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9qkpxc | how do the silica bead packets remove moisture from the stuff around them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qkpxc/eli5_how_do_the_silica_bead_packets_remove/ | {
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"The beads adsorb surrounding moisture. Adsorb with a D. Very similar to absorb, but rather than absorbing into say a sponge the moisture clings to the surface of the beads which causes them to explode due to the pressure.",
"Silica, also known as silicon dioxide is what we refer to as a “desiccant” which means it has the ability to “pull” or adsorb water. It does this because the thin layers of water molecules are attracted to the high surface area of the beads. It has thousands of holes of pores that can adsorb 40 percent of its weight. It’s essentially porous sand. \n\nOnce saturated with water, or moisture it can be restored back to being lean, or dry by applying tons of heat to it, essentially causing the moisture to vapor off. \n\nThat’s the best explanation I can give. Basically, because the silica is very porous, the surface area is high and significant amounts of water can be attracted and adsorbed"
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3wl1di | why does pastry go all soggy in the microwave, but all crispy in the oven? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wl1di/eli5_why_does_pastry_go_all_soggy_in_the/ | {
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"Think of it like a desert heat (dry and crispy) versus a New Orleans heat (Hot and sticky). \n\nA microwave is like cooking your food in New Orleans whereas cooking your food in an oven is like cooking your food in Palm Desert....\n\nMake sense? ",
"Microwave keeps moisture, just vibrates it to create heat. Oven heats the moisture so much it evaporates."
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6g22vm | what's going on with the comey testimony? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6g22vm/eli5_whats_going_on_with_the_comey_testimony/ | {
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"Trump tried to get Comey (who was head of the FBI at the time) to drop the investigation into his staff's involvement in Russia influencing our election.\n\n > The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, ... \"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.\"\n\n > On the morning of March 30, the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russian investigation as \"a cloud\" that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country ... [and] asked what we could do to \"lift the cloud.\"\n\nA short time later, Trump fired Comey, and said that he had \"the Russia thing\" (as he calls it) on his mind when he made the decision to fire him.\n\nEDIT: SOURCE: Today's LA Times."
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1knliz | why i automatically get sleepy whenever i travel on a plane, bus or train, even if i've had a good nights sleep. | You know that feeling, you get onto some method of transport and almost as soon as you start moving, your eyes start to droop and you're falling asleep. Why!? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1knliz/eli5_why_i_automatically_get_sleepy_whenever_i/ | {
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"the white noise, the gentle rocking of the train/bus, the relatively comfortable seats, the monotony and lack of stimulation of it all makes you want to fall asleep. airplanes are different as the seats are cramped and you can't fall asleep as easily."
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1sbqph | why and how does china get away with such blatant copying of patented and protected items when it is a member of world trade organisation? | Is China judged by a different standard than others? I mean recently US Military was forced to pay 50 million USD for using software in an unauthorized way. I haven't seen any such measures being taken against China.
Also China uses its prison population as cheap labor for its construction work around the world. How do they get away with this? isn't this a form of slave labour? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sbqph/eli5_why_and_how_does_china_get_away_with_such/ | {
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"Because calling them on it would require picking a fight with China, which no one wants to do.",
" > I haven't seen any such measures being taken against China.\n\nThe WTO does have meetings about this regularly, but the WTO is mostly toothless, and trade agreements are usually bilateral. \n\nThe US files complaints, the Chinese do actually have decent IP laws on the books but they're weakly enforced (or not enforced at all).\n\nThe EU does the same dance as the US, complains, gets rulings in their favour etc. \n\n > Is China judged by a different standard than others?\n\nWell the WTO bins countries based how developed they are. So yes, the standards for china are lower than for say, the netherlands. \n\n\nBut the result of those first two points is that there are 'customs' (duties/tariffs etc.) in effect on chinese goods coming into the US and EU and canada. You can do whatever you want in your own country but you aren't supposed to be able to sell that stuff elsewhere.\n\nBack in 2009 the US won a WTO ruling about chinese counterfeiting for example. \n\n\n > Also China uses its prison population as cheap labor for its construction work around the world.\n\nChina doesn't send prisoners to work around the world but yes, they have labour camps. The US does the same thing with their prisoners. That is legal.\n\n\nChina has a lot of friends and a lot of muscle though, all you can really do is try and increase the price of chinese goods to reduce their exports, but they have enough money and enough trade influence and enough friends they will find someone else to buy it, or threaten you with retaliatory action. Just like the US.\n\n\n > I mean recently US Military was forced to pay 50 million USD for using software in an unauthorized way.\n\nYou mean the US military was caught using software it hadn't paid for licenses of. That's somewhat separate from the china thing - what you do in your own country is to some degree your own business. The US military was pirating software from companies that could take them to court in the US. WTO 'courts' have a lot less teeth than national ones. \n\n > isn't this a form of slave labour?\n\nNot technically. But sure, penal labour is regularly used for governments and state owned corporations. This is not unique to china. ",
"American uses its prison population as cheap labor as well. =) ",
"well it's not so much that they are allowed to get away with it, but the vast amount of products exported from China make it nearly impossible to police everything.\n\nWhen you do get caught however its taken very seriously. I worked at an electronics import and distribution company a couple of years ago and very frequently our shipments would get stopped arriving in America for some sort of Infringement. One time we were importing a huge shipment of LCD tv's and because the batteries that came with the remote control had half black, half brown colouring to them, the entire container was sent back. Apparently our chinese factory was \"knocking off\" duracell, even though the name duracell was not on any batteries and the top colour was brown as opposed to their standard gold. It might not seem like much but that incident cost us nearly $50,000 in freight costs, fines, and labour to have all the batteries replaced.\n\nIf the products stay in China no problem, but the second they are exported they stand a real chance of being caught and in that case no one gets away with it. They will not let the goods enter the country and there is a good chance of getting fined.\n\nIMO the amount they pay in fines is minimal to the amount of counterfeit items they actually get into other countries. So its more of a \"let's see how much we can get away with\" type situation.\n\ntldr: there are financial consequences to violating copyrighted and patented products but the vast amount of exports leaving china, makes it nearly impossible to catch the majority of violators ",
"Think about it this way. American corporations under pay Chinese people to make everything for us. It's silly, they make it but someone else in another country gets all of the benefits and they are left with nothing but chump change and lots of pollution. what's the difference in a product if it is made by the same person on or off of the clock. If I got paid $1 a day to produce a bunch of hand bags that sell for hundreds. I would be tempted to make some on my own....",
"Probably the same way the USA can be part of the UN but ignore the UN when they really want to bomb the fuck out of some country",
"No one's going to call their bluff.",
"China is the recent offender , United States use to be a big offender of international copyright laws which they refused to sign the treaty, only in more modern times, with Hollywood's success has United States been the cry baby. there is a long colored history of Copyright law and well beyond the scope of this comment, recent changes in Copyright law have negated progress in adherence . Disney had congress to change the life of a copyright since Mickey Mouse was due to expire in the not too distant future. with the messing around with the laws, lots of countries have regarded them as null and void for the most part. they all agree to the lifetime of a copyright and then we change the rules for our benefit, is that the way we should be doing business. Our integrity is crap with China and there is no incentive to honor our agreements.\nEDIT: as a side note, the Netherlands have no copyright infringement prosecution, they charge each customer a few pennies extra for media , which is put in a fund to pay media producers. They avoid the silliness by paying up front. you are suggesting one world order stuff here , where one entity is responsible for policing the world. That one entity will be the mightiest ( the ones with the most soldiers ) and that isn't the U.S. ",
"Because that's not a Honda, that's a \"Hongda\".",
"Short ELI5 answer: Because everybody wants to stay 'friends' with them - they are a trade superpower.",
"Another thing to consider is the fact that policing the import of possible 'rip-offs' may not go that far because in a sense, we as Americans demand them. Not only do we demand them, but the domestic retailers and distributors still make a lot of money off of them, which is good for our economy. \n\nHowever, being someone who creates Intellectual Property, I would be pissed off if I knew China was copying my work and trying to sell it in America. Some companies are taking a different approach to this however. For example, one of the gun parts manufacturers we have here in the US contracts out a Chinese company to make the 'knock-offs' for at least they still get some royalties on their design and they were able to choose a manufacturer that wouldn't completely botch their product.\n\nI think what needs to be done about this is that people selling 'knock-offs' need to be more honest about what they are selling. Certain things on Amazon for example are hard to determine if they are legit or rip-offs.",
"[by saying this...](_URL_0_)\n\nnobody wants to take them up on it.",
"I used to be of similar thought until I did import/export from them regularly.\n\nFirst off, if a USA company moves production to china....what happens to the factory and the know-how when not doing production for the ____ USA company they changed their factory to accommodate?\n\n1. They sit on their ass producing nothing until another similar order comes in.\n\n2. Use the same tuned machines and know how to make local variants for sale or something \"similar\" since retrofitting all those machines takes time and money. \n\n\nIronically, many USA companies will sell the rights/license to the factory to produce local variants....for example, Korean motorcycle companies were the local distributor/production facility for their Japanese counterparts. Honda, Suzuki, etc. eventually sold them the rights to produce older versions of their bikes. Plenty of Eastern European car companies make new \"old\" model versions of Western car companies legally. You scream \"Copycat!\" but the originators figure it's more money since they won't produce it any more or enter the local markets....\n\nSometimes the reverse is true.....Americans buy a crappy version slapped with a brand name on them and the Chinese OEM models are superior with a much wider selection; I've ran across this a few times. Kenmmore is an exception as they improve the quality of the rebranded items(So I heard). The Nexus 5 is a lesser, cheaper version of LG's flagship phone.\n\n================\n\nAs for straight up **fakes**, there are 5 types:\n\n1. Factory has access to the mold of a famous western product but crams it with cheap local parts inside: You get a electric razor with plastic norelco body but different inside parts.....YMMV on this big time.\n\n2. Fake luxuries goods that look like garbage(fake LV bags) unless made by hand by a skilled artist/shop. I can just ask a skilled leather maker to make an LV purse to exact specifications but it won't be cheap...cheaper than a new real LV purse though.\n\n3. The real deal: Factory is producing extras of an order and selling the extras under-table for lower prices. Quality should be the same and have original packaging with same name or a \"local\" brand name. I buy these all the time....your more likely to find boutique brands be victim of this than.... not Nike or Apple. Price is FAIR not dirt cheap so you don't get $140 shoes for $20; more like $60-90 possibly with brand name removed. \n\n4. Reverse of number 1.....someone buys the same OEM parts or superior parts but crams them into a different mold with separate brand name. Sometimes Q & A and product testing might take a hit....For example, you can just buy all the OEM parts of a high end MAC desktop for cheaper and install the MAC OS on top. Case would be different but it's a real Apple MAC through and through.\n\n5. Rebranded old stock......old electronics that aren't sold typically get exported to 3rd world countries. Someone might buy them and rebrand them for legal reasons....\n\n\nOne somewhat funny observation I used to hear was that Japanese car companies setup Chinese factories that are well-designed, clean, decent paying, and safe to export worldwide. They show that factory to the press to prove they aren't a sweatshop. Next door is the dingy, low paying, dirty, questionable safety standards factory pumping out the same Japanese cars for \"domestic sale\".",
"who is going to punish them?",
"Seriously, what's in it for China to follow US IP laws? It only serves to raise prices and reduce productivity. The usefulness of skirting capitalism and having a government award monopolies to the originator of an idea is questionable in the best of situations. For a country that is a net importer (of IP) there is nothing in it for them to enforce another countries monopolies. ",
"Talked about this a bit while I was studying law at Beida (Peking U) in Beijing this past summer. \nAfter WWII, while western countries had been developing IP law for sometime, China was in shambles and pretty much an agricultural society. During this period, Chinese law was in a constant state of flux and at times, virtually non-existent - i.e. there wasn't even a criminal code, judges were farmers from the community, etc.. Property law was pretty black and white with the state owning everything. As such, property law was given very little attention. With the emergence of china on the international scene as an economic power, and shifting from agriculture to manufacturing, textiles, technology, China's property law began to change. The NPC and scholars recognized that in order to benefit china's economy and draw in foreign investors they had to begin protecting foreign property interests in China. As a result, China amended their property laws to begin giving some individual propriety rights to both their own citizens as well as foreign investors. However, while China was an agricultural society, education was virtually non-existent. As a result, China has a large portion of their citizenship uneducated with education only really gaining some traction in the last twenty years. The idea of copyright or IP protections are completely foreign to these citizens. As a result, while China does have IP laws, it is difficult to enforce by virtue of the sheer overwhelming size of their population. ",
"I learned about this in Management class. Chinese police DO crack down on patented good sales. There are just way too many people doing it, and most of these knock-off retailers are either too small for police to care (think street vendor), or too large for police to be able to tackle (Think Mafia).",
"I imagine it's because China's knockoffs tend to only be sold to its own poorer Chinese populace. \n\nIf China made money off American consumers using stolen American IP, that would be a way different story and more people would go ballistic in that case.\n\nOf course, US companies would also financially suffer if they try to expand into China's consumer market, since they can't compete with their own already stolen IP. ",
"Because we believe in copyright philosophy, putting it bluntly. It allows a superpower (or the U.S. military as you mentioned) to become the Al-Capones of this kind of utopian prohibition at their own whim, and without any practical threat of being stopped. There is a reason why drug cartels would lobby to keep the war on drugs going if they could: untaxed, unregulated rewards. In China's case, it is exporting pirated goods abroad to reap in foreign currencies. If we were to get rid of copyright laws, we could kill the Chinese government's piracy monopoly in a very profound way as this exporting would drop dramatically. There are many deluded fools in the U.S. who think that fighting piracy at home will make the least bit of difference in the face of China's 80% global piracy share and easily corruptible U.S. armed forces (not dissimilar to the way cops can succumb to drug corruption), but abolishing copyright is really the only sensible answer, because it means China doesn't benefit from everyone else following the rules and the U.S. would have to pay up (using assurance contracts instead).\n\nKim Dotcom, for example, is unlikely to be a copyright abolitionist. He is actually likely to be PRO copyright for the Al-Capone reasons I've stated. He was armed with a shotgun during the raid for goodness sake. And the same goes for every casual BitTorrenter out there. They are all bound to hate the idea of something like Kickstarter because of its ability to empower the artist to demand payment or else nothing gets made whatsoever - since with copyright, profit is expected only on *trust* without guarantee. You can rest assured the Chinese government will be very willing to block crowdfunding websites using its great firewall for the very reason that it wants to preserve its piracy monopoly and not have it destabalised.\n\nCopyright is a utopia: innately unenforceable, and wreaks of the Luddite mentality. And the Chinese government is benefiting from our stupidity. Copyright is not out to prevent piracy, it is the CAUSE of piracy. This must be understood. Adding artificial scarcity to an intangible form of property is only as good as you can enforce it, which we obviously cannot. And as a result, thieves can take advantage of the artificial scarcity we give them and profit from it.\n\nIf you want to swing the balance of power towards creators, back the crowdfunding revolution. It's gaining ground every day. Don't buy into this Spotify/Netflix nonsense. They too depend on copyright and are just as doomed.",
"The reason China gets away with such crimes is because there isn't much the WTO can do about it. So much of the worlds economy relies on China and the only way to stop the Chinese from continuing these types of behaviors would be a world-wide trade policy punishing China. Something that simply would cause more damage to the World's economy than doing nothing.\n\nThese actions do not go unnoticed of course, the U.S. files multiple complaints against the Chinese, but for many of the reasons stated above and that there are not many laws set in China to prevent these companies, they usually go unchecked.",
"In regards to IP law for software and media.....it's a lost cause in Asia unless it's broadcast or cinema.\n\nPiracy is so ingrained that you'd have an easier time finding bootlegs than the real deal. Much of the blame lies with Hollywood and the USA software industry not adjusting to \"local\" pricing, lack of asian language options, and BS region controls. Aside from Japan, Asian games tend to rely on charging for in-game items, ads, and sometimes subscriptions; $1 a few times a week is much easier to financially swallow than $50 upfront....You can nail hardcore gamers for $100+ monthly but western producers seem fixated on $50 one shot payments.\n\nHollywood can push the bootleggers out of business by selling for the same price....not charging $40 for a blu-ray in a country where $10 a day is a good wage....most stores don't even bother having large movie and movie sections unless they're bootleg.\n\nAs for stealing and reverse engineering.......it's just much, much easier to hire ex-engineers from a competitor. Always pay your engineers/I.T./Developers well.....outsource those jobs and don't be surprised when your foreign competitors offer them a sweet Thailand Vacation and corner office. \n\n\nUSA also uses prison labor.....infact it's an incentive for good behavior and seen as a way to reintroduce them into society! I wish we had more prison labor...might actually give them all job skills to use outside of prison. I doubt China sends prisoners abroad for labor....Plenty of willing Chinese and Indians who aren't convicts are first in line to work abroad. ",
"Because it is sometimes less costly (to you) to just let them produce your stuff for their local market. You can sue 10 factories that clone your product and some possibly infringe on your brand/trademark as well, but by the time all the 10 court rulings came out forcing them to cease the infringing operations, there will be another 10 factories that are already pumping out your product clones to meet the market demand. As long as there's a demand for your product, there will be someone somewhere who makes them to fulfill the market demand. You stop that someone; there will be someone else. It's money. If you have so much money to waste, you could sue endlessly and they will at most try to change the cosmetics of the clones, and subsequently, the court may let them loose [Daewoo Matiz vs Chery QQ, Honda CRV vs Laibao SRV].\n\nIf you use Alibaba to source items from China, you will see that there are just TOO MANY factories that make product clones. Many times they even list the product clones with the OEM brand, but when you place an order, \"THK\" brand becomes \"Lingshui\" on the invoice.",
"Where to start? Its a very complex issue.\n\nFirst: its not really China that gets away with stealing copyrighted material. In order to join the WTO, the central government had to adapt a patent system up to european and american standarts. It is possible to patent something in China and there is are many instances of that happening in the past. A taiwanese patent troll keeping ipads out of mainland China for many years is good example (_URL_0_).\n\nHowever, there are a lot of chinese companies getting away with it.\nFirst, you should distinguish between patents and IP (intellectual property). Patents are only one kind of IP.\n\nAs I said before, it is possible to gain a patent in China and enforce it. However, one of the reasons why chinese companies steal stuff is that a lot of international companies fail to take the necessary measures. If you want to do business in China you should get an expert. Somebody from China, somebody you can trust. Believe it or not, a lot of international companies don't do so. That's why chinese companies get away with stealing: those international companies don't properly protect their patents, but just trust their partners in China. So when their IP gets stolen, they won't have chinese law on their side. A good example is an english speaking business man signing a contract in english and chinese. If you do this, and the chinese version is different to the english version you're fucked, as the chinese government will only accept the chinese version. And instead of saying that your precious IP stays with you, it might say the opposite. Good trick, right?(_URL_1_).\n\nFor other IP it might vary, but in general there is a problem of enforcement in China. Like those street vendors selling dvds and books in every city and on the internet. That's something you have to fight on the local level, so naturally there is some places where it works better, and some places where it doesn't work at all.\n\nIf you want to know more, I'd recommend this article:\n_URL_2_\nits pretty much ELI5, starting from zero and with a lot of interesting cases. I wasted hours on that blog...",
"It all follows the same rule: If you are powerful enough, nobody can force you to do something you don't like to do. \nThat's why the US is getting away with grave human rights abuses and war crimes.",
"They get away with it in the same way the US gets away with blatantly ignoring UN directives, because they can",
"1. Imagine this is six hundred years ago. We have property. It's land and cows and textiles. I tell you - you know what? We should transfer that type of right to ideas. Do you know how fucking stupid that sounds? Intellectual property is a relatively new idea, all told. And the US ignored it for a lot of its early history - copies of European books, stealing British machinery.\n\n2. Patents are territorial. That means they are only granted for the countries they apply for. You know how minimum wage is different in different places? It's like that. \n\n3. We have some international agreements on how we can get patent rights abroad. Paris Convention, Patent Cooperation Treaty. There's no such think as an international patent, the same way there's no such thing as an international drinking age. Please, tell me more about how you want to enforce our laws in other countries. \n\n4. A lot of patents are bad anyway. You give patents out for the things that are new, useful, and not obvious. Sometimes the PTO is in a rush and hands it out when they don't deserve it. That's why we have lawyers duke it out. \n\n5. You sounds like you come from a place of hostility, rather than actually wanting an answer. It would probably help you learn more if you started from \"Why do X?\" than \"I hate China.\" Seriously. Taking a neutral approach means that you can absorb more information rather than looking for information to confirm your own biases. Assuming that you want to learn, of course. If not, you can probably keep doing what you're doing. \n\nTL,DR: National sovereignty. For five-year-old? My house, my rules.",
"Just a slight tangent: China has a first to file system and it is incredibly complicated. Trademarks for shoes will not work for toys, or games, or shirts. Of course being written in Mandarin and with different cultural idiosyncrasies make it considerably difficult for westerners to grapple agains trademark/copyright infringement.\n\nHere's one of the more famous Ferrari cases:\n_URL_1_\n\nSource: _URL_0_ Not my own, but I'm a frequent reader.",
"I lived in China two years and had the pleasure of visiting plenty of these manufacturing shops in Guangzhou that blatantly rip off trademark / patented products. You just need to be good friends with the right people and they're more than happy to take you on a tour of it all.\n\nI'd say the best way to describe it is a mutual \"Let's get rich together\" kind of shared thinking in the local communities of Chinese.\n\nThe police generally don't care to enforce it until the ripping off / copyright / trademark violations gets so bad that the Chinese government gets involved and orders the police to go fix the problem (since the police are paid to do so). The police get their memo and they'll \"accidentally\" forward that memo on to all the infringing manuf. plants a few days before the police go investigate... The police go on the daily News along with a little rampage shutting down all the infringing manuf. plants for a few weeks and confiscating fake products (mostly just garbage/left over materials on the floor of the factories that the workers were too lazy to clean up). They come and clean all the garbage off the floors of the factory, load it into police trucks as \"evidence\" and leave. Leaving no garbage behind but leaving all the manuf. equipment in the factory without so much as a fingerprint.. It's practically a janitorial service. \n\n Immediately after that the police write up their reports about how successful they were at accomplishing their jobs, how many tons of goods were ceased and destroyed (yes, they are really destroyed with evidence to prove it for foreign governments / foreign companies / chinese government / local media / foreign media / etc).\n\nImmediately after that, deals between the manuf. plants and the police are made under the table (blatant bribery) and those shops that were shut down are now back up and running again at full production within a week or two and the police just turn their backs to it. So the police got paid by the government to shut down the shops and then they get paid again by the factories to open up again. If you run one of these factories and you don't pay the police after you get \"shut down\" there's a good chance that factory might get a follow up visit and have more goods confiscated but the goods end up \"disappearing\" after they're loaded onto the police vehicles. You will get endless follow up visits with disappearing goods until you pay the police off properly.\n\nI know a lot of people in the USA will jump up and down talking about how terrible it is and how bad the corruption and bribery is in China.. That was my reaction as an American before I came to China.. But they really have no concept of how poor some of these Chinese people are.. I'm not only talking about the factory workers, but I'm also talking about those police officers that also often come from the very deep depths of poverty. \n\nA lot of police officers in China make far less than the guy flipping burgers at your local McDonalds.. Just keep that in mind.\n\nAt the very core of all of it.. If you look deep down at it.. You will see local communities doing what they can to make sure they can come home with a decent paycheck so they can feed their babies / family. If that means ripping off trademarks / resorting to bribery, etc. then they just go ahead and do it.\n\nSo I see a lot of people talking about WTO and all these organizations but they're completely missing what's really happening here and how these local communities are doing everything they can to bring themselves out of poverty. But the worse part is that people are missing out on seeing how well it is working at bringing Chinese out of poverty.. The average wage for Chinese factory workers has been skyrocketing and continues to do so.\n\nMy girlfriend in China can't even get high school drop-outs to work for her for less than the equivalent of $300/month. 10 years ago, you would have had thousands of people applying for a job with that kind of pay.\n",
"All I can think of is the [Top Gear episode about fake cars](_URL_0_)",
"China does do things about counterfeiting but because the problem is so big, not much of a dent has been put into it.\n\n\nAs far as the prison population... I find it a good thing that they make prisoners work when in the USA it costs $30-50k a year to take care of a prisoner.\n\nOn the other hand, when the US gives development aid, they hire locals and contribute to the economy but China just brings in their own people for free. Both are not bad strategies and I see the value in both. ",
"For the same reasons the U.S. get away with subsidizing a lot of its industries against WTO rules, the reason is who will make the U.S. to stop doing it? The most apt explanation would be \"because fuck you\".",
"Because China has the will (out of necessity) to do what it takes to prosper, while the rest of the world is spineless by comparison and spoiled or content with their status. If everything at Wal - Mart went up a buck per item because we put the squeeze on China there would be riots. Meanwhile everyone else has the advantage. If China doesn't create X many jobs a quarter they risk real revolution.",
"For the same reason the US can drone people everyday : there is no one to stop them.",
" > Also China uses its prison population as cheap labor for its construction work around the world.\n\ned\n\nAt one point so did the US. Currently it uses cheap prison labor for factory work. ",
"1. Knockoffs are cheaper, obviously. The local populace doesn't have the cash to drop on an imported brand product at the price paid in the West. That's a huge chunk of the average person's wages -- annually [46769 RMB](_URL_0_) or roughly USD 7700, and even people are saying that's skewed upward by the more affluent coastal cities.\n\n2. The government knows this and doesn't care to enforce it. Seriously, go on the streets and see the guy selling a case full of dollar DVDs or knockoff sneakers (IVIKE, etc.) 10 steps away from a cop. And China isn't the only place that does this. A lot of poorer countries like Bolivia are like this, because paying full price is a luxury the people can't afford. We hear more about China because the market is bigger, they have a larger population of rich people, the government is well off, and the economic growth rate has been something like 7% for over a decade. The US isn't going to bully Bolivia into paying what they don't have, and is trying to get something out of a trade agreement because China will buy US goods (and bonds, etc.).\n",
" > Also China uses its prison population as cheap labor\n\nso the the USA",
"Ah, this reminds me of China's love for ripping off BMW...\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf I remember correctly, BMW tried to take the Chinese manufacturer to court in their country and the court essentially ruled in their favor saying \"eh, looks nothing like a Beamer.\"",
"Penal labor does create conflict of interest issues, and I know it differs by prison and country, but to hell if I'm paying taxes so criminals can eat and sleep. If you told me I could eat, not pay rent, not have a job, have access to education I'd think you were bullshitting me and yet that's what criminals receive at the cost of some freedom."
