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c4pcsv | What would realistically happen to society if life was discovered on another planet? | Not sure if there is a concrete ELI5 answer. I bet it would involve some kind of religious uprising. From my understand most religions agree that their god made us and specifically Christians believe God made us in their image. To inject life from another planet would turn theology on its head. Or, like flat earthers, would deny the evidence as fake and stick to their beliefs. Either way it would have an irreversible affect on our society. | f85594ad-0021-484c-afcc-1347b63a65d1 |
c4pok9 | What's the difference between suntan lotion, sunscreen, and sunblock? | Suntan lotion, as its name suggests, is for tanning. It only blocks enough UV light to prevent sun burns, but enough to get a more tan complexion with enough sun exposure.
& #x200B;
Sun screen is a more casual protection. It blocks more UV light than suntan lotion, but is a light enough formula that it doesn't alter the appearance of your skin while its on. This is more ideal if you're going to be in an area where you'll be alternating between in the shade and in the sun (IE: Theme parks, hiking, etc.)
& #x200B;
Sun block is a formula which blocks significantly more UV light, however it tends to go on very thick and makes your skin look more white. The smell of it also tends to linger even after you rub it in. This formula is ideal for being in full sun, such as when on the beach.
& #x200B;
I'm not sure how to fix an uneven tan. | 1f9f89a1-b462-48ac-a334-b72294d96693 |
c4pwfd | How do medicinal patches work and what is the process of how they generate their specific purpose in the human body? (Ex: nicotine patches, birth control patches, etc.) | The first job of any medication or drug is to get into the bloodstream, in almost all cases. So the job of someone making drugs is to deliver them effectively. You can inject them directly, but that isn't always appropriate - especially because then the body gets the whole dose into the bloodstream at once, rather than having it released slowly over time. So most drugs are delivered from outside the body, to the inside.
This is easiest to do through the mucous membranes - the lungs, mouth, and gut - because they're *intended* to let molecules through. It's harder to do through the skin, because skin's entire purpose is to keep things out of the body.
Enter the transdermal patch. The limit on these patches is that the drug they deliver has to have small molecules (to pass through the protective barrier of the skin) and has to be suitable for delivery in fairly small doses.
They actually work very simply - they press the drug against the skin, and hold it there until it's absorbed. Some patches also contain other chemicals that help to make the skin more permeable - this may be by encouraging blood flow to the area, or opening the pores more widely, or dissolving the drug in something more easily taken up by skin.
The dermis (the upper layer of skin) doesn't have a lot of blood in it, but the *epi*dermis (the lower layer of skin, the part anchoring it to the body) is *full* of capillaries and other blood vessels, so once the drug passes through the dermis, it's very easily taken up into the bloodstream, which will carry it around the body until it hits the cells which respond to it. | 887b1826-74ce-4ee1-8e3a-fb853f0fdff1 |
c4qh9z | What’s the difference between shampoo, body wash and facial soap. | Different ingredients to do different things. Face soap usually had an anti acne/blackhead ingredient. Getting that on your junk would burn. Shampoo can be used as body wash. Body wash should not be used as a shampoo because it doesn't have the right stuff to strip mineral build up from hair. They do make All In One soaps though. | 017ed740-c683-48f2-b375-ac3a5699c0ef |
c4qi46 | What does imposing sanctions on another country actually do? Is it a powerful slap on the wrist, or does it mean a lot more than that? | Most of the time it is a sanction on trading, and are specific. E.g. You can't buy corn from us, or my people aren't allowed to import cars from you.
It massively effects the economy of the country on which the sanctions were imposed IF the country imposing them is a large consumer.
So, lets say France is a huge importer of Russian Soy Beans ( I am literally making this up ) and Russia does something to upset France. France puts sanctions on Russian soy beans so no companies in France can import Russian Soy Beans until the sanction is lifted.
There are also asset seizures. Say Chinese companies hold assets in America. America can seize and hold those assets, be it land, buildings, mines, etc. | 81a1511a-cb1b-4227-94ac-9f830ccdbd04 |
c4rv12 | Are innocent smoothies actually healthy because of the fruit content or does the high sugar content outweigh the benefits of the fruit? | You can not categorize every food article into healthy and unhealthy. You have to look at your entire diet as a whole and even your body and activities. Some people might have a hard time getting the required vitamins and minerals and would have a big benefit from drinking more smoothies. However others might have issues keeping their calory intake reasonable and their weight low and the same healthy smoothie would be quite unhealthy due to the sugar content. | dce40f56-d5a5-4a88-8438-d9b8e472ee47 |
c4ryi0 | If the primary colors are Red, Blue, and Yellow, why are displays and televisions built on a Red, Blue, and Green color standard? | Because there are 2 different sets of primary colours.
When you're mixing pigments (like paint) the primary colours are red, blue and yellow (or magenta, cyan and yellow)
When you're mixing light (different wavelengths), the primary colours are red, blue and green (and because the tv works by emitting light, that's the standard they use) | 64663f8c-3e51-48b0-8aab-75e2573d3a51 |
c4s1ug | Why does snot change color from clear to yellow or brown when you are sick? | Yeah it's just excretions from the battle going on. From what I remember, yellow is dying white blood cells, green is bacteria, brown is usually blood that's been up there awhile? Color change is good for when you're sick it means stuff is happening. | b792ab6f-9e5d-4f28-827a-6371c6416b48 |
c4sbc5 | What is the difference between program and a script? | In practicality nobody really cares too much about the semantics of program vs script. Sounds like your friend might have a bit of an ego problem. Devaluing someone else's enjoyment of CS is not a cool move on his part.
Basically, a script is something written to control a piece of software. It's read by a command interpreter built in to the software. VBA, Python, and PHP are all examples of scripting languages. The lines get very blurry in the case of Python and PHP especially.
A program is something that gets compiled to machine code and run that way - it doesn't give instructions to a software interpreter, it gives instructions to the hardware.
Once again in reality nobody really cares and whether or not someone calls it a program or a script is often based on the application, control flow, and usage of whatever has been written.
For example if I'm gonna write a utility to do one small, linear thing, like moving some folders around in Windows with C#, I might call it a script. If I'm building a whole video game in Python I'm not gonna call it a script. Don't get caught up in the semantics too much! | 7f8e37fe-d470-4865-a3b3-2204a3cbbde9 |
c4syu2 | If there are areas of space where there are only a few particles per entire cubic meters, what’s between the particles? Is it really just nothing? | With normal physics, yes nothing. Empty space. No particles.
But with quantum physics, "nothing isn't nothing anymore". Empty space has mass and empty space has energy. Wtf is it? We don't know...yet
_URL_0_ | d57b4dda-2e6f-4822-aade-062389ebf9a0 |
c4t15u | How modern tanks are said to be indestructible against WW2 era tanks? | That's a very broad statement, and I'm sure you can find exceptions. Speaking broadly however, there are big differences in weapons, armor, and firecontrol that make it like using a handgrenade to shoot fish in a barrel.
& #x200B;
WW2 era tanks generally used solid AP or improved solid AP rounds for armor. Solid AP is simply a solid metal round designed to punch through armor using pure kinetic force. Improvements on this will include explosive boosters in the rear or an explosive cap to help cause more damage, but they are all very old ways of beating armor. Shaped explosives were adopted into tank weapons after WW2, and them becoming part of the vehicle mounted arsenal redefined how tanks had to deal with incoming fire. Modern HEAT rounds of the same diameter can roughly go through 3 times the armor of something like a WW2 75mm M3 gun, and because they rely on an explosive effective of the warhead rather than kinetic energy, the distance to the target is less relevant.
& #x200B;
Modern tanks fire a variety of rounds including HEAT. HEAT uses the explosives inside the round to form a copper or similar penetrating medium into a slug that goes through armor. This is pretty much the default effect used in shoulder fired anti-tank weapons. Sabot rounds are the other most common method. Sabots being a very dense metal like depleted uranium that fires at an extreme velocity. Less common but still in use are HESH rounds that try to thump tanks with a wide explosive pattern to cause a large dent and internal spalling.
