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5m994d | how exactly does nat-traversal work? | Especially when running peer to peer connections without opening ports | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m994d/eli5how_exactly_does_nattraversal_work/ | {
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"This can mean lots of different things, so I'll assume you're referring to something like file sharing or telephony.\n\nPut simply, the P2P application you're using will be talking to a central server of some sort - this is how peers find one-another. The server is keeping track of key details for each peer, including both their private (pre-NAT) and public (post-NAT) IP addresses and TCP or UDP ports the peer is using.\n\nWhen a peer wants a connection to another peer, the server facilitates an introduction & exchange of IP & port details, then steps out of the way. The application then establishes a \"session\" to the other peer using these details, which happens at the firewall being used by each peer. Once the sessions are established, the firewalls continue allowing traffic related to the session until the traffic stops.\n\nFor home / small office scenarios, firewalls will typically allow computers on the \"inside\" (internal / private / LAN) network to talk to anything they want, on any port and protocol; but they will deny any incoming attempt from the \"outside\" (external / public / WAN) network by default. This is why you typically don't need to open ports.\n\nNote that a \"session\" is different than a \"connection\", because many P2P applications use UDP (i.e. connectionless). It's up to the firewall performing NAT on each end to keep track of these sessions, referred to as a 4-tuple (source IP and port, plus destination IP and port), and do the relaying accordingly. This prevents some other host from barging in on or interrupting an existing session.\n\nThere are published standards for some of these concepts, which many applications follow so as to be compatible with the broadest selection of firewalls. The net effect to you is that 'it just works'. There's a very thorough explanation of this [here](_URL_0_) if you want to geek out - might take reading it lots of times before it sinks in, it's pretty dry, but expands on this basic principle and all the variations of it in lots more depth."
]
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"http://www.brynosaurus.com/pub/net/p2pnat/"
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1tg07i | [serious] invasive animals explained? | Why do we care about invasive species if they are evolutionarily better than the native ones? Are we stopping evolutions process by doing this and if so why do we protect native species so much? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tg07i/serious_invasive_animals_explained/ | {
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"Because in general, human civilization is invested in the natural environment staying more or less the way it is. It doesn't benefit us to have the balance of an ecosystem destroyed, and may very well harm us.\n\n > they are evolutionarily better\n\nThis is a myth about evolution that really needs to die. Evolution doesn't care about \"better\", it cares about who gets to breed.\n\n > Are we stopping evolutions process by doing this\n\nYes, in the same way we do every time we save someone from dying of cancer. That doesn't make it a bad thing.",
"Species are invasive because they were introduced as a result of human activity. \n\nProtecting native species protects biodiversity and ensures that ecosystems are more resilient to future change. If you have more species in a habitat, there is a better chance for some of them to evolve to survive."
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38w21g | what happens to bullets which don't immediately hit something? | So shooting upwards or even straight across a plane. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38w21g/eli5_what_happens_to_bullets_which_dont/ | {
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"across a straight plane - the bullet will lose momentum and gravity takes over and it eventually falls to the ground"
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[]
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awvxmp | how come water stays carbonated at normal pressure for hours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awvxmp/eli5_how_come_water_stays_carbonated_at_normal/ | {
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"Don't think of carbonation as just bubbles of CO2 in the water, it is actually CO2 dissolving into the soda. Basically, CO2 can dissolve into water just like salt dissolves into water. Water absorbs the most carbon dioxide when it is cold, so the beverage is chilled prior to being exposed with the gas. Once it comes out of the machine, the soda has dissolved the most CO2 that it can, and therefore there is some left in the form of bubbles that rise to the surface. \n\nWhen kept cold, the CO2 will remain in the soda for hours, even if left out. This is one reason that soda is oftentimes served with ice. However, as the water warms up, the amount of CO2 that it is capable of keeping dissolved decreases, and the CO2 aspirates out of the solution. After the drink is warm enough, most of the CO2 escapes and leaves the flat soda behind."
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1ji82i | why doesn't anybody file a claim against the nsa for violating their constitutional rights? this seems like an issue that the supreme court would be able to make judgement on. | Is it because there is no law for them to deem unconstitutional? Is it because the NSA's actions are not based in any legal grounding?
Edit: [Relevant Guardian article](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ji82i/eli5why_doesnt_anybody_file_a_claim_against_the/ | {
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" > Is it because the NSA's actions are not based in any legal grounding?\n\nWell... they are, they are approved by the FISA court which was created by legislation. It's entirely possible the court might argue that they don't meet the rules the law sets out, but there is certainly a law which they believe gives them the right to do this.\n\nThat being said, some people are suing, here's an article about one situation, these things take time if they go anywhere though:\n\n_URL_0_",
"You can't sue without proof they're doing anything. Any attempts to get proof are met with responses that say \"we can't say if we're doing anything or who we're doing it to because of national security reasons\".",
"This is way more likely to get handled at the legislative level, long before anything could make its way to the SCOTUS. Note that \"handled\" might not be the way you want it to go though-- the Patriot Act itself is a means of \"handling\" the concerns involved by making what was unlawful before, lawful.\n\nThis whole situation is actually democracy in action-- a leak of information stirred up the whole country, people are arguing everywhere about what to do, and some amount of that will percolate up to the decision makers. They'll do stuff. If we hate their choices enough, we'll vote them out and their replacements may do other stuff. Etc.\n\nIt's messy. Don't expect the courts to fix things.",
"Because it is supposed to be a heavily classified program, it operates such that it is essentially immune from complaints. We're not supposed to know it exists, so for all legal intents and purposes, it doesn't. You can't challenge the constitutionality of something if it doesn't exist.",
"Simply put: they are all in the same side. Who would win? A tiny little citizen with a piece of paper or two large institutions that have interest?"
]
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"http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/aug/01/fisa-court-bill-us-senate"
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2osne5 | how come if i scratch my head it's not as enjoyable as if someone else did? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2osne5/eli5_how_come_if_i_scratch_my_head_its_not_as/ | {
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"You anticipate your own touch. It's very hard to tickle yourself as well, even when copying the movements of others that send you into hysterics.",
"You know, that's not the only thing that's more enjoyable if someone else does it."
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3p3w77 | how is it even possible to survive multiple gunshot wounds considering the huge damage that is created inside the body? how do surgeons deal with this situations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p3w77/eli5_how_is_it_even_possible_to_survive_multiple/ | {
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"First you must consider the caliber of the weapon.\n\nSecond, the type of bullet (JHP, FMJ, etc.).\n\nThen the size of the target.\n\nSmall caliber handgun plus large target means that many of the bullets can go through soft tissue and either end there or ricochet inside but with less kinetic energy.\n\nIt's not as easy as the movies portray to get killed by gun shots unless you're tied down in front of a firing squad.\n\nI've also seen one shot that pierces a major artery or chest wound that causes a DOA.\n\nI've seen people survive gun shot wounds to the head and face.\n\nSource: Inner city anesthesiologist in a large east coast metropolitan city in the U.S. for over 10 years.\n\nAdd to this that many of the shooters are not trained and may actually be running away while blindly firing, perhaps even aiming backwards or behind them. Considering that, it's a wonder they connect with anything at all."
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1tkglo | why we can record sight and sound but not smell? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tkglo/eli5_why_we_can_record_sight_and_sound_but_not/ | {
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"Sight (light) and sound are energy in different forms. You can convert energy between forms and therefore record and reproduce it.\n\nSmells are particulates in the air. You'd have to somehow convert molecules to an energy pattern, and then to \"play back\" the scent convert the pattern back to matter.\n\nWe can analyze components of scents and come up with a similar chemical composition that mimics it, but that's as close as we're going to get without fundamental leaps forward in physics.",
"We can sample the compounds that make up a smell with a GC. The problem is more that there's fairly little interest since we can't reproduce it easely.",
"I thought scratch and sniff stickers were \"recorded\" smells.",
"Weren't they going to put [smell-o-vision machines](_URL_0_) in movies theaters?",
"Ask Jean-Baptiste Grenouille.",
"Some materials (like textiles) absorb smells and then emit those smells over time. You might be familiar with how long cigarette smoke smell can stay in a jacket or how a person's clothes might smell just like that person later. It's not a perfect reproduction with near-infinite storage capacity, but it is an example of the phenomenon you're looking for.",
"You mean Smell-o-vision?",
"Devices do exist - but never were viable:\n_URL_0_\n\nI tried a few at an expo once, and they were always a bit dissappointing because they required someone to 'capture' a smell in some way. Often they just used existing different smelling perfumes/aerosoles to mimic it - but it was like smelling the equivalent of artificially flavored food. It never was quite right...\n\nThat and you had to keep buying vials of the stuff when they dried/ran out - just like inkjet printer ink.\n",
"Light (sight) and sound are both waves, although they are produced and act slightly differently.\n\nSmell is achieved by actual particles entering the nose.\n\nAs others have said, there have been attempts at making devices, but producing particles is much more difficult than producing EMS waves (light) or vibrations (sound).",
"Because no one wants anyone to produce a real fart cannon",
"If you think about it....technically we can. Haven't you ever seen a scratch n' sniff. Or a scented candle?"
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1ikqfg | network ping | I get kicked from games when it's high. I know I'm supposed to get it low, but what is it exactly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ikqfg/eli5_network_ping/ | {
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"Its the time it takes for information to go from your computer, to the server host, be processed and then come back to you. Basically your computers reaction time. It's usually measured in MS (microseconds). Anything under roughly 200 is considered a good connection, higher than that and things get dodgy. (Fun fact, I once had 5000ms to a computer less than a mile away, no idea why)",
"Its basically a measure of time of how long it takes a signal to get from your connection to another connection, in the case of video games, the time it takes a signal from your console to go through your router, through your cable, and to the host's connection.",
"It's a measure of how long it takes for data to get from your computer to the hosting computer. When data gets exchanged between your computer and another one somewhere on the internet, it's not a direct connection between them. Each packet has to be routed and it will pass through a bunch of different \"hops\" across a bunch of different physical networks before it reaches its destination. Depending on the number of hops and the speed of each network, a packet will take a certain amount of time to get there. \n\nIt's important in games, because the server is trying to make sure that each individual player's computer has up to date information on what all the other players are doing. If it takes half a second for packets to travel between your computer and the server, then all of the data in your game (for example, where the other players are) is going to be half a second behind. In a fast paced game, a lot can happen in half a second."