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"http://www.chinalawblog.com/2009/07/china_oem_agreements_we_like_o.html",
"http://www.chinalawblog.com/2011/06/protecting_your_intellectual_property_in_china_part_i.html"
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|
2g6ge0 | why do people continue to live in california if scientists are fairly certain the big one will hit (with major consequences)? | Is it because people don't believe that it's such a high probability? Or is it because of denial? Or is it because they don't think it will do much damage? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g6ge0/eli5_why_do_people_continue_to_live_in_california/ | {
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"Not sure what \"hit\" you're talking about. But California is associated with fame, wealth, and luxurious lifestyles. If you want in the entertainment business, it's the best place to start. With that being said, everywhere is dangerous to live in some way. East coast is hurricanes. Most western states would be almost completely obliterates if Yellowstone were to erupt. The Midwest has tornados. \rBasically, it isn't much dangerous than anywhere else. ",
"Floods, hurricanes and tornadoes have caused far more damage (human and financial) to the south/east US than earthquakes ever have to California.\n\nSource: _URL_0_",
"Californian here.\n\nThere is no place on earth that is immune from natural disaster.\n\nIf I was going to live somewhere that might get an earthquake, I'd rather be in California than anywhere else in the world. The building codes are very strict and designed to protect structures from extremely severe earthquakes.\n\nThe last two big earthquakes killed fewer than 100 people each. The estimates for a really bad earthquake are that maybe up to 2,000 people might die. This is in a state with a population of 38 million, and to put it in perspective, 2,800 Californians die in traffic fatalities *every year*.\n\nSo no, out of all of the things I could be scared of, an earthquake is not one of them. Probably someday it will hit. Some unlucky people will die. Many more of us will have damaged homes and property, but the vast majority won't be personally affected. We'll survive and we'll rebuild, and life will go on.\n",
"Because we can prepare for earthquakes. Take a look at Japan, a country that is used to having a lot of earthquakes. Their buildings are designed to be able to withstand the force of a quake, and its actually [quite effective](_URL_1_). Same with California. They prepare for and take appropriate measures. One example of preparedness is the [Great California Shakeout](_URL_0_), which is a state-wide earthquake drill. Schools, police, fire fighters, paramedics, hospitals, companies, and regular people all participate in this drill. Everyone in California is taught what to do in an earthquake, and people and authorites are prepared and trained to handle it when it happens. \n\nWith that all being said, the other reason is that there is just too much opportunity in the state to throw it all away. California's GDP is the largest of any US state, and if it were a country it's GDP would be among the 10 ten of the world. There is simply too much money to be made in the state for eveyone to up and move away. \n\nAnd finally the truth is that even though earthquakes are scary, no body really lives in fear of them. Big earthquakes are infrequent enough that they really aren't a factor in everyday life. It really isn't a factor that people consider when choosing to live there. Life is fine, and everything goes on as normal. Hope this answers the question.",
"California is home, plus as others have mentioned there is no place free of life threatening natural disasters. Pick your poison and plan accordingly. ",
"California is home.\n\nIt's the same reason people live near Yellowstone, are still in New Orleans, or live in Tornado Alley."
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3ovwj1 | how come some faces are blurred out and some can be shown in a reality show? | Do all the people on the show have to give consent to have their faces shown on TV? I'm asking because it just seems so awkward for shows like Border Security or COPS where those people are caught doing something wrong, and the tv crew going up and asking if it's okay to have their face shown | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ovwj1/eli5_how_come_some_faces_are_blurred_out_and_some/ | {
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"Most people who have not been blurred out are specifically asked for their permission with a little money to grease their fingers. Reality shows cannot display someone's image without their consent.\n\nThe blurry ones are the guys who didn't consent."
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3eqg2f | why can't airlines save time when flying from america to europe by flying over the north pole? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eqg2f/eli5_why_cant_airlines_save_time_when_flying_from/ | {
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"They can and do.\n\n[These are called the Polar Routes and there are numerous flights.](_URL_0_)\n\nOnly specially certified and equipped airplanes can fly these routes, and only when temperatures are such that the fuel won't freeze (-40, -50 depending).\n\nAnother problem with the polar routes is the ionosphere (whatever sphere) is thinner - passengers on these flights get more cosmic and solar radiation. Which varies with atmospheric conditions so if today's radiation report says, we take the long way around.",
"They fly the most efficient route possible, while still maintaining compliance with ETOPS regulations. Often the route is as close to possible to the [great circle](_URL_1_)\n\nETOPS specifies the distance a plane can be from the nearest airport, incase of an in-flight mechanical or medical emergency. \n\nOfficially, ETOPS stands for Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards. Pilots often say it stands for Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim. \n\nFor more information about this, please see _URL_0_\n\nAlso this is most efficient route from LHR to SFO\n_URL_2_"
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3thbx0 | why is there no consensus whatsoever among health experts whether coffee is good for you or not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3thbx0/eli5_why_is_there_no_consensus_whatsoever_among/ | {
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"You can't just say something is good or bad for your health. If you drink 12 liters of water, you will most likely die. Does that mean water is bad for you? Of course not.\n\nCoffee contains huge amounts of different compounds, many of those have an effect on our body. One compound may have multiple effects - consider, for instance, how many effects caffeine has.\n\nJust to name a few, it affects your nerves, metabolism, and blood pressure. Caffeine may be used to treat low blood pressure. Then it's good. However, some people have high blood pressure, so increasing it even more by drinking coffee is not good. Also, it's impossible to find two persons that would react to a substance identically.\n\nSo, again, you cannot simply state that something is good or bad. There are just too many aspects.\n\nSource: Am taking courses on pharmacology and chemistry.\n"
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zp3th | when i have a full bladder during the night, i sometimes dream that i pee. what keeps me body from actually wetting the sheets? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zp3th/eli5_when_i_have_a_full_bladder_during_the_night/ | {
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"Im not sure why this happens but is the opposite way round for me, once I dreamt I was having a pee and I did one! ",
"Sorry, but I read \"me body\" and had to re-read the title as the Lucky Charms leprechaun.",
"I'm still not sure why it happens, but ever since trying to do a search for the answer, all of my Google-sponsored ads have been about diapers. \n\n/First World Problems",
"Practice. \nI mean, I used to actually wet the bed when I had dreams of going pee. And it was awesome until I woke up. \nNowadays, I have some subconscious part of me that, when I pee in a dream, makes sure that I don't actually do so in real life. It's something that I'm vaguely aware of, which means some part of my head knows that I'm dreaming, and to not actually pee. ",
"Both nocturnal penile tumescence (morning wood) and REM atonia (a purposeful block from activating normal muscles while dreaming so that you don't sleepwalk or kick your dog or eat your pillow) prevent you from peeing the bed.",
"When you enter REM sleep (aka the time when you dream) your brain shuts down everything that is not needed.\nIt suts down your, arms, legs and bladder etc.\n\nSo if you are dreaming of running naked through a field of daisys while pe is going everywhere.\nYou will not start running around your room peeing.\n\nHowever if the part of your brain that controls these things is damaged or didn't form properly.\nThen you may sleep walk.\n\nTl;DR when you sleep your brain turns unneeded things off, like walking and peeing.",
"I asked myself the same question and the answer was simply....nothing. ",
"Whenever I'm sleeping and have to piss really bad, my dreams always prevent me from letting er rip. I'll usually find a toilet in my dream, but the bowl will be 5 feet high or something. My biggest fear is that some day I'll dream of a normal toilet and wake up pissing on my wife. ",
"This happens to me too. Fairly sure it's your brain's way of letting you know you really have to go. I have on only one occasion (out of many times) actually peed just a tiny bit and then woken up and gone \"FUCK!\" and bolted to the toilet. Most of the time I just dream about peeing oceans of water though and eventually wake up and go \"OH. So THAT'S what that was about\". ",
"Well, I DID pee when I dreamt I went at a urinal. Afterward when I took a pee IRL I always got paranoid that I wad dreaming and really pissing in my pants.",
"On topic story, but not answer: After a really good night of college drinking, I had a dream I was peeing in a urinal, when I woke up I was kneeling on my bed pissing. \n\n",
"When I dream a dream like that I'll wet my bed. Actually the two last time I wet my bed I had a dream like that.",
"I don't often have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, but when I do, my waking up to go do so is ALWAYS prefaced with a dream about me going pee. Haven't peed the bed SO far",
"gumption and moxy?",
"ITT: Dozens of redditors get tagged as 'Bedwetter\" on RES.",
"You *do* piss the bed, your mom changes your sheets before you wake up.",
"I have dreams where I need to piss really fucking bad, but in my dream I can't piss. I go looking for a different toilet, but they're all out in the open and it's embarrassing trying to piss in my dream with people watching. ",
"wait a second. If I ever DO make it to peeing in my sleep I always wet myself. Fortunately this hasn't happened in years. "
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xkqw8 | [meta] hey everyone! | **edit: link flair implemented!**
Hi guys! I'm the newest mod in ELI5.
I know I posted a self post earlier about this sub turning into an all-answers sort of sub (rather than five-year-old explanations)-- **but based on the way the community reacted, I've since figured that it makes more sense to just keep the answers coming.**
I intend to be very conservative in my moderation, and will only remove offensive or other very rule-infringing posts. Just so you guys know, I'm not out to fuck up this awesome subreddit.
****
So, now that that's out of the way, I was just wondering about aesthetics.
I did the CSS over at /r/shittypoetry. I was wondering if you guys would be interested in a CSS overhaul here. It wouldn't be as crazy as at shittypoetry-- just a nice change from what we always see on other reddits (with maybe a few minor functionality improvements). I'm totally open to suggestions!
Thanks!
anonymous123421 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xkqw8/meta_hey_everyone/ | {
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"In my opinion, subreddit styling distracts from the content. I like all of my subs to have a uniform look and feel. The default styling does a great job of emphasizing the content, which is what reddit is about.",
"A play-doh themed CSS would be cute, but I'm not sure how the entire sub would react.\n\nMy big recommendation would be to make the \"Five year old's guide to the galaxy,\" more prominent and, if you have the time, more robust. There are plenty of great responses that could be added to it, and would go a long way from us having to answer the same question multiple times.\n\nOh, and flair, we need flair!",
"Hi, anonymous123421! Thanks for all the hard work you do. I think you have the right idea for this subreddit. :)\n\nWith regards to CSS, an overhaul would be great! I think it'd be fun to have a grade school theme (chalkboard, alphabet, etc.)!",
"A few things that are less visual and more about function (let me know what you think, and feel free to add to the list):\n\n* more prominently placed Guide to the Galaxy (but not annoyingly placed)\n\n* ~~mod-appointed flair for genuine experts, a la askscience (I would not qualify, as I just rely on knowledge or use wikipedia to decipher answers)~~\n\n* link flair for specific types of questions (this could get annoying-- it would be very subtle)\n\n* RESOLVED and UNRESOLVED link flair"
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5funmv | why do guns have recoil? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5funmv/eli5_why_do_guns_have_recoil/ | {
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"Conservation of momentum / force / acceleration. For the bullet to be pushed forward, the gun must be pushed backward. The bullet is a small mass with a high acceleration, while the gun is a large mass with a smaller acceleration. ",
"Newton's 3rd Law, Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So when the bullet is propelled out of the gun with a certain amount of force, that same force is exerted by the bullet onto the gun.",
"Newtonian physics. For every action there's an equal but opposite reaction. The forces propelling the projectile down the barrel are also pushing back against you. ",
"To produce a forward force, an equal and opposite opposing force must also exist.\n\nThe explosion that propels the bullet pushes in all directions. It throws out expanding gas in all directions, shoving against everything in its path.\n\nBecause there is an entry for the bullet in the form of the chamber, some of the force is directed outward and pushes the bullet forward and out of the gun.\n\nThe rest of that force, called recoil, pushes against the gun itself away from the speeding bullet and propels the gun back into your hand and toward you with the same force it used to propel the bullet forward."
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5pxt3u | why can't the keystone pipeline go around standing rock? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pxt3u/eli5_why_cant_the_keystone_pipeline_go_around/ | {
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"Well, first off, it's DAPL that goes near Standing Rock, not Keystone XL. DAPL goes just north of the reservation right now, but if there is a leak, the water in the reservation would be affected, which the protesters want to prevent. At this point, they are going on with construction, so it will be tough to convince them to obtain permits and move it again."
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9h7g5y | body in space without a suit | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9h7g5y/eli5_body_in_space_without_a_suit/ | {
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"Vsauce did a good video on this very topic. I believe the time alive is under a minute. He goes on to explain how your blood/saliva would start to boil, then you exhale/expend all gasses and air from your body at once. I'm going to find the link and send it to you here, it's a good watch. \n\nEdit: here ya go... \n\n_URL_0_",
" > How long time would you survive in space without of a space suit?\n\nA few minutes, barring unfortunate circumstances (well, *more* unfortunate anyway) like being near a star or something.\n\n > What would kill you and why?\n\nOxygen deprivation. In the absence of an atmosphere, your lungs would actually speed this process up, as the oxygen in your blood would move across them to the lower pressure (inside your lungs, and then into space), effectively removing oxygen from you already present. You'd lose consciousness in a matter of seconds, and your brain will begin to die in ~4 minutes without oxygen.\n\nYou won't explode. The difference is 1 atmosphere (a vacuum versus what we usually experience on the surface), not several like might happen in a high pressure incident. However, in the absence of pressure, your tissues will begin to swell, as fluids migrate into them. This can result in what is called flaccid paralysis.\n\nYour blood won't boil. While it's true liquids tend to boil when exposed to a vacuum, your blood *isn't exposed to a vacuum,* but is contained within your circulatory system. This is strong enough to keep it pressurized. However, as your tissues continue to swell, you might eventually experience circulatory collapse. This would be slower, though, than suffocation itself.\n\nWater on your exposed surfaces might boil, like off your eyes, sweat on your skin, moisture in your airways. This wouldn't be *hot* mind you, it will result in *cooling* those regions, and possibly even some faint ice (that will ultimately sublimate into vapor).\n\nYou won't freeze to death for a while. A vacuum doesn't draw heat out of material very fast, in fact it's an insulator. The only way heat can leave you is as radiation from your surfaces. A cold river, on the other hand, would suck it out of you much faster.\n\n\n\n\n",
"Your body is actually pretty resilient and would hold together pretty well even in the vacuum of space. The most immediate concern is the lack of oxygen. Any air in your lungs would expand, either being exhaled or resulting in rupturing the lungs. And with no source of oxygen, you would asphyxiate. If you somehow didn't asphyxiate, another fatal concern would be the formation of air bubbles in your blood vessels leading to air embolisms that would cut off blood circulation.",
"In vacuum you could remain conscious for 5-10 seconds and the you could be saved if get back to pressure within 90 seconds. You suffocate because you have no more oxygen.\n\nWhat would happen is that the air in your mouth and lungs would be at pressure but the outside its not so it would try to escape. You sound open your mouth to let is escape that way if you did not your chest cavity would likely rupture. So the air escape from your lungs and the all oxygen that is in your blod start to escape into the empty lungs and then into space.\n\nThe reason that you can stay conscious for only a few seconds compared to if you hold your breath is that then you can use the oxygen in your lungs.\n\nIn 1971 Soyuz 11 had a valve problem and the three cosmonauts was exposed to vacuum. It landed automatically and the dead cosmonauts had dark patches on the face and trail of blood from the nose and ears.\n\nIt has also happen one time on earth in a low pressure chamber in 1966. But because the could pressurize it get a rescuer in from a intermittent pressure chamber in 30s and return to normal pressure in 60s he survived without and permanent damages, Yo can see the accident on video at _URL_0_ and hear him tell that he felt the water boil on his tongue before he fell unconscious.\n\n\nSo the problem to bee in space without a spacesuit is that you the low pressure and you would die because of lack of oxygen. Radiation or anything else would not be relevant.",
"Everyone is saying Oxygen deprivation. What if you had a pressurized helmet but your body was exposed?"
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608qzt | why do high volt chargers fry a circuit but high amps one doesn't seem to affect it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/608qzt/eli5_why_do_high_volt_chargers_fry_a_circuit_but/ | {
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"You can think about voltage and current like water in pipes. The voltage represents the water pressure pushing it forward and the current represents, well, the water's current or flow rate. Now, you can have water moving as fast as you want through those pipes, but when too much pressure builds up the pipe will burst.\n\n\n(This is why we can't run transmission line's at infinitely high voltages. They will arc and give off corona discharge, ionizing the air around them, or they will ionize and fry the insulation.)",
"The voltage rating of the charger is the amount that the charger will put out, regardless of what you attach to it.\n\nHowever current (amps) is drawn by the device. So the current rating on the charger is the max amount that it *can* provide. The device only takes as much as it wants. So if a charger says 5 Volts and 2 Amps, then it will put out 5 volts and the device can draw anywhere from 0 to 2 amps. "
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ersrrr | because fish oil is so good for you, why don’t we use it for cooking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ersrrr/eli5_because_fish_oil_is_so_good_for_you_why_dont/ | {
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"Fish oil contains high levels of omega 3 fatty acids, which your body cannot make. Cooking is a high heat process that breaks down the oils into different compounds. \n\nAlso, the amount of omega 3 your body needs is really small relative the total amount of fat you eat daily, way more than the amounts used in cooking.",
"Okay so let's take the most commonly used oil in fish oil pills which is cod liver oil. It goes rancid Superfast for one it's not exactly cheap to harvest compared to other oils and you don't need that much fish oil to have an effect on your diet",
"One very good reason in addition to the more scientific ones : it tastes like fish. Most people do not want all their food to taste like fish.",
"It tastes like rancid fish. It makes burps taste like rancid fish. It could only be used in applications similar to [real] olive oil. \n\nI don't know about you but I really wouldn't want to eat my salad if I had to dump rancid fish vinaigrette on it.",
"Fish oil is \"good\" for you because it contains relatively high amounts of omega 3 fatty acids.\n\nHowever...\n\nIt is not the only source of omega 3 fatty acids. Other oils also contain omega 3 of similar structure, like canola oil. Same with other vegetables.\n\nLastly, it is not entirely clear how beneficial and in what amounts omega 3 are.",
"PSA: if your fish oil tastes or smells rancid, it probably is. Something is wrong with the product and/or storage, and you are probably not getting the desired nutritional value. Buy a better brand or from a better vendor and remember to keep it refrigerated.",
"As others have stated, the omega 3 will break down in heat, thus removing most of the health benefits of fish oil. But also : \n\nAn important factor in cooking with oil, is where the smoke point is. This matters for both taste, and health (cancer risk!). You want to cook with oils lower than the temperature that they smoke at.\n\nThats why you don't (or shouldn't) fry in olive oil, etc, but instead use peanut oil or other oils with a high smoke point. \n\n_URL_0_",
"A good cooking oil will have a relatively high smoke point. Fish oil does not. It would smell like burning fish when you use it."
