your high blood pressure is controlled by medication. [Here](_URL_0_) is the eligibility requirements to donate for Hoxworth, who handles most Cincinnati area blood donations, etc. | 48687b11-ab42-4022-832f-2a3cce627031 |
c1y4ga | what is it that makes it possible for us to swing higher on a swing set when we move our legs? What is happening? | When your legs are in front of you, your center of mass changes to be closer to the front of your body. When you swing them back, it changes to be closer to the back. The changing of your center of mass creates kinetic energy. | 7a93fea3-8b71-45b2-90f0-ffc26e58d415 |
c1yehm | Bellwether Seats in Elections | It's just coincidence, really. These are seats that tend to contain either (a) a broad cross-section of different demographics, or (b) a fairly uniform 'middle' or swinging voter demographic.
In both cases, these seats would be expected to broadly reflect the national trends overall, so tend to closely follow the national election result. | 28c16186-e052-44fe-bbd5-fd831f2d9e8b |
c1yjwj | How does light-based data transmission work? Fiber optics? | I have no specific knowledge about starlink sattelites, but I'm an electrical engineer and fiberoptic cables are not really complicated.
You basically just put a Diode on both ends, one that can be used to create light (LED) and turn light back into electric current (Photodiode). Diodes are semiconductor technology, so they are really really fast, you can change it's state in nanoseconds, so billions of state changes are possible in one second. The limitation on data capacity comes from the cable itself, if bits are too fast they will "smear" into each other because glass has a property that different wavelength of light have a different speed of light. So length of the cable has a maximum for a specific dataspeed and you need to plan for repeater stations.
As a general note light is just another form of electromagnetic radiation, so transmitting works just like a radio signal (but with other materials blocking it) | 99f17d09-8f41-4d27-9367-f1df34fa01ec |
c1ym2n | what is different in a humans body that is allergic to shellfish compared to humans who don’t have the allergy? And why does the allergic reaction happen | Your immune system basically just overreacts when an allergic reaction happens. In the case of shellfish there's a certain protein that your immune system mistakes as being harmful thus triggering the reaction | d82e2162-0e50-4a11-b6ab-5a4dd2cefa2a |
c1youm | Are there restrictions on how a person’s body can move based on their size? For example could you teach a 7ft2 person to do a perfect double somersault or does their size mean they would never be able to do it like a 5ft tall gymnast? | Yes there are restrictions. The taller and larger you are the harder your body has to work for you, so there’s going to be a significant drop off in agility and perhaps flexibility. Taller people tend to suffer from joint issues at a higher rate than average, are more likely to suffer from blood clots, back pain, etc. This can be seen in the NBA quite prevalently. Wilt Chaimberlain was 7’ something and had like a 4 foot vertical, played volleyball, you get the idea. He’s probably the most agile, freakishly-tall athlete ever.
Remember our bodies are optimized for a certain size and weight, so when we’re talking about extremes on either end there can be unexpected side affects. | 51c74187-76f5-41b9-8e37-bd060a3c6eb4 |
c1yp3t | Why does it feel disgusting/crap to watch the porn you have just been watching after you ejaculate. | It... doesn't?
There's a refractory period post-orgasm where you aren't as intensely sexually interested in whatever it was that got you going in the first place (could last a minute, could last all day, every situation is unique).
But you shouldn't feel negative about whatever it was you were enjoying just a moment ago. Indifferent? Sure. Depends on how you got in the mood to begin with. If there wasn't a lot of build up and physicality (like with intercourse) then it's just instant gratification; you got what you needed, popped off like you wanted, and don't need it anymore.
But if you feel disgust, shame, or feel bad about yourself, you should talk to someone and try to figure out why. That sounds like a personal issue or some deep-seeded shame/self-hate and that's another issue entirely. Because after busting a nut the very least you should be feeling is indifferent and don't care about the rest of the video, and at most you should be happy smiling relaxed and good for a few hours. | cd06d0d1-69e8-476c-b633-bb4c4aabc8ab |
c1yr3m | How does the nuclear material get put into a nuclear reactor? | In this case, uranium isn't that radioactive.
First of all, its not highly enriched uranium. So most of it is the less radioactive kind.
Secondly, even the more radioactive uranium isn't that radioactive. The fuel rods are safe to handle with some protective equipment.
As for mining, uranium ore isn't that much more radioactive than regular dirt. Or even a Banana.
Uranium becomes very radioactive by artificially bombarding them with neutrons, causing chain reactions where uranium being bombarded will bombard nearby uranium with its own neutrons. | 1a7d2f71-1588-4ec4-9c7b-56da0f0a2992 |
c1z73d | What makes a computer programmable and not a single purpose machine? | It's whole structure.
The CPU is just a blank calculation machine. It gets data and commands from the memory and writes data back into the memory, so what it does depends fully on what is saved in there.
An analogy would be a toolbox, you have different tools, for different tasks, but the order and how you use them can be freely chosen.
I hope this answers what you were asking because I don't fully understand your question | 99ea3094-eb8c-4596-97f8-461a63754659 |
c1za74 | There are four commonwealth states in the U.S. Why do they identify themselves this way? | John Adams (from Massachusetts), Benjamin Franklin (from Pennsylvania), and Thomas Jefferson (from Virginia) were responsible for the term's usage.
They were close friends who felt that the term differentiated the British Government from the US Government. Whereas the British Government was formed for the benefit of the king, the US Government was formed for the benefit of the people. Because of that, they felt that the term "commonwealth" was a better descriptor of the US system of government than "state" or "republic".
They were also the dominant political force in their home states, and were able to use that influence to name their states commonwealths when the US declared independence or shortly thereafter. The term didn't really catch on outside of their friend group, and the other states just continued calling themselves states.
Kentucky was originally part of Virginia, and kept using the term commonwealth when it split from Virginia.
Other than that the name doesn't mean or do anything - it was just a naming gimmick to help gain support for independence. | 48fa5221-90d2-49ce-a6ca-c0c1ddb71e22 |
c1zg8l | what happens if i play a 1080p video on a 720p display? | The image gets shrunk. There are several ways of doing that. You could just skip pixels.
So for instance, a line from the image with 8 pixels:
12345678
when shrunk by half would become:
1357
You don't need to do it by halves, for instance you could do by a third by removing every third pixel:
124578
But that doesn't give the best results, because it looks really bad on fine details. Like if there's a single pixel thick line somewhere it can just vanish entirely when you do things that way.
So a better way to do that is to average the pixels. If you have a black line surrounded by white and shrink that you get a middle grey sort of line. | 7b79ad24-461f-4e47-9fc1-0ffb51041fa5 |
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