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1nb2u8 | What is meant by a Marxist reading of a novel? | In brief, a Marxist reading of a text is one that focuses on class conflict. For example, when you read Oliver Twist, you don't have to think about class issues at all, but if you do, there's a fair amount there. | eff4794c-3ae1-4cc8-aafd-9db7f1726be4 |
1trn4i | What does it mean when commercials use "actual users not paid actors" at the bottom of the screen? Has anyone here been an "actual user" for one of these commercials and were you paid or not? | When companies advertise, they want to tell you that their product or service is good and that you should buy it. If you know that they gave someone money to tell you it is good, they know that you would not believe it. If they show actual users, they want to tell you that these people really believe that they product or service is good and that the people do not just say that because the company paid them.
And no, I've never been in a commercial. | 9d2ff91c-714a-4772-b27f-1aa632a7d48b |
4d7lb8 | What caused the division of Czechoslovakia? | Probably a number of things, although the division was quite peaceful -- it was known as the Velvet Divorce. Most people in the country didn't want it to separate; but eventually Slovakia declared independence, the Czechoslovak government agreed to it, and everyone worked to make it a peaceful transition.
Czechoslovakia, as its name suggests, was populated by Czechs in one part and Slovaks in the other. Although the two halves were supposed to be equal, there were cultural and economic differences between the two. When, after the fall of communism, democratic political parties formed, each half had its own parties.
There is a lot of discussion about whether the separation of the two states was inevitable or not. Czechoslovak politicians argued over whether it should be a single state, or two states in a federation, or two completely different countries; in the end, the "two completely different countries" argument won.
It was a peculiar event. Most people didn't want it, but it happened by mutual consent and without any violence. | 2a84f3a6-082c-4b39-b53c-98a4bb07d9ae |
59em3z | How do people test the intelligence of A.I? | It depends really what the AI is built to do, a chatbot is an AI that helps you when you have problems with something on a website, when you start looking at other AI's such as IBM's Watson which was put onto the game show jeopardy, it absolutely destroyed 2 previous winners, it was a very intelligent AI.
The chatbot that I made last year in my computer science degree was fairly stupid and only reacted to certain things that people said but had phrases that it could output if it didn't see anything it understood.
If you haven't already seen IBM's Watson on jeopardy it is something good to watch :P | fc5227ab-2d90-40fd-9457-aa4f5e1874c0 |
14wafk | Why is _URL_0_ telling me that a person whom I know is deceased has viewed at my profile in the last two days? | Thinking logically this can be either of two things.
1. His website profile is obviously not him but a collection of data on a website, so any number of people could have his passwords and loved ones could be going through his things looking for loose ends.
2. The website lied or glitched for whatever reason. (Maybe it fabricates harmless user interaction to make it appear more valuable and busy than it is.) | a7b91a93-541b-41d9-82e5-92fb7ed5e364 |
85759g | If your neurones make a new connection when you learn something new, would it be possible to run out of space in your brain for new connections to form. | No, basically a neuron is capable of thousands of potential connection to other neurons, your brain is formed of trillions of these neural pathways (synapses) and they do strengthen and weaken over time. Your brain cleans out old or unused pathways as it develops more. The potential for creating new pathways is always extremely high in our brain and we don't really know the upper limit capacity, but even if you could prolong human life by a significant factor, your brain would never reach full capacity as it would be losing connections as well as creating new ones.
Sometimes when you try to remember something and can't do it right away, then it comes back to you later, it's in essence your brain found a new pathway to old information because the old pathway to it was lost. This is an example of how you lose connections, but because there's trillions of connections there is almost always a backdoor to certain information. | 7e7e1115-4793-4246-b9cf-8ef5aad52235 |
419g1n | What is Asbestos and how do people die from inhaling it? | It's basicly finely shreded naturaly occuring fiberglass. When you breath it in, it attaches to your lungs. You're breathing in glass. Breathing in glass tends to kill you. _URL_0_ | c82f462c-9f04-4e82-82bb-d295f1362330 |
1mvlwl | Ylvis The Fox | The song is about how nobody knows the sound that a fox makes. It is also produced to the exact current pop hit formula, and it knows it. So people like it because it is both absurd and self-aware. | 5469d6b5-5450-4d71-aca8-07597a6c744d |
342wr4 | In the UK, How did the recovery from the recession 2007-2009 happen? | To be honest, I didn't see any knock-on effect from that "recession" in Scotland. By all accounts, we actually seemed to do very well during this time. Most of the impact was corporate and over-played. I don't really identify this in the traditional sense of the term "recession" where people are actually impacted.
Since Big Oil starting playing silly buggers, I am now seeing hundreds of people being laid off, pay being slashed, and house prices are crashing. The media isn't saying much about it though, probably to prevent the shit from hitting the fan when panic sets in. | 5f0ba91e-1a47-4644-b101-56d3fb4d4b1a |
3c4pmn | What is the cause for nostalgia and why do we feel it? | Not an explanation of the cause, but in psychology classes I've took we talked about how it is natural for humans to see the past as better than it was. You look back as all the happy moments and don't think too much about the bad moments | 1b6155f2-aaf0-4728-b011-8e45475f23cc |
4mya3o | Why do most songs nowadays require a capo to play on guitar, but when you look at most songs from the 60s to 90s, they were rarely used? | Capos aren't *always* required depending on if you can tune your strings high enough without busting them, but that's the general use of a capo; to play higher pitches without retuning.
If more songs use capos nowadays, it's simply because they're using a higher key than standard but use the capo to avoid having to retune. | 541412ad-f8df-499e-bc10-a070239b6d2e |
qct1a | What is Compression Artifact? | Let's take a very simple thought experiment - and essentially speed the scale up later.
Most importantly - when you record a song with anything digital the recording is made up of thousands of individual sound levels, expressed as a number. The number of times this is done, is called the sample rate. We'll use a pretty low sample rate of 10x a second, and we'll use 0 for silence 1 for sound.
For a thing to sample, let's go with a drumroll, where the hits are five times a second, perfectly spaced. That would be recorded as ten values like this.
1010101010
However if you change the sample rate to eight times a second, something odd happens to the numbers.
If you ignore the last two numbers the audio is "wrong' as it will only play four beats in a second.
Somehow the pattern of alternating numbers has to change to 11010101 to fit five ones in eight digits - so the rhythm becomes different.
When you move into thousands of samples per second, the ones and zeroes start to line up with the sound waves the instruments make, just like the the very slow sample rate affected the drummer. When this happens the sound can become harmonically "off". | 1e2a2057-5519-4ba2-bf58-685c810ea291 |
1rtija | why do men's dress shirts come folded, filled with cardboard and tissue paper, and fastened by so many pins? | In a word, Marketing. Men like quick and easy. That form of packaging shows off what It might look like wearing one. Hold one up in front of the mirror, and bingo bango you just chose your shirt! | ac4c5fac-a1b1-4487-b223-dfe9fec65aac |
72o5h2 | why is it called both the Sea of Japan and the East Sea? | If you are located just to the west of it, and you don't love Japan, you call it the East Sea. If you don't think China should have any claims over it, you call it the Sea of Japan. | b7809934-e725-4de6-af5f-f271fd1cd636 |
1snt85 | How can Germany abolish tuition fee for university students while we are paying thousands of dollars or more each year? | The German political culture is not opposed to socialist policies like the nationalization of a university system.