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f5bmfz | why don’t video game companies hold the rights to gameplay videos? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f5bmfz/eli5_why_dont_video_game_companies_hold_the/ | {
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"They do, most do not enforce their rights and see the gameplay videos as good PR and free marketing. [Nintendo though, will certainly claim a copyright strike against videos including their property](_URL_0_) and prefer content makers partner with them and their unfavorable returns on ad revenue in exchange for the \"privilege\" of posting Nintendo IP videos.",
"They do hold the rights in theory, but there have been very few court cases to form an adequate legal precedent. For the most part, it has become culturally acceptable to share and monetize gameplay videos without the publisher's consent. \n\nI think it's because watching videos of gameplay does not replace actually *playing* the game, so you might still buy it. It likely promotes more sales, so it's a win-win.\n\nDifferent situation with film and music.",
"There's still some argument about if they do or not but nothing has gone to court to make a definitive ruling. \n\nGenerally a commentated gameplay video would fall under fair use. Meaning if you use someones work and make commentary or critique of it, that's fair game. \n\nThen there is the transformative aspect of it. You've taken that content and remixed it. Your playthrough is different than anyone elses and your personality is injected into the performance. You've done something creative with that material to make it your own somehow. \n\nSo long as you don't claim to own or to have made the game, it's fine. \n\nFinally there's some data to suggest that gameplay videos are good for sales numbers (unless your game is terrible). So most are happy either way to just let you do your thing so they can get free advertising."
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55xcc4 | why exactly do employers who claim to be an eeo or equal opportunity employer ask the applicant their ethnicity? what's the purpose? | When filling out job applications, why exactly do employers who claim to be an EEO or equal opportunity employer ask the applicant their ethnicity? What's the purpose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55xcc4/eli5_why_exactly_do_employers_who_claim_to_be_an/ | {
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"In the USA, it is actually a piece of information that the government requests. So, they ask it. The US government uses this information for their statistics on race, ethnicity, gender.",
"1) It is requested by the government to be on all employment records. \n\n2) It is a way of collecting evidence as insurance against being sued for being discriminatory based on race. "
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afrr6x | why does a radio start at 87.7 and end at 107.9? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afrr6x/eli5_why_does_a_radio_start_at_877_and_end_at_1079/ | {
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"Those are the radio station frequencies that are \"allocated\" (given) to radio stations that are designed for broadcasting consumer-based media (music, talk shows, etc.).\n\nThere are a ton of other frequencies but a lot of them are reserved for other use (for instance, there are international frequencies for emergency messages at sea).\n\nYou can see just how many other types of messages and frequencies are used if you look at this crazy chart - _URL_0_\n\n",
"So, those numbers are frequencies you can tune the radio to receive, in megahertz.\n\nOk. Well, in America, the FCC has decided that 87.8 MHz and 108.0 MHz define the lower and upper limits of the FM band, meaning that any FM radio station that wants a license to broadcast has to transmit on on one of those frequencies. There are other regulations that go along with it, such as you can only transmit on odd decimal frequencies (101.1, not 101.0 or 101.2), but that's the gist of it.\n\nThe AM band works on a different principal, and is numbered in kilohertz instead of megahertz, between 535 KHz and 1605 KHz. The regulations are different for the AM band than for FM.",
"Great minds think alike. Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why does the radio only go from 88.1-107.9? ](_URL_3_) ^(_7 comments_)\n1. [ELI5:How does FM radio work? Why does it only range from 87.7-107.9, and why is it only odd numbers? ](_URL_2_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do FM radio stations seem to always be in the 80-100 range? Why do we never hear of FM stations like 30.5 FM? ](_URL_0_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: why are all the FM stations ending with odd number always? ](_URL_4_) ^(_3 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why do current FM radio station channels only range from ~80 - ~105? ](_URL_1_) ^(_7 comments_)\n",
"Some other countries use the even tenths.\n\nWhile we’re on the subject, west of the Mississippi station call signs start with “K”, and East they use” W”. (Regardless of band :FM/AM)\n\nSome examples being the famous K-Roc in Los Angeles, and the fictional WKRP in Cincinnati.\n\n"
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3quc0v | why is frozen food thought of as being unhealthy? | Stuff like frozen pizza, hotpockets, etc. Why is this considered "junk food" by most people? A generic pizza, for example, essentially has all of the food groups in one package, and freezing it does not fundamentally change this in any way. Freezing may diminish the freshness and flavor somewhat, but that's not a health issue. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3quc0v/eli5_why_is_frozen_food_thought_of_as_being/ | {
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" > A generic pizza, for example, essentially has all of the food groups in one package, and freezing it does not fundamentally change this in any way.\n\nA generic pizza itself is typically considered junk food. They tend to be rich in sodium, fat, and calories. Frozen vegetables, on the other hand, aren't widely held to be unhealthy. The fact is, a lot of frozen convenience food (like a lot of convenience food in general) tends to be chock full of things that we already consume in excess. \n\nThis isn't to say you *can't* have a healthy pizza, or even have an unhealthy pizza and still be healthy. But what the average american reaches for when you say 'pizza' isn't generally a stellar example of a good diet in and of itself. ",
"Frozen foods are not unhealthy, but the foods you listed are. It's not the freezing. Unfrozen pizza is also not a healthy food. ",
" > Freezing may diminish the freshness and flavor somewhat\n\nAnd since nobody likes to eat poorly-flavored food, these products typically compensate with more fat, sugar, and salt.",
"Those things are considered junk food even when they are not frozen. A generic margherita pizza (or cheese and tomato) doesn't have all the food groups in one package: it's full of sodium and sugars, not to mention fats, cheap cheese (again, a lot of sodium, sugars, and fats), and \"tomato\" purée (one part tomato, nine parts oils, more sodium, and acids). If you want to be healthy, keep pizzas at an arm's length.\n\nWhat freezing *does* do is damage the produce, albeit minisculely. You freeze it once and defrost it, that will be fine: the damage caused by the food by expanding ice crystals during the freezing process is negligible. If you freeze it a second time, then it starts going bad (\"freezer burn\" is an umbrella label for many problems caused by the freezing process).\n\nMost people who consider freezing to be bad or unhealthy, typically have had a bad experience with freezing that I guarantee would have been caused by either human or mechanical error, not as a result of the physics of freezing. Such bad experiences would include ingesting food that has been improperly frozen (fish, vegetables, red meats, white meats, and dairy all need to be frozen at different temperatures, and there are many parasites and pathogens that are active at those temperatures, so contamination and decay is still a possibility), food that has been refrozen multiple times and thus tastes like and has the nutritional value of a piece of linoleum, and food that has been improperly treated prior to freezing (such as a pork chop that was left in the open air for a few days prior to freezing).\n\nIf you live in the EU, all the information you need will be on the packaging, or available from the butcher (in the case of dairy and butchery co-operatives). ",
"Frozen vegetables are very healthy. In some cases as much or more so than their fresh counterparts as they are frozen immediately after picking. As for the foods you mention they usually contain too much salt or sugar or fat.",
"Frozen fruits and vegetables are generally thought to be healthier than fresh ones as they're frozen very soon after picking so don't lose as many nutrients as the 'fresh' ones.",
"Frozen foods are generally higher in sodium for preservation. A diet high in sodium can cause high blood pressure among other things in the long run. "
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e4whe2 | why do some programs take ages to close when task manager closes them instantly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e4whe2/eli5why_do_some_programs_take_ages_to_close_when/ | {
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"The task manager kills things instantly and forcefully. This means the program doesn't get to do anything in response, and doesn't even know it's being closed, so it can't clean up after itself, can't ask if you'd like to save your work, etc.\n\nClosing a program the normal way sends it a message: \"please close now\".\n\nThis means the program has to receive the message (which may not happen immediately). Then some of those will have internal parts of themselves that will go through the same sort of process: they'll get sent a message from the main program, have to receive it, and terminate. This can take time.\n\nWindows monitors the message queue, and if it's not being read then eventually it'll just offer to kill the program by force.",
"If you hit the 'x' button in windows, it asks the program to shut down. This basically tells the program to run its shutdown routine, allowing it to do stuff such as save unsaved documents before hitting a piece of code which exits the program for good. Now if the program gets hung up, it might not ever get there and will never quit on its own.\n\nThe task manager can give commands to the parts of windows that control all the programs running on the computer. At the core of that is the kernel, which allocates CPU power to programs (among other things). The task manager can tell the kernel to stop running the program, so it simply no longer runs on your computer and takes up no more memory space.",
"A program normally has a cleanup procedure before shutting down, e.g. save unsaved changes, write into log file, etc.\n\nThe task manager shuts down a program forcefully and abruptly, i.e. it just closes and frees all allocated resources of processes belonged to the program without doing the cleanup procedure.",
"X button = would you be so kind as to run your shut down routine, take as long as you like, and close please?\nTask Manager = fuck off, right now.",
"Usually program is told \"close now\" when you press x. Program obeys and does whatever programmer set it to do in case of closing down, things like saving unsaved stuff, finishing operations it was in the middle of doing etc, before actually telling OS that \"I'm ready, you can do the cleanup\"\n\nTask manager does things more forcefully. It doesn't ask, it just takes program out of queue for cpu time, marks all the ram used by program as free, etc, all the cleanup. This works quite reliably, but hopefully it's obvious why this can be troublesome. Anything the program was doing is lost. No matter how critical. \n\nIt's the difference of security guard at shop or something saying \"we're about to close for the day, you should leave now\" and the security guard just coming at you, grabbing you and throwing you out.",
"Well you can ask your room-mate to leave, they'd need to clean up after themselves, pack up their stuff and everything. Or on the other hand you could just kill them and toss all their shit out the window.",
"Pressing the quit or x button is like asking a customer to leave your coffee shop because you are closing soon. They still have the opportunity to finish their drink, newspaper, and donut before gathering their belongings and leaving.\n\nForce quiting in task manager is like going up to said customer and tossing them out of the building by their pant waist and shirt collar; cartoon style. After, you go to their table and toss all of their belongings in the trash, because they didn't have time to save them.",
"You can fold your clothes nicely so they're all presentable and easy to order for next time you wanna wear them orrrr.. You can scrunch them up and throw them on the floor. Computer likes to deal with folded clothes rather than floor clothes.",
"Instead of arguing with the bully politely so he will give you back your lunch money, you kick him in the nuts. Hard.",
"What if the task manager can't close a program? What causes this?",
"Your computer is the bar. The program you're trying to close is the guy who has had one too many and fallen asleep at his table. He's not buying any more drinks and he's taking up space that could be used by people who will.\n\nClosing the program normally is when you send one of your wait staff to nudge the guy awake, make sure he's paid his tab and usher him outside into a waiting taxi.\n\nClosing the program with Task Manager is getting the bouncer to just hurl him out into the street because you can't get him to wake up. If he left his coat behind, tough.",
"Running a program is like you playing with your LEGOs on the dining table. You get your LEGO box and place it on the table and open it up and begin creating magical things. Eventually it’s getting close to diner time and I tell you “it’s time to clean up and get ready to eat”. And you carefully place everything back in the box. Packing away things you made for next time. Once everything is packed away how you want it, you place the box back on the shelf. That’s what it’s like to close a program normally. \n\nForcing it closed is like me drunkenly swiping your LEGO crap onto the floor, slapping it out of your hands, throwing a plate of spaghetti on the table, and saying “Eat.”",
"ELI5 answers are above. Here’s a more granular answer. Welcome to program signals in C.\n\nWindow X button sends a Signal Terminate.\n\nTaskkill /pid # /t\n\nThe SIGTERM signal is a generic signal used to cause program termination. Unlike SIGKILL, this signal can be blocked, handled, and ignored. It is the normal way to politely ask a program to terminate.\n\nTask manager sends a Signal Kill.\n\nTaskkill /pid # /f\n\nThe SIGKILL signal is used to cause immediate program termination. It cannot be handled or ignored, and is therefore always fatal. It is also not possible to block this signal."