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2kruzp | why does israel insist on building settlements on lands not considered theirs and at great political cost? what internal politics drive this when the "costs" seem to be enormous? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kruzp/eli5_why_does_israel_insist_on_building/ | {
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"Short answer, they do consider the lands theirs.",
"Short answer. It doesn't cost them much politically. They do so with almost impunity",
"Our relationship with Israel is like China's relationship with North Korea. Big brother backs me so I have permission to be an asshole, because no one is going to risk the wrath of big brother.",
"The Jews as a people know very intimately that all they have is each other at the end of the day. The default position is that everyone is against them unless otherwise stated. Being criticized or dealing with the consequences of their decisions does not phase them much psychologically.",
"They are trying to create defensible borders for the eventual two state solution. If you look at the location of the settlements, many of them are strategically placed, especially surrounding Jerusalem, so that in final negotiations, they can swap some other land for the settlements, which will create a greater buffer between the Palestinian state and major Israeli population centers. Whatever the current costs politically, Israel always has its eye on longterm survival.",
"Depends on the settlements.\n\nSome are sanctioned for some of the reasons others have mentioned.\n\nOthers are started by far right groups who consider all the land there to belong to Israel, without the backing of the government. These generally build the most controversial settlements and the ones most likely to be rolled up by the Israeli military.\n\n\nDon't think of Israel as being politically monolithic, it is no more monolithic than any other country in the world. They *look* monolithic when the chips are down because that is the best way to survive."
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2frtxv | why can apex predators feel fear? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2frtxv/eli5_why_can_apex_predators_feel_fear/ | {
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"Because apex predators can still be killed or injured.",
"Even a lion needs to fear an elephant. And an elephant needs to fear a lion. ",
"Getting wounded in a fight, even one that you win, will reduce your ability to hunt and compete with uninjured same-species competitors.\n\nAdditionally, being an apex predator doesn't mean that you can kill everything or are even safe from everything, it just means that no other predator can hunt you. A lion has every reason in the world to be terrified of a pissed off elephant, hippo, or rhino.\n\nNo one likes getting bitten by a snake either. Even if you step on it's head afterwards, it'll suck later."
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f15zf8 | why do fish and sharks swim together at the aquarium won't the sharks just eat them all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f15zf8/eli5_why_do_fish_and_sharks_swim_together_at_the/ | {
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"They only kill to eat. And, killing is a lot of work. If the aquarium staff feeds them, they aren’t hungry, don’t need to kill to eat, and don’t kill.\n\nThis is true in the wild, too, but you just don’t see it.",
"Not completely certain on this one but I do know that some small fish are actually helpful to sharks by eating parasites off of them. They need each other so it's a partnership."
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1z7iuy | what is happening atomically during a nuclear explosion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z7iuy/eli5_what_is_happening_atomically_during_a/ | {
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"Fission bomb? You smash two pieces of uranium together. The uranium splits, and suddenly you have a bunch of smaller atoms which have less total energy than the original uranium had. The excess energy is converted into heat, and some of the particles split other uranium atoms to continue the chain reaction. The egregious amount of heat causes a blast wave which is the main point of the bomb.\n\nThe fusion bombs (aka hydrogen bombs) we use are hybrids. First a regular a-bomb is detonated which causes enough heat for two hydrogen atoms to fuse together. Again, the helium atom which is produced has less energy than the two hydrogen atoms which it was made of, and the excess energy is converted into heat.",
"Fission - fuel is unstable, adding a neutron to the nucleus makes it even more unstable and it breaks apart almost instantly. This breaking apart releases energy and *more neutrons* which collide with other nuclei and cause *them* to split, releasing yet more neutrons. You get the idea. Eventually (and we're talking billionths of seconds here) either all the fuel has been used up or it's been sufficiently forced apart by the explosion that the neutrons are no longer able to find the remaining fuel atoms.\n\nFusion (aka hydrogen bomb) - use the above method to create temperatures and pressures sufficient to fuse hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei like the sun does. This creates an even larger energy output than fission alone."
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2rrcjq | why do all bollywood movies have songs in them? | My roommate is trying to get me into them, but even the serious ones, like ones with a murderer and that... all of them have songs..
I don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rrcjq/eli5_why_do_all_bollywood_movies_have_songs_in/ | {
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"Indian music has a built in pecking-order, not only based on the seniority or ability of musicians but also by drawing a clear distinction between vocal and instrumental music. Vocal music is considered the highest form of music in India because the voice is God-given whereas instruments are man-made, albeit with the explicitly stated aim of trying to sound as close to the human voice as possible.\n\nAs Indian music has its roots in devotional rituals, and melody is thought to have grown out of specific religious chanting whereby individual syllables and words of sacred verses had to be recited in a strictly prescribed pitch or tone, the human voice was always revered as something that contained immense mystical properties given the ability to evoke a sense of awe in listeners and performers alike.\n\nMore crucially, although music by itself is said to carry the power to transform human hearts and help listeners connect to larger reality, vocal music has the added advantage of being able to verbalise a given emotion whether as direct praise of God or other deities or saints or as an expression of a specific human sentiment or emotion. Many good vocal compositions carefully match the given poetic sentiment to the actual emotional aspect of the raag in which that poetry is composed. Some compositions have such strong lyrical connotations that even when they’re played as purely instrumental versions, the original lyrics, although un-sung, appear to be at the forefront of the performance.\n\nIt’s worth noting that while vocals are considered superior to all other instruments, (for the reasons given above), there is no particular hierarchy within the array of instruments and all whether string, (vina, sarod, sitar) wind (flute, shehnai, etc.) or struck-string (santoor), are considered equal with the further distinction that instruments which can produce melody are, on the whole, considered superior to percussion instruments. Percussion solos are a very recent phenomenon in Indian music and percussion’s traditional role has always been to play “second fiddle” to a vocalist or instrumental soloist.\n\nBut where newcomers to Indian music are concerned, the exact reverse order seems to apply in terms of relating to a new and strange musical tradition. They are, generally, first attracted by rhythm (always easier to understand), secondly by melody in its instrumental variety and only very gradually do they admit to being drawn into vocal music – language always proving something of a barrier. Even so, one of the most phenomenally successful vocalists of our time, the late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, (performer of qawwali – the music of South Asian Sufis or Islamic mystics which is heavily text-led) sang with such a dynamic and charismatic confidence that a very large number of those who packed the concert halls for his performances around the world were unperturbed by not knowing the language(s) of his songs – a clear case of music being able to transcend language",
"This is like asking why anime is all cartoony looking, or why heavy metal music uses electric guitars.",
"Hollywood movies all used to have songs in them too. If you have Netflix you should watch some old movies. I'd suggest Beach Blanket Bingo, any of the Dean Martin, Bing Crosby or Elvis Presley movies. (Not because they are particularly outstanding, but because they give you an introduction to some history of the movie industry. That being said, there are a lot of old movies that I love...)\n\nThe genre has some expectations. I seem to recall at least one movie without music in it, and I don't remember enjoying it much.",
"Indian here. Bollywood movie basically have songs in them because the movie makers want the people to come watch the movie. Some people only go for the songs in the movie rather than the story. "
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3xk825 | how to use a combination of tor and a vpn to download torrents safely/anonymously | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xk825/eli5_how_to_use_a_combination_of_tor_and_a_vpn_to/ | {
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"Any decent VPN will be good enough for torrenting. You only need both if you're doing stuff that'll get the government's attention, which torrents will not accomplish. ",
"I know this is off topic but, these two hosts are die hard log clearers and fast as hell compared to other VPN host. They also protect you downloading:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Tor is _not_ good for torrenting. You can do it, but without getting into the technical details, the way torrents work means that Tor does not give you any anonymity, because it uses a kind of web traffic that Tor does not know how to make anonymous. Also, even if you do hack it to work, it slows the network down something fierce, so don't be that guy.",
"[You don't use tor for torrents](_URL_0_). It's not designed for that purpose. All you need is a VPN service that does not record traffic data."
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3sag5f | why are chicken eggs usually sold in 6s and 12s? | I've always wondered why eggs were sold in pack of 6 and 12, but not 4, 5, 3, or 10? It just seems like an oddly large number of eggs to sell at once. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sag5f/eli5_why_are_chicken_eggs_usually_sold_in_6s_and/ | {
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"Dozens are a very common number of items for a great variety of trades due to their ability to be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6.\n\nI'm not sure what you are using eggs for, but it is very easy for many people to plow through a dozen eggs in a few days. I can't remember the last time I had eggs go bad. For people who use them less frequently, it is not uncommon to be able to buy six or four eggs at a time. Buying less than that seems like it would be uneconomical for stores to attempt.",
"Eggs need to be packed carefully because they are relatively fragile. So you can't have a heaping pile of eggs and choose the ones you want to put in a bag, like with apples or cherries. A dozen used to be a typical unit of account for all sorts of different objects... you would typically buy eggs in dozens, rolls of bread in dozens, etc. A dozen was such a common unit that people who wanted to buy a *huge* amount of something would often buy a dozen dozens, or 144... and the English word which originally meant \"a large number\", gross, now is used to mean twelve dozen. The \"dozen\" was useful, as others say, because if after buying a dozen of something from a vendor you want to split it up into equal portions, it is easily divided into halves, thirds, quarters, or sixths. To people who didn't necessarily write a lot or do written arithmetic, this was vastly more useful than buying things in 10s, 100s, or 1000s... which is how we tend to do things today.\n\nAlso, you can go through 12 eggs very quickly if you cook or bake a lot, even for just one or two people -- but if you do use the eggs slowly, they'll actually keep for a very long time.",
"As a chickenfarmer we usually stack them in layers of 30 (5*Rows of 6) (You stack those layers by rotating them 90° and putting them on top of each other) Those layers of 30 can then easily be divided in packs of 6/10/12"
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2tsvg1 | i understand trading stocks, but what is trading bonds? how can there be a market based on loans (bonds)? what are you investing in? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tsvg1/eli5_i_understand_trading_stocks_but_what_is/ | {
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"I am the King of Rasfertia, and I say to the financial world, \"If you pay me a dollar, I'll repay it at 3% interest for 5 years -- I'm only selling 300 dollars with this promise.\n\nIf you think Rasfertia will be around in 5 years time, and still be taking in tax revenue, speeding tickets, things like that, you say, \"Hmm. Rasfertia's promising 3%, and I can only get 1% from my savings account. I think I'll un-fund my savings account by 100 dollars, and buy me some of those Rasfertia bonds!\"\n\nThat help?\n",
"The language used to create the bonds is specifically designed to make them \"transferable\" to a new owner.\n\nGiven that, there can be a market in them by just doing it. The same way pretty much everything else happens. You want you trade me your marble for my marble? Well, then do it.\n\nWhat you are investing in is their obligation to pay you money in the future.",
"Bonds trade because the remaining value of the bond payments goes down over time, and because fluctuations in interest rates and likelihood of payback change over time.\n\nLet's say you buy a corporate bond issued by XYZ Co. for $1000 that pays 20% interest in a year, or $1200 total in 12 monthly $100 payments. But the company's big new product is a flop and there are rumors they may go bankrupt. So the likelihood of getting the full payout is reduced. Six months in, you may be willing to sell your bond for $400 to recoup what you can rather than risk them going bust and stopping their payments short of paying out the full $600 still owed. Somebody else is willing to take the bet that they can/will pay.\n\nAlso, as interest rates fluctuate, the value somebody's willing to pay will fluctuate. If a bond has a 5% interest rate and the going rate for interest is only 1% somebody might be willing to pay more than the face value left, getting an effective 3% interest rate.",
"Suppose I have a company and I need some money. So I get out a pen and a piece of paper and write on it, \"I will pay the holder of this piece of paper $100 on January 26, 2016. -- /u/white_nerdy, President of Vice\" This is called a \"bond\", it's basically an IOU.\n\nThen I sell that piece of paper to Alice for $90. I get money in my pocket today, but I have to pay back more money later.\n\nNow suppose Alice needs some money in six months. She might try asking me for an early payment, but I would be perfectly within my rights to tell her to go away and leave me alone, since the paper says I don't have to pay until January. But if Alice wants the money now, she can sell the paper to someone. For example, you might offer to buy it for $95; you'll get $100 from me in six more months, so this is a good deal for both of you -- Alice gets some money right away, and you get to make $5.\n\nYou (or Alice) is ultimately betting in my ability to make good on my $100 promise. If my business plan is solid and things go well, you get your $100 on schedule. If business is bad, I may be unable to pay and you get less than you were promised, or nothing at all. You can take my company to court and force it to pay -- in the worst case, you can get a court order to liquidate the company's bank accounts, land, buildings, furniture, equipment, etc. -- but if the total proceeds of the sale are less than the total of what I owe to everybody I owe, somebody's going to end up SOL, and it might be you (depending on the fine print in the various deals and whatever the court decides).\n\nA \"bond market\" is simply a place where lots of people can go to easily buy and sell IOU's from different companies.\n\nHow much the bond sells for in the market represents the market's collective judgment of how much they trust me to make good on my promise. This could be based partly on my reputation, but it should also be based on an analysis of my financial health and how I plan to make enough money to fulfill my promise.\n\nIf companies in my industry have a 5% chance of going bankrupt in a year [1], and you buy bonds from 20 companies like me, on average you'll make at least $1900 from those 20 bonds, even if the 20th guy goes bust. So if you pay $90 each -- $1800 total -- you will (on average) make a $100 profit.\n\n[1] Risk modeling is roughly coming up with both the 5% number and *correlation coefficient*. This is a fancy of saying, it's tempting to treat this experiment as paying $90 for a chance to win $100 if a fair 20-sided die (dice) rolls a number other than 1 -- a simple, elegant model which is fairly easy to solve. On average in 20 rolls, you'll see 1 a single time, occasionally 0, 2, or 3 times by luck, but rolling 10 or more ones is quite extreme.\n\nOf course, in the real world, you can have recession, terrorism, war, hurricanes, etc. which make a lot of companies or people financially unstable all at the same time. And when they're unable to pay, anyone who holds their bonds will also be in trouble, especially if they made their investments based on the simple mathematical model that underestimates the risk of this kind of extreme event in the real world.\n\nThis kind of modeling problem was one of the causes of the global financial crisis at the end of the last decade.\n"
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3vez78 | why do people want to live forever? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vez78/eli5_why_do_people_want_to_live_forever/ | {
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"Because we can't ever imagine a situation where we would want to die. Life is great and awesome and preferable to the nothingness that awaits us. Why would I want it to end?",
"It is less about eternity, and more about being the one who gets to choose when the ride ends.",
"Most people can not imagine the tedious reality of immortality. Therefore it is preferably to the fear of death after an inconsequential existence. ",
"I don't so much have a fear of the nothingness associated with death, but I'm excited about the future of technology. I want to see where we will be at 100, 200, 500, etc... Years from now. ",
"Why wouldn't you? Dying is the absence of ego, you don't exist anymore. Why would anyone want cease?"
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63h02n | why would you choose a trebuchet over a catapult? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63h02n/eli5_why_would_you_choose_a_trebuchet_over_a/ | {
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"A trebuchet is a better kind of catapult, it can throw the object farther. Why would you choose a less optimal catapult?",
"A trebuchet is capable of hurling heavier weights a longer distance as it doesn't rely upon the elasticity of materials but rather weight and gravity. However they are often considered to be larger and to be harder to move and quickly reload.",
"Speaking from personal experience, back when I was in high school, we had to design and build a catapult for physics class. My classmate and I built a trebuchet(which is still technically a catapult). We went for the trebuchet mostly because it was easy to build(just a pole on a pivot with a weight on the end) vs a catapult(which would have required finding a material that would be strong enough and finding a way to mount it). So yeah, I chose a trebuchet because it was easier to build than a catapult.",
"By \"catapult\", I assume you mean a device where a wooden length is bent back to gather force to hurl a stone. \n\nThe upper limit of the force you can gather for this device (which thus sets your upper bounds for range and weight of projectile) is a function of the tensile strength of your \"bending arm\". With a fixed maximum force, that means you have a set maximum range. \n\nYou're also stressing your \"bending arm\" in the ordinary process of use, which means each use carries the risk of partial to catastrophic failure with the arm breaking at some point. \n\nThe trebuchet gathers force through gravity and a lever-arm. The weigh-bearing basket is the limiting factor on how much gravitational energy can be stored, with the lever-arm determining the final energy released. Thus, it's possible to generate a **lot** more energy, for greater range, heavier projectiles, or both. \n\nThe trebuchet has its own risk of failure, but it's most likely to fail after the shot is released. It also has a longer \"reload\" time, as it's necessary to unload the basket, reset the arm, and then reload the basket. ",
"ELI5: why do people care so much about this question?",
"But is it in relation to Civ?"
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1sr79h | why is it we can we send a robot outside of our solar system, and exploring the surface of an entirely different planet, but the deepest oceans are unknown to us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sr79h/eli5_why_is_it_we_can_we_send_a_robot_outside_of/ | {
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"Space is empty. You're dealing with vaccum. \n\nThe ocean is full of water. Water crushes shit. ",
"The problem with the ocean depths is pressure - for the same reason we can't explore completely the depths of Jupiter, our technology at this point isn't able to withstand the substantial pressure of the ocean depths",
"No one has ever sent a probe to a planet outside of our Solar System. They've only been looked at through telescopes. \n\nProbes have been sent to planets in our solar system.\n\nThings don't have to be that strong to withstand 1 less atmospheric pressure. They do have to be strong to withstand the absolute crushing pressure of the bottom of the ocean.",
"The pressure difference between the vacuum of space the surface of the earth is about 1000 millibars, also known as 1 standard atmophere. The pressure difference between the surface of the Earth and the deepest part of the ocean is about a thousand times greater than that.\n\nIt's literally a thousand times easier to build something that'll survive being in space that it is to build something that'll survive being on the bottom of the ocean."