& #x200B;
Modern tank calibers are also generally much larger. A WW2 Panther had a 75mm. A modern M1 has a 120mm. Lot bigger, and they are higher velocity.
& #x200B;
Modern tanks have better armor. In addition to having better material composites, they also commonly have explosive armor that can prevent damage.
& #x200B;
This is to say nothing of fire control and imaging. Modern tanks have fire controls and stablizers that allow them to fire accurately fired while moving. Combined with thermal and night vision (often these system are combined in hybrid vision) and a modern tank can run circles around a WW2 tank while shooting at it, and keep doing it in the dark.
& #x200B;
The way warfare works, you're better off with a pickup truck with a decent AT weapon bolted on the back than you are with a WW2 tank. Even then that is really only going to be effective against unupgraded cold war era tanks and using good tactics. | 052dba97-4ec8-4123-a9de-b7d5d20ff826 |
c4t2s5 | How come it's easier to keep balance on a bike in motion compared to when standing still? | Spinning inertia and gyroscopic forces play a role in how the bike handles, but are not the answer for why a bike stabilizes at speed. [Some experiments have been tried](_URL_2_) that use a mass spinning opposite the bike's wheels to cancel out their gyroscopic force. While they do have some influence, they do not make the bike unrideable. [This video](_URL_3_) shows great demonstrations of how a bike self-rights its lean while moving forward. This behavior is mainly caused by the geometry and balance of the bike, and the fact that the bike is front wheel steering. The ability for front wheel steering vehicles to stabilize while moving forward is due in part to their [caster](_URL_1_), which is basically the angle of the steering axis. On your bike, this angle is the angle of your headtube, aka the steerer tube. The part of your frame that contains the fork and allows it to rotate. It is angled back towards the rider, instead of being oriented vertically, directly above the wheel.
& #x200B;
Imagine you are holding your bike upright via the seat. The handlebars are forward and level but you aren't holding them. Now lean the bike to the left and you'll notice that the handlebars and front wheel fall inward to the left, like they are steering left. This "steering-in" is caused by the caster and the balance of your fork and handlebars. Now imagine you are riding the bike forward at a good pace and you are riding no-handed. When you lean the bike the left, the caster and balance of your bars steer the front wheel left. The bike balances itself through the corner because gravity is pulling you into the leftward lean and wants to pull you over further, but your forward momentum, which would like to continue in a straight line, wants to pull you outward, away from the lean. This is the somewhat debated "centrifugal force." There is no outward force, but since we are turning we perceive a force in the "outward" direction. The more we lean, the more the front wheel steers, increasing the outward force to balance you. This is why if you are going slowly you cannot ride no-handed. Without enough forward momentum to resist the pull of gravity into your turn, you fall over.
& #x200B;
edit: another example, have you ever taken a very long lightweight object and balanced it on its end? It's actually very easy to do. Imagine you have something like a long wooden rod, like the one used in a closet for hangers. Two inches in diameter and ten feet long. It only weighs a few pounds and if you hold it upright you can quite easily balance it like [this](_URL_0_). As it starts to fall one way you push your hand that same direction to stand the pole up straight again. The is kinda what the bike is doing, you lean one way, and the bike wants to get itself back underneath your center of gravity. If you've ever tried to ride a bike backward you find that the bike steers in a way that amplifies the lean, instead of trying to cancel it out. | cb67efe7-455e-4a0a-97a3-e2badcadf2aa |
c4t6uk | Before modern technology such as GPS navigation, how did pilots know their way? | Private pilot here, so I can answer this one!
In private pilot training and pilot training in general there is still a huge focus on navigating without the convenience of things like GPS.
The first method is visual navigation. For example, you look at a map and follow a river or other landmark, spot airports or other points of interest, or in general just use your surroundings and visual cues to figure out where you are and navigate to where you want to be. But, of course, if you can't see your surroundings you can't navigate visually.
Then, you've got what's called dead reckoning. Basically, this is using heading, time, and airspeed to estimate location from a known point. For example if you took off from the airport and flew at a groundspeed of 90 knots, with a ground track of 360, for 60 minutes, you'd be 90 nautical miles north of the airport. This involves lots of calculations using mental math and/or flight computers, and it is of course an estimate. It also relies on constant, unchanging data which isn't how things practically work. So it can be inaccurate, but it is useful.
Lastly, radio navigation techniques. There are stations on the ground that emit radio signals and can be used for navigation. Some of the more common ones include NDB (non-directional beacon) which is essentially a radio station with a signal to guide you to that beacon from anywhere.
You've also got VOR (VHF omnidirectional range) which is a bit more complicated. There is just one radio emitting ground station, but it works based off something called radials. Think of it like 360 bike spokes extending out from the station - the reading can tell you what spoke you're on, or help you figure out how to track to another spoke. You can use this to get to the VOR, or maybe you've got a VOR that has a spoke which conveniently goes right through the middle of another airport - then you can find your way on to that spoke and fly along it right to your destination.
Radio navigation doesn't have to be particularly complicated either. I remember hearing from a pilot who flies an old piper cup, saying that if you have a radio that can track a low enough frequency, you can actually fly to a *broadcasting radio station*, like one you'd listen to from your car. It's the same concept, just generally uses higher frequencies and extra tech!
Hope that helps! | ad160c82-5347-4476-9418-df286678bd68 |
c4t8wm | Why does overheating makes computer performance lower ? | Because the the frequency the operate at get reduced so the do not get even warmer and result in permanent damage.
You can build a system that operate at full speed until it get so hot so the parts get fried and you have permanent damage and a lot of CPU:s in the past did that. The option is to slow down so less heat is generated and the survive but opterat at lower speed.
So the lower performance is a protection mechanisms from physical damage from to high temperature.
There exist effect that make CMOS chips slower at high temperature because resistance higher warm silicon so the max frequency you can operate at depend on the temperate. That start to get relevant of you overclock a lot and is close max possible performance but not the case for normal operation. | e8db1f8d-32b8-4fa6-b117-b8abaf08cfd9 |
c4tgwk | What is Gluten? And how do people develop a Gluten sensitivity? | Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye. When cooking it acts as a glue, holding everything together. It’s the main reason why bread is soft and chewy. Since oats are grown near wheat, most oats also have some gluten in them due to cross-contamination.
Gluten sensitivity is also known as Celiacs disease. Basically, what happens is the body thinks gluten is harmful and attacks it. The problem is that gluten is absorbed by the small hairs in our intestines that absorb nutrients. This causes the body to kill the hairs, which makes it hard for people with Celiacs to get the nutrients they need. | f5887a44-1e82-4bae-a26b-bde158cbcf92 |
c4tr03 | What does humidity percentage stand for? | Zero percent humidity means that there is no water in the air at all. So there are no water molecules anywhere in the air. 100% humidity means that the air contains as much water as it can possibly hold in the current conditions. If you get more then 100% humidity then you get fog and dew, possibly even rain or snow. Note that the definition of percentage humidity does change with conditions, most notably temperature. The hotter it is the more water can be absorbed in the air which means that the humidity have to be higher for it to reach 100%. Another common way to describe humidity is by using dew point. This is the temperature at which the humidity would reach 100%. If you know the air temperature you can easily convert between them. | 55a0391a-c256-4c21-8b9f-a4c3eb4d5522 |
c4tsl9 | Why do some street names in the Midwest look like geographic coordinates? Eg streets like East 450 West etc. | It's a grid system. Those numbers indicate mileage and direction. The number is how many miles (if you imagine a decimal point two digits to the left of the end of the number) north or south or east or west of the center of the county the road is. Thus, 100 N is one mile north of the base road and runs east and west. 100 S is one mile south of the base road and runs east and west. 425 W would be 4.25 miles west of the center of the county, and runs north and south. 150 E is 1.5 miles east of the county center, and runs north and south. | 7fd243fd-ea36-4d84-bb4a-28dd5c41cd0b |
c4u0wg | Physical Mimicry in Nature | Evolution occurs by natural selection.
What this means is that, in every generation, some individuals will reproduce and some will not. In this case the key point is whether or not each individual was caught by a predator before it had a chance to do the deed.