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nz2ww | how to use reddit properly | Hi Redditors. I'm new to this site. By new, I mean brand new. I just recently transferred from the God forsaken site called FunnyJunk. Also, I know of a few Youtubers who like this site (Captainsparklez, WoodysGamertag).
Anyone want to give me a rundown on how this all works, or any tips to get started? It's not as simple as what I'm used to lol | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nz2ww/eli5_how_to_use_reddit_properly/ | {
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"Different subreddits operate by different rules. What it acceptable in one subreddit (r/ < somename > ) will probably not work in another. \n\nSo lurk for a while in the subreddit of your interest and you might get the feeling for what goes and what doesn't.",
"how do you make these things though with the topics?\n"
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1xi8td | cpu clocks. | I'm currently in a computer architecture course studying ISA's and CPI. From what I've read I can see that CPU's have a crystal that oscillates at a certain frequency. But what exactly does this clock do in terms of instructions? What does the clock allow? I know that a clock cycle is just one rotation of the crystal, but what does it represent? What makes the frequency of a CPU better than the frequency of another CPU? And why can't they all just have a higher frequency in that case? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xi8td/eli5_cpu_clocks/ | {
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"The clock, which is generally based on the crystal, but the signal goes through a few rounds of frequency doubling before the processor itself, dictates how many operations can be done per second. They generally take a fixed number of cycles of the clock to perform a single operation.",
"The clock operates flip-flop circuits which increment the program counter, feed signals to the timers, execute the program instructions, load/store register values/addresses, and so on. A higher frequency means more cycles per second, resulting in more instructions being performed per second.\n\nThe limits of the frequencies depend on rise/fall times of the clock signal. What is ideally a square wave really has a bit of a curve to it as the voltage rises/falls based on the charge of the capacitive element of the clock & processor/memory components. If it doesn't charge up fast enough before the voltage rises/drops, the circuit won't change value. \n\nThis is why, when overclocking, you want to raise the voltage so they can charge/discharge faster but not so much you overheat the chips."
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wi3gb | the concept of cinematography. | I enjoy watching movies, but I often hear others praise a film or director for its/their "cinematography." I really have no idea what aspect of film this is referring to, so I'd like a simple explanation. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wi3gb/eli5_the_concept_of_cinematography/ | {
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"Cinematography refers to the technical skill of the cameraman and the director in achieving a shot. It's using things like different lighting, color, and focus to achieve a particular \"feel\" to your movie.\n\nThis video [here](_URL_0_), although computer-generated, is a fantastic example of \"pure\" cinematography- there's no story and no actors, but the excellent cinematography makes it enjoyable to watch through its pure aesthetic beauty.",
"It's like praising a photograph (that moves). It's the visual aspect of the movie.\n"
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6n40wn | if a crime suspect tells his defense lawyer the evidence of the crime, what should the lawyer do? | My understanding of the 5th amendment is that the suspect himself saying "I'm guilty" does not count unless there are other evidence pointing to the crime.
But let's say in an imaginary example where the crime suspect told his defense lawyer all the evidence of his crime. Is the lawyer required by any law to share those information with any party?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n40wn/eli5_if_a_crime_suspect_tells_his_defense_lawyer/ | {
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"My understanding is that the lawyer may not reveal what the client tells them. The lawyer can get disbarred if they break this trust.",
"The lawyer is required by law to give his client the best defense possible. Even if they know their client is guilty, they can still defend their client based on procedural issues in the prosecution's case. For example, they could say that the smoking gun you used to murder your uncle was obtained by the police illegally. If this is true, then the prosecution may no longer be able to *legally* prove your guilt, and thus you are *legally* not guilty. The only thing the lawyer can't do is knowingly introduce falsehoods (so they can't flat out ask you to perjure yourself if you testify).\n\nThey absolutely cannot share the information you give them as their client. This is called attorney-client privilege, and if a lawyer violates it they can lose their legal license.",
" > Is the lawyer required by any law to share those information with any party?\n\nAlmost never, and it is usually considered unethical to do so.\n\nThere are a few very narrow exceptions to attorney/client privilege:\n\n* the client indicates they are going to commit an illegal act or is soliciting information for the sole purpose of committing an illegal act\n* your legal relationship is unrelated to the information they disclosed...like you are a tax attorney socializing with a client and you heard them brag about a murder\n* you are suing the client in relation to the work you provided when they disclosed the information\n\nBear in might than just because a defendant confesses, it can still be very unclear what they are actually guilty of. Killing someone can be anything from murder to manslaughter to self-defense to an unfortunate accident.\n\nFinally, a lawyer cannot present evidence or a legal theory they know to be false. If their client confesses, they cannot suggest that someone else committed the act.\n\n\n"
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4tc3zs | how do officers issue you a ticket when you are a pedestrian or cyclist? | Obviously, it's not required to carry identification/licensing with you if you are a cyclist, but I've heard its possible to receive traffic violations on a bike (speeding, for example), or for jaywalking. My question is, how can you be booked when the officer doesn't know who you are? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tc3zs/eli5_how_do_officers_issue_you_a_ticket_when_you/ | {
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"They write up the report, print you a copy, and hand it to you. The same way they do for cars.\n",
"They ask you to identify yourself.\n\nIf you refuse, they arrest you, and if you lie, you've commuted a crime. So most people just tell them the truth.",
"Cop here:\n\nIf you do not have an ID, we will verify by another means.\n\nThe most common way is arrest records because- shocker- most people I interact with have been arrested before.\n\nI can also pull up DMV records or past police reports.\n\nIf there is absolutely no way to positively identify you, I can arrest you as a last resort.\n\nYou'll be taken to jail, booked, ID'd, then released."
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3h8txc | do people with no arms/legs have less blood meaning they have more chance to die due to blood loss? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h8txc/eli5do_people_with_no_armslegs_have_less_blood/ | {
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"Yes. It's a ratio thing. Smaller choo choo trains have smaller gas tanks. So when they lose a gallon it's a lot more than a big choo choo train losing a gallon. ",
"Yes. It goes for congenital amputees and those who are amputees as a result of injury or illness. The remaining blood vessels are stitched into others to keep the whole system complete. Say a woman looses both legs above the knees, high enough where she has some stumps left; maybe 8\" or so. Those legs contained large amounts of muscle tissue, skin, and blood vessels; all which need a blood supply. \nDuring surgery, a tourniquet is applied to each leg to minimize blood loss. You can google a video on an Above Knee amputation. She will have less blood; less in the tank if you will. Unfortunately, this is a bad thing. If she donates blood, the effect will hit her harder as she doesn't have as much as someone with all their parts. A blood infection or another serious injury with massive blood loss will also affect her much more than someone who has all of his/her parts. \nSmaller parts won't have much of an effect, but the larger part lost than the bigger effect it will have. "
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c82dqo | why do glasses always get dirty,almost greasy?do dust molecules naturally stick to the lenses even though i take care of them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c82dqo/eli5_why_do_glasses_always_get_dirtyalmost/ | {
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"Static electricity builds up to a small extent on the surface which attracts or holds on to small particles.",
"Glasses get dirty from a variety of things, most commonly from touching it. While you may take good care of them, any touch to any part of the glasses may have an affect on the lenses. \n\nIf you tend to have oily, or dry and flaky skin, then your glasses will smudge and get dirty easily. Same goes for if you wear makeup or if you apply lotion to your hands or face. Additionally, if you have long eyelashes, those eyelashes can rub off onto your lenses. \n\nMost lenses should have some kind of resistance to smudge or dust particles if you have a good anti reflection coating on it. If you do, then just make sure when you clean it to clean it carefully, as this layer could come off. \n\nBasically, lenses get dirty from everything, whether consciously or not, and if you have a daily habit of cleaning them then you should be alright.",
"When you blink small particles fly out from your eye causing the inside to start to develop a film of gunk, very thin, on the outside, the air isnt really as clean as we think it is, and all it takes is a little bit of grease or oil to crwate a residue there. Once there is something for the dirt and other stuff to stick to that is usually when you start to notice them being dirty.\n\nAlso the pads where they rest on your nose get very dirty because most peoples nose has a fair amount of oil on it, this oil builds up on the frames and can eventually smear or get on the lenses if not kept clean, but just another source for skin and oil yo get on glasses. I call it nose cheese."