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bfotoz | why are people now so much taller than they were hundreds of years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfotoz/eli5_why_are_people_now_so_much_taller_than_they/ | {
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"Generally speaking, it's access to better nutrition and healthcare. \n\n\nThe human body needs to have a good supply of nutrients at certain key points in life (ex. puberty) to grow properly. Children in poverty-stricken areas without the same access exhibit stunted growth. As we can assume, people hundreds of years ago didn't have the same food choices we have today in the same way as the poor kids.",
"The main factor is nutrition lets us grow to our full potential, in the past people rarely got enough to eat, today it's the opposite, people eat too much. Hygiene and health is another, the body can focus on growing instead of fighting off disease.\n\nFinally hormones and pseudo hormones in our environment and food might help boost growth.",
"Better nutrition. Better understanding of pregnancy and providing enough for unborn babies. Also I believe that babies can develop differently based on if the mother is in duress during pregnancy, and there’s less to stress about today. For example, worrying about not having enough food isn’t a thought for a lot of Americans, or dying of cold weather. \n\nAll around better conditions that simply don’t inhibit the growth of children.",
"Human height has stayed roughly the same for most of our history, and the increase is relatively recent. It's mostly due to better nutrition and better standards of living.\n\nEven today we can see that poorer people without access to healthy food are on average shorter than their more well-off peers. \n\nThere is a genetic limit on how tall we can grow, so we won't keep growing forever. In fact we have probably already hit this ceiling today.\n\nIn short, there's a range of height that the average human can reach and thanks to good food, today we have very nearly maximized that range.",
"Mostly diet. People have access to much better quality and calorie dense foods then they used to.",
"The key word is famine. \nIf you experience malnutrition as a child you will be shorter than you would otherwise be. From a biological standpoint it's a sane choice. You'll use less energy during the period of starvation, and you'll also develop less bodymass in an environment where starvation is a strong possibility. \n\n\nAs such human average height has always varied depending on climate and how well the population was able to feed itself. During the height of the middle-ages and the medieval warm period people were not much shorter than we are today. A few centimenters, but that's expected in a society where food is such a central issue that 90% of the population has to be involved in food production. No refrigeration or advanced techniques for preserving foodstuffs also meant that during the winters the food was frequently of lower quality than it is today. \nThe shortest people have been in known history was during the \"Little ice age\" a period during the 17th and 18th century where the summers were short, the winters were harsh and Europe was frequently ravaged by war and famine. It's in this period that humans are 10-15cm shorter than the modern man, giving rise to the myth of \"how much taller we are than our ancestors\", when in reality for most of history the different is just 3-5cm compared to the modern average.",
"You can still see this today, if you look at a picture of a North Korean and a South Koran person they are related in many cases. The person from South Korea is much taller because of the better quality of nutrition and health care.",
"Better nutrition. My family were peasants in the Ukraine. My great grandfather was 5'2 (his name was Benyumin der Kleiner, or Benjamin the Short). My grandfather was 5'6, my father was 5'10. I'm first generation American and I'm 6'2. That's 4 inches a generation.\n\nIf course, there is still family variability. My uncle was 5'8 and his sons are all over 6 feet, but yeah... better nutrition.",
"One aspect of it (in addition to nutrition) is selective breeding.\n\nWomen tend to prefer taller men over very short men. So the genetics continue on.",
"People used to be much larger in the hunter gatherer days. After they started farming size decreased due to fewer nutrients on diets. Now we are returning to our former larger selves as access to nutrients have increased.",
"It depends on where you’re from. If you’re European or Scandinavian you generally would have a lot more protein as they relied on usually seal flesh or fish. If you were south Asian or East Asian you would have generally had a diet of rice.\nCarbohydrates give energy but not much else for growth etc. Now we have a large range of nutrients in our food so we can grow a lot bigger and taller",
"Because we have better food and healthcare. This makes sure our body can put all the energy needed into growth, because we have all the building blocks (food) and no distracting events (illnesses) that cost extra energy.\n\nSource: am archaeologist specialised in human bone and did my thesis on the growth trends in the Netherlands from medieval times until now.",
"Short answer : food and quality of life.\nLong answer... You'll actually notice that people weren't as short as we imagine during most of history. There was a higher range of heights because of more disparity in nutrient access (regionally and over centuries, trends of famine or times of plenty), but average size wasn't *thaaaaat* much lower in the middle ages and Renaissance than it is today - *however*, the Industrial Revolution era saw a noticeable shortening of a large portion of the population, which lost access to a lot of food (they stopped being peasants, basically, which is actually worse), worked in worse conditions... Generally much lower quality of life and health, resulting in short height.\n\nThis paper is not the one I was thinking of, but it illustrates what I'm talking about : _URL_0_",
"The easiest current example for this is comparing North and South Korea. Both are internally homogeneous populations which were separated by an arbitrary line. The only notable difference between them is that one of them is now wealthy and lives on a nutrient rich diet, while the other population lives like they're in the 1800s on a sustenance diet.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAs a result, North Koreans are estimated to be 3-8 inches shorter than South Koreans on average. [source](_URL_0_)\n\nSo yes, nutrition plays a big role.",
"ELI5: Nutrition is part of the reason people grow taller now, but pooping in the toilet is another part. When people don't bury their poop, children get sick from bacteria and parasites which makes them grow less tall.\n\n\n\nELIPHD: Nutrition is the largest factor in height difference over the last hundred years, but open defecation is another very important factor which I haven't seen mentioned here. The human immune system adapts in childhood depending on environment. In areas where open defecation is common (e.g. rural India) children's immune systems take so much energy fighting off infection that it stunts their grow significantly. The difference in open defecation practices and population density explain the height difference between parts of rural rural India and rural Africa where nutrition is similarly poor.1\n\nInterestingly, the practice of open defecation was only stopped in the southern United States fairly recently due to a Rockefeller study on the difference between the southern and northern state's productivity.2 It was found that the cause of the productivity difference was anemia due to hookworm infections which are spread by open defecation. Hookworm is a significant cause of stunted growth in humans, and again has to do with the immune system, but is complicated by the active relationship between the hookworm parasite and the human immune system. Hookworm can travel up to six feet from feces, and hookworm infections stopped when people started burying their feces six feet deep.\n\nOn a further tangent, the relationship between the hookworm parasite and the human immune system is a complex one that goes way back in human evolution. It turns out to be the case that hookworms actively regulate the human immune system. Stopping the practice of open defecation in the developed world has lead to the rise of allergies, asthma and immune disorders at much higher rates than in places where the practice of open defecation is still common. In some extreme cases of immune disorders some studies starting to infect patients with hookworm as a treatment.3\n\n1. _URL_0_\n2. _URL_2_\n3. _URL_1_",
"Short answer: \n\nbetter nutrition, better understanding of nutrition and better access to food\n\nLong answer: \n\nthe main factors are better nutrition, better understanding of nutrition and better access to food. Some other factors such as epigentices (i.e. The expression rate of certain genes), changes in genes in the population etc, but the main factors are better answers.\n\nSo let's start with the better nutrition point. What do we mean by better nutrition and why? Well one of the primary factors that determines height in adult life is wether you have a good diet in your childhood. By good diet and good nutrition I mean adequate amounts of protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals; I will refer to these as nutrients. Let's first define what these nutrients are: carbohydrates include starch, sugar, lactose these are your body's main fuel source and indirectly the major factor which tells our body to grow or not. Protein is well protein it's meat and plant protein like soy it's the major building block of our body and used to facilitate nearly all chemical reactions in our body. Fats are self explanatory what they but these are important for many different structural, biochemical functions in our body but mainly a good energy source. \n\nTo aid with our understanding of this further we must understand how growth occurs. The way our body controls growth (ignoring gene expression and age) is if we have an excess (or an appropriate amount) of nutrients our body will signal to grow and repair instead of breaking down our body down using it for energy which our body will do when our body has inadequate nutrients (specifically inadequate carbohydrates). So to grow our body needs an excess of energy and an excess of protein. \n\nSo why is this relevant well let's get into the point of better access to food. Across the 1900s the cost and scarcity of food in the western world has decreased for many reasons. The most important drop in food cost and scarcity is protein. Prior to the 1940s protein specifically meat was very expensive so people tended to not eat alot of it or if they did it was cheap cuts of meat. Due to many factors such as factory farms the quantity of meat produced increased dramatically which decreased the cost of meat and made meat affordable for even the working class to buy and consume frequently. This is just one possible explanation for why meat became cheaper but the point is it became cheaper and people now ate more of it. As previously mentioned adequate amounts of protein are required to grow so now that children at more protein they were able to grow more. Furthermore this made disease states such as PEM (essentially protein malnutrition) which stunts growth during childhood much less common therefore people grew taller. \nNow days most people in Western countries over consume protein and thus get more than enough protein in their diet (specifically in my country, Australia where at around ~73% of people [no I don't have US stats on the top of my head]) thus making protein nutrition during childhood quite rare, and therefore making disease states which stunt growth less common; this is also why in poorer countries people tend to be shorter. \n\nSo now for the final point a better understanding of nutrition. This is rather slef explanatory but I'll explain anyway. Alot of population and group studies have been done on nutrition and what we are supposed to have in our diet to be healthy as thus for child to grow across the 1950s till today. We have a good understanding of how much nutrients are enough to meet the needs of people's bodies. These studies are how values of nutrients which are deemed appropriate for a specific age and population are created (E.g. RDIs and AIs). So thanks to these studies the public health and medical system can better manage and influence our dietary health (E.g. The food pyramid [yes I am aware of its controversy but this is good example of a memorable public health promotion]). Furthermore we also have a better understanding of what is toxic to our bodies. Some of these toxins stunt growth in children so the fact we know more about them and have way less exposure to them will also have an impact on why we are taller. \n\nTL;DR: So we have cheaper and easier to get food and eat alot of it, we also know what we need to be healthy and thus grow so people grew taller. \n\nThese are just the major factors as mentioned before there are others such as epigentics but they are still being understood today and probably have a minor impact on the height of people today.\n\nSource: I am a Biomedical Science student who's done nutrition and public health units\n\nEDIT: sorry in advance for the essay",
"A) wealthier people have better access to food and nutrients that ensure that people gain the best possible body development\nB) it has become more economically feasible for the majority of the population to acquire nutritious food\nC) tallness is an autosomally dominant trait. (Not acute tallness, but gradual tallness over generations )\nD) human population has grown quite a bit over the past few decades. It's mostly people from decent financial backgrounds who actually make it into adulthood (and receive proper nourishment)\n\nWhen you combine all the four points, you end up with the answer to your question",
"Fun fact: some people were so small because of lack of proper diets while others were very tall even by today's standard. That's where the myths of Giants from Nordic folk tales comes from",
"What about natural selection, or is it artificial if it's done by humans?, anyways, if taller individuals are favoured and mate more, have more offspring and all that wouldn't that have a bigger impact on height than diet that hasn't got any better in the last 20 or 30 years in the developed world and yet people is taller than before?\n\nI mean, you can feed all you want a chihuahua but it isn't getting to Grteat Dane size, just because they have been selected for their size for generations, you can starve the Great Dane and it will still outgrow the well fed chihuahua.",
"I imagine 6’0 got you a right swipe in ancient times too. 2000 years of swiping right in Chad has given us more chads and fewer promethiuses",
"Evolution. Ever seen \"6'0 and over only\" on Tinder?",
"The real reason people are taller, if you have read the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is because there are more people now so he is not able to hold us all down as much so people are getting taller.",
"FSMS'm explains this perfectly. \"God\" a.k.a. The flying spaghetti monster was able to keep it's noodly appendages on all people in the past, which prevented them from growing taller. But as population grew, it wasn't able to maintain constant contact with everyone so people were able to grow taller the less noodly appendages touched them."
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1qlkzh | why is hairloss so hard to cure? | Many of my friends are at that age (late 20s) when thinning hairlines are really starting to manifest. It seems odd that with everything we know about biochemistry and genetics, a real treatment still eludes us.
First world problem jokes aside, is it a matter of economics? Or is the basic science just so complicated that it eludes us?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qlkzh/why_is_hairloss_so_hard_to_cure/ | {
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"check this out. treating hair loss and tendon damage with stem cells\n_URL_0_",
"I'm really struggling with losing my hair. I'm 31 and getting really thin on top and around my crown. It's getting to the point where I am going to need to shave it to avoid looking a little silly. \n\nSome blokes start to lose there hair and think, meh never mind, for others it can be very damaging psychologically. I dare say I am the latter. Its hard to explain, but anyone else who feels anxious about it like me will know, some days it genuinely makes me very depressed indeed. Its that feeling of losing your youth, looks and potential pulling power.... \n\nI went to my doctor here in the UK for help, he is an older man and thin, not bald on top. His response was less than helpful, he basically said 'that's life, get over it' \n\nI'm not built to be bald, I am tall, skinny and pale. With a bald head I'll look ridiculous. If I looked like Jason Statham/Vin Diesel I wouldn't care so much.\n\nI keep wishing they will find a cure, but even if they do, it doesn't sound like it would be for regrowth, just prevention. \n\n\nEDIT: I'm new to Reddit and I just realised I posted without answering the question which I think is a taboo.. Sorry\n",
"Because baldness is not a disease but a DNA programmed pattern. Almost a normal behavior.\n\nMuch much harder to correct."
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48yv5h | how did mp4 technology improve? | I remember when mp4s started becoming commonplace rather than real media files and whatnot lets say 5 years or so ago (at least in China).
I remember for the longest time that the dialogue was incredibly quiet and one had to turn up the volume almost to max. Then suddenly an action sequence would come up and end up waking the neighbours.
Why such a huge difference in the audio and when/how did audio encoding go to the normal I am use to now?
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48yv5h/eli5_how_did_mp4_technology_improve/ | {
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" > I remember for the longest time that the dialogue was incredibly quiet and one had to turn up the volume almost to max. Then suddenly an action sequence would come up and end up waking the neighbours.\n\nThis is more of a function of how the thing was made, audio-wise. People expect to be hit over the head with sound on action sequences for some reason. I guess too, it shows off the THX, positional sound, whatever too - they feel they have to hit people over the head with it.\n\nBut overall, this has nothing whatsoever to do with MP4.",
"I don't think this is related to mp4. What you're describing I can do by dynamic range compression, which is unrelated to any media format or codec and has been done since the 1990s.",
"MP4 is actually a container format. _URL_0_\n\nELI5: MP4 is a coffee can. It can have good coffee or bad coffee stored inside of it.\n\nAs time has gone on, the quality of the formats put inside the container have gotten better."
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9vnnwk | what is it that makes some glues able to stick with plastik where others won't? | At work we have different types of glue for different tasks.
We mostly use a mixture of wallpaper adhesive and some kind of dispersion (I don't know the right word in english, but in german it's '*Kunstharzdispersion*') which works great with any form of paper, however we have one glue especially for plastic and foil and it says it's **also** this kind of dispersion. I tried finding an explanation for why it works with plastic then, but got nothing. I need your help, because my vocational school teacher asked me if I could present it in class and I really want to but am not able to find the reason why it does what it does.
I really hope this is the right places to ask such things.
If needed the name of the adhesive in question is "1977 S" from Eukalin.
Our mixture is mostly "Elasta N" also from Eukalin.
But I would be glad for any simple and general explanation! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vnnwk/eli5_what_is_it_that_makes_some_glues_able_to/ | {
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"As far as I know, the glue sort of melds the plastic, so that the two peaces that have been glued together form a very strong bond! \n\nSource: Been doing a lot of model building with plastic glue! "
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4u29vu | why is it easier for non-native english speakers to sing, than to speak, with good pronunciation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u29vu/eli5_why_is_it_easier_for_nonnative_english/ | {
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"That's because we repeat the sounds we hear, instead of processing the sound from scratch. \n\nImagine speaking like drawing a horse, isn't it easier to copy one from your drawing book than drawing one from a blank piece of paper?\n\n",
"When you sing, you are forced to conform to the proper rhyme and the proper accent patterns because they are part of the song's DNA. Additionally it is easier for your brain to remember the sounds that you hear when it can relate them to another experience like pitch.",
"Hi! I'm by no means an expert, but I did a lot of choir and a capella in high school, and this is what I've gathered.\n\nWhen we sing, we use 5 main vowel sounds: ee, eh, ah oh, and oo. There are various reasons we use these, the biggest reason being that they simply sound the prettiest. However, in regular speaking English, we actually use much more (14-20 depending on dialect). These various vowel sounds are largely where you hear an accent (depending on their native language or region). By simplifying our vowels to 5, it makes it much easier to sing/understand. Infact, a common chior drill is to actually speak the words the way you intend to sing them, which is surprisingly different.\n\nGetting back to the question, these 5 vowels are largely used across many different languages. This means it is much easier to teach someone how to sing a sound they are already familiar with.\n\nYou'll start to notice pronunciation issues from a singer when their native language doesn't have a specific vowel or consonants needed. For example, the Chinese language doesn't have an 'L' sound, so a Chinese speaker who has not been trained to make the 'L' sound will mispronounced it, regardless of whether they are speaking or singing.\n\nThis phenomenon can also be observed when listening to a singer who speaks with a heavy accent, but sings without one. Some artists might try to preserve their accents through their singing, and a trained ear can pick one out, but your average Joe wouldn't notice. For example, One Direction is a British band, but sounds like any other boy band from America, Australia, or any other region. ",
"I have also found that typically it is music that the singer loves to listen to. So they know the words VERY well. Think about (at least for me, from Texas) when you are singing songs that are in Spanish (or another language you are not fluent in). You probably pronounce the words in the song very well, compared to how you would sound normally.\n\nI have a cousin who lives in the Netherlands, and she has a very thick Dutch accent when speaking English, but they (the Dutch) love American pop music, so when she sings I hear no accent and I get to hear her voice like I would hear her speaking English fluently. "
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49gx68 | why does having general anesthesia feel like you blink and you're in the recovery room when normal sleep feels like time passed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49gx68/eli5_why_does_having_general_anesthesia_feel_like/ | {
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"No one really knows. Seriously we do not understand how it works. An anaesthetised unconscious state is not like sleep at all but more like a coma, though the exact details of what happens remain a mystery so far. Obviously the parts of the brain that are responsible for creating a sense of time having passed when we sleep are also prevented from working or prevented from recording it for a while. ",
"/u/Detective-Mittens- is right, we don't know for sure. If you'd like to hear more about what we do understand and learn about the ways we try to discover more, I highly recommend listening to this podcast: _URL_0_",
"I remember the story of a lady that was put under, but felt the entire surgery. She couldn't move, but felt and heard everything that was going on. She had no way to show she was awake and in agoney as the operation took place. On the bright side for the medical team, they could work without the patient yelling or flailing about. On the dark side, the patient laid there enduring every painful slice, every movement of her internal organs, and each suture without being able to scream out to the team that she was not completely under. \n\nShe felt THAT time pass...",
"I was put under once, and I had dreams and felt like time passed. Is this common?",
"That'd be cool to torture someone by every time they blink another limb is missing until they give you the info you need. ",
"I always found that \"blink\" effect kinda weird though and it always ends up sucking. Every single time I wake up from it I feel like I need to barf and I'm so thirsty I'd drink the water out of the bottom of a dumpster that's been festering in the hot sun. \n\nThough I did make a game out of how far back from 100 I could count with the surgeon before \"click\"...I made it to 93 once... :) \n\nEDIT: Fixed a type-o.",
"how we humans experience time is subjective. i have experienced the general anesthesia \"blink\", but i've also had sleep that goes so fast i feel like i missed it. \n\nhere's a thought experiment to help explain the subjectivity: after months of wishing about it, you find out someone you like also likes you. you go on your first date and over the next week you are on an emotional high (love does that). the same week you are going through this high energy love experience your best friend is going through a break up.\n\ntwo different people, with two opposite experiences, living the same 7 day stretch. for one of you time will fly by. for the other, every minute in heartbreak is a timeless agony. but based on the movement of the sun across the sky, time itself is exactly the same for both of you.\n\nit's no different with sleep..and i would challenge the premise that \"normal sleep\" doesn't sometimes seem like it's over \"in a blink\". i have had plenty of nights where my head hit the pillow and the next thing i know the alarm is going off. i dont remember dreaming, or even moving positions. other times, i will glance at my phone and realize i've got 4 more hours to sleep but i already feel rested (yippee 4 extra hours of sleep!)\n\none other example...daylight savings time. in fall, for those of us who \"fall back\" one hour...that first day when you gain an extra hour can really mess with your perception of time. it doesn't take long to correct this...but that first day you may think it's 2pm, for example, and find it's only noon!",
"the combination of drugs used to prep you for induction cause an amnesia-like effect by creating an altered mental status, which causes you to forget (most) anything that happened up to the point of injection. afterwards, when your body has metabolized the drugs and is in the process of expelling them, you finally come out of your altered status and into normal mental status, which is where you begin to remember things again.\n\nwhereas, sleep is a normal function of the body that doesnt use chemicals or drugs to happen, so you still maintain a normal mental status\n\n(and as a surgical tech, i can tell you that you are 'awake' more than you remember. usually, we give you the cocktail in pre-op, and you stay awake all the way into the OR, and you are awake a few times in post-op before you finally 'come to')",
"When I got my tonsils removed this blew my mind. I remember my eyes feeling heavy after they injected the anaesthetic and just instantly waking up with a sore throat in a different room in a different bed. Really weird experience.",
"This doesn't match my experience with a general. The Anaesthetist attached the drug to my cannula. I got a slight rush from the tiny amount of drug that managed to get in before she injected it. Then when she injected it was like over a few seconds I got the biggest high and then asleep. When I woke I felt tired af and it took ages for me to properly \"wake up\". ",
"Even if this gets buried: Modern anesthesia is often comprised of multiple components with three main goals: Numbing the pain, putting you in a sleep like state and supressing your ability to form memories. Especially the last part is responsible for that experience of \"blinking\" and not realising time has passed.\nUsually we can form memories while sleeping (even though WE tend to forget our dreams), but special chemicals can suppress that.\nInsufficient supression of memory forming is also the Basis of most \"I woke up during surgery\" or \"I say myself, while floating above the operation\" stories. The patients don't actually wake up, but can form memories of sensory input while being under.",
"depends on the person, for instance my father and I both have a bad habit of waking up during operations. For me it feels like I shouldnt be asleep, and I know I am asleep. the beeping of the hospital equipment feels like my alarm clocks so I am always struggling to wake up every time I am under. (happened twice for me, four times for my father)",
"Possibly because during normal sleep, your consciousness keeps switching between deep sleep, REM sleep (dreaming) and shallow sleep where you can be waken up easily. During anaesthesia however you are under a permanent deep sleep (or even deeper as you do not experience any pain), so your sense of time is not existent.",
"normal sleep also seems like a blink to me. it takes a while for me to fall asleep though, but often it deels like going from turning and hoping I'll finally fall asleep right into waking up. I rarely dream(or remember it), I dreamt maybe once in the last year, or maybe it was longer ago. and sometimes when I have more trouble falling asleep I only know I eventually did fall asleep because I wake up, and waking up means I had to be asleep before that, but the only thing I experience is waking up.\n\ncan't really compare it to anesthesia though, since the only time I had that was a long time ago.",
"Umm, hi. Is something wrong with me? Sleep feels like I blink, and I wake up with no passage of time.",
"Something happened to me during my first c-section. They had a hard time with the spinal. I started throwing up, then shivering violently. The anesthesiologist couldn't give me anything to stop the shivering because he said it would affect the baby. He also said I should stay awake, that it was better for the baby. It was rough, but I hung in there till they showed me the baby. Then I asked, \"so she's out? \" just to be clear, and they said yes. I remember thinking \"that's it, I'm outta here. \" And then passing out . \n\nApparently I was awake in the recovery room, and talking normally to the doctors, but I have no memory of it. Weeks later the doctor made reference to a conversation we'd had in the recovery room and I was like, I have no memory of that whatsoever. The first thing I remember is being in my room. I do not know, but I suspect something was wrong with the anesthesia. My husband says I was as pale as the sheets, and that the anesthesiologist looked in on me several times and that he looked worried. ",