Another huge factor is that German education is much more rigid than in America and the standards for being in a path towards University are very high. This means that a large volume of Germans that are not serious about furthering their education are not running off to University as in America. | 8711c43d-8a8d-4745-b97c-a1ed12a04b1e |
360czx | What would I need to legally start my own country? | You really only need one thing: The ability to defend that piece of land. Go ahead and claim a piece of land anywhere you like. Even if someone disagrees with you, as long as you can militarily defend your land then it doesn't really matter if they disagree. You can do what you like with that land. No one can stop you. That's how countries have risen and fallen throughout all of human civilization.
Now, if you DONT have that military defense, then all the paperwork and "rights" in the world won't be able to save you if someone else decides that they disagree with you. They'll just take it right back. You only have a country as long as you have the ability to defend it. | d305284e-783d-47bf-b142-466fb76a36f5 |
m0fxf | What is "alcoholism" and how does it differ, if at all, from habitual heavy drinking? | Alcoholism is an alcohol addiction.
Addiction is when you continue to do something despite repeated negative consequences.
If someone is able to drink often but drink responsibly and avoid negative consequences then they may be a heavy drinker, but it wouldn't make sense to call them an alcoholic. If someone is getting busted for drunk driving, losing their job, alienating friends and family, etc., but still continue to drink then it would be fair to say they have an alcohol addiction and are therefore an alcoholic.
(note: I am basing this on a phycholigical definition of addiction which can be applied to all forms of addiction, rather than a definition based strictly on physical dependance, which I don't think applies to many addictions) | 230a2e48-d16f-4007-8098-72b506ebead7 |
3nijcl | why does beating the remote control make it work when the batteries are running low? | Often the batteries don't "die", the contacts simply corrode a bit. By jostling the batteries you a) rub off the corrosion and/or b) find a new contact point.
Twisting the batteries also works, you don't need to attack your electronics | 6344013a-ba49-4135-b6a8-87211595a7b9 |
1es5ir | Wtf does the Vice President do? | The vice president's Constitutionally mandated roles are:
- Serving as a president of the senate, casting a vote only when there is a tie.
- Taking over the responsibilities of the office of the President of the United States if the president is dead or incapacitated.
Other than that, the role of VP depends entirely on what the president wants/allows the VP to do. This varies greatly from administration to administration, and changes over time.
And no, the VP is not the second in command of the United States. The President of the United States is the chief executive of the executive branch of government, as well as the Commander in Chief of all military forces. The VP had no executive or military authority under the Constitution. | 06151ea5-25b3-4682-a6b6-4a79e0e37c65 |
6h8irv | Why is under-cooked steak "rare"? | Here's what etymonline has to say about it. It comes from the Old English word "hrere" which meant lightly cooked.
> "undercooked," 1650s, variant of Middle English rere, from Old English hrere "lightly cooked," probably related to hreran "to stir, move, shake, agitate," from Proto-Germanic *hrorjan (source also of Old Frisian hrera "to stir, move," Old Saxon hrorian, Dutch roeren, German rühren, Old Norse hroera), from PIE root *kere- "to mix, confuse; cook" (source also of Greek kera- "to mix," krasis "mixture"). Originally of eggs, not recorded in reference to meat until 1784, and according to OED, in this sense "formerly often regarded as an Americanism, although it was current in many English dialects ...."
EDIT: since this reply gained some traction, I'll pimp etymonline a bit. It is a great site for understanding why a particular word has its specific meaning. Here's the link to rare: _URL_0_ | c66c0fa4-c836-426c-8a6e-d75197bb739a |
3212fq | What is the benefit to not allowing officers to be recorded? | Some people feel that it would prevent the police from being able to do their job if they are going to be scrutinized by the public and risk losing their job over every little incident. | a0b31fe3-f2b2-4dcd-a208-81cc6f8c9c36 |
3zw0vj | Why are the Yen and Euro considered safe havens? | Say you are an Indian business man, you probably keep some money in Indian Rupees since you still do need to pay your workers and buy stuff like food, but the Indian Rupee is not a particularly stable currency so you would be smart to put your excess money into a more stable currency. The US dollar is the most popular choice, but generally 4 other currencies are also used as they are also considered to be extremely stable. They are the Euro, Yuan, Yen and Pound. To massively oversimplify the more of these currencies you have the more stable your assets are.
So when the dollar is weakening people will move some of their money to a place that isn't weakening, or is weakening more slowly. Usually most of the issues are relatively short term and these moves are as well, but with a little bit of luck you may even make money. | 2ce92234-8756-41fd-8c45-0135f9f1cf66 |
1x7n44 | Why does bottled coke taste different from canned coke? | And if you happen to be drinking Mexican Coke, which comes in glass bottles, it tastes better because it's made with sugar instead of corn syrup. | 71bffd15-b140-4271-814e-46f3f71cdee7 |
145oqd | Why is it that we have no sense of smell in dreams? | As opposed to sight and sound, smell is not stored in the brain in the same way. Close your eyes and you can imagine what your mom looks like. Start thinking about your favorite song and you can hear that artist's voice. The same does not hold true for smells. Think of pizza. You know it smells good. You can tell when someone brings in a pizza, but you can't smell it in your mind; you need the actual smell.
This holds true for dreaming since dreaming is a phenomenon of the mind. | f8073e48-02b0-43b5-a636-b89530be3b30 |
64e6f7 | Why does transferring files create this pattern? | A common reason for speed to vary is the size of files currently being copied. Small files are slow especially on a traditional hard disk drive. Each file has its own location on the drive, requiring the head to move and wait for the data to appear under it. The grinding sound you may recognize is the head moving back and forth rapidly. Typical music files of a few megabytes are small enough to lose noticeable throughput. Large files like video files can stay close to peak throughput because they can take advantage of long sequential regions of space.
Another reason for variable speed is that data stored on the outside of the disk (which is mapped as the beginning of the drive) is faster to access. There's more disk surface passing by for every revolution, allowing more data to be stored, and faster.
I'm not sure how either would create a nearly perfect sinusoid, but maybe I gave you a lead. | 84f3f211-ba0d-4cfe-a413-382f9621c612 |
o15ps | What is Molly/Mali? | It is ecstasy (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine), a drug typically taken by kids who party at raves. It induces euphoria and a sense of closeness with those around you. The nickname Molly is short for molecule.
Also, I would never tell a 5-year-old about MDMA. You should check wikipedia or ask r/drugs for more information | a1c266ef-a4d8-4ee1-9292-aee4767e76ad |
1vbkd8 | How/why do we simultaneously have eye contact with another individual although we were not thinking about it. | random chance and recognizing false patters.
How many faces do your eyes shift to in a full room? 10? 20? A hundred? How often do you catch people's eyes just at the right time? Maybe once? It's not that it happens that often, its that when it does happen, its memorable. | e1e6cb10-7cd3-4cef-aaca-b7f36f1de0fa |
33r2bu | Trapping light | Yes, provided you have perfect mirrors and a perfect vacuum.
On a side note, you don't need to close the box faster than light. If you make your box big enough, you can close it fast enough. | b047177e-0287-4a80-800e-d1e75d59a4ff |
5funaq | How do doctors and nurses handle menstruating patients? | As a ICU RN, I have had female patients in various of consciousness, who are having their menses. Just as we would bathe and clean any patient, we would clean her up and place a pad on her. Naturally, when possible, which is almost 100% of the time, a female RN will clean up the genital area of these ladies to avoid embarrassment or distress of the patients and their families, and we give them as much privacy as possible. | 57b6f002-0b7e-44c8-97d0-1a0b1f38ba8c |
2afisv | Why are bodily expressions like urine, feces and semen all relatively controllable, but periods just come a flowin' whenever they feel like it, without any say in the matter? | There's no sphincter there.