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54lmuf | how does squinting eyes change this image? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54lmuf/eli5_how_does_squinting_eyes_change_this_image/ | {
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"Well, Zoolander is super sharp and the girl is blurry. When we squint our eyes, move further back, down-scale the image, take off our glasses, etc., we can no longer see the super sharpened detail of the photo, and instead see the general idea of what it is, which is the blurry image. \n \nAlso, that image was on the front page here like yesterday, someone isn't a heavy Reddit user.",
"High and lo pass filtered images superimposed on each other.\n\nWhen you squint you lose the ability to see fine detail so the lo-pass filtered image stands out as the details (high pass filter) disappear. When you are not squinting you see the detail parts stand out because the brain likes to see fine detail more than the 'background' (lo-pass filtered) blur.\n\n/edit/ gadamnit, I was about to reply saying wat? I dont get it? 'Lose' ?? and then.. Doh. :)",
"This also happens when you look through a pinhole, and because a pinhole is a more extreme example, it's slightly easier to explain with that. Test it with that image by looking at it through a few tiny holes poked in a piece of paper.\n\nYour eye works by light rays coming in through your pupil and being focused onto the back of your eye, the retina. That picture has multiple images superimposed on each other to look blurry. Let's say there are 3 images stacked on top of each other in that picture- that means for each part of the image, you're getting three rays of light to represent that, which is confusing. If you look through a narrower gap, by squinting or looking through a pinhole, fewer of those rays get in, so you get a clearer image ending up on your retina.\n\nIt's actually much easier to understand in [pictures](_URL_0_). \n\nA pinhole of the right size also improves long- and short-sighted vision because only light rays that are almost parallel can get through, which is seen [here](_URL_1_).",
"I'm so confused, I'm not seeing the illusion. What am I missing?",
"To visualize it:\n\n[Here is the original image](_URL_1_)\n\n[Here is the low pass version] (_URL_0_)\n\n[Here is the high pass version](_URL_3_)\n\nI got the low pass image by using a gaussian blur on the original image and the high pass by subtracting the low pass image from the original (using [imagej](_URL_2_))",
"This wouldn't work (at least as well) if it were the head of an antelope and the head of an elephant. We have parts of the brain that specialize in human facial recognition- so when you squint you are effectively losing a lot of the fine detail (ben stiller)- so you recognize the other face composed of soft values. ",
"There are two different faces that are drawn there. One of them is drawn with lines and one is drawn with blobs of light and dark. When you squint and everything gets blurry you can't see the lines anymore because they're too small. The lights and darks are very big so you can see them just fine when blurred. So by blurring, one of the faces disappears while the other stays.\n\n\nIt's also why the man's face looks really weird when not blurred. Your eye expects the lights and darks areas to be caused by the lights and shadows on the man's face, not the woman who's in a slightly different position.",
"It isn't supposed to be squinting:\n\nprint out the photograph and look at it from far away.\n\nthen walk up to the photo. \n\nYou will see the faces change. \n\nJust like [this one of einstein / marilyn monroe](_URL_0_)\n\nIt has to do with the ability of your eyes+brain to average / resolve light. In lower light, you see less detail so squinting works. In the same light if you're far away, you lose detail due to light receptors averaging out info.\n\nThe top answer isn't accurate but whatev's, nothing to do with \"brain liking to see more detail\" \n\nIt is that literally you cannot see the detail with less light or from far away.\n\n",
"I'm gonna have to disagree with the \"how alcohol works\" thing, cause I'm pretty drunk right now, and I still had to squint to see a difference",
"Try going crosseyed and squinting with just one eye.\n\nI get the guy on one side and the girl on the other.",
"ELI5 why I don't see it?",
"Why.... doesn't it work for me? "
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j52jj | explain being high, like im 5 | I know how it is being high, but not the scientific explanation. Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j52jj/explain_being_high_like_im_5/ | {
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"I hope you like [cartoons!](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"chocolate chip cookies + the high point of a really good swing on a swing set",
"The active ingredient in marijuana (I hope this is the high you mean), tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) binds to receptors in your brain called \"cannabinoid receptors.\" These receptors normally receive other kinds of chemicals, but THC kind of gets in the way and stops the cells with cannabinoid receptors from doing their job. Different drugs act on different receptors.\n\nFor example, ethanol (drinking alcohol) acts on receptors in the cerebellum, the part of your brain that controls movement and timing. This explains why you talk funny and can't walk straight.\n\nSomeone correct me if I've made a mistake, but I think most of this is accurate.\n\n---- \n\nSimplified further:\n\nThe thing in weed that makes you high is called THC. In your brain are workers, called cells, that are constantly trying to get things done. These cells send each other letters with other chemicals called neurotransmitters. The letters fit into a mailbox, but the mailbox only fits one letter. Some letters only fit into some types of mailboxes. Workers with different jobs will have different kinds of mailboxes that receive different kinds of letters. When you do drugs, the drug sends out a LOT of the same letter -- that letter is called THC. THC goes and fills up mailboxes so the workers can't do their jobs properly. The proper letters won't get through, so the worker won't get the right message, so your brain won't act properly, so you'll do silly things.\n\nWhen you drink alcohol, it sends a letter called ethanol. Ethanol's letters really like the mailboxes in the part of your brain that tell you how to move. This is why people are clumsy when they drink -- the letters that have instructions for moving properly aren't getting through because the ethanol letter is in the way.\n\n(I'm bad at metaphors!)",
"I hope you like [cartoons!](_URL_0_)\n\n"
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2j7wwf | why is it that some kinds of radio communications dissipate right away in short distances (wi-fi) whereas others can go to another planet just fine? | Edit: thanks for the answers guys, I have a lot of reading to do, as this subject is fascinating to me :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j7wwf/eli5_why_is_it_that_some_kinds_of_radio/ | {
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"It's to do with antenna power and shape. You can use long-range, directional antennas to connect by Wi-Fi over several kilometers. Similarly, a hand-held walkie-talkie doesn't have a huge range. \n\nWi-Fi antennas don't need to broadcast their signals all the way out into space not only because it would be very expensive to run your router, but it would also interfere with everyone else's.",
"Wifi is like a lamp. Radio stations and cell towers are like huge beacons. planet-to-planet communications are like lasers. \n\nWifi is broadcast in all directions at low power. It is required by law to accept interference from other radio sources, and not cause interference, which means that it uses a tight radio spectrum at very low power. \n\nRadio and cell phone towers are allowed to interfere with signals around them. They use huge, extremely powerful antennas to broadcast in every direction. \n\nSpace communication is different. They use parabolic dish antennas to direct a communication in a particular direction. If you're sending a message towards Curiosity on Mars, and I'm on Jupiter, I wouldn't be able to tell, because the message is more or less a beam that goes from one planet to the other, I would have no evidence that anything took place, just as a laser produces a single point of light with nothing visible inbetween. "
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61s0y3 | what is the difference between "type" and "form" of government | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61s0y3/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_type_and_form/ | {
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"As an example, we have a constitutional Republic with democratically elected leadwrship (type) that takes the form of two houses of congress, an executive branch with a president and vice president and a judicial branch."
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6pi57p | why do words like calculator, accelerator and detonator end in or instead of er? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pi57p/eli5_why_do_words_like_calculator_accelerator_and/ | {
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"It has to do with the etymology of the word in most cases. Words with Latin origin typically end in -or, while Germanic words have the -er suffix",
"*-or* is a Latin suffix used to indicate a \"noun agent,\" i.e., a noun that is *doing something*, often acting as the subject of a sentence. \n\n*-er*, on the other hand, is a *Germanic* suffix that serves the same function as *-or* does in Latin.\n\nSo. When the root word is taken from the Latin, one expects to find its noun agent form ending in *-or*, whereas when the root is Germanic, one expects to find *-er*.\n\nDoesn't always happen that way though. Why? Because *English*. It's a mess. "
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2iunor | the current college situation in germany | Recently, Germany abolished College tuition fees: _URL_1_
Even more recently, they did this for international students as well: _URL_0_
As an American high-school Junior, I was wondering if someone could perhaps explain completely what this means for German education and future international students. I realize there is a language barrier, but other than that this looks like a great option, are there any other hidden snags I should be aware of? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iunor/eli5the_current_college_situation_in_germany/ | {
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"It doesn't mean anything for German education or future international students. German Universities have been free for a long time and even when they weren't, the tuition they charged was only a few hundred Euro per semester.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"It's nothing special outside the Anglo world really... _URL_0_ \n\nWhat's exceptional is how attractive and successful Germany is. The most prosperous countries vacuum great minds in at the expense of other countries no matter what. ",
"I had to pay those 500€/semester and then it became free one year later.\n\nWell one prof said straight in our faces that our university won't have any money in a decade and it will probably fall apart or have outdated equipment. And of course that we are lucky because it won't affect us at all. Definitely a **good option to consider** if I was an international student.\n\nWe get mainly more and more **indian** and **chinese** students, aswell. Some new students from Korea and Japan, too. I somehow believe that there will be a ton in the next year. We jumped from 3200 to 3700 students (yes it is a small-medium sized institution) in the first year just because of the free tuition fees. And it wasn't even **that** public some months ago.\n\n---\n\nPls keep in mind that you have to worry about food, apartment, etc. for yourself.\n\nLearning German isn't that difficult. There are basic course in almost any university that teach that. Besides that there are international degree courses, too. Mostly on bigger universities.\n\nFurthermore learning German isn't really difficult as people might think. It's just the speaking part that is hard for every non native speaker. (Goes for other languages aswell)\n\n---\n\nBut who the fuck pays all in the end? The tax payer. Means you too. \n\nGermany has the 2nd highest income tax worldwide.\n\nStudy in Germany - Earn money in the U.S. - Move in another country with 65y",
"The biggest \"hidden snag\" isn't really hidden, but it's something a lot of people might not realize at first: the German university system requires students to take charge of their own education. You figure out the courses you need to take on your own (based on a Modul for each major), and most of your classes will be large lectures with the final grade determined by one final exam or research paper. The relationship between professors and students is more distanced, accordingly. The grading also tends to be a bit more harsh than in the US, as grade inflation isn't as widespread here. \n\nThe other main obstacle is finding good housing, as most German unis don't have traditional campuses with student housing. You'll have to find an apartment, probably via websites like WG-Gesucht, or apply to live in a Studentenwohnheim (basically apartment-style, \"off-campus\" dorms), which is a good option but a bit hard to come by, since more people apply to live there than they have rooms. This would be less of an issue in a smaller city, presumably, but the largest research unis that offer the most English-speaking programs tend to be located in places like Berlin, Hamburg and Munich where it's an issue. \n\nRegarding the language barrier, for admission to a German-speaking program (most Bachelor programs), you generally need to take either the DSH (an exam issued by individual universities that you would take in Germany) or the TestDaF, a standardized test in the same vein as the TOEFL that you can also take in the US, and score at least B2/C1 on the European language level scale. "
]
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"http://www.cbsnews.com/news/get-a-free-college-degree-passport-required/",
"http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/10/01/3574551/germany-free-college-tuition/"
] | [
[
"https://www.daad.de/deutschland/en/"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education#Countries"
],
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|
2vg9rm | why aren't snow melters a more common solution for snow removal? | I understand not everybody should have a flamethrower, but why isn't melting snow a more viable option for cities with a lot of sewer drainages?