"The drugs given for anesthesia are to change your conscious state, but they are also dissociative. They put you out and don't allow your sensory perception to match your cognitive perception. Additionally they totally block short term memory while under their influence. The other thing they do is totally paralyze you. \n\nYou aren't awake, you don't know what's going on, you can't remember anything, and you can't move.",
"Anaesthesia and sleep are totally different - they just look like each other, and as doctors we encourage people to think they're the same as it helps avoid people being pannicked by the idea!\nAlthough we don't really understand sleep (or anaesthesia, come to it!) - it's definitely not just 'brain off' - it's quite active, particularly during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage. Anaesthesia is much closer to an off-switch - which is why it often stops you breathing etc, at least when the anaesthetic levels are high.",
"My first time under anesthesia was strange. I had to get my wisdom teeth pulled. The nurse told me I'd fall asleep in a few minutes, next thing I know I wake up and trying to figure out when the operation is going to start. I was so confused when they told me it was already done. I felt like I could walk but they warned me to stay in the wheel chair. \n\nI wish my work days went by that fast. ",
"I don't think anyone here mentioned the anterograde amnesia that's induced with the medications given at the same time as the anesthetic. That's why you don't remember anything after you are put out.",
"Based on the comments I might be alone here, but I feel like a normal nights sleep is just a blink and then I'm in the shower getting ready for work. ",
"There was this one time I laid down in bed and passed out for like 9 hours.. But really it felt like I just blinked. Weirdest feeling ever, just went through my whole day thinking it can't be real. ",
"Because anesthesia stops interferes with the mechanisms in your brain responsible for storing memories, so you dont feel the time because you have no recollection of time even passing.",
"My guess is that it has something to do with environmental cues. Sleep at home typically has passage of time expectations that are often confirmed by light conditions (e.g. most people sleep when it is dark outside and wake up to daylight). Hospital environments tend to be light neutral and the process of having an operation makes the patient less time conscious (in the sense of having to check their watch or phone). ",
"While under for my knee surgery last year I remember dreaming and when I woke up I thought I had just dozed off. Very strange experience.",
"Because you wake up several times during \"normal\" sleep. When you're a kid, it is the \"blink\" kind of sleep, as you get older this changes, in particular for men. It is speculated it's a psychological trait acquired by evolution long ago, when the men needed to protect the group. (or something like that)",
"I went under general anesthesia for a surgery in the past few years and this was not my experience. After they administered the drip, I had a warm pleasant (mildly euphoric) feeling everywhere, and I started feeling sleepy. They rolled me into the operating room. I remember looking around and wondering if I would remember the operating room when I woke up (obviously I did). I also remember feeling very tired and making a decision to go ahead and fall asleep. When I woke up in the recovery room, my mouth was extremely (painfully) dry but other than that I felt just like I had just had a long, luxurious sleep in a bed made of silk and unicorn fur.\n\nI'm sure that if I had tried to stay awake, I would have conked out anyway, but I don't think it would have felt like blinking and being in the recovery room.\n\nMaybe it just depends on the kind of anesthesia they give you. I think some kinds of anesthesia (not the kind they gave me) mainly inhibit your ability to form memories. Maybe without the ability to form memories, you remember the episode as blinking and suddenly being in the recovery room.",
"I remember when I was a kid and was falling asleep, I couldn't feel the time passed after I woke up - the felt instantaneously just like the anaesthesia. Later in time I started to feel the time I was sleeping.",
"Wait, do most people feel that time has passed after they sleep? I have never felt this way, unless I had a restless night and woke up multiple times in the night",
"My dad's family has history of allergy to anesthesia... so I've had to have an appendectomy with an epidural instead of general anesthetic. Felt a bit weird being awake the whole time and them digging around inside me.",
"I think general anesthesia is the closest we can safely get to death. When I was out for my tonsillectomy, coming back to consciousness was the strangest thing. My brain had forgot to breath on its own. Autonomic bodily functions cease to continue. I remember grasping for air and screaming that I can't breath. Apparently it's not uncommon for patients to come out of anesthesia in fits of rage, anxiety, sadness, terror, etc. ",
"I'm kind of surprised that no one has put forth the obvious answer that being anesthetized is not a normal part of the sleep cycle.\n\nThe normal sleep cycle has 4 sections that culminate to your body squirting a chemical called DMT into your brain and you experience vivid hallucinations in which you may work through problems, emotions, or simply play. Dreams are what give you a sense of time during your sleep, even if you don't remember them, you still experience the time (even though it the sense of time can be warped - a 10 minute dream seeming like 30 years) and you keep that experience of time even though you lose the memory of the dream.\n\nWhen you are anesthetized you skip the first two parts of the sleep cycle and are just unconscious for some time. If you do dream, it is likely because you come out of anesthesia and your restful state induces the 4th stage of dreaming.\n\nMy response may not be 100% scientific as sleep and many processes in the brain are still not fully understood, but I feel like this is a better explanation than anything else in the thread.",
"Another question if anyone is still around: Do people who wake up from years-long comas feel like they were out for a short time?",
"So after reading this thread its pretty apparent I experience sleep a bit differently than most? To me its the same thing. I lay down and poof, its the next morning. When I had surgery it was the same experience. I'm thinking I'll mention this if I ever need surgery again.",
"When I was a kid sleeping was pretty much like blinking to me compared to now where it takes a while to fall asleep.",
"Went through major surgery, guy says this is just to relax you, he pushed it, I say hey the fucken burned ZZZzzzz, lights out, 5 hours later they wake me, it was like someone just threw a switch and lights were off, no passage of time felt at all, to be honest I felt unsettled after with such a loss of any sensory, my only answer would be it shuts off your brains function to its senses.",
"my question is if I'm having neck surgery why do I need to be naked? ",
"One of the medications used actively wipes and prevents the production of new short term memories. One of the interesting issues is whether or not a person actually is suffering greatly throughout the procedure, but is both paralyzed so we don't see, and their memory of it destroyed so they don't know.\n\nI'm surprised this was not mentioned sooner.",
"Anesthesiologist here, when you sleep naturally, your mind goes thru several different stages of sleep marked by different brain waves, specifically delta waves for deep sleep, or in REM / active dreaming, brain waves actually look like you are awake. These phases cycle over 90 minutes to 2 hours. In the anesthetic plane, brain waves are kept, purposely, in a low frequency state for as long as necessary, sometimes in burst suppression (periods of flat line). This means the brain is minimally active, which is nice since it also means the brain isn't as metabolically active and can tolerate lower blood flows without stroking. So basically, when you are sleeping your brain is still working and can tell how long time as passed, when we put you under anesthesia we turn all that stuff off. The same is basically true with blacking out from booze or sleep meds. ",
"So totally unrelated, but it's a funny story none the less. Pretty sure this is from Adam Savage on some sort of podcast. He was getting put under for some sort of dental thing, as I recall, and the anesthesia nurse was like \"want to see the best trick ever?\" and then started counting back. They apparently had gotten so good at reading people coming out of it that they were able to pick up the count right where they left off, so it seemed like \"10, 9, 8, 7, 6\" eyes close, eyes open on an entirely new room \"5, 4, 3, 2, 1, tada!\" "
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kxf83 | torrents and pirate bay and their dangers | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kxf83/eli5_torrents_and_pirate_bay_and_their_dangers/ | {
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"torrents: You can download stuff on the internet using a special program.\n\nPirate bay: A website where you can find a list of files that can be downloaded with a special program.\n\nDangers: None of the files that you download should be copyright because that is illegal, and they will put you in jail, and you will never see mummy and daddy again.",
"The safety of downloading torrents is entirely on the user, it's like a darwin award scenario. Don't download things that look shady, use adblockers on websites, don't download cracks without scanning them first. Since the Pirate Bay is public, this is riskier, but torrents in general have a built in fail safe because of the communal nature of them: download torrents with lots of seeders, and lots of comments, and from trusted uploaders, because many people support this download the less likely it's got malware attached to it. Private trackers are even better for this. Always seed if you have a good quality file.\n\nAlways scan things just in case if you can't discern between them.",
"torrents: You can download stuff on the internet using a special program.\n\nPirate bay: A website where you can find a list of files that can be downloaded with a special program.\n\nDangers: None of the files that you download should be copyright because that is illegal, and they will put you in jail, and you will never see mummy and daddy again.",
"The safety of downloading torrents is entirely on the user, it's like a darwin award scenario. Don't download things that look shady, use adblockers on websites, don't download cracks without scanning them first. Since the Pirate Bay is public, this is riskier, but torrents in general have a built in fail safe because of the communal nature of them: download torrents with lots of seeders, and lots of comments, and from trusted uploaders, because many people support this download the less likely it's got malware attached to it. Private trackers are even better for this. Always seed if you have a good quality file.\n\nAlways scan things just in case if you can't discern between them."
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ch33u9 | where did the original vinegar "mother" come from, if you need vinegar to make a "mother"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ch33u9/eli5_where_did_the_original_vinegar_mother_come/ | {
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"Vinegar is Latin for “sour wine.” All you have to do is let wine go bad under certain conditions and you’ll get a mother eventually.",
"There's nothing magical about the mother, it's just the biofilm byproduct created by acetic acid bacteria fermenting alcohol in the presence of oxygen. Acetic acid bacteria are *absolutely everywhere.* Leave some wine out for long enough in the right conditions and you'll have your own vinegar, complete with a brand new mother, because acetic acid bacteria will get in and start fermenting. Using an existing mother is just a faster way to get the process going.",
"Vinegar is wine that has spoiled and gone sour in a somewhat controlled way that leaves a product that is still safe to consume. You do not need a \"mother liquid\" to make it. Using a mother liquid simply makes the production of safe vinegar easier and you get toxic batches less often."
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6xyjta | why does customer service always say "high number of calls/emails" no matter what. how am i supposed to know when they actually are having a high number and not just saying it for seemingly no reason? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xyjta/eli5_why_does_customer_service_always_say_high/ | {
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"It's pre-emptive. They say it to prepare you for the worst, and hopefully they can get to you reasonably fast and you say, \"Oh, that wasn't actually that long.\"\n\nAs opposed to saying \"we'll get to you as soon as possible\", and if that takes a long time, you get angry.\n\nSaying high calls/e-mails means they set the bar low, which means it is easy to meet it or exceed it."
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3qt7ni | if the earth rotates at an angle, why are summers at the poles not boiling hot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qt7ni/eli5_if_the_earth_rotates_at_an_angle_why_are/ | {
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"The amount of energy from the Sun's rays that make it to the Earth depends heavily on the amount of atmosphere that the rays travel through. The more atmosphere the rays travel through, the more energy is reflected back into space. Despite the axial tilt of 23.4 degrees, the Sun's rays are only perpendicular to the Earth between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, neither are anywhere near the poles.\n\nSo each pole can have longer days, but because the Sun's rays travel through more of the atmosphere, they don't get much warmer during the summer at the North Pole, or the winter at the South Pole.",
"Because the angle isn't that extreme. The poles are still very far away from the areas closest to the sun during the rotation.",
"Because the poles are illuminated at an angle.\n\nImagine you have a ball. During the day, it's going to be illuminated the same at all times. Now consider the shadow. If the sun is directly above, it's a circular shadow that's the same size as the ball. But the lower the sun is in the sky, the bigger the shadow. The shadow is the area the light would have fallen on. A longer shadow means that the same amount of light falls on a larger area. This means less light in general, so it will be less warm.\n\nOn the poles, the sun never gets that far above the horizon. Even though it stays up 24/7 during the summer, there's still less sunlight hitting the ground than there is on the equator, which is only illuminated half the time. So the equator is warm and the poles are cold."
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5h9fxg | how do lines of code and text make up a game, or anything graphical overall? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5h9fxg/eli5_how_do_lines_of_code_and_text_make_up_a_game/ | {
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"As far as i know even photos taken with cameras are just a line of code going deep enough, how does it work?",
"Like all programming, there's layers of complexity. At the highest level, you have a line of code that tells the computer to display a certain picture at a specific time. Drilling down, the part of the code that references the picture is actually a code pointing to a location in memory in which a series of binary (ones and zeroes) is stored. \n\nIf you think of a digital image as a matrix of dots, it's easy enough to imagine how a computer encodes that. The dots are physically represented by pixels in your screen, and the ones and zeroes tell the computer whether to turn that pixel on or off. In simple black and white, that's all you need. To render color, there's a set of colored nodes that you turn on and off in each pixel that combine to create a huge array of colors. So there's just an agreed upon pattern for what the ones and zeroes tell the computer to do. Each pixel might be represented by a finite set of ones and zeroes, a handful indicating the number of the pixel, and the last three telling it whether to turn on the red, yellow and blue nodes, respectively. \n\nThere's a million ways to do this in practice, but that's the general concept."
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47pa94 | why do some people blink a ton? | I have met a handful of people who blink a ton when they are talking. Truly rapid blinking, I can't even try to flutter my eyelids the way they do, but they don't seem to notice it at all. I am very confused what it means/what causes it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47pa94/eli5_why_do_some_people_blink_a_ton/ | {
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"For me, it's just a habit/tick. I get very dry eyes as well which is another reason why I do it. It happens to a lot of people who were contact lenses.",
"For other people who can't blame contact lenses for their dry eyes, it can often be a mild form of Tourette's Syndrome (TS), where the person is compelled to move the eye or blink. \n\nMost of the times, the blinking is done without thinking about it. Other times, it's like when a fly sits on your arm. You can't just ignore it. You simply have to reach out to make it disappear. \n\nBlinking your eye is only one of the many 'weird' moves. Throwing your hair back, lifting your shoulder or other small movements are normal. People normally think of people screaming \"CUNT\" totally out of context when they hear about TS, but it actually has a lot of facets.\n\nSource: My self. If you have any of these conditions, know that it is quite common and that there is no reason to be alarmed. It is caused by a chemical unbalance in the brain. I am uncertain about any medication, but you can get an evaluation by a neurologist.",
"Have this itch in my eye like I have to tense my eyeball like you would stretch your legs or snap your fingers to release the pressure. Blink hard puts pressure on said eyeball and releases pressure~.",
"Correctly if im wrong, but It cant it also be environmental? I subconsciously blink an extreme amount around my mom or when in nervious. But not in normal situations. ",
"Honestly i read this and looked to see if people around me Blink an awful ton and i encountered this kid that must have been really fucking high with eyes as dry as the desert blinkin furiously ... made my day. thanks dude.",
"I have mild-to-moderate Tourette's Syndrome and I can confirm that the eye blinking is a thing that is both conscious and unconscious. We're aware that we're doing it, but it's very difficult sometimes to keep it under control. TS is a complicated disease and is often linked to other neurological conditions that often have similar or odd symptoms such as rapid blinking, eye movements, squinting, going cross-eyed, holding your eyes completely shut for a second or two, and many other things only concerning the eyes. \nThere are many things that can cause rapid eye blinking, and they may not even have any condition that causes them to blink rapidly, that's just the way they are, but most people are aware they are doing it, making the person the best source to ask, but only if your curiosity is really that strong, and only politely, as it can be very embarassing to some people.",
"People subconsciously blink and look away/keep eyes closed when they don't want to maintain eye contact or look at something they don't like. ",
"A lot of the current thought about blinking says that we do this as a way of processing information. One of the reasons supporting this is from watching audiences watch movies. Most of the audience will blink in unison following important parts of a movie. \n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nSo, my best guess is these people are just doing more processing of information. Or, they get a lot eye lashes in their eyes. Either or."
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f31ki5 | when doctors say that an antibiotic or some other medicine attacks certain types of cells, how can you make a drug target certain cells? would creating medicine to target cancer cells work to treat cancer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f31ki5/eli5_when_doctors_say_that_an_antibiotic_or_some/ | {
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"In order for a normal body to function cells grow and divide to create new cells. When those cells grow old in the normal cell cycle, they die off and get replaced by new healthier versions. \n\nIn a body with cancer, those old cells don’t die off and new cells just grow with no reason. Those cells grow and divide uncontrollably thus creating things like tumors. \n\nSince there are many different cells in which cancer can inhabit it is difficult to target said type of cell because it varies (I.e. bone, liver, muscle, heart, prostate, breast, etc). \n\nIt isn’t the mere fact of targeting cancer cells it is understanding what causes these cells to not die properly or understanding why they grow uncontrollably. Thus the difficulty behind why there is no cure for cancer.",
"This is the basis of modern pharmacology in general, not just with respect to infectious diseases. Penicillin, for example, targets the cell wall, literally breaking microbes apart. The problem is that some cells may be resistant to this mechanism. Some can neutralize the mechanism of the drug itself, while others may simply have no cell wall to begin with. \n\nOther antibiotics target transcription and translation (the processes that read the DNA and turn it's stored information into useable proteins for cell function). Mechanisms exist to thwart these methods of cell destruction as well. \n\nEvery drug is administered to accomplish a task, whether it is to kill foreign invading microbes, or to influence physiological functions. One could explore the mechanism of action of blood pressure medications to learn about all the different pathways available to influence blood pressure (strength of cardiac contraction, \"tightness\" of blood vessels, fluid modulation, kidney hormone influence, etc.)\n\nUnderstanding the natural processes and inner working of both the body and the infectious organism present is critical to be able to safely treat any infection",
"In order to target specific cells you have to figure out what makes them different.\n\nAntibiotics target aspects of bacteria that are fundamentally different from the cells in your body. Penicillin prevents bacteria from properly forming cell walls which hold them together so they end up popping and dying when they try to multiply. Your cells don't have cell walls so they're unaffected by this which is good!\n\nSometimes medication will be made to target cells which use certain chemicals, this can be useful for targeting the liver or pancreas.\n\nThe problem with targeting cancer cells is that they've very similar to your cells. Liver cancer cells are still mostly liver cells with most of their markers, they just now multiply significantly faster and don't stop like they're supposed to. So maybe you target fast dividing cells? Bad news, your hair and stomach lining are also fast dividing cells so whatever you do to kill off the fast dividing cancer cells (like chemo and radiation therapy) will also kill off the lining of your stomach and your hair causing you to be quite nauseous and lose your hair, plus it'll kill a percentage of all your other cells which happened to be dividing at the same time. This isn't ideal but its workable.\n\nThe further something is from a standard human cell the easier it is to target it, but the closer it is to a normal functioning cell the more difficult it becomes to target just it without taking out lots of normal cells in the process",
"Antibiotics are very effective at attacking and destroying bacteria only. Cancer cells, however, are not bacteria, they're eukaryotic cells that are nearly identic to our somatic cells in almost every aspect. Therefore, antibiotics can't be used to treat any form of cancer.",
"I work in a cancer hospital. Immunotherapy is the new thing which does target cancer cells directly. The way a doctor presenting info on it explained to me is the immunotherapy locks cancer cells in a handshake so they cant keep growing.\n\nNormal chemotherapy drugs attack all cells, prohibiting a lot of cell growth and killing other cells (which is why people get so sick during chemo). A non-medical analogy way a doctor explained chemo to me is it's running the blood through a sieve (sieve being the chemo drug).",
"Since this is ELI5 and not ELI25, let me simplify what’s already been written on this thread.\n\nMedications that kill bad cells, like bacteria, use chemical reactions to disrupt a small part of that cell that’s necessary for it to live. This can be lots of things, like poking a hole in its outer skin or preventing it from reproducing. The trick is, these medications have to attack things that exist only in the bad cells and not attack any of your own body cells. This is one of the main points of drug development.\n\nNow this is much easier with things like bacteria because they’re completely different from our own body cells. For example, the process of reproducing is completely different, so if we stop the bacteria from reproducing then there’s no chance of stopping our own cells from reproducing. What makes killing cancer cells so difficult is that cancer cells are still *your* cells. What kills these cancer cells will also kill your own good cells. Therefore, it’s much harder to make a drug select only the cancer because cancer cells and body cells are too similar for the drug to perfectly select only the bad ones. This is why people get so sick on chemo; you kill lots of your cells and hope the bad ones die first.\n\nThe answer to curing cancer is to figure out how we can select for only the cancer cells. But, these cancer cells come in so many different varieties that it’s incredibly difficult to make something that can kill all of them, while not killing every other cell in your body."
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33i01r | how does lung capacity increase? | Does the volume of your lungs become bigger and thus expand outward creating a bigger chest or do the cluster thingies on the inside become more efficient?
How does this work? im trying to increase my stamina and i couldn't find a solid answer | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33i01r/eli5how_does_lung_capacity_increase/ | {
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"I think there is also an effect where people learn to breathe more efficiently via aerobic exercise. ",
"As others have said, the lungs themselves don't change. It's mainly the cardiovascular system becoming more efficient. However, increasing the strength of your respiratory muscles (certain muscles in your abdomen and neck) also plays a big part. These muscles help you expand/contract your chest wall, indirectly expanding/contracting your lungs.",
"I have a question regarding this too... how come when working out or singing, they say fill your belly with air not your chest? air just goes into lungs right? what is going on?",
"The maximum volume of air held in side your lung cannot change (I.e., total lung capacity). The key adaptation that improves your stamina is found within the cardiovascular system, namely the heart. This makes sense as studies have shown your cardiac output is the limiting factor in determining a healthy individual cardiovascular performance (stamina). Your cardiac out put is determined by your heart rate (beats per minute) x stroke volume (amount of blood ejected per beat). This gives you a cardiac output value in L/min. Since max heart rate is determined largely by your age, the only thing your body can do to increase cardiac output, and therefore stamina, is to increase your stroke volume. So with repeated training your heart muscle gets stronger (like any muscle) and you are able to pump more blood per beat, have a higher output of blood per minute, and thus more stamina as more blood can be sent to and oxygenated by the lungs. \n\nTo add, there would be no benefit in increasing lung volume to take in more oxygen in a healthy individual. Your blood does not extract 100% of the oxygen taken into the lungs and the residual oxygen is exhaled (this is why CPR works).",
"The way my band director explained it is that your lungs don't necessarily get bigger, but you learn to control your air more ",
"Lung capacity can not be increased. Instead, the reason stamina (or aerobic capacity) increases is due to a number of factors. The most important factor is the heart being able to pump an increased amount of blood to the working muscles with each heart beat. Another factor important for aerobic capacity is the activity of certain enzymes which increase the working muscle's ability to use oxygen. Movement efficiency is also an important adaptation. What this means is, basically, that your body needs less energy to run at a given speed.\n\nAll of these adaptations will come naturally when you train but running at higher intensities will yield better results. You could try to run for 4 minutes at as a high a speed as you can maintain for that time and then rest for 2 minutes. Repeat this 3 more times and do this for 3 times a week and you should see nice improvements soon. Shorter intervals at a higher pace can be used to!\n\nThere are many websites to be found with running programs, so if you're really interested I suggest you find some inspiration for a running program that you feel you can stick with. Good luck :)",
"Brass musician here. It is less about actually making your lungs bigger, and more about working to actually achieve the full volume and capacity you are capable of. Yes, your stomach, ribs, chest, and back will expand to get out of the way so the lungs can do their thing. Wind musicians do a lot of exercises to get to full capacity as often as possible, and with the least restriction for enhanced breath control. At your normal resting rate, your lungs would not need to expand to the level required for athletics, wind instruments, etc. to absorb the necessary oxygen.",
"I just finished these two skills in GTA V. I just kept my character underwater until the last second, and his lung capacity rose over time. As for stamina, just sprint a lot and eventually it will be maxed out.",
"Contrary to popular belief, training in most sports doesn't actually increase your lung capacity. This is because your lungs have a huge surface area, and isn't the limiting factor to getting oxygen into your blood (your circulatory system is). So your cardio gets better (your heart gets stronger and blood gets better at carrying oxygen), and you breathe faster when you need more air.\n\nThe exception to this is swimming, where your breathing needs to be controlled (to match your stroke), and your body is submerged in water. Because your chest is submerged in water, the muscles that pull air into your lungs have to work a little bit harder to expand your chest all the way in order to breathe. Thus, the muscles get stronger and can pull harder, increasing your actual lung capacity."