Therefore it follows that a creature which, by pure random mutation, has a trait which reduces its risk of being caught by a predator, is more likely to reproduce and pass that trait on to the next generation.
Let's take the frogs- one frogs in one generation was born with a mutation which made them, in some small way, blend in with nearby leaves. That frog didn't get eaten so that slight 'leafiness' gets passed on.
The survival advantage persists so the frogs with that trait expand and multiply, and eventually the whole species looks a bit leafy.
Then a frog in a new generation has a mutation which makes it, by chance, look even more leafy. That frog has even more of an advantage against predators, so again the trait spreads through the population.
Following this path you can see that, over millions of years and millions of repetitions of this cycle I've described, the stacking of these leafy mutation would eventually lead to this frog species looking near indistinguishable from the leaf. | 7d76f970-aa93-4d35-9cee-24bd1041f21c |
c4ufo3 | The economics of the mini strip mall. Just about every one has a cleaners, a phone repair, a burrito place, a nail salon and a mattress store. A typical person might eat a burrito every week but only buy a mattress every decade. How do they all do comparable business? | Some businesses do low volume but at an amazingly high profit margin per unit. For example, a mattress store might make $400 on an average sale, so if they sell 2 a day they are ok. | 74847420-4cf7-4a42-8917-c660d3d18b3e |
c4ug4d | How can the universe expand if it's already infinite? | astrophysicist here. clarifying question: why do you think it's infinite?
Answer: The part of the universe we can see (called the visible universe) isn't infinite, and it expands into the invisible universe. We could theoretically see new objects due to this effect, though because space is big and everything is far away, we really don't.
However, if the invisible universe is infinite, then it could just expand into itself. There are different sizes of infinity, and more importantly, it would locally look like it was expanding. Think of this as rescaling numbers so that every number is taken to twice how much it is. So 1 becomes 2, 2.5 becomes 5, and so on. Every number would be covered (i.e. would be mapped to somewhere, and another number would be mapped to it), but the number line would look twice as big, and still be infinite. That's similar to what it would be like.
The big question in astrophysical philosophy right now is actually the opposite: because space and time end outside our universe, what would a finite universe (which we think we live in, absent evidence to the contrary) expand into? | 8fc66037-4b0c-4e94-aca2-f2117394caa0 |
c4ul2r | Did life on Earth begin only once? Can different forms of life born frequently but get killed by modern microorganisms because they had an headstart? | It is absolutely possible in theory. However, we have found no evidence that it happened. As far as we can tell, all the life that's ever been on Earth is related. | f44cecc3-d352-4d85-b3b1-beb41bbb0740 |
c4utt2 | Why is it important for websites to verify that you're not a robot? | Spam bots are a common method of malicious online robot. They spam message boards or other internet sites with repeated advertisements (at best, more malicious things at worst). they also participate in phishing scams (where they try to steal your password/information).
Those verification steps help cut down on those bad actors. | 96cdbef0-fbf5-45e4-8809-5010030bd74f |
c4vhtr | What happens when a fly goes in your eye? | If a fly flies into your eye, chances are your eyelids will close before it hits the eyeball. Your brain will move the eyelid quicker than you recognize that the fly is there. If it still manages to land on your bare eyeball, your eyelid or lashes will bat it away shortly and you will be fine. | 1674728c-e797-4dc0-b83e-ea1104ba68ea |
c4vrao | when do soccer games actually end? | Unlike other sports, the time is not stopped whenever there is a pause in the game (e.g. when there is a fault). Extra time is given to compensate this.
Sometimes the referee may give a bit more time if something happens during the extra time. Also, usually the referees don't end the game when a team is on the offensive, they will wait until the other team successfully defends or if the offense is interrupted | 43f3f8b6-f6a7-4afa-a7b9-bb57ad5a6eda |
c4w3vz | what happens to deleted items on a computer? Where does all that data go? | It is marked as deleted by the operating system, and is then considered free space. It will be overwritten by other data later. Which is why if you want to undelete something you need to do it quickly. | c0367f3a-9bc0-4a4a-b336-ba457b5a8970 |
c4warr | How are muscles and ligaments "glued" to the bones? | To a large part with structures of bone and gelatine, which is a protein. Incidentally gelatine from livestock and horses was actually used as an actual glue in the past.
It's also used to make jello. If you make really, really thick jello you can use that as a glue if you apply it before it sets (but don't put flavorings in it then!)
Edit: As background to the moderator response below, my initial discussion with moderator u/Rhynchelma (which is deleted here in this thread) can be seen here: _URL_0_. Hope it is OK that I post the link here, if not PM me and I'll remove it. | d3b12ab6-1352-49f9-b3f2-127ea34f80ef |
c4wbus | what causes the electricity to go out for just a brief moment when it storms hard? | There is some disaster recovery built into the system.
So if you have a neighborhood and that neighborhood is divided into four quarters. Each quarter of the neighborhood is only connected to the other quarters at a single point where a smart switch is installed.
So a tree falls on a powerline in the northeast quadrant, and those smart switches which connect the NE quadrant to all the other other quadrants will trip, like a circuit breaker. Once they trip, then the SE, SW, and NW quadrants go back to normal.
So that momentary outage is the time between when the tree falls and the time when the smart switch kicks in and disconnects the rest of the neighborhood from the damaged section of the grid. So it's a pretty robust system, kind of like a spider web, no matter which part gets damaged, there is usually a way to route power around it and keep most of the city going. | 629dbf05-99cb-4cbb-91e2-21f07398dbf2 |
c4wcm6 | How big is the Library of Babel website? | Its not so big. Its generated each time you search. Its contain a mathematical formula to create directions. Ps: vsauce make an explanation on YouTube. | d95920c3-7b8b-4b94-ab67-fd7a18de17b5 |
c4x5pp | How do astronauts float around in 0 gravity without their stomach acid floating out their mouth? | When the lower esophageal sphincter is closed, it prevents acid and stomach contents from traveling backwards from the stomach. The LES muscles are not under voluntary control. | 15c8c5e9-015d-4ca7-bdd9-db34d6b82fbf |
c4xcms | Why is it that most of the time, animals tend to just ignore documentary crew? Do they usually ignore humans or does the crew somehow establish that they aren’t a threat? | Sometimes the crew that films the animals film far away. Like, REALLY far away. It may not seem like it, but when using stabilizers or gimbals on a camera that allows tens of times of zoom without losing quality, it does look like that they aren't filming far but they indeed are. Sometimes the crew might film 200-500 meters away from the animal at sight. Otherwise, sometimes the animal doesn't really care. For example, crows on the streets don't really care unless if you approach them deliberately. | 541c9c0f-453a-4ecf-8bb1-50ea19817563 |
c4xymh | How do game developers know their games will run on upcoming or unreleased game systems? | 'developer kits' - machines that match the specs of the upcoming console to a *sufficient* degree, and specifically the maker of the console *promises* the console will be compatible with the developer kit. If there are changes in specs, the developer kits will get upgraded to match and the game will need to be fixed/adapted to the changes; these will NOT be large changes. The console will be a neat small box that is self-contained, with streamlined production, big contracts for specific parts bringing the price down, protection mechanisms against modifying the software. The development kits are bulky, custom (often hand-)made devices - or just custom-built PCs with very specific software, that allow running, and debugging the game, modifying and observing the running code in ways no console would allow.