Am from Boston. Please send help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vg9rm/eli5_why_arent_snow_melters_a_more_common/ | {
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"Melting ice/snow actually takes a LOT of energy. It takes 144 BTU to melt a pound of ice. A gallon of gas would only melt an volume of snow 4 feet by 10 feet, 2 feet deep.\n\nIt's just not efficient. ",
"Because moving the snow takes way less energy than heating it up and melting it. So the fuel and time is better used by a snow plow than a flamethrower.",
"Lots of energy to melt the snow, though it is done in areas where just pushing it to the side is no longer a viable option.\n\nThe other concern is flooding and ice built up. When you melt the snow and conditions are still cold enough for it to freeze up, you just created a block of ice that is now going to block up any means for the snow to drain when the warm weather does return.\n\nIf you melt the snow and the weather is warm enough not to refreeze, your introducing large amounts of water into the area which will drain into a body of water and possibly overflow its containment area.",
"It actually is, though not in the way you're thinking. Cities often put a layer of salt down on the roads before or after a snowstorm. Salt water has a lower melting point than fresh water, so dissolving salt into the ice and snow will cause it to melt back into a liquid without the need for flamethrowers.\n\nAs for flamethrowers themselves (or just hot air cannons), /u/midwesterner64 covered it pretty well."
]
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4n89mp | why have unattractive humans not gone extinct through natural selection? | Why aren't I (and everyone) absolutely damn 10/10 perfect specimens? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4n89mp/eli5_why_have_unattractive_humans_not_gone/ | {
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"Well, my guess would be that attractiveness is subjective; to you I might be a solid 10/10 but to someone else I might be a 0/10. \n\nThe phrase \"beauty is in the eye of the beholder\" comes to mind.\n\nThat, and I expect looks aren't always a requisite for engaging in reproduction either.",
"Because unattractive people can still be healthy people and and still find mates and successfully reproduce.",
"Evolution does not achieve perfection. Evolution achieves \"good enough\". People of all levels of attractiveness manage to find someone else to reproduce with. ",
"Virtually everyone *is* a perfect 10...compared to our primitive ancestors. You have disease free skin and all of your teeth, you are a supermodel to them.\n\nThe problem is that beauty is about exclusivity, which will always make it a relative thing. The population becomes healthy, more attractive, and better groomed, the standards for beauty will increase with it. There will always be a top 10 %.",
"So you're assuming everyone who wants to mate with a 10 gets to? All those 1s out there go \"Well, I can't get a 10 so I'm just not gonna mate\"? \n\nPeople make compromises, and physical attraction can end up *not* being that high on the priority list. ",
"Gawd these answers are awful because they're so one-sided.\n\n* yes, standards change and beauty is in the eye of the beholder, blah blah blah\n* yes, 1/10s meet up with other 1/10s and get it on\n\nJust as important as the others answers, though:\n\n* not everyone gets hung up on physical attractiveness, or to put it another way they may find non-physical attributes attractive. Think about the stunner on the arm of the ugly rich dude, or the 9/10 who marries the really awesome and fun 5/10.\n* Genes for looks, intelligence, disease, longevity, etc. are far more variable than you might expect when they're mixed through the magic of chromosome mitosis and recombination. Attractive parents can have unattractive children (and vice-versa), just as stupid parents can have average or intelligent children. It's kind of a crapshoot.\n* people's personal level of attractiveness changes over their lifetimes, and I'm not talking about getting old and wrinkly. Do you remember that really attractive girl in high school that you would have killed to date, but twenty years later you realize you dodged a bullet because she's just so... plain? The reverse happens just as frequently, the gawky teenager turns into a stunning 40 year old. Just because someone is attractive now doesn't mean they always were, or always will be (without surgical help, that is).\n\nninja edit: sometimes letters run together",
"If an unattractive person reproduces the chances of having an unattractive child is not 100% and if the child of an unattractive person become attractive he/she still carries the genes of the unattractive parent, yet his/her child might express/activate those genes of the grand parent (unattractive) and becomes unattractive.(Genes have on and off switch). Beauty in eyes of different people are different, one that you find unattractive might be attractive for another person and this will keep those genes of unattractiveness circulating in the gene pool. Gene pool is the the stock of different genes in an interbreeding population. If you need some more explanations in field of population genetics, I'd be glad to explain more. "
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1rt4x8 | how does a large team logistically manage simultaneously working on a complex project like the iphone for example? how do they keep in loop of each others day to day activities / advancements that may affect their specific tasks? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rt4x8/eli5_how_does_a_large_team_logistically_manage/ | {
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"I have some experience in this area as I have worked as a software architect and have been pretty heavily involved in some mid-sized complex projects.\n\nEssentially on the projects that go well there are clearly defined parts of the project which can be worked on in parallel without having to coordinate details between them on a daily basis. Very often there will be a technical leader or group of leaders for each part of this project who will coordinate these components and this helps to ensure that it is clear who to talk to when there are questions or problems.\n\nOn top of this, these days there are almost always digital tools which are used to track the features and bugs which the team are working on so that if you need to get an idea of how somebody else's work is progressing you can look at a report or the actual worklog of the element in question. In a well oiled shop there are a lot of standards for doing development which aid the team and help to avoid having to negotiate every little change that gets introduced.\n\nThat said, don't underestimate the complexity of these projects. There's a reason that many big technology projects go massively over schedule or budget or never even see the light of day."
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925xog | ; what is the shimmer mirage like waves you can see on roads on hot days or coming off anything hot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/925xog/eli5_what_is_the_shimmer_mirage_like_waves_you/ | {
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"It's called a *heat haze.*\n\nThe convection currents cause the temperature of the air right above the road surface to vary, and that variation, between the hot air right above the road and the cooler air above it causes a gradient in the air's *refractive index,* causing the light rays to bend as they pass through the gradient.\n\nThis manifests visually as a shimmering, hazy effect.",
"Air is matter, and affects light as it travels through it. As air gets warmer, it changes its refractive index, which is a property that gauges how light travels through it. The hotter it gets, the more extreme the change, so air close to the ground and near a heating element distorts the image in a similar way to light shining off water. "
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4t1nkh | the war of the roses | I want to understand how it started and why. I tried to read the Wikipedia article but it just mashed me up with all it's titles. i didn't know who they were talking about. Can someone here help? Can someone break it down for me. The origins, how it started and how it ended. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t1nkh/eli5_the_war_of_the_roses/ | {
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"Before the War of the Roses was the Hundreds' year war, which weakened england. Furthermore, the next king in progression was Henry VI, who had a mental breakdown and was a super weak king. This shitty king made it seem as if this other dude, Richard the Duke of York, had a more legitimate claim to the throne. \n\nBasically, a bunch of people wanted the throne. If you like Game of Thrones, its just the same when everyone wanted the throne after the king died.\n\nHow it ended:\nThe Lancasters won. This war was primarily fought between the Lancaster family and the York family, both of which had fair claims to the throne. After a few short wars, Henry Tudor of Lancaster killed Richard III of York in battle. After, Tudor married the previous York king's eldest daughter, ending the fight for the throne because both familys had children in power.",
"It was a dynastic war in England, between the descendants of different sons of Edward III. The House of Lancaster (symbolized by the red rose) were descendants of John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, Edward III's third son. The House of York (symbolized by the white rose) were descendants of Edward III's fourth son (Edward, Duke of York) on the male side and Edward III's second son (Lionel, Duke of Clarence) on the female side. \n\nWhich is to say that they were all cousins in various degrees, and the exact way the English crown would be inherited was not yet set in stone.\n\nTurning points in the war came when a King was weak or unpopular, a King was mentally ill, and when the King was a child.\n\nThe House of Lancaster started ascendant. Richard II, the grandson of Edward III through his oldest son, had no siblings or children, and his reign was troubled (Peasant's Revolt, unpopularity, etc.). His first cousin, Henry IV (House of Lancaster) deposed Richard II in 1399 and set himself up as King. Richard II died in prison not long thereafter (whether murdered or neglected to death, we aren't sure). Henry V was the son of Henry IV and had a successful kingship, but died *while his only son (Henry VI) was still an infant*--and Henry VI became mentally ill in adulthood. This left a sort of power gap and a lot of positioning...and the family of York (already very powerful) decided that they would be the ones to fill it.\n\nSo, \n\nRichard II (weak, deposed, died in prison) \nLANCASTER ASCENDANT - RED ROSES\nHenry IV (Lancaster) \nHenry V (Lancaster) \nHenry VI (Lancaster; infant king; weak king; mentallly ill) \n*civil war breaks out, various positioning and battles occur*\n\nThis is York's opportunity; in 1461, Edward of York deposed the (probably schizophrenic) Henry VI, imprisoned him, and took the crown.\n\nHenry's wife, Margaret of Anjou, wasn't very happy about this and she was a formidable woman. With the help of a major English noble (Neville of Warwick; his daughter married Henry VI's son and also Richard III...), she ousted Edward, restored Henry VI to the throne. It took only about 6 months for Edward to regroup, kill Warwick and Henry VI's son Edward in battle, retake the throne, and imprison Henry VI who promptly and *conveniently* died.\n\nEdward IV (House of York) held the throne securely for over a decade thereafter; he died, leaving the throne to his oldest son (Edward V). Edward V was *twelve*. He was a kid. Power vacuum ahoy!\n\nEdward IV also had a brother named Richard. Richard was regent on his nephew's behalf, but wanted the crown for himself. Richard *conveniently* \"discovered some evidence\" that Edward IV's marriage was invalid. Oops! The child king is a bastard now, he can't be king. Richard, now Richard III, slammed 12-yo Edward-formerly-V and his younger brother (also confusingly named Richard) into the Tower of London, from which they *conveniently* and mysteriously disappeared. \n\nso:\n\nYORK ASCENDANT - WHITE ROSES\nEdward IV \nEdward V (child king, probably murdered) \nRichard III (unpopular; suspected, with some basis, of murder) \n\nAs you can imagine, Richard III didn't have as many friends as he might wish, especially after being suspected of murdering his nephews. Plots and rebellion ensued. Unfortunately for Richard, when he (allegedly) murdered his nephews, *he left their mother and sister alive*. This mother, Elizabeth Woodville, threw in her lot with someone named Margaret Beaufort (an influential woman, descended from Edward III through another line) and they backed an alternative candidate for the throne-- Henry Tudor, who also happened to be Margaret Beaufort's son. This plot worked; Henry Tudor defeated Richard III in battle in 1485, became Henry VII, married Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville -- thus reuniting both Houses of the Wars) and brought the Wars of the Roses to an end. \n\nSo:\n\nTHE TUDOR ROSE\nHenry Tudor, an offshoot of the House of Lancaster *with a very influential mother*, defeats Richard III of York, marries Elizabeth of York, and becomes Henry VII.\n\n...and there was great rejoicing--and England was actually done with dynastic wars, pretty much to this day. There were some kings deposed after this, some civil unrest and the installation of a 9-day-queen after the death of Edward VI, a king beheaded during a civil war, and there were some dynastic *revolts* (Monmouth's revolt, the Jacobite rebellions), but nothing that stuck for *generations* of back and forth like the Wars of the Roses. \n\n"
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1l0xrt | exactly how scripted is professional wrestling? do the champions actually have more wrestling skill than others? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1l0xrt/eli5_exactly_how_scripted_is_professional/ | {
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"Everything is scripted. Even the champions.",
"Wrestling is written as a \"program.\" The outcome of the matches are predetermined. The purpose is for the booker--usually a former wrestler or manager--to create an entertaining program with heroes (\"babyfaces\") and villains (\"heels.\") They must consider not only the main event but the undercard, which could mean secondary title like the tag-team scene.\n\nThe best wrestlers are the ones who have both in-ring ability and talent at building and projecting a character to the audience. They want to generate \"heat,\" or audience reaction. This means getting cheers if you're a babyface or boos if you're a heel.\n\nThe matches themselves could be planned out in intense detail or improvised, depending on the participants' preferences. Generally, if two wrestlers who both like to plan or are both skilled at making up a match on the fly are in the match, it will be good. Mixing the styles makes for less entertaining matches."