There's vaginal muscles but if you tell girls on their periods to flex them you'll get stabbed in the face. | ed2d2f96-9f1a-40a1-8baf-eda1013799ae |
1n9nyw | What is the difference in thread counts in sheets? | it's all about texture. the reason why things are rough or soft is because of granularity. concrete is rough because there are a lot of visible bumps on the surface. glass, on the other hand, doesn't. at least not on a visible scale. if you zoom in enough, you can see that glass also has bumps, but they are incredibly small and close together. when you run your hand over the concrete, you feel all the bumps because they are bigger than your nerve endings. on glass, however, you don't because the bumps are smaller than your nerves.
The same goes for sheets. lower thread counts make the individual threads more noticeable to the touch, thus feel rough. higher thread counts make the space between threads smaller, so you don't feel it as much. | 1cab8d73-6828-416b-a0b4-4064780dc405 |
1mv6vo | How do Stocks Work? | I see lots of good answers on here but I'm not convinced they're entirely true.
1. Stock are a piece of paper (now electronic) that say you own a piece of a company. Usually you will buy the stock off another person who has owned it for a while.
2. This affects you because you are rooting for the well being of the company. You can then vote for their management and have a (very limited) say in how it is run.
3. If the company makes money and grows two things can occur a) the piece you own grows bigger and is worth more, or b) the company may decide to give you a small portion of the earnings (called dividends). If the company grows you may decide to sell your stock for more money in the future.
4. I see a lot of answers saying the price depends on the amount of money the company earns. In truth there are many factors. Many people rely on how much the company earns to price the entire company. Other people buy or sell simply because the stock is popular or some news came out. Some people invest just because. The actual price rises or falls because there is a difference between the number of people buying/selling and the price they want to pay.
For example say a company has a stock worth $5 (the company may be worth 1000x$5 or $5,000 in total. Today 10 people wanting to buy a stock at $6 and only 1 person wants to sell at $6. The price will rise to $6 or more because more people want to buy than sell. This means the stock is now worth more than its real value of $5. If later today everyone wants to buy for only $4 and everyone wants to sell for $4, then the price will drop to $4. There may be no other change than supply & demand or something might have happened, like the company may have lost a large contract that makes tons of money. With more information we can better price the stock. This is why large banks can make more than individuals and why the stock market isn't really gambling.
I hope this answers your question.
EDIT: I'm getting a lot of people telling me I'm wrong because I didn't explain things like noise, splits, Markowitz's CAPM, or PMT. You guys are completely correct, but I wouldn't try explaining these things to a 5 year old. I was just trying to answer OP's questions. | d34b92d4-eb8e-437c-8956-392b8da68031 |
3zhoai | Why can diseases be past down from mother to child but not immunizations? | Diseases that are passed down from mother to child are hereditary, and are inherited because they are part of a mutation in genetic code. Immunizations, however, are not part of your genetic code, so they can not be passed down. Another example is if you dye your hair, that cannot be passed down to your offspring because you are not changing your DNA in doing so. | c0a8f06e-d0a4-4bfc-9742-45912113e58b |
4htp98 | How come it's so hard for us to reach the bottom of the ocean due to pressure when we're equipped with high-end technology, but fish and other animals can live down there with no problems at all? | There are fish living in the deepest parts of the ocean: the pressure in and around them is equalised i.e. they are not resisting the pressure. We humans can't handle that pressure because we are air-breathers, and the air needs to be in the range we can breath. If you compress air it becomes denser and harder to breathe. The same is not true of water: under massive pressures it barely compresses at all, meaning that water-breathers like fish can still extract oxygen from it at extreme depths. | 38721d27-5dfd-4f8e-9af0-854d2b7aa8c8 |
2m8xvg | Why do girls have better hand writing than boys? | I have a degree in psychology. It's because girls develop their fine motor skills at an earlier age than boys do. In a way, they get a head start during the years where they are learning to write, draw, color, etc. Boys eventually catch up though. But this is why girls tend to have nicer hand writings. | 623a950f-40e9-42ca-8c2f-73049e2b1b27 |
7gnsr1 | Why do many people claiming to be US patriots display the Confederate Battle flag when the Confederacy was fighting against the US? | America is a free speech country, you can mostly say whatever you want, it doesn't have to make sense or reflect history accurately. | 185cef26-b9e0-433b-b882-4c78cd8efb85 |
14ziit | Why do I get light-headed when I stretch? | When you stretch you are tightening your muscles in your limbs, because of this extra space your heart pumps blood into these areas causing a loss of blood flow to your brain which causes you to be light-headed.
Also, I remember reading an /r/askscience post regarding why it feels good to stretch my legs, the answer was that it's difficult for your heart to circulate the blood from your legs back to the heart so stretching your legs causes the muscles to force the blood back to the heart, causing a satisfying feeling in your legs | c7218405-5af7-4f3b-808d-2443356cd4cc |
12g1pg | how come we're perfectly fine with impossibilities in dreams? | Via [Wikipedia](_URL_0_):
> Certain physiology studies suggest that "seeing is believing" to the brain during any mental state. If the brain perceives something with great clarity or intensity, it will believe that it is real, even when asleep. Dream consciousness is similar to that of a hallucinating awake subject. Dreams or hallucinatory images triggered by the brain stem are considered to be real, even if fantastic. The impulse to accept the experience as real is so strong the dreamer will often invent a memory or a story to cover up an incongruous or unrealistic event in the dream. For example, "That man has two heads!" is not usually followed with "I must be dreaming!" but with something like "Yes, I read in the paper about these famous Siamese twins." Other times there will be an explanation that, in the dream, makes sense and seems very logical. However, when the dreamer awakes, he/she will realize that it is rather far-fetched or even completely absurd. | f7c11385-d3cd-4335-b63e-bf621dc04b34 |
5i4vvt | There was an episode where the Mythbusters dipped their hand into molten lead, isn't lead toxic just to be around? | It isn't radioactive, being near it is going to do nothing to you. Which is why it's safe to keep a gun loaded with bullets holstered near your nether regions.
Getting lead in your blood stream however, is not good. It can eventually cause cancer and other nasty side effects. What the Mythbusters were doing was demonstrating the Leidenfrost effect - dipping their wet hands into molten lead. The water immediately turns into stream, creating a protective barrier around the hand. So their hands never actually touched the lead. Even if you are handling lead though, it will take a lot more than one touch to get any negative effects | f9a71d39-bdf1-4670-a96a-133ec50e265e |
69n068 | why are people in the tornado alley building wood houses and not "normal" (European stone) houses? I imagine that they wouldn't be damaged as much or not fly away. | In America, wood is normal.
But wood construction is generally cheaper to set up and rebuild than stone, especially where wood is readily available. | 89a4d911-74e9-4b4f-b3ab-ae7cbc4edfec |
yykdl | Why are Britain and Sweden willing to make an international incident out of prosecuting Julian Assange? In other words, why is all of this worth it to them? | Because he's under suspicion of having committed sexual assault on two women. While the fact he is famous means he may be a scapegoat in all this, the fact any person is famous should never deter a government from following through with criminal proceedings.
It is a little fishy whosever side you're on, but the whole ordeal will reach some kind of conclusion now the British courts have decided to extradite Assange. The problem being now that he's claimed asylum in the embassy, so the British now need to decide whether to try and use diplomacy with him/Ecuador to get him out, or whether to simply take him by force and extradite him. It's a stalemate at the moment, so Assange may just remain in Britain. If not, then he will be extradited and questioned in Sweden for the crimes he is under suspicion of, and then may or may not get charged. It's mostly only an incident because lots of people think that his extradition to Sweden will lead to his under-the-table extradition to America, where he could face a lot of trouble.