Let's add the developer kit machines are obscenely expensive and obtaining them requires all kinds of legal agreements, non-disclosure, no resale, exclusivity and so on. Often they aren't even sold, just rented. | c48b1c9a-b95f-4448-8bc6-10e7a5cde685 |
c4xz0l | How are Teslas and other cars with touch screen computers able to sit in the sun without overheating, but smartphones can't? | Nah these responses are too complex still here's the best one:
Car designed like that, phone not | d222de15-b47f-4731-96f3-75a2397238f9 |
c4y851 | How do certain objects / materials hold liquids, such as a towel holding water? | A lot of objects aren't completely solid, in the sense that there are little holes throughout them. If you put an object like a towel or sponge in a liquid, the liquid will flood all those tiny holes. Water is a bit sticky, so the molecules hold on to each other and the surface of the object enough to keep the liquid in the towel/sponge/whatever | cde0d981-f1ea-4b0c-818d-a018c712fdd1 |
c4yi0v | what is the difference between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning | Which way you go in the reasoning. Induction is to deduce possible future facts from an initial sample. For example, if I give 1,2,3 you may give me 4 after. Deduction goes in the other way, that is, from a consequence deduce the initial facts, if you go in a room and someone is death in the floor stabbed and a another person is standing with a knife you may deduce that this person killed the other. | f3edbf88-02e3-4a08-9411-f8fe475becbd |
c4z05w | How do speakers replicate sound? | When you drop a stone in calm water, ripples spread from the point it entered the water, and when something makes a sound, similar waves spread through the air, you just can't see them. If you put a microphone near the sound source, these waves will vibrate the diaphragm in the microphone, which is attached to a magnetic coil, and the movement of the coil creates a very small electrical current that mimics the 'shape' of the sound wave that created it. Amplifiers do exactly what it sounds like, they take that tiny electrical 'wave' and amplify it until it's strong enough to make a coil 'vibrate' its magnetic polarity next to a huge magnet, and that makes the coil move exactly like the original sound wave did. That coil is attached to a paper cone which makes more air move and thereby reproduces the original sound. The waves can get pretty complex if the sound source is an orchestra or a rock band, but the principle still works just the same. | 7fb62de5-4af0-4dc7-806e-49cc15b4960c |
c4z7z1 | What is the nature of thought? How do we think? | That's a big ol' question. I assume by thinking you mean the conscious experience of reality that humans seem to possess. I'm not very knowledgeable on the philosophical side, but I can talk from the psychological side. In psychology, we know some stuff about how. For one, thought seems to be just what developmentally healthy human brains do. E.g., if I remove your brain, all indications of your conscious experience disappear. And brain damage or abnormal development can drastically alter that conscious experience.
How do brains do this? Each of the constituent parts of conscious experience aren't necessarily that intense. E.g., at the earliest stages of processing vision, it's kinda like dots. A neuron fires when it detects a dot in its location. Later in visual processing, neurons are firing if those dots appear to be an edge. Visual processing is a fun example because the parts of the brain doing color and shape are actually different! E.g., at early stages, when you see a red ball, your brain sees red and it sees a ball, but it doesn't know that it's a red ball. It's later stages of processing that put two-and-two together.
Indeed, there's really interesting cases of brain damage where people have motion blindness: the brain networks that keep track of an object moving in space are damaged. These people may see the world as a series of static images that inexplicably change moment to moment (instead of seeing a car rushing toward you over time, they see a car far away and suddenly it's right on top of them with nothing in between).
This may seem like it's not quite about thought, but this is how thought works at a basic level. People who show severe deficits in thought, like with alzheimers, are just expressing outwardly what it means to have damage to basic brain processes.
So yeah... thought is a very complicated combination of sensory perception, working memory, long-term memory, and other brain networks responsible for different things. And on top of all that is that your brain processes information at subconscious levels, too. Cocktail party effect: you can be in a crowded party, not able to understand any single conversation, but still hear someone call your name. How were you able to understand that but nothing else? Your subconscious processing was paying attention and decided this was something to push into conscious awareness and focus more attention on.
Note: when I say subconscious, I don't mean Freudian sub-conscious. I just literally mean anything the brain is doing that you don't need to consciously do. Like controlling your heart rate is subconscious.
It's up for debate what it means for "free will" if there is some subconscious thing that controls what the conscious mind experiences. Personally, I don't think much about it. As far as I am concerned, the subconscious stuff is still "you" just as much as the conscious stuff is you. | 2ef76dc5-c249-4a1f-bd01-49e812090905 |
c4zfmy | What can a Raspberry Pi do? | Its a mini computer. So anything you want a cheap, small computer for.
I use one for an emulator (playing old video games).
I have another one I use as a wireless print server.
At work, we use it in place of a computer (its displaying a dashboard on a TV, so computing power isn't needed).
You could use it as a media server. There are many other uses. | ac935df9-42d9-407b-bed3-bda677bea961 |
c4zm49 | Chemotherapy? | Chemotherapy is a chemical treatment that kills fast growing cells in your body. Cancer is when cells from your body multiply too fast for your body to handle. Chemo tries to kill those fast growing cancer cells. This is why people lose their hair, because hair comes from fast growing cells. In short, chemotherapy poisons you just enough so that the cancer dies, but you don't. | 625a5924-c712-41ff-8109-896861dc947f |
c4znkb | why doesn’t sunburn appear until hours after you’ve left the sun? | Sunburn is a type of radiation burn caused by exposure to the sun. To put it simply, the radiation from the sun has bombarded the atoms that make up your DNA, causing irreparable damage. These cells with damaged DNA can no longer self-replicate, meaning they must be shed and replaced.
Like any burn, your body responds with inflammation of the affected area. This is the redness we typically associate with sunburn. What is happening is your body's immune system has recognized that there is a region of localized damage to your skin, and has begun to repair that damage by replacing the skin in that area with new cells.
To do this, it increases bloodflow to the damaged area in order to supply more oxygen to help with the 'repairs'. Depending on how *deep* the damage is, the more extreme the immune response will be (i.e. first, second, or third-degree burns).
Redness can appear within an hour of exposure, but typically you'll experience the most pain between 6-48 hours. The pain and redness you feel is actually your body's response to the sunburn, and will take several hours to fully peak. | 2c21111d-e781-4580-b231-79976badc46c |
c50iec | how ants determine the path they take between their home and food | A trail of formic acid they left behind like breadcrumbs. They use smell to follow the path. | c4e38742-e44e-4add-b153-b191d2a1eb2e |
c50jvg | If our nose hairs are our bodies filtration system, why is it ok to wax those hairs away? | Whomever told you it's ok to wax nose hairs is very wrong.
Nose hairs are the first filter to keep particles out of your lungs, not having them would be bad.
Also plucking/waxing/pulling them out is bad because parts of the nose are on the brain side of the blood-brain barrier. If you rip a nose hair out and the follicle remains gets infected then that infection could have an unobstructed path straight to the brain. Brain infections are generally understood to not be a good thing.
If nose hairs gets long you can trim but you should avoid plucking/pulling them as much as possible. Not saying if you do pull one you'll die, the odds are very low, but the simple fact it's possible should be warning enough.
Waxing nose hairs should never be a consideration.
To answer your other questions. Stuff that gets trapped gets collected in the mucus and you get rid of it by blowing your nose, picking it out or it gets swallowed and passes through the digestive tract. | f189da03-e0b8-443b-878c-9ef5f8d8ff35 |
c513ub | What's the different between Gen 3/3+ or Gen 4 nuclear reactor to the normal Gen 2 reactor? What are the advantages? | 3+ plants incorporate passive safety features. That’s the biggest difference.
Gen 3 plants eliminate large Recirculation piping and reduce the size of the worst possible LOCA because of smaller piping. They are usually simpler. They take advantage of the operating knowledge of the gen 2 plants which are the first plants that had very high power densities. They use more digital or solid state integrated control systems instead of the gen 2 plant analog control systems.
Gen 3 plants are more standardized | 8176f6f1-8faa-4d2a-b0ec-a225257ffcd2 |
c51505 | How do stocks work, and how do you profit from them? | Stocks are pieces of a company. Let's say my company: Simmell Corp. Is worth 500 million dollars and I want to sell 1 million shares. Each share is "worth" 500 dollars.
Now, one day Simmell Corp announces we are adding new products and have higher profits. The company is worth 600 million, so each share is worth 600 dollars. Anyone who bought a share earlier has "made" 100 dollars if they sell it.