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170d8x | when discussing a cars performance, why are 0-62 times sometimes used rather than 0-60 times? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/170d8x/eli5_when_discussing_a_cars_performance_why_are/ | {
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"62 mp/h = 100 km/h",
"Because 62mph ~100 kph. It makes it easy to understand rather than posting a 0-60 mph and a 0-100 kph, you can just use 0-62 mph. ",
"62 mi/h =~ 100 km/h"
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6ask8z | lsd micro-dosing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ask8z/eli5lsd_microdosing/ | {
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"Check out r/microdosing but it's essentially taking a small amount of lsd, below the threshold where the chemical becomes a \"trip\". The goal is to have a mental advantage, better creative thinking, as well as a boost of energy, without having to deal with the visuals and wild headspace that comes with an actual trip. While I have tried this method a few times, all with great results, I'm sure someone else on here will be able to better explain microdosing "
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||
a5ifnx | how an organ (instrument) works | Also, how would an organ from 300 years ago differ compared to today? I notice in a lot of churches today that the keyboard where the organ is physically played is at the front of the church, but the pipes the sound comes from is generally at the back of the church? Is everything “wireless” now? Or are there pipes and wires running through the walls or under the floor? In the past, would the organ pipes and keyboard have to be closer together? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5ifnx/eli5_how_an_organ_instrument_works/ | {
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"In earlier instruments there was a physical, mechanical connection between the keyboards, or 'manuals' as they're known, and the wind chest, which is the unit that delivers air to the pipes via valves. There is a set of controls in the middle called the Stops, they determine what sets of pipes (or 'ranks') are sounded when a particular key, or pedal is pressed. \n\nIn a modern organ, as you've noted, the main change that has happened is that the interface between the manual, and the actual valves that drive the pipes has been made electrical as opposed to mechanical. \n\nThis has a few advantages. Mainly, again as you've noted, the unit where the manuals are, called the Console, no longer has to be physically attached to the rest of the organ, it can be separate. This gives a lot more flexibility on how an organ can be installed - the pipes can be positioned where they'll sound best, the console can be positioned in a place that looks visually attractive, or out the way, whichever is most appropriate. \n\nThe second advantage is down to the fact the keys are now working electrical switches, as opposed to physical linkages. What happened on older organs was that if you had more stops pulled; more pipes being sounded, the physical effort it would take to press the keys increased, because you're physically moving more linkages, each key-press was actuating more valves. So playing expressively took a lot more skill, as you might want to adjust the sound of the organ mid performance, but you also had to be ready for the fact that it would change the physical key-feel of the instrument with each change. This isn't the case on a modern electromechanical organ. \n\nThere was an intermediate system that used an air system between the keys and the rest of the organ. That gave a greater flexibility than direct mechanical action in every sense; keyfeel and location of the organ, but it wasn't as free and flexible as the modern purely electrical system, as well as introducing a noticeable lag between the press of a key and the sounding of the pipe. \n\nThe other main difference is how the organ is supplied with air. \n\nOn older organs, the way they were supplied with air was via a big old pair of bellows that some church-hand had to operate while the organ was being played.\n\nNowadays that's done using an electric compressor. "
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6ae5t0 | how reddit manage to update, store and manage all gazillions of posts/users/uploads/updates every second and best of all, in real time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ae5t0/eli5_how_reddit_manage_to_update_store_and_manage/ | {
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"Reddit uses Amazon Web Services as the back end hosting. There's lots of servers to let the system scale up, replicated databases to increase response time. And it's all running in big data centers with really really fast internet connections. "
]
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c8gjlj | why do foreign objects sometimes get pushed out, and other times your body just seems to shrug and be like, 'this is our life now.'? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c8gjlj/eli5_why_do_foreign_objects_sometimes_get_pushed/ | {
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"I don't know why I can't see your comment anymore, but I meant like splinters and stuff. Minor things close to the surface. Those ones that form calluses. I had one on my thumb for almost a month,that bastard finally fell out today. I've got an identical one my left foot, been there for fifteen years. It doesn't hurt, but evey time I wash my feet, I'm like, 'Oh, right. I forgot about you. Still? Really?'",
"I believe it has to do with the material, the bacteria is brought with it, and how deeply embedded it was.\n\nThe body can’t break down wood, so splinters usually stay whole and lodged in your skin. Same with metal splinters. But some materials can be dissolved or displaced more easily.\n\nUsually splinters bring bacteria with them, causing infections that the body fights off. While the site swells up, the body attacks the foreign object to dispel it at the same time so that it fights the infection. If there is no infection or the infection is minor, the body doesn’t really have another mechanism to dispel foreign contaminants. Except for skin layers...\n\nSkin is actually made up of many, many layers. And some of those layers make up the outer skin, middle skin, and sub-skin layers. Even deeply embedded objects usually only reach the middle layer. In these layers, the skin is constantly growing out. This growing out and shedding of layers means that any foreign object gets pushed out with the skin layers. It takes longer, but eventually the splinter will fall out. However, if the material is lodged deep enough, the sub skin layer doesn’t really grow out, so the material can get stuck. Then the mid and out layers grow over it.\n\nSo, if something isn’t poisonous or contaminated so that the body fights to get it out (or resolves the infection quickly) and it’s lodged deep enough into the skin, then the skin just grows around it. It’s annoying but it probably won’t kill you.\n\nFinally there’s the reality that your body isn’t exactly “smart”. It makes mistakes and sometimes ignores something that could cause a lot of damage. So when you get a really deep splinter that your body just accepts, you should probably have a doctor take a look."
]
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2nka8w | when did we really start recording the years? | Obviously as BC, but i'm sure other civilizations had their own way of keeping dates and knowing what year it was. When did everyone get on the same page? And why is After Death and Before Christ so widely used? My brains hurting just thinking about it. Help? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nka8w/eli5_when_did_we_really_start_recording_the_years/ | {
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"It's not \"after death\", it's \"anno domini\". \n\nBC and AD are widely used in the English world because of Christianity. Academics prefer BCE and CE (\"[before] common era\"). ",
" > When did everyone get on the same page\n\nIt was gradual, but it caught on in Western Europe between the 11th and 14th centuries.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > And why is After Death and Before Christ so widely used?\n\nFirst, AD stands for Anno Domini which means \"in the year of the Lord\" and refers to the years after Jesus' supposed birth (it's actually out by a bit).\n\nSecond, it's handy to have a single standard. Just like seconds and hours and later the metric system (other than in the US), it makes sense for people to use a single standard when communicating. As for why it's this system, that is mostly explained by the history of the 17th-20th centuries and the rise and dominance of Christian nations in global affairs. \n\nIt should be noted that many countries maintain their own calendars, but most of the primarily use the one you are accustomed to (often referred to as the Gregorian Calendar, after Pope Gregory who made the last major change to it) \n_URL_0_"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini#Popularization"
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dfflkv | with the vast increase of women entering the labour force over the last century, and the introduction of technology which has drastically increased the efficiency of many jobs (office jobs in particular), why has there not been a drastic decrease in the amount of time we work each week? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dfflkv/eli5_with_the_vast_increase_of_women_entering_the/ | {
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"Accourding to [this graph](_URL_0_) the average work time has drastically decreased over the last century. So I don't see how you get to your conclusion that it has not."