EDIT: Fixed some terrible phrasing on my end; the courts have already decided to extradite Assange. Assange just isn't in an extraditeable place right now. | a76b7669-fc28-4823-b379-579bc973bc48 |
1o4k4d | How do knots in your back form? and how does digging into them with someone's elbow get rid of them? | Your muscles - especially fast-twitch muscles - get overexerted. They lose the ability to "turn off" and spasm. Additionally, lactic acid and proteins build up in the muscle fibers. A good deep tissue massage or proper stretching or physical therapy will stretch the tense muscle, helping it to turn off, while also increasing the blood flow to flush out the lactic acid. The touch of another person also aids in the release of pleasant hormones. Your pain receptors also priortize heat over pain, so the extra warmth of a hot hand, stone or extra blood flow will help with pain management. | 094091da-638e-4aae-82c9-d0682e805fac |
6ebtzk | How does the prosecution seek the death penalty in California when we don't have the death penalty | Proposition 62 was rejected. California still has the death penalty. The higher courts ensure it can't actually be carried out, but the people and the prosecutors still support it. | 87f6fffe-9471-4423-8be5-472290b5c40a |
6iwjt7 | Big public companies like JPMorgan, GM, GE, BoA and Apple have millions of different shareholders, both private and institutional, what is the process to fire and appoint the CEO? | The Board of Directors hires and fires all Executive Officers. The Board of Directors is elected by the Shareholders. | 4cba8625-3044-4ca0-8399-3d2ce68194cf |
24badn | Why cant we get rid of lobbyists and make it more fair based on actual information and not money?? | Primarily because the the constitution says congress can't make laws against "the right of the people...to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". Basically, you have the right to ask the government to do things. Preventing lobbying means you're preventing people from asking the government to do things. | a50c5238-cca2-481b-b640-d0a6fd1f6780 |
8ve2l5 | Why can some foods not be refrozen after they’ve been thawed? | Sometimes it's due to health and safety - if bacteria start growing and you refreeze it, when it thaws the bacteria already there will start multiplying again. Freezing food doesn't kill bacteria, just slows them down so they can't reproduce.
Sometimes it's due to integrity of the food. Ice crystals form in it when frozen. If you thaw it and then refreeze it, it can change the texture of the food so it might not taste the same - cells break down.
As long as it's been stored below 5°C during/after thawing, it should be fine to refreeze as bacteria won't have had the chance to grow (mainly applies to raw meat). | 8a0f03eb-ce49-4064-8aa9-33e4b15fad3b |
8cmkx1 | How does a petrol pump know when to stop filling? | There is a smaller tube inside the pipe that goes in your tank. This is the "sensing pipe". The small tube connects to a valve that shuts off the flow. When the tank is full, fuel reaches the end of the nozzle, this pressurizes the small tube which activates a valve which shuts off the flow of fuel. _URL_0_ | b772a901-4a30-4e57-b28e-c4ebcfa8db82 |
20a751 | How does canned food "keep" so well for so long? | The canning process kills all the organisms in the can; it's sterile and sealed so there is nothing alive in there that could spoil the food and nothing can get in. | 5f9c3732-a2a6-493f-baa7-5217de667478 |
2f401v | Please explain to me Preference Utilitarianism as a belief system/religion? | Utilitarianism is a system of belief based on making and doing things that have use. Utilitarianistic design has less flair and more practicality.
By extension, Preference Utilitarianism is a system where morals are defined based on how things make people feel.
If I kill you because youre a murderer, morally I'd be fufilling the preference utilitarianist system if that makes people happy.
If I kill you because you design cheap houses that are affordable, a preference utilitarianist society would be unhappy and as such, by the system, Id be in the moral wrong | 459cc5fd-26dd-41ed-8c12-bdb432c3fb20 |
2yrxfl | if NASA tests their new rocket with 3.5 million pounds of force, how do they stop the rocket from crumpling, or shooting off? | See the giant piece of concrete in front of the rocket? That's sunk in the ground, and while it doesn't weigh 3.5 million pounds, the reactionary force resisting the rocket's push is equal to 3.5 million pounds. As for why the rocket doesn't crumple, the rocket is basically packed solid with fuel, and designed to resist the force trying to push the walls of the rocket apart, which isn't as strong as you might imagine since the rocket is a shaped charge that is designed to explode toward the rear. | 25ac1b5e-7840-4c6d-a89c-33524cb0884b |
80fy4h | "To deodorize your futon, sprinkle baking soda over the unfolded mattress. Let it sit for about an hour Then, use the vacuum to remove the baking soda" How would that work? | The idea is baking soda granules have a large surface area and a molecular structure that they'll bind small odor molecules that happen to drift past them.
By and large, this doesn't work. People swear by it, but they're wrong. Really, a trivial google search will find an endless plethora of research, not funded by Arm & Hammer, that trivially demonstrates how ineffective this is. Anecdotal testimony is not reliable and peoples sense of perception and memory are inherently flawed. Confirmation bias means people think their whatever smell better because *they want to believe it does*, and it tends to correspond to several other methods in conjunction in an attempt to clean and/or remove the source of offensive odor. Take your refrigerator for example, "oh it smells so much better", yeah, and you took out your fish leftovers and ate it, too. So, you know, that helps, too.
The baking soda in this scenario doesn't remove the source of the odor, which may be inside the mattress, so once you remove said baking soda, you permit the odor to persist into the room. If you want to remove odor, you have to actually physically remove the source, and that may mean washing the mattress and possibly it's stuffing, and drying it out before mold and other bacteria are allowed to bloom in the wet fibers; it may mean replacing the whole mattress if this isn't possible.
Baking soda also doesn't work in the fridge. It's all about surface area, you need a huge surface area to try to bind the odorous molecules, and that means spreading the baking soda out on baking sheets. Second, you need to actually get the molecules to the baking soda, which means it should be suspended in a filter medium and the air in the fridge has to pass through it. NONE OF THIS HAPPENS inside the tiny opening in the top of the box. They sell boxes specifically for refrigerators where the side opens with a fiber barrier, and that's still not enough surface area, and not enough air circulation to actually do anything whatsoever.
Most of the odor elimination comes from the occasional cleaning that typically comes when you bother to switch out the box on the occasion.
And if you were going to filter out smells, activated carbon is hundreds to thousands of times more effective because it has orders of magnitude more surface area and is more chemically reactive to do the binding. Carbon is so reactive, you can make more molecules out of just carbon than you can with all the other elements *combined*. This is why charcoal filters are a thing across all filtering applications and baking soda filters basically don't exist except for limited consumer application and sold only by Arm & Hammer.
Of course Arm & Hammer will gladly advertise and sell you baking soda to eliminate smells, because it's what you want to believe. And they aren't even lying, because as I said before, it does have some limited ability to bind to other molecules, and it is an effective cleaning agent to physically and mechanically remove the offending source of stains and smells (the granules are like molecular razor blades, and using too much will actually shorten the life of your clothes, for example, but grinding off the grime is why it's effective). The problem is they're greatly exaggerating the truth. It's Arm & Hammer's cash cow.
> "But it's only $1.20 a box, so what's the harm?"
Large or small, a known waste of money is your loss. The time and effort you went into working to earn your income, to go to the store, to buy that box, to put it in your fridge and fool yourself, go through all sorts of apologetic gymnastics to defend *buying baking soda* in the belief that it does something when it doesn't, you could have just used some cleaner and a rag.