]
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5jg2op | if you stick food in a vacuum sealed chamber will it decay? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jg2op/eli5_if_you_stick_food_in_a_vacuum_sealed_chamber/ | {
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"It will still decay, just slower. The aerobic bacteria that are present in the food will die after a while, as there is no oxygen for them to grow. Some anaerobic bacteria present in the food, which don't need oxygen, will simply go about their business as usual provided that other compounds required for growth are still present.\n\nApart from bacteria spoiling the food, eventually any organic material will degrade [chemically](_URL_0_), under the influence of UV radiation for example.\n\nFood will decay eventually, no matter what the environment.",
"If you have water in a vacuum, it'll start evaporating. This is actually used to evaporate water if you don't want to heat the liquid up, for example when making juice concentrate, removing alcohol from beer, or freeze drying fruit. \n\nBut if you have a fruit that has a protective shell, for example a watermelon, it would not dry out, and could therefore start rotting from the inside. ",
"Would something like milk or yogurt (that has culture in it) still be edible? Would is spoil quicker or last longer?\n"
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_decomposition"
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||
1gu54z | why are torrents more popular than regular downloads when it comes to illegal material? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gu54z/eli5_why_are_torrents_more_popular_than_regular/ | {
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"Because a \"regular download\" has to be hosted by a server that somebody owns. If the copyright holder complains, it takes like five minutes to find out who owns it and go knock on their door. \n\nWith a torrent, there's no central distributor to go after. There's like a thousand or more people offering up little pieces all over the planet. Who do you go after?",
"Many reasons: \n\n- You can't shut down a website that hosts it, only a website that provides ways to getting to it. If the website is shutdown, the files are still available. \n\n- It's much faster, because you can download multiples parts at once\n\n- There's no \"premium\" or \"pro\" thing where you can pay for increased speeds, higher download capacity, etc...\n\n- Speeds aren't throttled/monitored",
"Can I ask a dumb question here? What do I need to be doing to make myself as reasonably safe as I can be while torrenting?",
"Lots of people have gone over why illegal content is transferred by bittorrent, but no one has mentioned that transferring files with bittorrent is a lot more efficient. \nThe person distributing the data doesn't need to scale up their internet connection to correspond to demand. Imagine thousands of people trying to download files over a 100mbit connection. You would get really crappy speeds. The bittorrent protocol spreads this over many connections. \n\nThis applies to legal data too."
]
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[],
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||
bkryze | does bursting audio too loud ruin a speaker? | also, does the speaker gets damaged by a specific type of sound? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bkryze/eli5_does_bursting_audio_too_loud_ruin_a_speaker/ | {
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"Yes, in any \"Speaker\" there are two components, the driver(s) and the amp. The driver(s) are the cones that actually move back and forth at specific frequencies to produce sound (sometimes there are multiple that allow the speaker to replicate more frequencies more accurately). The amp converts the relatively low signaling voltage into something strong enough to move the cones. When you send too much gain (volume) down the line to the amp, a few things could happen. You could make the amp work too hard to send that voltage out to the driver, this could cause it to overheat, draw too much power from the wall, or a number of other things. This can cause it to either fail outright, or go into protect, a mode that forces the gain down in order to protect itself. The second point of failure is the driver. It's effectively a coil, which is an electromagnet that pulls the cone back and forth. If you are sending too much voltage from the amp to a driver, you can cause the cone to physically move past both of it's limit, and depending on its frequency, you can do that very quickly, effectively destroying the mount that's holding the cone in place."
]
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|
1wtnb9 | why when i weigh myself before and after i go number 2, i weigh more afterwards. (serious) | This has always bothered me and I'm really curious to know the answer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wtnb9/eli5_why_when_i_weigh_myself_before_and_after_i/ | {
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"Sounds like your scale isn't giving consistent results. Measure your self three times in a row stepping off and on, do you get the exact same result each time? Is your floor smooth?",
"Is your scale electronic? They often do something that can give weird results. \n \nEarly electronic scales in bathrooms got a lot of customer complaints, because they did not give repeatable results. You could weigh yourself several times, and get a different reading each time. So the manufacturers put in a \"fix\". They had the scale remember its last couple of readings, and if a new one came along that was close to one in memory, it just displayed the one in memory (instead of the new reading). Problem solved! \n \nOf course, this is a cheat. It didn't really solve the repeatability problem, it just hid it. \n \nMy guess is that this could be causing your issue. You step on the scale, and the reading isn't quite close enough to a previous one, so it displays the new reading. The problem is that the old reading was bogus. \n \nOr, as other people have mentioned, if the scale is not on a level surface it can give varying results. And the intrinsic accuracy of a bathroom scale is usually on the order of a pound or so, unless it is a balance beam type. "
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3ztcf5 | what causes the "blaster" sound on frozen lakes and what is it called? | The best example I have is that of a cable under tension, sound [here](_URL_0_). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ztcf5/eli5_what_causes_the_blaster_sound_on_frozen/ | {
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"text": [
"It's the sound of ice cracking. The entire lake acts like a compressed spring, and when it cracks, the entire lake surface acts like a giant loudspeaker.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRWA9EUItC4"
] | [
[
"https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_6ptf6qFSdg"
]
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|
671qpe | donating to eradicate starvation in africa... will it ever work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/671qpe/eli5_donating_to_eradicate_starvation_in_africa/ | {
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"It's more because charities have to implement small localised solutions to problems that need massive infrastructure investments. Also, because these adverts often talk about 'Africa' rather than talking about specific countries it seems like there is only one problem in one place that needs solving, when Africa is a massive continent with 54 different countries that all have different problems at different times - some areas are prone to droughts, some areas are prone to civil wars and poorly functioning governments so even if a charity has eradicated poverty in one area it might just take a bad year and a crop failure to return everything to square one (and of course, many of Africa's countries are modern economies that don't actually have millions of starving children). Donating to (some) charities definitely helps people, but the advertisements that say \"for the price of a cup of coffee we can solve hunger in Africa\" are selling people a false promise to try and get donations. \n\nThere is also the massive issue that the developed nations that donate with one hand are often causing or contributing to the problem with the other: _URL_0_",
"Donating is a bad idea that makes things worse. I had a professor from Africa who really dislikes it because he says that it doesn't work and only screws over local people. Here's why: \n\n1) It's impossible to micromanage the donations to get to everyone's house. So instead you give it to the government and they decide who to distribute it to. This tends to end up with rival political parties not being fed because if they don't support the president why should the president support them? Because the president's party is not starving and the other people are, his party gets stronger and he stays in power for longer.\n\n2) It ruins farmers' income. They're just one person so they can't produce as much food as the surplus food from the entire United States, so all of a sudden food aid comes in and now they can't sell their crops because people aren't stupid and will go for the cheaper food. Most African farmers, much like North American ones, aren't rich and don't have money saved up for when this happens.\n\nThere were others but I don't remember that lecture very well. Professor did mention that investing in businesses for developing countries is better because it treats the problem rather than the symptoms by letting them develop."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2014/jul/22/africa-rescue-aid-stealing-resources"
],
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||
3v3c8e | why does pollution from china and other polluted states not drift with the westerlies to the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v3c8e/eli5_why_does_pollution_from_china_and_other/ | {
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"It does. I think I read once that something like 1/4 of San Fransisco's poor air quality comes from China. Oregon and Washington get hit, too.",
"It totally does. The pollution may be dangerous in those Chinese cities but as it blows out into the Pacific it gets dispersed into the much larger volume of air over the ocean. Your city may look big to you but each one is a small dot on the planet. The pollution is relatively small compared to the overall volume of the atmosphere. Think of the pollution as a dot of red food coloring. The atmosphere around Beijing is cubic centimeter. You drop the single red drop into the cubic centimeter container, and it will be very red because it is very concentrated. Now take that single drop of red and drop it into a cubic meter of water. The water won't even change color, the red just disappears due to being dispersed into a much larger volume.\n\nPlus, between China and North America the pollution, which is primarily particulate, is being dragged through humid ocean air. The particulates act as nucleation points for moisture, and drops of rain form on the particulates as air masses reach the dew point. Some percentage of the pollution gets scrubbed from the atmosphere as rain that falls into the ocean, taking a lot of pollutants down with the rain before it can even get here. I recall a few summers back there were terrible forest fires in Siberia and it made sunsets in the US more colorful. Volcanos do the same thing. ",
"The solution to pollution is dilution. I learned this in high school chemistry class. :)\n\nSo, as others have pointed out, some of it does reach the US, but the concentration drops so much that we don't notice it."
]
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3uadvs | why does an ipad cost $500, an ipod touch cost $200, but an iphone costs $700 (without an upgrade) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uadvs/eli5_why_does_an_ipad_cost_500_an_ipod_touch_cost/ | {
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" > An iPod touch is the same thing as an iPhone except it doesn't make calls. \n \nIt used to be, not anymore. The current iPod Touch has a 4\" 640p screen with a 800:1 contrast rario, the 6s has a 4.7\" 750p screen with a 1400:1 contrast ratio, full sRGB color gamut, and dual-domain pixels. The 6s undoubtably has a better CPU and GPU, the current iPod touch has an A8 and a seperated M8 chip while the 6s has an A9 chip with an embedded M9 chip. The current iPod touch has an 8MP rear facing camera vs the 12MP on the 6s, which also has a 5MP front-facing camera instead of 1.2MP, can do Live Photos, has phase-detection autofocus, an aperture of f2.2 vs f2.4, 4K UHD video, 1080p @ 120fps and 720fps @ 240fps, better camera software. The 6s has TouchID and Apple Pay, the iPod touch doesn't. The 6s has Bluetooth 4.2 vs 4.1 on the iPod Touch. The 6s also has a barometer. \n \nAlso, the iPod touch of course doesn't have the cellular radio, which costs money."
]
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||
32zikn | how does superman exercise and build muscle? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32zikn/eli5_how_does_superman_exercise_and_build_muscle/ | {
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"Saw something the other day how he has a weightroom with kryptonite in it so it weakens him and allows him to actually work out.. Im sure someone has a better answer",
"It depends on the universe that you are talking about. \n\nBecause of the way Kryton was, their gravitational pull was stronger and it was a harsher planet to live in, their super strength became their normal strength. Also their sun was not as strong as Earth's, so they got alot less radiation.\n\nWhen superman came to earth, firstly, our planet's gravity is lighter, which makes his Kryton strength more stronger here, and with Our sun producing more radiation, its like he is injecting ALOT of Steriods.\n\nIn Another Universe, In his castle/base, he has a red sun generation, which is his weakness. It allows the red to strain him of his super strength, so he can work out normally."
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31it33 | why do i feel physically exhausted after an argument, even if i argued calmly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31it33/eli5_why_do_i_feel_physically_exhausted_after_an/ | {
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"text": [
"Because any sort of conflict triggers the 'fight or flight' response.\n\n[Wikipedia] Fight-or-flight response - _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response"
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||
3mpn94 | why do we need to wash our fruit and vegetables before eating them? what exactly are we washing off? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mpn94/eli5why_do_we_need_to_wash_our_fruit_and/ | {
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"text": [
"Possibly salmonella. The exterior of fruits and vegetables are handled often and are normally quite dirty. Unlike a candy bar there is no wrapper and so the exterior should be cleaned well before consuming.",
"Well in america we are washing off the wax that makes it shine in the grocery store and the pesticides that keep it fresh from insects. The wax is edible but it tastes bad and the pesticides are very minimal so I just give my fruites and veggies a quick rinse",
"It also helps remove any lingering chemicals used in the growing process such as pesticides",
"It comes off with really hot water :) plus I dont entirely mind eating it sometimes. I rinse to get rid of the pesticides for the most part, and those come off easy",
"Dirt and all the stuff you can find in dirt, like bugs, germs, pesticide, and animal poop. ",
"You know how you grab fruit to check it before you buy it? And then you frequently put it back? So does everyone else. You don't know whose handled that before you bought it, and where they've been.",
"In addition to dirt (gritty salad is the worst!) washing produce can help remove some pesticide residue and bugs like salmonella and listeria. We had a listeria outbreak in Colorado a few years ago that killed more than 30 people because the operators of a cantaloupe farm didn't thoroughly wash the produce before distro."
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1smlqd | why do materials in the earths crust group together in vains? | I know that the earth has a metallic core because the heavier elements sunk down when the earth was still a giant molten ball of fire. But wouldn't the same heat and fluidity have allowed for the diffusion and fairly even spread of elements. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1smlqd/eli5_why_do_materials_in_the_earths_crust_group/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"In any given volume of molten rock in the core of the earth there is a mixture of different elements, roughly equally distributed like sugar stirred into a cup of coffee.\n\nSometimes that molten rock is cooled - usually by being injected into a volcanic system that brings it to or close to the surface.\n\nAs the rock cools, various things can happen which change it's consistency from a \"smooth blend\" to something more complex.\n\nSome materials crystallize as they cool. They clump together forming various shapes, with the clumps separating into distinct inclusions within the cooling rock.\n\nSometimes materials precipitate from the molten rock. As the temperature decreases, different materials may transition from a liquid state to a solid or gaseous state and flow to different parts of the rock mixture by gravity (the heavier things sink, the lighter things rise).\n\nThese changes can be affected by pressure, by motion, by chemical-molecular bonds and interactions, and by the expansion or contraction of the melted rock over time. Some materials transform differently under different conditions, or differently as changes in the surrounding molten rock take shorter or longer time periods to transition between various states.\n\nThese kinds of complexity is why we get so many kinds of rocks, mineral concentrations, chemical compounds, veins of metal, crystals, and other kinds of formation from a relatively simple, relatively homogenous molten rock core."
]
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1si6cg | what is the basic idea behind the concept of a "rainbow universe" and what does it mean for us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1si6cg/eli5_what_is_the_basic_idea_behind_the_concept_of/ | {
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"text": [
"The basic idea is that different frequencies of light would be affected slightly differently by gravity. The rainbow comes from just that -- looking at the color of the light as well as the effect that gravity has on it.\n\nIt would be very difficult to observe or test, though, since the effect would probably be very small. However, scientists think they could use very energetic events, like gamma ray bursts.\n\nWhat it could mean for us... we have two theories to describe the universe. At one end is Einstein's relativity, which describes very big things (planets, stars, galaxies, the universe); at the other is quantum mechanics, which describes very small things (atoms, electrons, photons, etc.) \n\nThe problem is that the two theories cannot be made to work with each other. Relativity does not apply to very small things and quantum effects disappear in very big things.\n\nThe rainbow universe hypothesis is one attempt to try to get relativity and quantum theories to connect to each other. Additionally, if this hypothesis were true, it would mean that we didn't need a \"big bang\" to create the universe, and that the universe may have always existed.\n\nAt the moment, it is only an hypothesis, and one which a lot of physicists dismiss out of hand."
]
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||
b71tbv | why would an overweight person not be able to eat as much as a skinny fit person? (read below) | Sorry the question is worded weridly. This subreddit is kinda bad about removing posts.
But, I (18 and overweight) can barely eat one normal sized meal before feeling super super full and my girlfriend (18 and super skinny/fit) can eat a larger meal and still be hungry. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b71tbv/eli5_why_would_an_overweight_person_not_be_able/ | {
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"text": [
"How much you can eat in one sitting is based on stomach size, not body size. The fact that you have a lot more fat stored around your body has nothing to do with how big your stomach is. In fact, it probably makes it harder for you to eat massive amounts at a time because your subcutaneous fat would limit your internal organ space."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
bf63v6 | why is it that i sometimes lose my complete sense of time and day after taking a nap? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bf63v6/eli5_why_is_it_that_i_sometimes_lose_my_complete/ | {
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"elbbnzv"
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"text": [
"When you sleep you go through different stages dictated by what are called alpha and theta waves. Being in certain stages of sleep will result in different levels of awareness upon waking up. I don’t remember what stages dictate what, but some involve not even being aware that you were asleep at all, and others involve not knowing where you are, what time it is, etc."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
3jpuin | why do we prefer more width over more height on screens (movies, tv's, monitors, etc.)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jpuin/eli5_why_do_we_prefer_more_width_over_more_height/ | {
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"text": [
"Our eyes naturally see in a wide screen aspect ratio so wider screens fill our vision more than square ones.",
"That's how our world is arranged: The sky and ground right beneath us are both mostly featureless, so we focus on the strip in between, where most important activity happens."
]
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[],
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||
8apnhp | humans and their ancestors didn't always have civilization to make caring for one another so easy. when/why did human babys get so useless? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8apnhp/eli5humans_and_their_ancestors_didnt_always_have/ | {
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"dx0htgu"
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"text": [
"They have been in tribes and small communities for hundreds of thousands of years. Depends how you define civilization but we have pretty much always had a group of other people to help out (at least as long as we were still considered people)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
cra0fi | ; why do pills generally need to be kept at a certain temperature? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cra0fi/eli5_why_do_pills_generally_need_to_be_kept_at_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"ex31dv7"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Heat typically accelerates the rate at which things degrade or break down, so keeping pills at a certain temperature reduces the likelihood and/or speed at which the active ingredient in your medicine breaks down and no longer does it's job.\n\nThe stability/shelf life of medicines is tested at *very* specific temperatures and humidity levels to demonstrate that they still work after a given length of time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
kjxez | - what would happen to the ocean (and the earth) if all sea life was removed from the ocean. | Talking more about the effects on the oceans level and the subsequent effects on the Earth, rather than the effects on humans themselves. (but explaining that would be cool too) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kjxez/eli5_what_would_happen_to_the_ocean_and_the_earth/ | {
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"text": [
"Plankton in the ocean are responsible for producing most of the oxygen that is created by biological processes. Without them, there will be lots more CO2 in the atmosphere. This will probably also accelerate global warming and acidify the seas a bit.\n\nAdditionally, a large part of the human population depends on sea life for protein. Without it, a lot of people would die.",
"Plankton in the ocean are responsible for producing most of the oxygen that is created by biological processes. Without them, there will be lots more CO2 in the atmosphere. This will probably also accelerate global warming and acidify the seas a bit.\n\nAdditionally, a large part of the human population depends on sea life for protein. Without it, a lot of people would die."
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9ky533 | why is the majority of education based simply upon regurgitating facts and memorizing details/formulas when nothing is gained simply from memorizing them, but rather using them in a meaningful way? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ky533/eli5_why_is_the_majority_of_education_based/ | {
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"I'm just a burnt-out college senior sitting here late at night cramming for yet another midterm and pissed that I still have to take tests, but I'm fed up with education, at least as my experience with it has been. All I'm ever asked to do in my exam-based classes is cull down everything that's been taught to a small list of points to regurgitate on demand from memory, memorize a bunch of formulas which have little value in the real world and certainly do not need to be, and *should not* (to ensure accuracy when using the complex ones that matter) be memorized to be useful. After this is said and done, nothing is lost from permanently forgetting the majority of it when it is no longer relevant to survival in the given class. So why is this the norm? I'm excluding essay-based classes. But the rest of it seems like a pointless and pathetic charade which forces us to demonstrate a very specific skill, and contributes nothing to our broader knowledge.",
"It's about building a foundation of knowledge as rote. For example, learning your times tables is not as functionally helpful as learning how to multiply in your head. But foundationally is more helpful so that you can learn other things easier.\n\nAlgebra needs to be learnt by using it, but you can't unless you understand multiplication and division which you can't understand without addition or subtraction. Which you can't understand without numeracy which you need to learn by rote.\n\nAlso many governments in the world use a standardised testing system as a way of ensuring all people get the same \"level\" of intelligence. Unfortunately these tests are on your ability to recall facts as apposed to your practical skills. And so for the schools to do well. They need you to learn things by rote."
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6wxhqg | why are there no protections against a a rich person suing a poor person? why can a company sue a person and trap him for years, making him bankrupt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wxhqg/eli5_why_are_there_no_protections_against_a_a/ | {
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"Think about it: what is the purpose of suing someone? Typically, you either want to stop them from doing something that's illegal (get an injunction), or get compensation for an illegal act (a tort) they committed against you. It wouldn't be just if a person rich person wasn't be able to do these things--their property can still be damaged, their person can be injured, their reputation can be slandered.\n\nInstead of restricting the rich plaintiff, it's the poor defendant who needs protection, and here the law does provide some remedies. For instance, if the law is clearly on one side, the court can summarily dismiss the case instead of going through a full trial. A poor defendant may not have to pay any court costs. If the law suit is frivolous (not based on any reasonable legal claim), a court can award the defendant his legal and attorney's fees. In special cases, the defendant may even be entitled to additional compensation as a punishment for the misbehavior of the plaintiff. Additionally, it is considered a professional responsibility of attorneys to participate in or to support *pro bono* programs, that provide legal assistance for free or at reduced cost to poor defendants.\n\nCertainly this system is not perfect. Not every defendant who needs *pro bono* assistance can get it in practice. But it's a preferable approach to simply taking away people's access to the courts because they're wealthy.",
"It is up to the voters in the US to decide this. They vote for the people who makes the laws that create the system. If you look at other countries this is a thing that ends up being less common. First of all there is a lot less cases you can sue over and more cases that is put through the criminal justice system instead. In the US if you hurt someone you may have to face a lawsuit from them to pay compensation, however in other countries you may face a criminal trial for your actions and may though the criminal trial be forced to pay compensation in addition to fines or jail time. And in a criminal trial you get presented with a lawyer. There is also stricter laws for insurance agencies so it is common for the insurance agency to have to pay the lawyer if you are sued. Even if you lose the case you may not have to pay the entire lawyer fee."