]
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[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Work-hours-per-week.svg"
]
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||
1oijgb | how do doctors tell if someone died without any pain. | In many reports of someone that died in a accidents or of natural causes. They say that they died instantly and without any pain.
How do they know if they died without any pain. if they have died and cannot testify how their death was.
Couldn't their be a split moment before their "Instant" death they have experienced pain? Or is their a way of telling if they experienced pain or not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oijgb/eli5_how_do_doctors_tell_if_someone_died_without/ | {
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"The signal for pain has to travel through the nervous system. Although it is extremely quick, it isn't instant. So if you die instantly, there is no way for your brain to know the pain existed.",
"No doctor can accurately say that a death was painless.",
"They say that to make the family of the deceased feel better. "
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3m4tth | would gears on an electric motor in a car help in any way? | I know that the Tesla Model S, among other electric cars, have a 1:1 gear ratio, or only one forward gear, or something like that. My question is if putting a gearbox on an electric car would be beneficial to the car in any way.
* Could you have better launch?
* A higher top speed?
* Even more fuel economy?
* Are there any disadvantages?
For reference, I'm talking about motors like the one in the Tesla. I'm not specifically asking about if I can stick a golf kart motor in my Mustang and get it to run at freeway speeds, although it would be good to know about. For reasons. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m4tth/eli5_would_gears_on_an_electric_motor_in_a_car/ | {
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"Gears have their own losses. Adding them takes away energy from driving. Electric motors can be designed to run optimally at various speeds.",
"Model S doesn't have 1:1. It's 9.73:1 but yes 1 gear. The reason is because their electric motors have so much torque that they eat transmissions for breakfast. Tesla tried loads of vendors but they just didnt go for it. \n\nYou also factor in. A transmission takes alot of space of the cabin. No tran makes the model s more spacious than your comparative car and makes it that much better.\n\nAlso factor in that Tesla's patent for their engines. They figured out that a copper core in the engine lets them rev way way higher and maintain torque out to higher rpms. Their patent enables them to actually do a better job. \n\nIf Tesla did include a transmission at this point. The cost of the car would be significantly higher. The cabin space would be lost and worse yet the only real advantage will be top speed and track performance. The model S doesn't need that really. \n\nInstead they should just develop Tesla Roadster Gen2 and let it do this. ",
"The first Tesla model, the Roadster, was going to have a 2-speed transmission for a long time and they only gave up on that when they couldn't find a transmission that would work. It was a significant problem in the development of the Roadster. They actually shipped the first cars with the 2-speed transmission, locked in second gear.\n\nImprovements in the motor and battery have made it possible to use a single speed transmission. That does limit the balance between acceleration and top speed, and the top speed of the Tesla cars is much lower than competing ICE cars. Having multiple speeds would help with everything you mentioned, but the advantage of a single speed is lower weight, less complexity and lower costs.",
"Internal combustion engines only work well when they are rotating in a narrow range of speeds. However the rotational speed of the tires changes based on how fast the car is moving. For example going from stop to rolling is a very low speed, but traveling forward at 75 miles per hour is much faster speed.\n\nThe gears allow the engine to rotate inside that narrow range while allows the tires to rotate at the speed best suited for the forward speed of the car.\n\nNow why did I explain all that? Because Electric motors work well over a wide range of speeds which means the gears are unnecessary. They can't help at all because the motor can just match its rotation speed to the speed the wheels need to turn at. ",
"Electric motors frequently have gears. I think they usually spin much faster and need to be stepped down. I don't know about cars in particular."
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669jf2 | why is it socially acceptable to eat donuts for breast, but not, for example, cake or pie? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/669jf2/eli5_why_is_it_socially_acceptable_to_eat_donuts/ | {
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"Coffee cake? Apple strudel is kinda like pie... Danishes are another sweet pastry. Muffins are pretty much cake without icing. . .\n\nThere are loads of sweets that are considered socially acceptable to eat for breakfast even though they have little nutritional value other than providing you calories.",
"Do Americans eat donuts for breakfast?",
"I've found from experience that the more doughnuts I eat the less breast I get. So the real question is what am I doing wrong? ",
"Donuts used to be a slightly sweet piece of bread. Now days donuts are super sweet and are not much different from cake or pie. ",
"I don't believe it is socially acceptable to eat a donut for a breast anywhere. Perhaps in a very low class brothel."
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b6jnyv | the recycling system in the us | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6jnyv/eli5_the_recycling_system_in_the_us/ | {
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"That's pretty terrible logic TBH. Just because something is done poorly but still has a positive effect, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done at all.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThat being said. A lot of the recycling in the US is based on what money can be made off it. Many things are (used to be) shipped to China, and they would buy it, and reuse it. China has stopped doing that, so less profit is made off of recycling and much of it, just ends up in the ground anyway. Yes the system needs A LOT of improvement, but that doesn't mean you should stop.",
"Questions about the US are generally better in r/askanamerican, not least because things like recycling can go down to the lowest local level.",
"Our \"Country\" doesn't really recycle. Your COUNTY or CITY might, but as a whole there isn't really a national recycling program or mandate. If you're looking around the world, the US is pretty shit-tier compared to Germany who has a national mandate that all citizens MUST recycle to cut down on actual trash. The best the US has is some slick advertising saying \"Please Recycle! If you can...if you want.\"\n\nThe problem is that America is really really big, and recycling is currently more expensive than just buying a chunk of land that's already an EPA nightmare due to other environmental sins from the 1940's. Nixon founded the first iteration of the EPA in the 1960's, but even then the rules were basically \"Hazardous Waste dumps don't require remediation if it's on YOUR land\". EPA standards as we know it wasn't really a thing until the 1980's. \n\nNow those sites are all properly walled off and contained, but nobody can ever really use that land until someone pours a billion into cleaning and decontaminating the soil. However, if it's already a contained and monitored site, then it's also the perfect place to start a new dump supporting the city that built up around the old polluting factory. \n\nTo actually properly recycle means SOMEONE has to sort out plastic, paper, metal, glass, and compost. The vast majority of American citizens have proven that they're not willing to do it themselves as they throw things away. Hiring someone to sift through trash is stupid expensive because nobody's doing that job for $10/hr and it's extremely time consuming. Automation is probably the future, but the technology isn't there yet. \n\nThis is all mostly because the cost of new raw ingredients in the US is cheaper and higher quality than buying recycled - especially with plastics. Unlike the EU, we have Oil, Refineries, AND Distribution all streamlined to make brand new plastic custom tailored to your needs cheaper and more reliable than using recycled products. \n\nOne big exception is building materials. Almost all significant demolition projects start the bidding at $0 + salvage rights. A proper demolition company will separate, scrap, and recycle every ounce of steel, concrete, and soil they pull out and make a handsome profit doing so. But those materials recycle easily. Steel furnaces run so hot it doesn't matter how much rust or paint is on what you toss in. \n\nThere are programs out there that are working, but they're hyper-local. With few exceptions, it's very inconvenient to the populace and inefficient for businesses to recycle, and until someone figures out how to crack that code, nothing's going to change. \n\n"
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3wzvi9 | 50s voices. | Why is it whenever I listen to a tape or something from the 40s or 50s that all of the male voices sound very similar. Is it because of the technology from then and now? If so, will people 60 years from now think that we all sound similar? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wzvi9/eli550s_voices/ | {
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"In the 40s and 50s many radio and television performers had voice training and affected a \"midatlantic\" accent. This is the upper class sounding accent you're used to hearing in old film and television. \n\nAt the time that accent was common among the upper class of the New York/Philadelphia region. Most major radio networks had their headquarters in New York City, which was also the largest city for theater and the place where the first movie studios started before they moved to Los Angeles.\n\nActors, radio announcers, and newscasters tended to either be members of the East Coast upper class community or affected the accent and mannerisms to help their careers. "
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mcp8u | how did they confirm that osama bin laden was dead? | News articles usually say that they performed DNA testing to ensure that it was actually him. But how did they get his DNA to compare it to? How do they get (confirmed) DNA from most wanted suspects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mcp8u/eli5_how_did_they_confirm_that_osama_bin_laden/ | {
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"Comparing DNA with family members who are not as dastardly, I think.",
"Comparing DNA with family members who are not as dastardly, I think."