After a few decades, Simmell Corp is basically at its peak for growth. So instead of putting profits into growing, I share it with the share holders. I make 20 million in profits every quarter, and give a dividend of 20 dollars to each shareholder in those quarters. Sometimes more, sometimes less. The stock holders only paid 5 or 600 dollars, so they're literally making money from owning the shares. | 75761e2e-7184-4d91-b351-21999429c828 |
c51be7 | Why does spicy food make me feel high? | Spicy foods typically involve something called capsaicin, which causes the body to release pain-signalling chemicals.The body's normal response to pain is to release endorphins - natural painkillers. Adequate capsaicin can bring about the release of enough endorphins to make you feel "high" in the sense that you are no longer in pain and that other sensations may be dampened. | 8d29607f-996c-4a06-9a22-ed9f8d97d0b7 |
c51dmu | Is it possible to genetically engineer a horse to grow a horn, like a unicorn? | In theory, yes. Are we that advanced? I'm not sure but I'm pretty confident we aren't there yet
However, instead of altering their genetic code to naturally grow one I do believe we have the power to implant a horn 'seed' of sorts and make one grow that way | 2865aff9-e075-4559-bd54-170f13c1ab7c |
c51k68 | Why are name brand foods usually better than store brands? Or are we just suckers for marketing? | Sometimes the name brands use more expensive ingredients, proprietary recipes, or just have tighter quality control standards. Sometimes they're the exact same thing in a different wrapper.
We are suckers for marketing though. | a82076e7-3a6e-422d-b732-04887ab98e4c |
c521pc | Why do people express less intense emotion as they grow older? | Exposure most likely combined with knowing that dropping a cookie isn't the end of the world. | 7d0a17a2-fd7a-4616-9ded-52a31caf7471 |
c524p8 | How to CDs work, more specifically, how does sound and picture get transmitted from a little disc? | A CD is essentially a layer of metal pressed between two pieces of plastic. To record onto the CD, a laser burns pits into the metal. If there’s a pit, that represents a 0, and if there isn’t, that represents a 1. This is recorded from the inside to the outside in a tight spiral.
To read the CD, another laser is shone along the spiral, and a photo sensor is placed so that the reflected light from the shiny bit will hit it and create a small electric current, representing a 1, and the pits don’t. So this electrical signal is read back to a computer that takes that stream of 0s and 1s and interprets it in some way to pass on to computer memory, and then eventually out to a screen or speaker as a pattern of light or a wave of sound. | 640c657e-aa0f-4769-9aea-7a25eb01af85 |
c529bi | How does a company like Space X make money? | They offer launch services to the government and private companies and charge money for those services. | 94f03008-1c86-4958-95ed-33b2ee8e41d9 |
c52dm1 | Why sometimes when you take a short nap for a half hour that it sometimes feels like you've been asleep for days? | When we sleep we go through “cycles”. We move through 4 “stages” + REM sleep in each cycle, There’s a lot more to it, but it’s easiest to think of the stages as measuring how deep our sleep is. Stage 1 is the lightest sleep stage 4 is the deepest.
But we don’t just go from stage 1 to stage 4 then start a new cycle . During each cycle we go from stage 1 to stage 4, then back down to stage 1. Each stage lasts around 10 minutes, then we move to the next stage. This adds up to a full cycle that lasts about 90 minutes. So here’s an example of the typical sleep cycle:
Stage 1: very light sleep/easily awakened
Stage 2: somewhat light sleep
Stage 3: moderately deep sleep
Stage 4: deep sleep/more difficult to wake up.
Stage 3:
Stage 2:
Stage 1:
REM sleep: easily awakened. Dreaming stage
After the above stages the cycle starts over.
So now onto why we feel worse when we sleep for certain times. Remember how each stage lasts ~ 10 min? That means if you sleep 5-10 minutes you’ll wake up in stage 1. This is light sleep and you still feel alert when woken up. Your brain doesn’t have to adjust too much. But if you sleep 45 minutes, you’ll be waking up in stage 4. You’ll be going straight from deep sleep to awake and your brain had to make some major adjustments, so you’ll feel groggy and tired for awhile. However if you sleep 90 minutes, you will be back to stage 1 and will feel fine when you wake up.
So basically it just depends which sleep stage you wake up in! If you’re tired and want to take a nap keep it under 20 or shoot for 90! | 4f49dc92-f07c-4a36-95b5-ec1615ddb456 |
c52r4r | Why Europe is counted as a separate continent to Asia | Because the ancient greeks only knew the mediterranean (hence its name, middle-of-the-earth) and its surrounding landmasses, and divided the world into three distinct areas: Europe, Asia (Turkey) and Libya (North Africa). Africa is also somewhat connected to the Asian landmass via Arabia.
The discovery of America, Australia and Antarctica, with its modern definitions of a continent based on anything from tectonic plates to large landmasses, came later on, after Europe and Asia had been established as continents for centuries, if not millenia.
There are actually several different models of continents, with a five-continent model (Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia/Oceania) being popular in Europe, whereas a seven-continent model (separating North and South America and including Antarctica) is more widespread in North America. The smallest one is a three-continent model with Afro-Eurasia, a combined America, Australia/Oceania and no Antarctica. | 3b77ea80-f387-4bff-aaa5-445d1a81429b |
c52r65 | Why is it bad to "blank" fire a bow? to release the string with no arrow in it. | When you loose (fire) a bow with an arrow in it, all of the stored energy goes into the arrow, which is what makes it fly. If you dry loose it, there's no arrow, and nothing to absorb that energy, so it goes into the frame of the bow which can do serious structural damage. | a6d79552-6787-4dba-834a-a4e3c5e1b5b7 |
c534s5 | Why did the Japanese side with Nazi Germany when the “perfect utopia” Hitler was going for didn’t even include Japanese people? | The biggest obstacle to Japanese expansion in the Pacific was the United States, with colonial powers Britain and France also being a problem.
If these countries were pinned down in Europe fighting the Germans, Japan would have a chance to build and strengthen a much bigger Pacific empire, and thought the Allies would negotiate with them to focus on fighting the Third Reich.
Nazi ideology of a universal Aryan world was considered a political fantasy used only for internal German unity, and Japan saw it as unlikely to be a problem in the near-term. | b77e9420-4137-4e2d-b9cd-1c88e5a81a8e |
c537y1 | Why do you people have higher levels of anxiety about minor problems when they awake in the middle of the night? Many issues that seem trivial and are easily ignored during the day can cause severe anxiety in the middle of the night. | Iirc it is in part due to lowered regulation of bodily functions when we're tired/on the edge of sleep. Being in a state where the body is shutting down unnecessary functions, or slowing necessary ones for a little R & R, we don't have the mental capacity to separate emotional struggles from physical/actual threats.
So your brain takes these emotional/social failures and treats them the way it does any threat, by activating your fight/flight response. And with no actual thing to fight or flee from we're left with heightened levels of stress hormones.
Actual ELI5: Little hills become big hills when you switch between a gas engine and a bike. Your tired brain is a bike, and that trivial thing is a small hill. You struggle with it much more when you don't have best tools at your disposal. | 669da845-fff0-42a0-a175-3c9813e7955a |
c53a9s | When you're feeling unwell, why does 'fresh air' always make you feel better? | Because when you are stressed, your body changes your body rithm for your own sake to make you more alert or prepared for the reason whatever stresses you it doesn't know. This change is obviously bad for you it makes you feel even worse but as I stated your body is just trying to keep you safe in short term. Some of the changes are about your breathing and body heat. That is why taking some fresh air may help to recover also the change in environment makes your body think that you are avoiding the danger which can also help. | 9a244998-ca07-4515-8f46-e8daa298c0ab |
c53e3k | What are the weird particles, colours when closing your eyes? | They're called Phosphenes. When your eyes are open, the abundance of light overpowers anything else that likewise stimulates the cells in the back of your eye. When you keep the light from getting in by closing your eyes or by being in darkness, you can see the random noise/stimulation that is normally overpowered. Your brain may also try to interpret what the noise is and it can result in various colorful shapes in motion. It can also occasionally result in almost hallucinogenic dream-like imagery. | 0378d65a-6020-48c2-8342-4b77c431582b |
c53rca | Why do so many languages have similar sounding words for mother and father, even when those languages seemingly developed separately? | Part of it would be that a lot of languages come from a handful of very old and now extinct languages. So those words would have been around since then
The other explaination would be that those words are ones that babies would say by just making sounds as most words for dad is something like dada, papa, baba | 6a2ca383-8be5-4d76-81f0-b501935c7932 |
c53yfm | Why does sleep Paralysis occur and why is it such a temporary effect. | There's a chemical that your brain releases to prevent you from acting out your dreams basically a paralysing agent so when suddenly waking from your sleep that chemical is still in your system thus the paralasys effect | 4bb9e0b2-3209-4791-8d2a-38c5d027d556 |
c5489k | If white reflects the whole color spectrum, why are mirrors or other reflective materials often used to reflect sun rays? e.g. in some kinds or solar plants or to keep cars cool | A white surface is white because it reflects all the colors of light, but mixes them up into a big jumble of light because the surface isn't smooth.