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29dlzi | how does a wooden sailing ship work in terms of the wheel steering it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29dlzi/eli5_how_does_a_wooden_sailing_ship_work_in_terms/ | {
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"text": [
"The wheel controls a rudder located underneath the ship. The rudder then displaces water allowing the ship to move freely within its surroundings."
]
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||
1ltdpa | what is the invisible hand idea? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ltdpa/eli5_what_is_the_invisible_hand_idea/ | {
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"In the 1700s, people were still trying to figure out how production and consumption worked and what governments should do about it. One set of ideas, now associated with a man called Adam Smith, came up with some theories which essentially said that if there was an increase in demand for a product that they would compete and push prices up, which would send a signal to producers to make more of that thing, which would drive prices back down. The 'invisible hand' was simply a personification to explain what was happening.\n\nWe take a lot of this for granted today and Adam Smith's writings have been warped and politicised quite a bit, but for the day, this was groundbreaking stuff."
]
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||
1jh7f9 | the hubble telescope | Can someone explain in simple terms how astrophysicists and astronomers can determine the distance and existence of planets/stars billions of miles away? I know the Hubble telescope takes in light which has been emitted by glowing stars but with all that power and "accuracy" how come we have a hard time determining what the surface or Pluto looks like? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jh7f9/eli5_the_hubble_telescope/ | {
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"The farther a star is, the dimmer it appears. A star's color spectrum is a good proxy for its actual brightness, so given that and it's apparent brightness (how bright it appears), we can estimate its distance. We can also see if it's moving away or towards us by examining its Doppler shift - a shift towards the \"red\" part of the spectrum indicates movement away, or an increase in wavelength. Finally, \"billions of miles\" is not very far in stellar terms :) Billions of light-years (a measure of distance) is more accurate."
]
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|
fbpdrm | why is japanese media so violent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fbpdrm/eli5why_is_japanese_media_so_violent/ | {
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"text": [
"Can't speak to the media. But their history is absolutely rife with war and being a rather aggressive neighbor."
]
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[]
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||
35ct7o | if you're standing at the south pole, can you only go north with your first step? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ct7o/eli5_if_youre_standing_at_the_south_pole_can_you/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes. In any polar coordinate system a unit move from either pole can only go in 1 direction. After that, you can turn east or west, but the first is always North in your example."
]
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[]
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||
30871y | what function do the mesh over the speaker? | Is it just for protection or something more? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30871y/eli5_what_function_do_the_mesh_over_the_speaker/ | {
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"text": [
"It stops foreign objects from passing through and damaging the speaker. Some are water resistant to an extent and some can help with sound quality by allowing soundwaves to pass freely through them.",
"Protection. It's so you don't puncture the material in the middle that vibrates to produce the sound.",
"Generally protection. Allegedly there can be sonic reasons but that may be the usual audiophile snake oil nonsense.",
"It's for protection and has been since at least the 1930s.",
"Audio engineer here.\nOnly protection and/or aesthetics.\nNothing to do with sound quality.\n"
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2k3ble | what was the incentive behind the terrorist attack in canada? | Sorry im a bit out of the loop. From the UK, been away for the week and come back to this news. Do they know who did the shooting and why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k3ble/eli5_what_was_the_incentive_behind_the_terrorist/ | {
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"An Islamic extremist was the shooter. The motive was to create terror in a peaceful society because Islam is at war with that society.",
"Its a terroristic act, they're just trying to cause unrest and fear in a society. ",
"I have no idea why this thread is being down voted."
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367frd | what advantage can a revolver give over a pistol? | Why some people keep using revolvers if a pistol has more bullets to shoot? It's just a matter of fashion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/367frd/eli5_what_advantage_can_a_revolver_give_over_a/ | {
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"I assume you mean a self-loading pistol (like a common semi-auto Glock.)\n\nOne advantage is that semi-auto weapons can be prone to jamming, whereas revolvers don't necessarily have that issue in the same way. There are many more working parts in a semi-auto than a revolver, so fewer parts to break / wear out. And because of the design, you can have a wider variety of calibers in a revolver. I've seen a revolver chambered in .357 Magnum, .45-70 Gov't, .410 bore, and many more. I haven't seen a semi-auto in those calibers.",
"Revolvers have a much simpler mechanism, and a semi-automatic is more likely to jam than a revolver.\n\nBeyond that, it's really a matter of personal preference.",
"If you have limited grip strength (like me), chambering a round in a pistol, or loading a magazine with ammo, can be difficult. Revolvers are also pretty much idiotproof, which if you're not at the range very often can be useful.",
"There is a lot less to think about. A cylinder, a hammer, a barrel, and a trigger, plus the trigger mechanism/spinning mechanism. Semi autos have gas systems to clean and more moving parts in general. This is not to say that either variation is more reliable, both should be perfectly fine if kept clean, used responsibly, and well oiled.\n\nA side note is that because of their reliance on mechanical cylinder rotation, revolvers are able to fire ammunition that has more powder (magnum ammo like the .357 or. 44). Semi autos use a gas system to chamber the next round and the high pressure from such powerful ammo unless it is built larger, and doing this defeats the purpose of having a small gun. A Desert Eagle is a great example of a oversized semi auto, and comes in .357, .44 as well as it's more famous .50 AE. ",
"A revolver is (arguably) more reliable because the cartridges (bullet + case) just sit in the cylinder as it rotates from shot to shot.\n \nIn a pistol with a stack of cartridges in a magazine, each cartridge has to be moved from the top of the mag. stack and completely into the chamber or the gun won't fire. After it is fired, the casing (usually brass) has to be ejected before the next cartridge can be chambered. There can be jams with both operations but they are almost always quick to fix. (could be fatally not quick enough if you **really** needed the gun to go boom ...)\n\nI have only had 1 failure with a revolver and it was due to the factory made ammunition - the bullet only traveled a fraction of an inch and stopped partially in the barrel and partially in the chamber. This is not a quick fix - you have to get a rod and tap the bullet back down so the cylinder can swing out. This can also happen in a pistol too.\n\nIt takes more skill to quickly reload a revolver, even using a device called a speedloader which holds a number of cartridges in the same pattern as the cylinder. \n\nPersonally, I would prefer a revolver in a very dusty or dirty environment. Also, when I go hiking/camping.\n\nThe military and police have largely switched over from revolvers to magazine fed pistols.",
"Revolvers give you a better chance of surviving Russian roulette. You can also visually verify rounds remaining in most revolvers, but please don't point the barrel at yourself to do so. \nRevolvers also don't have issues feeding low-power rounds.",
"One advantage that I have not seen mentioned yet in the thread is that a revolver is more practical if you do not want to leave the cartridge casings on the ground. \n\nFor pistols, firing a shot will expel the casings automatically and it can be a hassle to collect them. A revolver keeps the casings in the cylinder after firing."
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3dhgd2 | when a television receives no signal, why does it output that "salt and pepper" screen? | [Link](_URL_0_) for those who don't know what I'm referring to.
What causes it? Why is it black and white? Why that particular "pssh" sound? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dhgd2/eli5_when_a_television_receives_no_signal_why/ | {
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"Interference it is picking up background radiation, cosmic rays and other signals which it is attempting to sort out into a picture and failing, because there is no signal.",
"This refers to obsolete analog TV, not digital. \nMost of the noise you see and hear comes from the radio signal amplifiers in the TV. All amplifiers produce electronic noise. The more they amplify, the greater the noise. Tuners are designed to be able to pick up very strong and very weak signals, and they adjust the amplifiers automatically to give you a stable picture and sound. The weak signals need amplification by around one million times. With no signal, all you see is the noise. You can see the same type of noise on a weak signal. \n\nIt is black and white because TVs blank out color information when no color signal is received. The circuit is called the color killer. Newer TVs blank out all picture and sound when there's no signal. \n\nThe sound gives you the \"pssh\" sound for the same reason as the picture. FM radios can give you the same noise, unless they have a muting circuit (like the color killer). \n\nBTW the TV signal uses AM and the sound is FM. In the TV transmitter I maintained, the picture and sound used separate power amplifiers and were only combined so they could share a common transmitting antenna. Some FM radios could pick up TV channel 6 sound because it was just below the FM band."
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4a5yl0 | what’s the benefits of using 32-bit windows operation system over 64-bit windows operation system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a5yl0/eli5whats_the_benefits_of_using_32bit_windows/ | {
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"Marginally faster in older hardware. However the security benefits of 64bit are IMHO outweigh all.",
"Older hardware can be a pain to get 64-bit drivers. Also, old but still active CPUs might lack 64-bit instructions. 32-bit is slightly faster as well on dinosaurs.",
"64 bit Windows no longer supports 16-bit Windows applications. If you require some 16-bit apps, then you have to stick with Windows 32. This mostly applies to business with old custom apps they don't want to, or can't update.",
"most people are familiar with desktop video settings in windows. Like if you want 16.8 million colors, you need 24bit video to do it, and 256 colors only requires 8 bits, and 16 bits can encode 65,000 colors. \n\nThe bits in a CPU and a piece of software work in a similar fashion. The 64 bit operating systems can access huge amounts of memory without having to resort to tricks like paging and swap space. This allows a program to be very complex, but also very efficient. It can hold all of it's variables in memory at the same time without any tricks. It's like having a really big work area, with which to do your work. \n\nA 32bit operating system has a much smaller size of addressable memory and work space. This is regardless of how much ram the system has. In order to have very large working memory pools the system has to divide the memory up into pages because it can't keep track of it all at once because you can only encode so many positions with 32 bits of data. The larger the working memory space in bit width, the more it can handle at once without swapping and such. \n\nThen at the CPU level you have 32 and 64bit processors, but this is usually referring to the width of the CPU bus. The bus is like a highway that loads data into and out of the CPU. Having 64 lanes of traffic lets you move more at once than 32 lanes of traffic. The MHZ speed of the CPU is more like a speed limit. If you have 32 lanes, but the speed limit is 1000mph then you can move a good amount of cars, but a 64 lane highway can move the same amount with a 500mph speed limit, so you get more from it. You can move massive amounts of data at once the wider the path into and out of the processor. \n\nThen there are other lanes like to memory or the PCIx bus, and memory controllers, and chipset bridges etc. ",
"There really is no advantage to 32bit over 64bit beyond 16bit application support, but you'd be hard pressed to find a 16bit application out in the wild anymore. \n\nWe've also reached a point where even low end PCs on the market have more RAM than a 32bit OS can address."
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e4t54c | why do screens shown on television (like the scoreboard of a football game) appear to constantly flash on the television but not with the naked eye? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e4t54c/eli5_why_do_screens_shown_on_television_like_the/ | {
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"These screens are made up of LEDs. The LEDs each require a driver circuit to make them light up. But to save costs, many LEDs share the same driver circuit. But since the driver can only drive one LED at a time, the driver quickly switches between LEDs. This happens way too fast for us to see at normal speed. However when they show a slow motion replay on TV we can now see the flashing as the driver circuits switch which Leads they are driving.",
"What you see on a screen is not fluid movement, but a series of static images. The screen will show one image, then replace that with another image.\n\nWhen a screen is being recorded by a camera, the camera is also taking a series of images. If the two sets sync up right (or wrong), some of the images that the camera records will be \"in between\" the images being shown on the screen (either dimmer, blurry or black depending on variables such as make and model).\n\nBecause of that variation, the final image you see will not be consistant, resulting in that on/off flash or flicker.",
"The screens don't display an image constantly they refresh many times a second. Think of the flip books kids make that have a stick figure in a slightly different picture on each page. When flipped more quickly the motion looks more fluid. Screens work similarly. They repaint the image over and over. \n\n cameras similarly have a rate at which they capture images. The camera rate and the screen refresh rate aren't the in sync with each other so you see periods where the screen is dark or only partly painted in. That causes the flicker. \n\nYou might have seen similar phenomenon when a strobe light is illuminating a moving person and they appear to move in a jerky interrupted fashion. You're only seeing some of the motion and missing other parts. \n\nTo the human eye around 24-30 images per second looks fluid and seamless. Though with more rapid motion being captured and different screen technolgies in use, you'll see TV screens refreshing more and more rapidly to keep things looking fluid and smooth. 60-480 times per second have been common. \n\nThere are more variables at play but I hope this helps."
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43ezh6 | if our bodies can adapt to fight infections, why do we always contract colds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43ezh6/eli5_if_our_bodies_can_adapt_to_fight_infections/ | {
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"As well as viruses mutating. Antibodies only have an effect for so long. If you're sick and then you recover but your family gets sick from being in contact with you, chances are you won't get that sickness back. You stop being sick because antibodies identify what's making you sick and helps remove it. When your family is sick with your cold, the virus is still in the air but the antibodies in your system stop it from doing any damage. When everyone is okay and the air is purified by time, the antibodies kinda fizzle away/die/sleep however you wanna look at it.\n\nIf it snows, you go out and shovel. You don't keep shovelling in the summer so you put the shovel away. When it snows again the next winter, you pull out the shovel and start again.\n\n If you get a cold again, they have to reset and start over again. That's why you should get your flu shot every year, they insert a very small portion of dead influenza cells. Your body detects it, creates a protection and so that if the influenza cells come to you, they can't affect you."
]
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||
748i3w | does peeing directly into the water or on the side of the bowl keep your toilet cleaner? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/748i3w/eli5_does_peeing_directly_into_the_water_or_on/ | {
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"Side of the bowl. \n\nThe water hits it at an angle and bounces downward towards the water. \n\nWhen hitting the water it’s forced upwards. \n\nAdditionally, forget the cleaning issue. Hitting the water is disgusting, loud and horrible for anyone else within a city block to have to listen to. ",
"Side of the bowl gets rid of big splashes but you'll get a fine mist. in the water makes big droplets but i think you get somewhat less mist?\n\nsit when you pee at home and you basically don't need to worry about splash zones."
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20f0pt | how are fire drills done in skyscrapers? | Just had a fire drill at work and we walked down 4 floors worth of stairs. So how do they do it in buildings with 50 or even 100+ floors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20f0pt/eli5_how_are_fire_drills_done_in_skyscrapers/ | {
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"Our building just had a supervisor come up and demand a few people meet in the hallway at the elevators.\n\nHe described how to use the emergency stairs and phones, what not to do, how the elevators wouldn't be working, and that was it.\n\nWe are on the 15th floor of an 18 floor building.\n\nI don't know if thats universal, but I think in general they just test alarms, remind everyone of the basics steps for evacuation, and thats it.",
"This is somewhat speculation but i did recently read about 2,000 pages worth of NIST reports regarding the 9/11 attacks on the WTC.\n\nThere seemed to be a few factors to take into consideration.\n\n1. Identify the severity of the fire.\n\n A microwave fire on floor 59/120 may not be worth evacuating the entire building mainly because it *may* cause more harm than good if you have to move 30,000 people out of a building and fire fighters can't get in.\n\n2. Most buildings are designed with reduntant stairways in case of a fire (usually less fancy but still functional)\n\n3. Most skyscraper fires are fully beatable and can be contained, many people in this thread may draw their eyes back to 9/11 but that was a VERY VERY rare case in which the kinetic energy from the plane structurally compromsied the building and the fuel from the plane managed to spread between floors and ignite many fires.\n\nIn most skyscraper fires, tenants that are trapped will be able to wait until they are either overcome by smoke, burned to death or rescued by firefighters.\n\nAnd the newer a building is the better it's designed for prevent the smoke or fire death part.\n\n(i just realised you said fire *drill*, but whatever)"
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6db8du | why do carbohydrates and proteins contain 3 kcal/gram and fats contain 9 kcal/gram if they have the exact same mass but different structures? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6db8du/eli5_why_do_carbohydrates_and_proteins_contain_3/ | {
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Calories are a measurement of how much energy our body can create from these substances. Carbohydrates are less energy efficient gram for gram than fat. Also it's 4 kcal/g not 3."
]
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t6u3d | modular synthesizers | I mean [these](_URL_0_)
I know basic synthesis like FM, additive etc. where you turn knobs to set waveforms and filters and stuff.
What's the big difference to modular synthesizers? Why are they so huge with all those chords etc.? Are they something like "open synthesizers" where you have to wire everything yourself or do they work completely different? Some special functions/possibilities compared to other synths? If no, what's the appeal to them?
not sure if this would be more appropriate in /r/edmproduction or something. I though the question was a bit to general to ask it there, and well, you guys don't have a specific theme or something on here so it's probably allright :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t6u3d/eli5_modular_synthesizers/ | {
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"OHHHH\n\nWhen these huge synths came around, the technology to make them was very rough. \n\nMost of these synths could only produce one note at a time, and the sounds where created by an oscillator. This oscillator defined the basic tone for the sound, a sine wave oscillator sounds like a flute, triangle waves more like a oboe etc. \nTheses oscillators by their own, are quite boring, so to spice things up, the sounds needed to be tinker with, that's why you see all those cables. The oscillator was patched through filters that taylor the sound, filters like resonance, high pass filters, vibrato and more.\n\nSo the musician plays a key on the keyboard, the higher the note the higher the voltage (depending on the maker of the keyboard), the oscillator generates the sound depending on this voltage and then the sound is sent to through these cables to these filters to create this amazing sounds you hear form vintage synths.\n\nThese devices then evolved to be digitally controlled and FM, essentially making all these cables disappear inside a self contained box and the computer makes the route you decide for the sound.\n\nToday you can have digitally controlled analog synths, wavetable synths, physical modeling, granular synth and a lot more.\n\n\nEDIT:\nAlso:\n\nWhen you see old Genesis or Pink FLoyd or Tangerine Dream videos, you see the have a bunch of these synths... why you may ask, well, simple:\n\nTo make these sounds, you needed to spend a bunch of time patching and recalling all the settings that you want and took note in a folder, but changing them was not easy and took time, so you had 6 synths, one for each sound you wanted, and sometimes a roadie or synth tech comes and starts to change a keyboard for the next song.\n\nAlso note: Not every keyboard was monophonic (a single note at a time), polyphonic keyboards started to appear but only 2 o 3 o 5 notes per keyboard, depending on the year.\n\nAlso the Melotron: this beast was amazing. Basically you had a keyboard that was polyphonic and had samples of real intruments!!!! How? there were tape heads and loops of tape with this recordings on the back of the device. It's sound is so amazing but transporting and calibrating and maintaining it was a tough feat.",
"You understand additive synthesis - you know that you have envelope generators, oscillators, LFOs, filters & whatnot. In a \"normal\" analogue synth, all of these are pre-wired so that there's a limited number of ways they can interact. A modular synth, OTOH, is like a bunch of legos that lets you string the bits together in any way you want - even crazy ways that don't make sense.\n\nPart of the reason they're so big is because, using the old technology of the original synths, they actually *had to be big*. Part of it is that, they need to be big enough to handle and see without getting lost.",
"I'm too lazy to read the long and probably correct answer from f3rn4ndrum5, so i'll just answer anyway with a quick easy answer, because 5 year olds don't like long answers. =P\n\nA modular synthesizer is a synth with the capability to add more modulators using patch cables. If you've ever used the DAW called Reason, the Thor synthesizer is an excellent example of a modular synth. \n\nThink less keyboard and more rack-mounted gear.\n\nThe basic appeal to the modular synth was it's workability/flexibility regarding shaping your sound to the exact parameters you want.\n\nHope that helps =)"
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g3m5c0 | how do cleaning products actually work to kill germs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g3m5c0/eli5_how_do_cleaning_products_actually_work_to/ | {
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"Most cleaning works by simply washing the bacteria off the surface you are trying to clean. Things like bleach, disinfectant, alcohol wipes work by damaging the bacterial cell wall so it dies. For that you need the cleaning solution to contact the bacteria for a certain amount of time.",
"Most cells are enveloped by a phospholipid bilayer. This is a double layer of molecules with a polar head and a long fatty tail. The layers are arranged so that the polar heads are all in the middle and the fatty tails point in towards the cell and out towards the world, forming a waterproof barrier. For things like coronaviruses, the bit that makes them infectious is large proteins embedded in this outer layer.\n\nSoaps have a very similar molecular structure. They also have a long fatty tail, and a polar head. Traditional soaps were actually made from fat. When you wash, the fatty end of soaps bind to the oils on you skin, and the polar end binds to water molecules. This breaks up the fat and allows it to wash away.\n\nThe same thing happens to cells. The fatty end of soap attaches to the phospholipids enveloping the cell and mess up the structure. The cell falls apart and is washed away. This is all a very mechanical process which is why a bit of elbow grease is needed. You need to make sure that the oils/germs are thoroughly mixed with the soaps all the way down, rather than just on the surface layer.\n\nOther cleaning agents like bleaches and alcohols also generally work by attacking the outer membrane.",
"Chemical cleaners frequently work by either changing the surface pH or by introducing a compound that breaks up molecules used by bacteria or viruses. In fact changing the pH may also break up molecules but may be slower. Some other chemicals (surfactants) loosen things from surfaces so they can be rinsed away.\n\nSo if a bacteria is on a surface and you introduce bleach, the chlorine in the bleach destroys the cell wall, killing the bacteria. Chlorine can also breakup the dna/rna strands that make up a virus. These types of rapid chemical reactions can be quite quick. A change in pH is like dipping the bacteria in acid, it may be a slower reaction to eat away at the cell wall.\n\nSurfactants like soap or detergents make it easier to wash things done the drain. Soaps and detergents frequently combine things like a pH change as well. The pH of human skin is about 5.5 my homemade soap has surfactants AND a pH of 8.5. So when I was my hands the surfactants loosen dirt/grime and dead skin that contains bacteria AND it may loosen bacteria that happens to be on the surface. The running water rinses them off and down the drain. In addition, the pH on my hands changes from 5.5 to much closer to 8.5 for a while. This can kill or weaken any additional bacteria left on my hands.\n\nAs to, is it clean:\n\n1 - no cleaner is perfect, I'd never say 100% die. Different cleaners likely have different effective rates. Just water? Well how much grime is still left on your hands? Soap and water, likely the same question? So anywhere from poor (just water rinse, no scrubbing, visible grime left) to REALLY REALLY excellent (submerged clean white cloth in straight bleach for hours until cloth starts to dissolve)?\n\n2 - it only cleans if it hits a spot when cleaning the shower. Did you spray down everything? Get all the nooks in the grout? Inside any gaps in caulk? Leave it long enough? Scrub off any soap slime, dirt or other stuff bacteria could hide under and spray that area again. Or are you that guy that stretches their arm in goes squirt squirt a total of twice in random directions an mutters \"close enough\". Most of us are probably somewhere in the middle.\n\n3 - it does not have to be 100% germ free. Your body has an immune system for a reason. Is a small spot in the bottom back corner of the shower that didn't get well sprayed going to kill you instantly when you step into the shower? Nope, or if so your immune system was incredibly screwed up and breathing outside air might also be a problem. That said, showers that have a bunch of mold or mildew visible MIGHT kill you or others via an anaphylactic reaction. So yes you do need to clean your house/dishes/shower/etc. Your immune system is not Superman, it can be overpowered. So you should have a clean house but not necessarily a germaphobic house.\n\nThat help? Clear?"