To remove smell from a futon mattress, I recommend an upholstery cleaner you vacuum out, because the stuff you spray on, scrub in, and let dry, while it may chemically break down some of the offensive source, still leaves it in the mattress, and now it stinks like upholstery cleaner, too. If it's that bad, you're going to end up replacing the mattress regardless. Throw a mattress cover on the next one. | 69444857-3b5f-4764-bf23-336b47ebb691 |
24m1hx | Why should we worry about a virus such as MERS? | My best guess is that us (meaning the United States) worrying is what makes virus threats almost harmless. When H1N1 came out everyone got vaccinated immediately and the deaths from it were extremely low, only a fraction of the deaths from common influenza. If we don't panic, then the virus might grow to be a threat. | a1316409-cede-43bf-bdb5-78bde9f3087b |
4lo2gb | Why is suit and tie still a thing when clothing fashion in general change so often? | The suit has also changed, namely in how the sleeves are trimmed, the lapel size and the width of the tie, as well as the pockets and number of buttons and vents. Formal wear is generally changed less often because formal wear is supposed to provide an air of grace and enduring rather than normal fashion, which is always supposed to be new in some way. Nonetheless, the suit has also changed in ways I mentioned above, and it has been changing for hundreds of years, from the frock coat to the tailcoat to the modern suit jacket. | 02a37efb-8bb9-4cef-8539-d7870f9906a0 |
6ec5v6 | Crows vs. Ravens | In North America, generally easiest to remember Ravens are bigger and don't fly in large groups, usually in pairs.
Crows are smaller and form the large flocks that can be so creepy.
American Crow and Common Raven | 54539e42-1849-4c9d-9c6d-8622c099b92f |
1pimj1 | How does fusion work in stars? | Fusion reactions can only occur under specific conditions of high density, high temperatures, and a high degree of confinement. When all of these conditions are met, the electrons will detach from their respective nuclei creating the fourth state of matter, plasma. In order for one to confine plasma, you need a great deal of force. In labs on Earth we use lasers or particle beams to achieve confinement. Stars use their own gravity to confine the plasma.
In general, fusion is just the process by which two atoms fuse into a heavier atom and give off a large amount of energy in the process. This extra energy exists because the larger nuclei will have less mass than the sum of the two initial nuclei. As mass is proportional to energy, conservation of energy dictates that the reaction gives off an energy corresponding to the missing mass in the larger nuclei.
Now you are ready for specifics:
A star begins this cycle by attracting Hydrogen atoms due to gravity. Once fusion starts, it takes 4 Hydrogen atoms to create a Helium atom. The Helium atom has an atomic weight .029 less than four times the atomic weight of Hydrogen and thus gives off energy when it undergoes fusion. The star will keep fusing Hydrogen until it has enough Helium to use as an energy source. Towards the core of the sun, you will start to see conditions that allow for Helium to fuse into lithium, boron, carbon, oxygen, and iron. This is a gradual process meaning that a star doesn’t switch all of the sudden to a new energy source but rather phases out the usage of lighter atoms as they are depleted as a fuel source.
Fusion reactions that begin with heavier atoms produce less energy. Fusing Iron requires more energy than it produces. This causes the star to cool.
One special property of stars is that the fusion reactions in the core create an internal pressure that prevents gravitational collapse. As you’d expect, when the star cools, that internal pressure dissipates and the star will collapse and explode. This violent process is what actually creates the rest of the elements heavier than iron.
The exact end result of a star’s collapse is dependent on its mass at the time of collapse but alas an explanation of all the possibilities is too long and not on the topic of this ELI5. | 1729d3b5-6c40-4972-b458-859ef04ac3b9 |
1oite8 | Why is being obese considered unhealthy? | It leads to many health complications such as high blood pressure and diabetes... | 1c60b962-6379-478e-91fd-12ec39e0a893 |
kyyzd | Silent Letters | The pronunciation of words in English has changed faster than the spelling of the words to the point that letters which were once pronounced are no longer. | b98ae099-1aef-4d19-a812-c61d788c5cef |
1i0h6y | How are there downvotes on Subreddits which have disabled the downvote button? | You can't disable the downvote button. You can hide it, but anyone who doesn't use your subreddit's custom style (there's an option to disable that) can still downvote. | 3efc97eb-5165-4cb2-a3ed-0f34d7f666f6 |
19zg0g | The argument against and for, the use of drones in the US. | Pros: It's cool to be able to take out bad guys without risking the lives of soldiers.
Cons: We keep blowing up schools in Pakistan. | 64a80cf2-61f3-4066-a0bb-5a6cb2602feb |
8qrsri | How do you tell the difference between being depressed, unmotivated, and lazy? | You don't.
You go to a professional and explain the situation, follow their instructions, and with a bit of luck they'll be able to determine which it is. | 675897b5-2f18-434d-866e-f01983116d0a |
3tyhxw | In American football, what are the rules regarding when the clock stops or keeps running? I just cannot figure this out. | In the NFL, the clock will always stop following an incomplete pass. Additionally, during the last 2 minutes of the first half, and the last 5 minutes of the second half, the clock will stop if a player in possession of the ball steps out of bounds. When a player goes out of bounds at any other time of the game, the clock is stopped until the ball is spotted by the referee. The clock always stops when there is a change of possession (i.e. turnover on downs, interception, fumble recovery). The clock stops immediately after a score (touchdown, field goal, safety). Obviously, a time out by either team will stop the clock. The referees can stop the clock for an injury, or something strange happening, like a fan disrupting the play of the game. The clock will temporarily stop when a penalty occurs so they can sort out how to assess the penalty yardage. The referees will occasionally stop the clock temporarily to measure yardage. The clock stops when a head coach throws his challenge flag. The clock stops after each quarter. | 8452260c-1198-42d5-9a24-c4b87f5fed5b |
3e34rt | what are the different versions of Linux and why do they exist? | Unity and Gnome aren't version of Linux, they're desktop environments for Linux. Ubuntu uses Unity, and numerous distributions of Linux use Gnome by default.
Different ones exist to fit different preferences of the creators and to fit different use-cases.
Ubuntu is a corporate-backed desktop Linux meant for workstations and adapted also for home-use. Mint is very Ubuntu like but the Mint devs fix some of what they see as faults in Ubuntu.
Redhat is a corporate-backed server Linux that, while it can be used on workstations, is focused on the server market. Fedora is a community project led by the Redhat folks to test new features and softwares they may put into the much more change-averse Redhat distributions.
CentOS is a rebuild of Redhat with all the copyrighted materials of Redhat removed so it can be redistributed for free.
Damn Small Linux aims to never exceed a 50MB core. CoreOS is meant to act as a sort of hypervisor to many docker instances. DD-WRT is meant to be a firmware/OS for router hardware. Many more aim to do many other things. | 760883df-57f3-489e-8943-9d66d6d8aa74 |
3oxxme | Why does it smell different outside when it's cold? | Are you talking about day to day cold or seasonal.
Diffenrt plants die when its cold and different plants have pollen released at different times in the season, its possible that day to day temperature difference can stimulate seasonal changes. additionally humidity might change the smell. | 279fb0af-937b-4688-b70b-befad802fec9 |
1hxalg | How do submarines adjust buoyancy? | No.
It is in fact exactly what they do - pump air into the ballast tanks.
They aren't, however, using air from the inside of the sub. Even if they did, they would still change the buoyancy, though:
You have 1 submerged submarine, one half of it are water-filled balance-tanks, the other half if the pressurized core. Use the air of the core, and you now have one sub, full of air at half the previous pressure. You still lost the weight of the water, though.
As far as I know, they have pressurized air in tanks on board that they use to displace the water in the tanks, though. That leaves the core at normal pressure, and empties the tanks.