A mirror reflects all colors of light, but doesn't mix it up so the light rays leave in the same way they hit the mirror, meaning you see the individual spots of color that make an image.
Imagine you have a 400x400 pixel image. Each of the 160000 pixels has its own color, and when they are properly arranged they show you a picture. If you take those exact same 160000 pixels but mix them up and arrange them randomly, you'll just get a white(ish) square. | be83aded-684f-4e43-8ccc-ed54d4895380 |
c54gq5 | How Does Snapchat Know I Screenshot Something? | Snapchat on Android appears to monitor for the creation of new image files and just assumes they were created by screenshotting. I was once transferring some images on to my phone by USB and browsing snapchat at the same time, and each time a file was copied over snapchat displayed the "you took a screenshot!" notification. | a98ad793-2539-44c9-8579-3e8deec3a57b |
c54loh | - How are scientists able to determine the size of stars and planets? How can they get an accurate estimation of size? | By comparing observable details and then building a model. For example, what is the orbit like? How luminous is a given body at x point in their orbit? What's the star(s) like? What other bodies are there? What does the body look like in different wave lengths?
It's incredibly complicated stuff, but the principle is that A and B will tell you what C is. | af922152-b498-4325-9a32-aabe07eb05c4 |
c54w1v | What is credit card debt? | Credit cards are basically banks agreeing to loan you money, pre-approved up to a limit, with the expectation that you will pay them back. If you don't pay them back, in full, by the due date (around one month from when you borrow the money), they charge a fee for the inconvenience (interest). At the same time, as long as you are under the limit and you make a small "good faith" payment every month, you can continue to borrow money. This makes it harder to pay them back in full, and the longer you take to pay back, the more inconvenient it becomes, and the more money you end up paying for it. Banks like this because the fees are where they make their money. | 1bc4279b-21ab-45b8-bc5a-5e833d9f881b |
c54ynq | How do sales actually work? | Banana Inc registers sales immediately after the Random Store acquires product. Banana Inc is entitled to get all their money for the product from Random Store, respectively if they've sold it to final customer or not.
There are of course exceptions, like consignment or if the store is a branch of Banana Inc., but I believe it was not your question. | ed454f07-ed9d-47dd-b887-30c33be3c14a |
c55iof | If all planets were flat, including stars, moons, etc, how would that effect the solar system? | They would all immediately start cracking and crushing toward their centers and end up roughly spherical. They're spheres because of gravity. | 13c99230-d901-4f01-9960-81c8e6f1f246 |
c55kzg | What causes different sizes of raindrops? | Raindrop shape is dependent on gravity force, the density of air (atmospheric pressure), the surface tension of water and wind.
Gravity and the density are almost constant.
So the main variables that influence the shape are wind and temperature (influences slightly viscosity thereby surface tension). | 7422a51b-e9af-4e7b-8852-ae91d6967f8e |
c55un4 | how do you make money as a stock broker | Buy low, sell high. Stocks are a popularity contest. The more popular it is, the more expensive it is to buy. Stock brokers try to gather news in whatever way possible to find out when “events” happen that will affect the popularity. Buy stuff before it gets popular and sell it before it loses popularity. | 9fbda3b7-f8c4-4221-9237-5aaa0d3ecfee |
c55wlk | How are household taps/showers able to change (or allow the change) the temperature of the water coming through in mere seconds? | It starts with plain old hot water and mixes in cold... It's not water being warmed to the temperature you want.
It's much easier to just add more cold water or slow the cold flow to achieve almost instant temperature change.
Sorry this probably makes no sense because I'm really high | efcbcb42-f743-4391-a3a1-92646dfd16d4 |
c563gj | How do banks make money? | Many ways.
The traditional method is lending money to people or companies (to buy a house, build a factory, or whatever). And earning money on interests.
These days thats only part of their business, as they also trade stocks and other financial products. | 1f05ef73-1ac3-4428-91f4-b0402ddef113 |
c56bvq | How does going to sleep help a headache/migraine go away when medicine won’t? | This is all IIRC:
headaches are inflammations of muscles and veins in the neck and around the skull. Inflammation causes pain by increasing blood flow to a region and creating pressure through 'bloating' it with blood and that pressure pushes into your nociceptors (pain nerves). Think of a water balloon and imagine filling it up too much but not enough to burst, but it's uncomfortably stretched out. This is why headaches hurt. They can be caused by muscle abuse, dehydration, stress, allergies, etc.
So sleep causes your body to slow down dramatically and because of this your blood pressure decreases (laying down also lowers blood pressure), as well as your body can go into fix mode to repair whatever caused the inflammation in the first place. Both of these factors cause inflammation to go down, which means no more headache | a67ed495-0c22-46da-b0cb-abe3f28e6b29 |
c56lyn | why is the N word so commonly heard in music when it’s such an offensive term? | When it is used in music it is almost exclusively done so by black people. In general, the idea is that if you are part of the group that a term refers to, then it is not offensive to use.
This whole idea of being able to use the term if you are part of it probably comes from the fact that the whole N word issue comes from racism and the whole history of white men using black men as slaves etc. So the N word is offensive due to being seen as racism - but if you are a black person, then it is suddenly not really racism anymore, and thus the offence of the word is gone. | 9703745f-be7b-496d-b2e8-3aec4e9a93d3 |
c56rww | How do birth control pills affect female libido? | Birth control pills are filled with things that affect hormones. When your hormones get jacked up everything does. Mood, sweating, libido. Anything hormonal can affect libido. | e0ab78bd-6c2f-432f-83b0-601090aef76e |
c572n0 | Why do car dealerships do "cashback" instead of just reducing the price? | Dealerships are all about numbers, they want to be able to report they sold the car for as high a price as possible. Most positions at dealerships are based on commissions, salesman get commission for the car, the detailers get incentives, managers get paid relative to total sales. So basically they just want to say to corporate we sold x amount of cars for a total of y. The higher y is the more the dealership can report and the mangers get paid relatively. So if they knock the price down they’re losing money but cash back comes out of the next months or a different pool.
Source: Uncle has been a sales manager at several dealerships for 30 years. | a096e537-e6af-41aa-a2bd-10de9ee21ca6 |
c572xy | How do meteorologists calculate the amount of rainfall in inches (or centimeters) if accumulation differs in different areas? | Official rainfall data comes from specific locations (for instance, in the US, National Weather Service Stations). Depending on how accessible an area is, there may be several weather stations nearby or the startins may be far apart in isolated areas. So basically the official rainfall in a city is measured at a specific location, though you may also hear on the news that "some areas of the city received x amount", meaning the neurologists are looking at data from multiple measuring sites, including ones they operate themselves (at the new station for instance.) The official spot ideally is an average area not prone to get much more or less rain than the general region.
This is true of all meteorological data. Temperatures, wind speed, humidity, barometric pressure etc all vary over even small areas, but official data used by the government or media come from specific measuring locations. This is why they might say "it got to 98 degrees at our starting downtown, while the airportreported a high of 101" | 606812bb-ddf2-415c-b1d3-8a4220a26124 |
c575cn | What does the amygdala do? | The amygdala is also responsible for encoding memory, but unlike the hippocampus, the amygdala is activated during periods of extreme duress and has the capability to directly encode memories without having to reinforce the learning. That's why everyone remembers exactly where they were they when they learned about things like 9/11.