]
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3y0kut | why are the biggest tech companies in america on the west coast? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3y0kut/eli5_why_are_the_biggest_tech_companies_in/ | {
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"Two reasons that I know of:\n\nOne, the simple network effect. Many early tech companies were in the area, and especially in the early days, new tech companies usually formed when a few engineers with an idea left a previous company to pursue their new idea. And they'd stick in the area because that's where all the other high tech engineers were— you want to be able to hire people.\n\nTwo, a side effect of [military spending.](_URL_0_) WWII radar research and the Manhattan Project moved an assload of smart, driven people into the general area. Then, tons of Cold War military research spending going into places like Stanford, produced a lot of tech investment.\n\nI suspect California's higher education system also has something to do with it— until relatively recently, it was possible for any resident in the top ~1/8 or so of their high school class to get a university education there, at a world-class university. (I think California schools were funded by the old Land Grant system, designed to provide a scholarship to anyone who would really be able to benefit from it.) Obviously if you have a bunch of people with good education (and without super debt) they are more likely to produce powerhouses like Silicon Valley."
]
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[
"http://www.tomshardware.com/news/secret-history-silicon-valley-gave-rise-modern-tech-giants,4713.html"
]
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||
2zlwq6 | why can a watch be made to remain accurate for years, but the second hand never be made to consistently lines up with the tick marks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zlwq6/eli5_why_can_a_watch_be_made_to_remain_accurate/ | {
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"I know this is speculation, and I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure this is to do with the error of parallax - which basically has to do with the fact that your viewing angles may not always be perfect so that you misinterpret the true location of the second hand, even if it is perfectly on the tick mark. ",
"/u/malnurtured999 gave a good answer but it could also just be your unit has a slight manufacturing defect. I own several mechanical watches and one of the less expensive ones has a defect where the diving bezel doesn't exactly line up with the ticks."
]
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[],
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3py1ev | why do so little people like history? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3py1ev/eli5why_do_so_little_people_like_history/ | {
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"I guess there's different reasons for it, my own reason is that i hate stupidly memorizing things. So school kinda ruined history for me, i just don't think it makes sense to force people to know specific dates - it's just no use to me. If i want to know those things i can just check them.\n\nThat's probably why i never felt like looking in a history book again after i finished school. If it would be only story i'd probably like it, but most of the time it just makes me memorize useless dates. Ain't nobody got time for that!",
"Good history teachers are hard to find. Rather than presenting history as a series of interconnected events, most history classes present a list of names and dates, which they then expect you to regurgitate on a test. Most people know that Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, but I would wager that very few could explain what a cotton gin actually is or why it was important."
]
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28oyel | why is female genital mutilation a thing? why did the swedish school force the procedure upon the girls? | I just don't get it. I'm probably pissing tons of MRA's off by saying it, but I can understand circumcision, there's religion and hygiene behind it. But doing the same for females? Why do they have to enact laws against that shit? Why don't schools know better than to cut peoples' kids' fucking genitals off? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the whole situation. But then again, that's why I'm posting it here! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28oyel/eli5_why_is_female_genital_mutilation_a_thing_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"cid0oda",
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"The school didn't force the students to do anything. It just happens to be attended mostly by immigrants, and many of the girls were discovered to have undergone the procedure. This mostly happens during the holidays when the parents take the girls on trips to countries where the procedure is legal to perform.",
"Why are you ok with male circumcision?"
]
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[],
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5u6z00 | if we can't control where fat is lost/gained from, how are we so symmetrical? why isn't one hand or one arm fatter than the other? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5u6z00/eli5_if_we_cant_control_where_fat_is_lostgained/ | {
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"text": [
"For the same reason.\n\nWhen your body stores fat it tries to spread it around as much as possible.",
"You can't change it intentionally but your body knows where to store fat. It doesn't ask you where to do it because it already knows which place has more fat and directs the fat to another place.",
"The mechanism that distributes fat to one arm is the same that does on the other arm. Normally there's no reason to be different. However, the way fat goes to your hip isn't the same for the fat that goes to your chest. Those are supposed to be different.\n"
]
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1qvwu4 | convergence vs divergence | Could anyone please explain to me what these terms means? I'm writing a text where I'm asked to give a characteristic of these terms. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qvwu4/eli5_convergence_vs_divergence/ | {
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"cdh1ql1"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Convergence is *converging*; coming together or meeting.\n\nDivergence is *diverging*; separating or moving apart."
]
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|
g3tcba | why do so many disney child stars lose their minds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g3tcba/eli5_why_do_so_many_disney_child_stars_lose_their/ | {
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"Because most of them are ridden into exhaustion by their parents. Parents are using the kids as meal tickets so they push them to be perfect and do everything to keep up the fame.\n\nUsually drives the kids to drinking and drugs in their late teens.\n\nIt's not just Disney stars. Look at the child beauty pageant circuit (Honey Boo Boo comes to mind).",
"Power, fame and money can corrupt a person or make them more powerful. When you are teenager, with a lot of money and bad company , it's easy to become overconfident and think like a very immature person, even worse than what they initially were. And it gets so out of control that they are filled with a lot of ego and suddenly start disrespting people who haven't achieved their level of success or have talent and skills that can match theirs so they end up doing something very silly and get misguided by everyone.",
"They don't Disney hires more child actors than any other single production company so when a child actor has problems, its more likely they've worked for Disney at some time than anyone else. In addition, there is some evidence that children (and adults) who seek the entertainment field start off with more mental problems than most."
]
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2fo8m8 | if i mistakenly step on my dog or stumble on him, then rightaway cuddle him as an "apology", will he interpret it this way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fo8m8/eli5_if_i_mistakenly_step_on_my_dog_or_stumble_on/ | {
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"text": [
"No. I think the Oatmeal did it best: \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAbout a quarter of the way down. Its' a joke, but that sums it up pretty well. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
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"http://theoatmeal.com/comics/dog_paradox"
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||
85zeck | how does nasa and other space agency’s manage to land a rover/probe on an moving asteroid? | Title. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85zeck/eli5_how_does_nasa_and_other_space_agencys_manage/ | {
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"We're really really good at intelligent computer and propulsion systems.\n\nThere's four steps to doing it.\n\nThe first is launching. Got that down quite well with multi-stage rockets.\n\nThe second is getting to the asteroid and matching its orbit. Got that down quite well with the ability to figure out where the asteroid's orbit will take it.\n\nThe third is selecting a spot to land. That can be performed by imaging the asteroid and determining a likely spot.\n\nThe final one is programming the propulsion systems on the orbiter part to drop its lander on the asteroid. With all the data you've collected so far, this is also achievable using sophisticated computer-driven propulsion systems with distance-detection measurement devices and self-correcting capability.\n\nAll of that stuff, we have now. We just need to do a lot of tweaking and testing and solid engineering to make it all work together.\n\n",
"Imagine jumping from one car to another while moving 60 miles per hour. The wind makes it a little difficult to do so in reality, but imagine that the air, therefore wind does not exist.\n\nIt would be quite simple to jump across, no issues. ",
"Others have already given the explanation, I just want to address an underlying assumption you seem to be making:\n\nYou might as well ask how people managed to land on a moving moon, i.e. our Moon. Nothing in space is standing still. Everything is moving in orbit around something else. Our sun orbits around the centre of the galaxy. Our galaxy and the local galaxy group orbit around their centre of gravity. What you want to do is make sure you orbit the centre of gravity (the Sun, in this case) at the same speed and with the same orbital parameters that the asteroid does. So it's like the car analogy that u/Xalteox made: when you're next to an asteroid at exactly the same speed, you wouldn't notice that the asteroid is moving.\n\nSo how do we get to the asteroid?\n\nVery basically (and I'll skip the launch part), you're in Earth orbit, travelling a few hundred kilometres above the surface at around 7,700 m/s - that's roughly 17,000 mph or 28,000 km/h. \n\nWe need to change our orbit so it crosses that of the asteroid. Timing is important - crossing the asteroid's orbit when it's on the other side of the sun is useless. The time where you can burn to intercept is the transfer window. Theoretically, it wouldn't matter that much, only you would need very, *very* large amounts of fuel, a much larger engine to propel the much heavier spacecraft and maybe several billions of dollars. That's not feasable, so we wait for the transfer window.\n \nOnce it comes, we burn the engine for a while until we're at such a speed that Earth's gravity can no longer pull us back around. Think of a car on a racetrack that's too fast to go around a curve and skids off the track - that's what we're trying to do here. Only our result will be that we'll change from orbiting Earth to orbiting the Sun.\n\nOnce we are at the intercept point (and hopefully we got everything right and the asteroid is also there), we burn the engines again for a while, changing our speed until our orbit of the Sun matches that of the asteroid.\n\nAnd then we do what the other posters said: use thrusters to gently manoeuvre us down to the surface.\n\nAs I said, this is the very basic version. If you want to try something like that, I'll shamelessly advise you to download the free demo version of Kerbal Space Program from Steam. Once you've become addicted to the game like most people (including me), there are mods to make it as realistic (i.e. very hard) as home simulations can be, n-body physics and all."
]
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1154bm | bright momentary reflection seen on a phone screen reflecting from a desktop lcd while scrolling. | Ok, ELI5, i just stumbled on something weird. I have a TFT monitor staring at my daily email, and i have an old smartphone turned off, in front of the screen, on my desk.
While scrolling the email, i can see the reflection on my smartphone screen - only when scrolling - as very bright, with inverted colors(white text on black background) but as soon as i stop scrolling the reflection disappears and it's barely visible.
Why is this happening and why does it get momentarily brighter ONLY when scrolling even by a tiny amount. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1154bm/eli5bright_momentary_reflection_seen_on_a_phone/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Go to r/askscience"
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|
1yxdvm | can a commercial aircraft, like a boeing 747, do a looping? | If not, why not? How about a barrel roll? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yxdvm/eli5_can_a_commercial_aircraft_like_a_boeing_747/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfom10h"
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"They can't loop in the nice circular sense. They don't have enough thrust to make it over the loop even if they start at max speed. However, if you're careful, you can get far enough over than, when you stall out, you're past vertical and can \"flop\" over to complete the loop in a rather ungrateful manner. You are extremely likely to over speed when pulling back to level. \n\nA barrel roll is no problem. 707s have done it at least twice for publicity. "
]
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|
9ji37k | how scientists landed a probe on a moving asteroid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ji37k/eli5_how_scientists_landed_a_probe_on_a_moving/ | {
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"Lots of math.\n\nThings in space move in predictable paths. If you have a good understanding of the solar system (which we do) you can very accurately predict where things will be and how fast they will be going very far into the future. Then you just need to have your probe be at the right place, and moving at the right speed to make a rendezvous. ",
"Science has gotten very good at approach trajectories.\n\nCalculating the known location and trajectory of the target object, they use math to determine the best speed and direction required to send the probe so that it arrives near the asteroid at a proper relative speed to allow landing. Then, using maneuvering thrusters and some more math, they land the probe on the asteroid."
]
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3bdwc1 | how do some insects fly so sporadically and change direction so quickly? how many g's are they under during maneuvers like that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bdwc1/eli5_how_do_some_insects_fly_so_sporadically_and/ | {
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171,
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"text": [
"What a cool question. \n \nTo start, most people could probably withstand around 9 Gs for a very short time. Then they would pass out and possibly suffer brain damage. The highest G-force ever put into a roller-coaster was around 6 Gs, but most very high G coasters are somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 Gs. \n\nSo, \n \nFleas can jump about three inches into the air. Which is around 40 times the length of their body, and they do that in around 1/1000 sec. They pull more than 100 Gs in that maneuver. \n \nDragonflies can see 360° and can execute a hairpin turn at 100 Kph. They're pulling around 25 Gs in that turn. \n \nJumping froghoppers and click beetles are probably the masters here though. A fly being knocked out of the sky by a swatter is taking around 200 Gs and that kills it. So we generally think of that as lethal for insects. Froghoppers catapult themselves about 28 inches into the air. That's about 1400 times the length of their body and in doing this they pull 400 Gs. \n \nClick beetles will generally match the froghopper. But one individual was calculated to have pulled peak brain deceleration of around 2300 Gs. in a leap. \n \nSo they can really move. ",
" > How do some insects fly so sporadically and change direction so quickly?\n\ninsects' small size make them much more subject to things like viscous forces which radically alters their aerodynamic properties. they don't even fly using conventional lift mechanics. instead, they fly though the generation of small vortices (think smoke rings). \n\n > How many g's are they under during maneuvers like that?\n\nthat's... actually fairly difficult to answer. acceleration is just change in velocity over time, but studying it for a fly would be quite the feat, I would imagine it's quite high. the reason insects can do things like spring several times their body length in a fraction of a second is because of how small they are. due to their low mass, the forces they experience (force is just mass times acceleration) are fairly low."
]
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480atf | the passage of time while sleeping. | It seriously confuses me so much. Time just goes so quickly while sleeping. I remember once as a child I was trying to fall asleep and I blinked while looking at my clock and it was suddenly morning. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/480atf/eli5_the_passage_of_time_while_sleeping/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0gmn9m"
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"The passage of time is nothing more than our ability to remember events during that time. You don't remember anything while sleeping save for a few moments dreaming.\n\nSet up your web cam and record a video. Put a clock in the background to show the passage of time. Pause recording for a bit then resume recording. Watch the video later as this video is your memory. At some point the video will jump ahead. This gap where the recording skipped is like you sleeping."
]
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|
cpyrks | why do strong weather systems break up around nuclear power plants? | I live within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant and whenever a strong weather system comes through, if you watch the radar, the red/strongest part will break up and go around the nuclear plant as it approaches. After it passes, it goes right back to how it was before it approached the plant. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cpyrks/eli5_why_do_strong_weather_systems_break_up/ | {
"a_id": [
"ewsi65g"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"We don't have a Nuclear power plant near us, but we do have a decent sized steam plant, and it seems like the strong stuff is always going around then reforms"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
7b4j47 | why underwater lighting illuminates objects underwater much better than objects above water | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7b4j47/eli5_why_underwater_lighting_illuminates_objects/ | {
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"text": [
"It’s called total internal reflection, basically the light is reflecting off the internal side of the surface of the water. \nBasically the same way fibre optics work ",
"Light bounces around under the water, and hits more things. Less light makes it out of the water to illuminate things after refraction/reflection etc."
]
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[],
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fpl9ys | why does there need to be a separate wash process for cleaning a dishwasher? why doesn’t it clean itself during a normal cycle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fpl9ys/eli5_why_does_there_need_to_be_a_separate_wash/ | {
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"text": [
"The soaps used to clean dishes can build up after many wash cycles. The dishwasher is then cleaned with a soap-removing solution. You can't wash dishes all the time with that, because it doesn't take off greasy stuff like food very well, and it costs more.",
"It really depends how heavily you load your dishwasher. A dishwasher loaded with relatively clean plates may well go its whole life without a cleaning cycle and suffer no ill effects. A dishwasher used to clean heavily soiled plates regularly may need cleaning every month. \n\nWith modern dishwashers, they use very little water and run at cooler temperatures. This means the cleaning water gets very dirty and deposits can start to form over time, particularly in all sorts of hidden locations like pipes, pumps and spray arms.\n\nAn empty/light load ran on a normal cycle will clean the dishwasher, but some hard to shift deposits may be left. The special wash cycle is hotter and more intensive to give your machine a really good clean. The special cycle may not rinse and dry properly so is not appropriate for washing dishes.",
"Because people are stupid and toss the most disgustingly unrinsed crap in their dishwashers.\n\nAs such, they need a special function to get properly clean. In most units they -super- heat the water to near boiling, and this can deal with the disgusting that builds up in them.\n\nBut I've had my dishwasher for 4 years and I've never used the cleaning cycle. Its spotless inside. Because I, like many but not all sane humans, rinse or even quickly prescrub really nasty dishes."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
5jzckw | if a person was standing in the north pole during the summer solstice, would the sun just appear to make a circle around the sky? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jzckw/eli5_if_a_person_was_standing_in_the_north_pole/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbk4c8x",
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"text": [
"Yes, thats exactly what it would look like. [Here's a video from not quite so north, but in the arctic.](_URL_0_) Far enough north (or far enough south during winter solstice) the sun never sets.\n\nHaving been to northern parts of Scotland in the summer, having the sun up at 11:00pm or later can be a little unnerving. ",
"If you're exactly at the north (or south) pole then the sun always just makes circles around the sky. Around the equinoxes it will follow the horizon around; at the summer solstice it will be 23° above the horizon; at the winter solstice it will be 23° below the horizon. You only need 18° below the horizon for \"astronomical twilight\" which is roughly as dark as the sky gets. At the poles, the sun basically rises and sets once per year. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndlQNicOeso"
],
[]
] |
||
1jpcn7 | why is generation x seen by some people as the generation that dropped the ball. | Generation X has done some remarkable things, but somehow they are seen by some as a generation of screw ups. why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jpcn7/eli5_why_is_generation_x_seen_by_some_people_as/ | {
"a_id": [
"cbgz0xz",
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"score": [
21,
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"text": [
"Because the baby boomers won't accept responsibility.",
"I think all generations have had to deal with that to some extent, but now it's their turn. \"You kids are so [negative trait here]! Why back in MY DAY...\" The same will happen to us, as it has already.",
"What is Generation X? O.O",
"Generation X were the children of the Baby Boomers. When Generation X grew up, the Baby Boomers, who made up the Woodstock generation, began to fear losing the limelight to a new group of people who were young, setting new trends, and moving popular culture in a different direction. So naturally, the Boomers sought to dismiss the up-and-comers by labeling them with an X, figuratively crossing them out.\n\nAs Generation X began to have children, the Boomers who by now were middle-age, gleefully noticed that their children could also be labeled with a letter, the one following X in the alphabet. And so they were called Generation Y, as in \"Why?\", or \"What's the point?\" It was doubly satisfying to the Boomers because they could also say they held them in so little regard that they couldn't be bothered coming up with any more original name than to use the letter following X.\n\nAs Generation Z approaches, however, trouble lurks over the horizon. If you adopt the same convention of using letters, then after Generation Z you'd either run out, or you'd have to wrap-around and call them Generation A. This is intolerable, because the letter A has positive connotations to it. For example, it represents the highest grade you can get in school.\n\nSo in preparation for this eventuality, they decided to break convention. They impressively refrained from calling Generation Y's children, Generation Z for Zilch/Zero, and called them the Millennial Generation instead. However, whether they resisted temptation, or their voices were merely drowned out -- by now the Boomers were approaching old age and their influence was quickly waning -- is disputable. I tend to think of it as Generation X and Generation Y asserting themselves and not allowing the Boomers to continue their self-absorbed and dismissive ways.\n\nPersonally, I call the Baby Boomers, \"Generation W\". As for what the W stands for, I like to think of it as the W in George W. Bush.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3fpkbk | why do countries like switzerland and new zealand have freer economies than the us? | In pretty much every list, the US is fairly far away from being at the top. How are these economies different from the US and what about them make them more free? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fpkbk/eli5_why_do_countries_like_switzerland_and_new/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctqrnfx",
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"text": [
"This presumes that \"free\" is better in some regard. It also presumes a strict definition of the word \"free\". If you mean free in the sense of less government intervention in their economy, its because countries are very very different and have very different needs.\n\nNew Zealand has 4 million people, and a very small and undiverse economy. The US has 320 million people... presumably, they have quite different needs to accommodate their people and economy.\n\ntl;dr: Countries have different needs.",
"ELI5: NZ offers a lot of stuff that the US does not in order to help its people.\n\nELI18: Our Health Care system is set up so that if you have an accident or if there is an emergency, you don't have to pay for it, same with pregnancies. It all goes under ACC and other acts and parts of government.\n\nOur IRD pays for families to have kids (dependent on your gross annual income and how many kids you have). Currently they are paying me $140 a week for being a solo father. Not to mention I am entitled to upto two tax refunds a year (my Working For Families Tax and my Income Tax). All of which has been set up by our government. There is a limit though, after a certain amount of money you earn a year, you will start to receive less and there is a cap. It also takes into account de facto relationships, and marriages.\n\nI could also go out and get an accommodation supplement because of how much I pay for rent and my circumstances etc. That would be $60 a week at most.\n\nIf I need a lawyer and can't afford one (or I am eligible), I can get Legal Aid which is another program which helps with getting a lawyer and not only for criminal cases. However they only cover a certain amount of hours.\n\nAll products in NZ must also show the price with the GST already added so you know exactly what you are spending instead of getting to the counter and finding out that you are a couple dollars short because you forgot to account for the tax.\n\nIncome tax is about 15% and minimum wage is about $14.50/hr. I know there are a fuck ton of other things we do that makes us a freer country than the States, but it escapes me right now."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2wto4p | why are fruit snacks flavoring/coloring distributed unequally? | Every fruit snack pack that I open has a random set of fruit snack flavors in different quantities which makes no sense to me. Wouldn't they want to supply their consumers with an equal amount of each color? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wto4p/eli5_why_are_fruit_snacks_flavoringcoloring/ | {
"a_id": [
"cou0aos"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The assembly line has to stop for half a second every time they start to pour something into the package to prevent spillage. Pouring in two reds and two blues etc. could take about three to five seconds, whereas just pouring them in from one container would take maybe one second. Also, it makes it easier to ensure that every package gets the same weight if they don't also have to worry about color ratios."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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