Say you have a bunch of empty balloons, tied to a helium bottle. That's going to weigh a ton and probably won't fly. But if you took the helium from the bottle and put it into the balloons, you might be able to life the bottle up.
Better yet, modern life vests: They do come with a pressurized air tank. The life west will sink as is. Once employed and inflated, it should swim just fine, though.
tl;dr > It's not only about weight, it's about volume replacement. Ideally, the tanks would be empty, as in: Contain a vacuum. | 3aaf6db6-d09a-4852-be1e-d608a5c622af |
8vyvce | What renders a cancerous tumor inoperable/not removable vs.Being able to remove it via surgery? | Generally, if it is too close to, wrapped around, or entering a vital organ that cannot have pieces removed, or if it is in a location that will cause death if an attempt to remove the tumor is made. | 4cfa0971-278f-4a94-b7f9-8ec48335fc59 |
1xwv96 | How could someone possibly believe that the Holocaust did not happen? | There seem to be four broad claims: the Holocaust never happened, the numbers are exaggerated, it wasn't intentional, and something that sounds like undiagnosed schizophrenia
The first actually seems to be really uncommon, and is usually based on nothing. They seem to present no evidence of any kind, and don't care to.
The second is usually that a lot less Jews died in the Holocaust then claimed by everyone else. Their evidence is usually about how the chemicals used were not strong enough to kill the number of people that were killed in gas chambers, and that a lot more food shipments were going to the camps then would be needed if the people in the camps were being starved to death.
The claim about it being unintentional is just that: Jews were being deported to Russia or detained for being anti-Nazi conspirators and were treated fairly until near the end of the war when the Allies started bombing the camps and destroying the food supply. The thing is, we actually have documentation from Nazi high command of them flat out discussing the most efficient way to kill as many Jews and other undesirables as possible.
The last is basically everything else, things like it was the Jewish wealthy killing their poor to remove competition, it was done by teh Gayz to make the Nazis look bad, and various other arguments that look remarkably like what happens when you convince an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic that he's a racist
Source: spent way too much time on a political forum with neo-nazis and Holocaust deniers | c50587cd-13ce-4886-a73b-c94591842d1f |
1z8xro | When I'm several stories up and I look at the ground why do I feel like is want to jump knowing it would kill me? | There is a theory that L’appel du vide (call of the void) is a result of our base brain still recalling a time when we lived in trees and, like monkeys, would jump out into open space without hesitation to get to another tree or escape an obnoxious proto-human who was hassling us.
That may actually be partially the reason for fear of heights. There can be a painful cognitive dissonance between a curious urge to jump to freedom, and knowing it will kill you. | b25954c9-a1ba-4457-ace4-cf834e23a1b2 |
3rb0qd | Why do magnets with two poles become smaller magnets with two poles each when split up? | Think of atoms in a magnet like a giant stack of lego bricks.
Magnetism causes all of the atoms to line up the same direction so this stack represents a typical magnet.
If you break that magnet in half, the orientation of the upper convex bumpy side and the lower concave side stay the same. It sticks back together if you stick a top to a bottom or a bottom to a top, but it won't stick together any other way. | 77f6c47f-b175-4da7-8735-0ac20ac9d937 |
1vi7lg | why does my bladder fill up so fast when I'm drinking | Alcohol is a diuretic. It accelerates the production of urine regardless of fluid intake. Because of this, dehydration is a leading cause of hangovers.
Protip: after a night of drinking, have a bottle of sports drink (or a big glass of water) and a vitamin before going to bed. You may feel a bit less like garbage in the morning. | 280e61ac-4ac6-4114-bdd1-bda670081011 |
1pt3g4 | Why are new clothes and socks I buy nice and soft, but after washing them a few times they go stiff? | Use fabric softener. The sheets or the liquid. Amazing stuff. Just don't overdo it. | fc724bbb-03e0-4ac9-947a-32de75aea653 |
37k12i | If it's so easy for Americans/Canadians/Europeans to go fight for ISIS why doesn't the FBI/CIA/NSA just send over tons of spies? | Well being as they would be spies, do you know that they aren't? | d3333a38-024f-4d9d-9c68-0910e0ef0e5b |
5hf0i1 | What can't we put a small generator connected to a wheel on our cars, then a transformer that takes that small about of electricity and makes enough to power the car when you hit the gas? | If you try to use the momentum of the car to create electrical energy, then it will decelerate your car until it comes to a stop. Due to the first law of thermodynamics - the conservation of energy, you cannot generate more electrical energy than you lose in the car's kinetic energy. And because of inefficiencies in real world devices, the electric generator will generate *less* power than how much you lose from the motion of the car, so trying to use that electricity to go back and accelerate the car is completely ineffective - you will just be wasting energy.
Hybrid gas-electric cars do having something called regenerative braking. What this does is when you step on the brakes of the car, a generator will create a small amount of electricity and use it to charge the battery of the car. This works because when you are braking, all of the kinetic energy in the car is lost to friction between the wheels and brake pad anyway - regenerative braking allows you to recover some of that energy. This currently only exists in hybrid cars because of the battery. A purely gas powered car has no way to store the energy that you would extract from braking. | 662657d2-c4d0-43f1-b8d0-61e7e4c3fb0a |
2cv2yp | Why any time I let a device download the updates it wants to, it runs slower and less reliably than before. | Too also add, the more space that's utilized on a storage device (hard drive, memory card, SSD, etc.) the slower the device becomes. This is caused by the 1) more information on the hard drive that the file system has to manage and memorize for read/write operations (e.g. when you open, modify, or delete a file) and 2) the operating system (OS) has less space to use when performing operations, this is known as SWAP or virtual memory. Basically virtual memory is when the OS uses the storage device in conjunction with the RAM modules to complete tasks at a faster and more efficient rate than using RAM modules alone.
As another user said, updates "add" to the operating system and some updates can push the needed system resources that the operating system needs past what the hardware can provide, causing slowness overall. Put it this way, waking up is fairly easy for the average human being who gets enough sleep. Now imagine that after an "update", you now have to solve 43 moderately complicated math problems before you can wake up.
Or in the case of a security update, for example, say you go down stairs for breakfast, but first you have to check every door (internal and external) and window, verify they are locked, and if not, write a report on why they're not locked, then lock them and write another report about it, then reverify everything you just did, and the write a final report on the tasks you just did, then you can have breakfast, but you're still monitoring the doors and windows. | a6db9558-9f26-4f0a-9c24-8d3f823bc194 |
7tp927 | How does kinetic energy play a role in chemical reactions? | When molecules collide with each other they may react with each other. So if you increase the kinetic energy of the molecules, you increase the number of collisions that occur in a given time interval. So you are increasing the rate of the overall reaction. | 5be9e284-066b-4a76-b0a4-98d5f4249387 |
3dbnwa | What are the positives/negatives for the Iran nuke deal | Let me try to provide a very, very simplistic breakdown, but please note that this is a very complex issue.
Supporters of the deal highlight a number of potential benefits. First, international inspectors will now be visiting Iran regularly to ensure it does not develop nuclear weapons. Second, Iran will now be limited in terms of its general nuclear development, keeping it at least a year away from a bomb. Third, reducing embargoes on Iran will stimulate economic growth that will help everyday Iranians. Fourth, reducing embargoes on Iran will stimulate economic growth that will strength the current moderate regime in Iran. Fifth, a deal here could possibly lay the foundation for a rapprochement between the West and Iran, transforming an adversary into a friend in the most volatile region in the world.