From an evolutionary standpoint, this is very useful because if you're exposed to an extremely dangerous situation, the ability to immediately encode that memory could you save your life in the future.
In modern times, there's a flip side. As you mentioned, it has major implications in conditions like PTSD. The reason why PTSD is so difficult to live with is because the brain won't allow those memories to be forgotten, no matter how hard you may try. People become hyper aware because the amygdala thinks that these situations could happen again and you need to be on the lookout for them. | 4527363f-bd26-46d4-8054-261fe37948b7 |
c57epb | Why do the last few percentages of our phone battery always seem to last longer? | The phone shuts down many non critical apps, lowers processing speed and screen luminosity and stops sending your dick pics to NSA. It basically goes into battery save mode. | a54a22e3-839c-4463-b83c-840cb14d812a |
c582hs | why are clouds flat on the bottom but "curly" on other sides? | They are resting on the thicker atmosphere below them.
They get to a point where they are less dense than the atmosphere below them and just hover at that point. They are essentially resting on a table.
When they get much more dense than that, it rains. | fc0dd5f5-f936-46dc-965d-5f5d5932ed6a |
c58dmb | How Was Egypt Part Of the Ottoman Empire But Under British Rule? | It was only Ottoman in name for a century before it became officially a British protectorate, the rulers there were independent and Ottoman empire was too busy falling apart to force them to do anything. They were pretty bad rulers and ran the country into debts with British, who then moved in to collect and took the whole country. | 4f86dc58-98e6-46c5-8fee-28f5391d997e |
c594mo | Can dark-skinned people get tanned? if yes,is it very visible? | Simple answer, yes, dark skinned people do get tan. The darker the skin, the less tan a person gets from sun exposure as more UV light is reflected. | 8c511936-b810-4eb9-96ef-9e5fbe5e89e5 |
c595k0 | the difference between being shy, introvert, antisocial, asocial and having social anxiety | A person who is shy would like to join in. (Really wants to join in, but is embarrassed/anxious/nervous/uncomfortable)
A person who is an introvert wants to go home. (Prefers to spend time alone, can't relax easily in public, needs to "recharge his batteries" by himself. Still comes to the party because that's where his friends are)
A person who is antisocial is about to loudly declare he hates all of you, and if the circumstances were lined up correctly, he would probably kill all of you if he was sure he could get away with it. (Disregards others emotions, thoughts, desires, and needs. Often unable to tell right from wrong)
A person who is asocial was invited, but declined to RSVP. (Avoids social interactions because he prefers solitude)
A person who has social anxiety showed up, but is too anxious to join the fun, and has spent most of their visit playing with your cat and only talking to you. Or they may have canceled last minute for the 12th time that month. (Totally cool with showing up and being present, but has difficulty with social interactions, especially in groups. Often alright with one-on-one interactions.) | 74471185-db8f-4cb3-85a1-830406758192 |
c5992w | There is this article that states how “citytrees” absorbs more pollutants from the air than trees because it is made of moss. Does that mean we should all have moss lawns or something? How does it do this? | Moss has a higher leaf surface area relative to its internal volume than a tree does, meaning that, pound-for-pound, a higher percentage of the moss's mass is touching the air. Each cell of a plant's leaves can only clean so much air, and can only clean the air they're touching, so the more surface area it has, the more it can clean. But for growing it, we care about the mass; the less mass it has, the easier it is to grow and the faster it grows. Thus, having a low mass and a high surface area makes moss ideal for this job. | 6be99cfe-10e0-4ba7-8899-749604896855 |
c599qg | How is it possible to divide by zero in the Reimann's sphere? In other words how come there is no such thing as a negative infinity? | Dividing by zero is not allowed in standard algebra because it leads to undefined answers. 1/0 = 2/0, but under standard algebra that implies that 1 = 2 which breaks the rules of algebra.
The Riemann Sphere behaves like typical complex algebra, except with the addition of a *valid answer to 1/0*, namely positive infinity. It explicitly says there is no negative infinity. Operations involving infinity are explicitly defined; x + inf = inf, for example. Other operations are not allowed, same as in normal algebra; inf - inf is undefined and an illegal operation.
By handling infinity in these specific ways, any paradoxes that would allow us to "prove" 1=2 are removed, and logical consistency is maintained. | 9129533a-8d8f-451e-8c9a-c9b1ed5927fa |
c59c1e | How do magic erasers work? Like the Mr. Clean brand sponges. Other brands make the same thing but they are called something else. | It's melamine. You can search online for melamine and get hundreds of "erasers" for a few dollars. It works like a flexible fine sandpaper. It's a mechanical cleaning action. | 0f3afbc5-c387-4bba-a7a9-a95660e7a9f9 |
c59el3 | How can I look at something on my WORK computer and then get a related targeted ad on my personal phone? | Have you ever logged in on the same account on any site that can have tracking cookies on both devices? It might be in the past and because of cookies the add server still know that you are the same individual. | c0c251e7-65c6-463c-846b-ee3f928acea7 |
c59m3l | Why do insects like moths get attracted to light? | Moths are nocturnal and use the moon and stars to navigate. Their instinct is to fly toward the moon, and since the moon is so far away and never gets any closer no matter how far they fly, they always travel in a straight line by following this instinct.
But when they see an artificial light like a lamp, they can't distinguish that light from the light of the moon, so they fly toward it, and get stuck flying into it indefinitely. | 3db87070-fcbe-454d-8419-54a98f2c3c31 |
c59mha | Why is diversity a strength? | People different from you have had different life experiences, because of that they may look at problems differently and have different solutions. Having lots of different solutions to problems is a good thing. | e7491f3c-6efc-4722-a523-48e37d5de8ee |
c59nt7 | Why do the Abrahamic religions not get along with one another? I'm not sure what the major differences are between them and why they disagree so much. | The religions themselves get along just fine, but religion is used as a political tool, and politics inherently involve disagreement.
Judaism is very old - around 4000 years old at this point. 2000 years into that, some people started saying "Hey - this Jesus guy is god, actually, and you can ONLY escape hell by following him as your religious leader."
In some times and situations - no big deal, okay, you folks can follow Jesus if you want. But some Christians started to *insist* that Jews do the same.
That's a pretty huge deal. It became more huge when political power and Christianity became intertwined. With the Catholic church acquiring huge amount of wealth, and kings adopting "I am chosen by the Jesus-god" as part of the rationale for why they get to be king, *not* being a Christian became very bad news for many people. Being a loyal subject to the King or the Church *required* being a Christian.
Roughly 550 years after the whole Jesus thing, Mohammed said "Hey, Jesus is cool and all, prophet of god, very good. But I actually met god the other day and uh, he's got some new rules we all have to follow." Islam became very popular in the Middle East, and the fractured tribal politics in that area became unified under a single Caliphate. Like with Christianity in Europe, Islam became tied to political power; being a good subject meant being a Muslim.
With two major systems of political power tied to two major religions, it's inevitable that major political, religious, and military conflict would arise.
Obviously this is an intensely complicated subject but that's the ELI5 verison... | 073ed5bd-c253-4004-8ad9-52d8d75deebb |
c59oia | What exactly are electrolytes and what do they do that makes them supposedly healthy for people? | They are just salts and sugar.
They are commonly found in sport drinks, and for raipid rehydration.
They are used because your body will absorbs the salt and sugars, and water will follow the salts and sugars. So they make your body absorbs water faster.
The concentration of salts and sugars is the same as your blood/ cells. This is called isotonic. You may have heard of isotonic sport drinks.
You may be thinking, if it’s just salt and sugar, could I use coke instead? Coke is far to high in salts and sugar so it wont work by itself. Floyd Mayweather like to drink a can of coke after his workout, so he would also drink water as well, to balance it out.
The selling point of the isotonic sport drinks is that you don’t need to balance them. The concentration is already right, “For faster rehydration”
How this works:
A key property of water is it will move from a place where there is more water, to where there is less water. When you pour water on the ground, it moves into the ground.