Opponents of the deal express a number of concerns. First, Iran commonly breaks agreements with foreign powers, so it is very much possible that Iran will benefit from this deal, then just restart its nuclear program, meaning the US gets nothing despite giving a lot. Second, lifting embargoes will greatly strengthen Iran, which is still a state sponsor of terrorism, a theocracy with limited democracy, and a US adversary. Third, the US had to compromise a *lot* in this deal, and there are arguments that it should have demanded a great deal more from Iran.
I'm personally in favor of the deal (from what we've heard about it so far), so I may not have made the opposition argument as well as the supportive argument. I absolutely invite people to respond to this post with more on the opposition (or with anything else). | 809ce271-bc6a-4712-8730-95eefce12b85 |
5u5rl6 | Why do playing cards develop a bad smell when left alone for a long period of time? | You are not far off. Playing cards are laminated with plastic to make it water resistant and longer lasting. Just like laminated magazine paper or temporary ID cards. When kept in that mason jar for a long time, presumably in an attic or a storage closet. (both of them are in contact with the outer walls and can get quite warm in the summers) the heat is trapped in the mason jar. Kinda like a car in the sun. This caused the plastic to react, presumably melt, and give off the smell you said of.
Hope this helps | 7a1a2aeb-eaa0-4360-842f-dfdcec59d5a6 |
5wuux8 | How do different eyesight problems differ to each other? i.e. long sighted, short sighted, astigmatism | To see, light has to hit our eye, and then reflect back onto the retina. This image is then sent to our brain and then comprehended.
If you are short-sighted, the eyeball is either curved wrong, or too long, and instead of hitting the retina directly, the light goes in front of the retina, causing you to not be able to see things far away.
Long-sighted is the opposite, with a too-short eyeball causing light to go behind the retina. This means you can focus on things far away, but not too close.
Astigmatism is something else entirely. It just means that your cornea or lens ( the visible,curved, clear part of your eye) isn't smooth. This means the light rays again aren't refracted properly.
You can have astimgatism and be near-sighted ( I am!) it's just a double whammy of not refracting the light properly. | f6361ef4-b59b-47da-accc-12044545018c |
316tby | Who are the :lawmakers" in the US? | It means "the US congress" (i.e. the Senate and the House of Representatives) if on the federal level, or an individual state legislature if on the state level. Those are the groups who write laws. | 595fa2cb-7c59-4889-906f-e9fabca977d6 |
5cgadw | How do Jelly Fish avoid getting tangled with each other? | "_Jellyfish don’t get tangled up because the tentacles are slippery. Their stinging cells don’t fire when they come in contact with their own tentacles or other jellies from their own species._"
[Source](_URL_0_)
Now imagine if they somehow applied this to earphones. | e8404d54-cc1f-488f-9908-7ce18b1e4556 |
84xczw | Is it possible to create artificial gravity? | It depends what you count as "artificial gravity". You could theoretically create such a dense layer of matter that it would create a noticeable amount of gravity, but that's not really artificial, and it's impractical to use in spaceships.
A common design for space stations or large spacecraft would be to have it rotating, which would create centrifugal force from the occupant's frame of reference that would be somewhat indistinguishable from gravity. So perhaps that's "artificial gravity".
I am not sure there's any theoretical basis for the kind of artificial gravity you see in, for example, Star Trek. | b9ed8c75-a172-42d1-af8d-c2385ea52347 |
1700hp | How does tickling work? | Originaly when you feel the "tickle" feeling you look and you whip off the bug and whatever made you feel like it beacuse its you nerve system saying "Hey,there is something weird over here clean it off" when you tickle yourself you dont feel anything beacuse your brain and your nerve system know its you and there is nothing to do about it
and when someone tickle you you know its not something weird or bad so the laugh is kind of a nervous reaction to that feeling there is also a social aspects which i will not detail beacuse its realy simple and you can wikipedia that shit | e2742cdc-1d67-457f-90b7-6e07d79ac85e |
p2mff | Explain To Me Like I'm Five: Female Circumscision | There's several different kinds.
The least severe involves making a small ceremonial cut in the clitoris or clitoral hood.
The most severe - known as *infibulation* - involves digging out the entire clitoris, cutting off both sets of labia, and sewing what's left up, leaving only a pea-sized hole for urine / menstrual blood. Then on her wedding night, the groom takes a dagger and *opens* her in order to have sex. Warranty seal, void if removed.
There's variations all the way between the two. Cutting off the clitoral hood is common, as is cutting off just the end of the clitoris.
These procedures are common in Africa, especially north Africa, and a number of other predominantly Muslim countries
I bet you're glad you asked.
Oh, and cutting off the clitoris was commonplace in the US, too, until the 50s and 60s. | 90f228ab-c4f9-4f83-bc57-9020228364e0 |
2yapf9 | Why are so many YouTube accounts names like DuHJ5swkN5zrO6b9DFx7? | Is that the name displayed in the URL bar? If that is what you are talking about - since youtube transitioned to a system where you can change your youtube name and multiple people can have the same one, they've started assigning random strings of numbers to the actual URL where previously a name would have been. | 517fb82a-12e5-46bc-97ac-d38a574f311d |
7kg41w | If I cycle for 6 hours in a day will I really burn 3,000+ calories? | That's correct. Hardcore athletes have to eat an amazing amount just to maintain their stable weight.
_URL_0_ | 31cc9308-9fcf-4a73-8312-c457870648c8 |
6tos12 | Why is it that a rocking motion or a car ride puts my baby to sleep but when I'm in a similar situation it doesn't make me sleepy? | It's not just the rocking motion, it is the constriction of the car seat that doesn't allow him to move coupled with the sound of the car. A car's tires on the road would be a familiar sound to what a baby hears for the entire gestation period. For instance, cup your hands over your ears and you hear the blood rushing through... sound familiar to a car tire on the road?
Those both allow the baby to feel back in the mother's womb. | 0639acad-ea3b-4e8a-8fe1-0123ca1b41a8 |
5561y3 | How can a company like Vivendi take over a company without consent? | A hostile takeover is when one company buys up the company's stock to gain control without their management agreeing to a merger.
For example, Ubisoft is a public company with a total market cap of $3.82 Billion. So if Vivendi wants to take over badly enough, they can just start buying up the Ubisoft stock... once they have 50% +1 share, they'd be the majority shareholder and would be able to control the company. But they wouldn't even need to buy that many shares if they had other allies who own shares, such as a mutual funds, hedge funds, etc. that has a significant stake. | 7a6821cd-1d99-4355-aef1-6b8648259b2a |
1ze5n5 | If the pressure at the depths of the ocean can get up to 1,000kg, how can creautres survive without being crushed? (Or am I thinking about "pressure" incorrectly?) | The pressure inside the animals is the same pressure as outside. They are breathing water that is at the same pressure, inside and outside are in equilibrium. Things get crushed when the pressure inside is less than the pressure outside. | 05a91278-8684-42d7-8bf8-efe4e8da2332 |
2gwzy2 | How is the Netherlands the world's second biggest exporter of food despite being so small and densely populated? | > More than half of the Netherlands' total land surface of 4.15 million hectares is used as farmland. 56 percent if used for arable and horticultural crops, 42 percent is permanent grassland and 2 percent is used for permanent crops.
Did not know this. Kinda blows my mind. | ffa62971-ff7d-42f3-bd08-52a79514c12f |
1t21x9 | Is it possible to block a specific frequency of sound | You can cancel out any wave by sending an inverse wave to it so that all the peaks and troughs match up against each other. That's how noise cancellation headphones work. Now, if you don't want to have to spend any energy, you would need a substance with a resonant frequency that matches the one you want to cancel out, but you could only do one frequency at a time and it is whatever the substance you have is good for, and that cannot easily be changed. | 851fb2e3-c5dd-4934-bf40-88b60c4f0440 |
371dq0 | Why are weeds not considered regular plants? | A weed is just a wild plant we don't want. "wild plant" is just one that a person hasn't planted.