There is a experiment you can do at home. Get two glasses and add a bunch of salt to one glass Fill the two glasses about 2/3rds of the way with water. Make sure they are the same level. Get a A4 piece of paper and fold it as many times as you can to make a bridge between the two glasses.
If set up right, you should see the salt glass water slowly rise and the glass without salt fall. Water will move through the paper to the glass with higher salt concentration.
This is called osmosis
Your body can’t move water, it will move salts and sugars instead. This drives all sorts of things; from cell signaling, muscle contractions, mucus secreations, absorption, urination. Really big part of celluar biology. | dac35c26-70bc-49cf-8e05-c5d6378f40e4 |
c5a2gu | Why does IV Contrast Fluid cause a warming sensation? | Iodine, which is in IV contrast, makes your blood vessels relax and expand. This relaxation allows your blood vessels to hold a larger volume of blood - think of a pipe expanding. This increase in blood volume increases the total heat available per unit length of the blood vessel and in turn warms the tissue. Peripheral sensing dude, nerves, pick up on this temperature change and tell your brain that your body parts are getting warmer. | 60ed9c84-a60e-450f-a6bd-1fc80783e1ab |
c5a5v5 | How do we send signals in space if there is no air to send waves? | Radio waves aren’t sound waves they don’t need a medium to travel through.
It might help if you think of sending signals like flashing a light at someone rather than yelling. | 63c784fa-0698-40cc-9afb-2113ff07eff2 |
c5a8w2 | When my heart is pounding because of anxiety is that a good cardio workout like exercise or bad like cocaine? | The principle of a good cardio workout isn't specifically about how hard your heart is beating, but how your muscles are working *as well as* your heart rate. If your heart is beating fast without your muscles being engaged, then it's not good in general. | 97fd5f90-cdc1-4eb1-85db-f8158a91eb6f |
c5ad27 | How do we know all the layers of the Earth and how deep each layer when we haven’t even dug to the end of Earth’s crust? | To expand on the other answer and make it a bit more ELI5 - S and P waves are seismic waves. We can determine a lot about the earth's internal composition based on studying seismic waves created by earthquakes, and how they "bounce" or "bend" within the earth. Studies have been carried out over many decades, and over time we have refined our view of the interior of the earth with finer and finer accuracy. | c18db1f6-70d8-416f-9467-af1ae6ca34f0 |
c5b6og | How do we know the verbal pronunciations of words and phrases from dead languages? | Basically it just involves a ton of extrapolation through related languages that still exist, or through the modern descendants of those languages. For instance, we know how ancient Egyptian sounded because of modern Coptic, which is the religious/ceremonial language for Christians in Egypt, and the only living descendant language of ancient Egyptian.
If it's a language with a ton of writing, as in the case of Latin and Greek, there's a lot of ancient writings of people complaining about how people pronounce things wrong and explain how to pronounce things phonetically. Also poetry is huge. Based on the meter and rhyme, you can figure out how a lot of things should be said. | 76d72bc0-af36-4d2b-a32d-86c2487abf77 |
c5c2or | Why does crust form around our eyes when we sleep? | Its the secretions aka tears that lubricate our eyes, it evaporates and leaves behind a residue, sleep in your eyes or as my ex girlfriend called them, eye bogeys. | c9cf62b3-e1cd-4e29-9eec-fb9a073a8301 |
c5cqg2 | What does a Chi squared test do? | It's a test to see if qualitative differences in experimental units may explain different outcomes. It's used to assess whether variables affect other variables in an experiment
_URL_0_ | 614d86fc-6a41-40e1-b691-6e02571ed55a |
c5csxr | How do some magnets have the ability to turn on and off? | Electromagnets can be turned on and off by adding current/electricity. Natural magnets cannot be turned on and off.
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | 87a19898-5bcc-4984-a17e-ce125d463e87 |
c5d6pi | Why haven’t wages kept up with inflation? | The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not changed since 2009. With many people earning or have their wages tied to the minimum wage, no increases means their wages won't scale with inflation.
Unions have been collectively demonized and broken up in the past few decades. Unions allow workers to band together to oppose a company's drive to cut wages. Without Unions, companies have the absolute power to control wages and can unofficially work with other companies to suppress wages. | c23d5feb-21cf-4293-9e2d-2eae21746cb9 |
c5d91f | If nickel is one of the primary magnetic metals, and 300 (18-8) series stainless steel contains 8% nickel, then why isn't it magnetic? Also, on the flip side, why is 400 series magnetic, but contains no nickel? Does the iron content contribute to the magnetism? | Just FYI: when you say "nickel is one of the primary magnetic metals", one of the other ones is iron. The question of why some iron-nickel alloys are ferromagnetic and others aren't, however, is an interesting one that unfortunately I can't answer. | 5e1210b5-7b86-4ccf-8415-90fb6e9f8d5d |
c5dgsu | Why can people bench press more with a barbell than with dumbbells? | Not a weightlifter, but an engineer, here's how I understand it:
When you hold your arms up straight, they are essentially acting as big levers with weights at the end. If you are holding dumbbells, the slightest tilt in your arms will cause the dumbbells to start pulling down, creating a turning force (aka. a moment or torque) on your shoulders, so you have to put more effort in to hold your arms directly upwards against gravity.
When you have a bar between the weights, the turning forces from the two weights cancel each other out - if both your arms are trying to pull outwards, the bar "pulls" them back together, so they don't move. You still have to put effort in to stop the bar moving in the direction of your head or toes, but you no longer have to resist the forces pulling outwards/inwards from your shoulders, so you have more energy/strength to put in to lifting straight up. | 306de3e4-a53c-447a-b06b-a1283357901f |
c5dvqh | The importance of FSH and LH | One could argue that FSH and LH dictate the propagation of our species.
Okay, dramatics aside, yes, they are very important. Both are made in the pituitary gland. Both enter the bloodstream to exert their effects on sex organs (testes or ovaries). But, for men and women, that's where the similarities end.
For women, the hormone FSH stimulates the production of the egg, and LH stimulates estrogen production in the ovaries.
For men, FSH stimulates the production of sperm, and LH stimulates testosterone production in the testes.
Without getting into nitty-gritty feedback loops (e.g. how they shut each other off), these hormones literally control what allows humans to reproduce (i.e. the sperm and egg) as well as what makes men 'men' and women 'women' (i.e. the testosterone and estrogen). Typically, however, they are not the first thing monitored to evaluate a man's fertility. A detailed semen analysis is done first, including quantity and quality of the semen, before secondary causes are investigated (e.g. pituitary problems, low testosterone production, etc.).
They also typically aren't used as "biomarkers," in the pure sense of the word. Rarely, one can have what's called a gonadotropin-secreting pituitary tumor ("gonado" - meaning pertaining to gonads, i.e. ovaries and testes, and "tropin" - referring to the hormones that ACT on these organs, i.e. FSH and LH, and cause the release of other hormones, i.e. estrogen and testosterone). This would cause FSH and LH levels to be very elevated on a blood test, but this needs to be distinguished from normal processes which cause elevated FSH and LH (e.g. pregnancy, puberty, menses). | 206a4949-9640-4f54-b353-89d7caa347bd |
c5e1cu | Why does a law/similiar ruling basically not exist unless the lawyer brings it up? | 1. What you're describing typically doesn't happen in real life but happens a lot in fictional media. Additionally, in a jury trial a judge wouldn't be the one "letting them off the hook" - the jury is.
2. The job of a judge isn't to make arguments for or against the defendant. This would be bad, and systems of "justice" wherein a government official determines guilt or innocence entirely on their own tend to be not so good for anybody but the government.
3. Law is a HUGE MASSIVE SUBJECT. There's a reason why lawyers get paid so much - not only for the experience, but for the time that goes into researching cases and forming arguments. Just like you don't know literally everything there is to know about your favorite subjects and might occasionally need to look something up, or might ook something up and realize something you thought you remembered was incorrect, this happens to lawyers too. | d4b56b15-477a-42da-bb34-f46cfb8c349b |
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