So they are considered plants, they're just unwanted and wild, so we use "weed" to refer to them. | e2ae0bca-ee78-4406-88da-eab4d8591a3a |
2v2gl4 | If an ATM machine breaks and gives you too much money or no money at all, what happens next? | I've had an atm short me before. Transaction was processing and then the atm just kinda froze up and shut down. My account showed the money being withdrawn and the bank did an "audit" of the machine, which they of course said came back right on point. After a lot of headache and threats to sue I finally had my cash put back into my account. I switched banks that same day. | b6e21df4-bd54-46d5-bdcc-5e8b9edc0aec |
2fzag8 | Why are there so many required virus software updates? Are there really that many different ones and variations? | Yes, there are really that many. Turns out, a lot of people are making malware (the general category that includes viruses, trojans, ransomeware, and others). And once anti-virus software updates to catch them, the writers tweak the code so it avoids detection again. | cc5dc680-e87b-4b38-a8ad-67bcbb0c93aa |
23muhw | How can Apple products be smoother and faster than others with less hardware capability. | On paper, Apple's laptops, desktops, but most importantly phones, appear to be weaker. Less cores, lower clockspeeds, and less RAM. But Apple controls everything about their phone's hardware and software. Software is designed in tandem with hardware teams, so optimization is the highest.
This is why Apple's A7 equipped iPhone's and iPads beat out the competition in almost every benchmark assessment, despite lower amount of cores and clockspeed. Apple's custom chipsets and integration of hardware and software teams allows them to produce greater results with unorthodox hardware.
tldr: Optimization and quality engineering beat out pure specs. | 5941f705-4d8d-41b5-9e79-0702a06f0f88 |
4uhtrc | How does a nuclear reactor work? | [This demonstration set up](_URL_0_) is a whole lot of ping pong balls carefully placed on mousetraps -- importantly there are two ping pong balls balanced on each trap. In the beginning, when a single ping pong ball is dropped on the trigger of one of the traps it sets it off and throws 2 ping pong balls into the air. Each of these ping pong balls lands on another trap and sets it off, throwing 4 ping pong balls into the air, which in turn set off even more traps and so on until all the traps are used.
The "reaction" is the ping pong ball triggering the trap. The spring in the trap has stored energy which is unleashed and used to throw the balls into the air. By containing the balls in the plastic cube and placing lots of traps next to each reaction triggers successive reactions. In other words, the reactions are "chained" together.
This is the basic principle behind the power source of a nuclear reactor. Early last century scientists discovered that some minerals mined from the ground can undergo reactions that unleash unusually large amounts of energy (nuclear reactions). Along with the energy they eject tiny fragments of themselves, similar to the ping pong balls, if one of these fragments happens to bump into another of the same mineral it can trigger another reaction. If these minerals are purified and a "critical" amount of it arranged in the right way these reactions can chain together and become self sustaining.
In the mouse trap demo the reactions occurred at a rapidly increasing rate because each trap set off two successive traps. In a nuclear reactor this is undesirable because the reaction becomes faster and faster and gets to a state where it is uncontrollable and dangerous. However, if we made it so that each mouse trap only set off one more mouse trap then the reaction would not speed up. E.g. think of falling dominoes, each domino only knocks down one more. We can design special chambers (reactors) where this reaction is carefully controlled by placing certain substances in the middle of the reaction that absorb the ping pong balls and prevent them from causing reactions. When we want to slow down the reaction we add more of these substances, when we want to speed up the reaction we remove them.
I mentioned that these nuclear reactions unleash a lot of energy. A small amount of the specially purified mineral (e.g. a metal called uranium) contains enough energy to power a city for years. Since we carefully slow down the reaction we unleash this energy at a manageable rate. The energy manifests itself as the reactor becoming hot. Modern engineers are very good at designing highly efficient machinery that turns heat into mechanical energy using steam. This mechanical energy is used to spin a generator and thus we produce electrical power. | d8ae2730-4eb4-4c8e-b488-3553bbf145c1 |
1f5d34 | Why do mirrors' reflections turn green when they're faced against one another? | The glass itself must be slightly green. A single reflection through one layer of the glass won't have a noticeable color change, but bounce the image through more and more layers and it will. | eff84afc-488f-4858-8252-0c31f2278c0d |
55jnja | How we find oil and then get it? | Modern scientist use sensitive gravity meters to measure tiny changes in the Earth's gravitational field that could indicate flowing oil, as well as sensitive magnetometers to measure tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field caused by flowing oil. They can detect the smell of hydrocarbons using sensitive electronic noses called sniffers. Finally, and most commonly, they use seismology, creating shock waves that pass through hidden rock layers and interpreting the waves that are reflected back to the surface. | 44f01e5e-32e9-4370-a118-9c3ee957ef3d |
ppney | Why melting ice DOESN'T overflow a cup? | When ice is floating, it displaces its weight in water - so dropping some ice onto a glass of water causes the water level to raise proportional to the weight of the ice. When that ice melts, it turns into water, which technically still only displaces its weight in water, so the water level won't change.
Sea level will rise when ice caps melt because the ice isn't just floating in the ocean. There is a significant amount of ice that's on land, but if melted the water will flow into the sea. | fcbccb48-069c-4f3d-9099-8113dd29d77f |
54xvqx | Why can humans initially recall the details of a dream upon waking up, only to forget even the most basic details of that dream shortly after? | Here's some links to posts where other people have asked this question. I'm only posting a few, but you can find more instances of this question being answered if you search the sub-reddit for "remember dream".
_URL_4_
_URL_1_
_URL_3_
_URL_2_
_URL_0_ | 8e18623f-8151-4157-86b3-1c078c78a3e7 |
41agly | why does our vision have green blobs after looking at the sun or bright light for extended periods of time? | Promise me you will never look at the sun without eye protection! Basically what happens is that our eyes focus the image on the back of the eyeball where there are millions of sensors called cones (they see colors) and rods (they see black and white). Each of them has pigment (like liquid ink) in them. When you look at a bright light, it goes through the eyeball and hits (impinges) a cone or rod, which uses up (depletes) some of the pigment. We sense the light because our brain can sense the pigment going away. A bright light uses the pigment up very very fast... faster than it can regenerate. It takes about 7 minutes to completely regenerate all the pigment after looking at really bright light. So, when you flash a camera flash in someone's eyes, you temporarily use up all of their pigment in their cones and rods (which can be painful). Now if you look at a red or reddish orange light it depletes all the colored pigment related to those colors, while leaving you able to see other colors, like green. I could blather on more about this..., but
TL;DR looking at the bright yellow light like the Sun, leaves us with an afterimage of the opposite color, which is green. | 81014aad-e531-4da1-b021-f58ccc6475a2 |
52310l | what causes the sound that we hear when a car passes by? And why does driving past stationary cars also make the same "whoosh" sound? | The sound that gets higher as the car approaches and then gets lower as it drives away is caused by something called the Doppler effect. As the car is driving it always products some sounds, as it goes towards an observer the sound waves it produces get scrunched together slightly, causes the pitch to go up. As the car goes away the same thing happens in reverse. If a vehicle goes so fast that all the sound waves going ahead of the vehicle bunch up directly on top of each other we get a sonic boom. This same thing can happen with light but then it causes the color to change (more blue coming towards, more red going away) | afb61352-b0f7-4628-b761-8d98fbb8c7bd |
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