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57sa72 | how do base 2 and base 16 number systems relate to each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57sa72/eli5_how_do_base_2_and_base_16_number_systems/ | {
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"Well 4 base-2 digits (so 4 bits or a 'nibble') can be used to represent 16 different numbers. (0-15). A single hex digit can represent 16 different numbers (0-F) where F represents fifteen. So a single hex value in programming can be used as shorthand for 4 bits of machine code",
"Base 2 doesn't convert well to base 10, but very easily to base 8 or base 16. Computers work in base 2, but it's really long and hard to write for humans, so those who need to like using base 16 as a shorthand for base 2.\n\nThat's because every 4-digit base 2 number can be exactly represented by a single base 16 digit.\n\nExample: 101 1101 0010 0011 becomes (5) (13) (2) (3), or 5D23 in base 16. Easy conversion without having to do any arithmetic. If you run these through a converter, you'll see that both are equal to 23843 in base 10.\n\nThe same is true for base 8, btw, it's just every three binary digits instead of 4.",
"I don't see it mentioned elsewhere; so, I think it's important to also point out that 2 and 16 are related because both are powers of two.\n\n2^1 = 2\n\n2^4 = 16\n\nand, I imagine, you've also seen '32 bit' and '64 bit' quite often, they are also powers of two.\n\nIn computing, things are based on two because that's the basic building block: a switch that is on or off.",
"It's sad... I need the title of the post explained to me like I'm 5, just to have an understanding of what needs to be explained. ",
"Edit one point that I've remembered having trouble with when I first learned this stuff *many* moons ago: all of this is only about how we write a number down. It makes no difference at all to the value of the number. six plus one is seven regardless of whether you write is in base 10 as 6+1=7 or in binary as 110+1=111. It's like writing a word in a different language, a spoon is still a spoon.\n\nSo, base 2 binary) and base 16 (hexadecimal):\n\nEvery four digits of a binary number (after you add zeros to the left side to make it a multiple of four long, eg binary '110' needs to be '0110') is the same as one hex digit 0-F.\n\nIt doesn't work out as nicely in Base 10 because the binary 1,2,4,8,16,32... columns don't match up with the decimal 1,10,100,1000.\n\nThat's why it's easier to work in hex when doing things related to bits on computers \n\n\n Base 10:|10|1 | Base 16:|16|1 | Binary:| 16| 8 | 4 | 2 | 1\n --------|--|--|---------|--|--|--------|---|---|---|---|---\n ||0 | || 0 | || 0 | 0 | 0 | 0\n ||1 | || 1 | || 0 | 0 | 0 | 1\n ||2 | || 2 | || 0 | 0 | 1 | 0\n ||3 | || 3 | || 0 | 0 | 1 | 1\n ||4 | || 4 | || 0 | 1 | 0 | 0\n ||5 | || 5 | || 0 | 1 | 0 | 1\n ||6 | || 6 | || 0 | 1 | 1 | 0\n ||7 | || 7 | || 0 | 1 | 1 | 1\n ||8 | || 8 | || 1 | 0 | 0 | 0\n ||9 | || 9 | || 1 | 0 | 0 | 1\n |1|0 | || A | || 1 | 0 | 1 | 0\n |1|1 | || B | || 1 | 0 | 1 | 1\n |1|2 | || C | || 1 | 1 | 0 | 0\n |1|3 | || D | || 1 | 1 | 0 | 1\n |1|4 | || E | || 1 | 1 | 1 | 0\n |1|5 | || F | || 1 | 1 | 1 | 1\n |1|6 | | 1|0 | |1| 0 | 0 | 0 | 0\n |1|7 | |1|1 | |1| 0 | 0 | 0 | 1\netc...\n\nYou can see how the rollover points are much better aligned for hex and binary than decimal and binary. That makes it much simpler to convert binary to hex than to decimal, and vice versa.",
"Base 16 is a shorthand for base 2, because it's base 2^4. Every digit in base 16 translates directly to four digits in base 2.\n\nThis is because every digit in base 16 represents a decimal number from 0-15. Every combination of 4 binary digits maps to one decimal number from 0-15.\n\nNote that A-F corresponds to 10-15 in hexadecimal.\n\n0 = 0000\n1 = 0001\n2 = 0010\n3 = 0011\n4 = 0100\n5 = 0101\n...\nA = 1010\n...\nF = 1111",
"As a lot of people have said, this is mainly used in programming because computers store values in binary (base 2), but hex (hexadecimal, base 16) is much easier to read. The system you're used to is the decimal system which is base 10, but the thing to keep in mind is that the number systems all represent the same thing. 5 goats (decimal) has the same value as 101 goats (binary), but one is much easier to write than the other. \n\nIn decimal, you can with one digit represent 10 values (0, 1, 2... 9) while in binary you can only represent 2 values with one digit. When you get to 2 digits, you can represent 10^2 (number of possible unique combinations of two digits) unique values. In binary, you can only represent 4 (00, 01, 10, 11). \n\nIf you wanted to represent in binary (what a computer uses) a customer's bank balance of 50000 you would have to use 2^16 digits (65536 possible unique combinations) which as you can imagine is a pain to read. This is an occasion where you would want to use decimal, but binary to decimal conversion while possible (and quite easy- you can do it by hand which I'll add a bit of explanation for at the end) isn't pretty. Instead, we use base 16 (because 16=2^4). because there are 16 possible values for each digit, and 16 possible values of 4 binary digits, each hex digit essentially represents four binary digits (or bits). The 50000 bank balance from before can be written out in only 4 digits of hex (c350, if you're wondering) which is much easier to read or punch into a calculator to convert to decimal than the binary equivalent (1100001101010000).\n\nNow for converting between number systems. First, think of base 10 as you learned it in elementary school: you've got a unes column, a tens column, a hundreds column, etc. These are all poweres of ten- ones is 10^0, tens is 10^1, hundreds is 10^2, decimals are 10^-1 , and so on. The same principle applies for pretty much any number system. In binary you've got a 1's column, a 2's column, a 4's column, 8, 16, etc. \n\n19 in decimal can be thought of as (1x10 + 9x1), and in binary it's the same but with powers of 2 instead. You start with the larges that fits into your number (16, or 2^4) and put a 1 in that column (we now have 10000) which leaves us with 19-16=3. Largest power of 2 that goes into this? 4 is too large, so we use 2 leaving us with 10010 and 1 left over to \"move\" to binary. 1 in decimal is just 1 in binary so 10011. Now if we wanted to add one to that, we would do it the same way as one would in decimal- add one to the one's column. this brings us to 10012, but there is no 2 digit in binary so we do it like in decimal and carry it over as 10020 but there's another two so we make it a zero and add one to the next column which leaves us with 10100. 16x1 + 8x0 + 4x1 +2x0 + 1x0 = 16+4 = 20, exactly what we would get with 19+1.\n\nComputers use binary because it can be represented as an electrical current which is either on or off, but this is done on a low level. There's stuff built on top of this which allows us to use decimal numbers instead (As you can see above, conversion is pretty easy) because nobody wants to use 4 digits to represent the decimal number 12, and way more for larger numbers. so it's easier to just write it in hex as c (hex uses letters as digits for 10-15 after it runs out of decimal digits). Because 16 is 2^4, any amount of hex digits will always represent that number times four binary digits. Essentially it allows for some of the benefits of the decimal system (being shorter to represent numbers) while also converting digit-for-digits into binary. ",
"One thing I'd like to add to the other explanations is the reason this works is because 16 is an exponent of 2. In other words, 2x2x2x2 == 16 (and thus, 4 base-2 digits makes 1 base-16 digit). A similar relationship can exist between a base 4 and base 16 system (4x4 == 16, so 2 base-4 digits together make a base 16 digit), or even a base 3 and base 27 system (3 base-3 digits make 1 base 27 digit, since 3x3x3 == 27).",
"In base 10, which is what we are most familiar with (because we have 10 fingers, also sometimes known as digits), we can represent 10 numbers with one digit (0-9). With two digits, we can now represent 10^2 = 100 numbers (00-99).\n\nThe same goes for base 2. With one digit, we can represent two numbers (0-1). With 2 digits, 2^2 = 4 numbers (0-3), with 3 digits, 2^3 = 8 numbers (0-7), and with 4 digits, 2^4 = 16 numbers (0-15).\n\nAnd with base 16, we can represent 16 numbers with one digit (0-F). We have symbols for digits 0-9, but to represent the digit 10, which only exists in bases greater than 10, we use the letter A. A = 10, B = 11, and so on.\n\nBase 10 | Base 16 | Base 2\n:-: | :-: | :-:\n0 | 0 | 0000\n1 | 1 | 0001\n2 | 2 | 0010\n3 | 3 | 0011\n4 | 4 | 0100\n5 | 5 | 0101\n6 | 6 | 0110\n7 | 7 | 0111\n8 | 8 | 1000\n9 | 9 | 1001\n10 | A | 1010\n11 | B | 1011\n12 | C | 1100\n13 | D | 1101\n14 | E | 1110\n15 | F | 1111\n\n\nSo, we can see hex (base 16) is a way to represent 4 digits of binary (base 2) in 1 digit.\n\nGiven a binary sequence such as 1010 0110 1111 0010, we can create an equivalent hex sequence A6F2. It goes both ways, as in you can also translate hex to binary just as easily\n\n",
"If a base is a integer power of another base, then you can convert from one base to another in batches\n\n 16 = 2^4\n\nThis means, if we have binary number, you can just convert it to base-16 by converting each 4 digits into corresponding single hexadecimal digit. If we use b prefix to denote binary number, 0x to denote hexadecimal, and no prefix to denote decimal number, and let's say hexadecimal is written with 0-9 and then with letters A, B, C, D, E and F standing for 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th digits\n\n b10101010 = 170 = 0xAA\n\nSo let's take a look. A stands for 10, so\n\n 0xAA = 10*16 + 10 = 170\n\nSeems to match. A converted to binary is 1010, so again, match. And b10101010 is equal to\n\n 0*1 + 1*2 + 0*4 + 1*8 + 0*16 + 1*32 + 0*64 + 1*128\n = 2 + 8 + 32 + 128\n = 170\n\nSeems to work. Why this works is that 4 binary digits correspond to exactly same information value as single hexadecimal digit. This happens if and only if you have one base be some power of another base. 10 is divisible by 2, but 10 isn't an integer power of 2, so you don't have any similarly easy way to convert between bases.\n\nThere are general ways to convert between bases. I'm not really sure how to explain them understandably in a comment like this, but suffice to say, it's possible to do it pretty fast with suitable algorithm, and this can be done by hand without ever converting numbers to base 10 as an intermediate step. However, it's still kinda nice to know that always when you see hexadecimal number with digit A in it, you just know that binary version of that same number has digits 1010 in it the same place.\n\nNow, something worth mentioning is that the use of a base doesn't change the underlying number. You may represent number in any base you desire. Technology tends to work in base-2 however, or base-256. And as it turns out, 256 = 16^2. This means, each base-256 number exactly corresponds to two base-16 digits. How nice!\n\nBase-256 happens because that's exactly one byte worth of information. Byte being string of 8 bits. For example, color data is often encoded as one byte for each primary color channel, giving you 24bits or 3 bytes worth of information. You can then represent that 24bits or 3 bytes with 6 hexadecimal numbers. So completely black pixel would have value of 0 at each color channel, so it's 0x000000. And completely white pixel has maximum value at each color channel, 0xFFFFFF. Blue pixel would be 0x0000FF\n\nInternet addresses are also represented by single byte for each number, so when you see an IP address like 151.101.193.140, each dot-separated number is actually exactly one byte of information, a value between 0 and 255, which could be easily represented by two hexadecimal characters. And this is actually done in the newest IP version, which uses more bytes for each address. They thus save space and use hexadecimal characters instead of decimal characters to convey the number. This is an example of IPv6 address: 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:9765:c18c \n\nBasically, computer doesn't operate with bits, but bytes. Hexadecimal is a nice way to use just two characters to convey one byte. I don't know if it has much other uses. If for some reason we had byte be length of 10 bits, then we probably would use base-32 system instead, because that's 2^5 and makes it again possible to represent byte with two digits.",
"Let's say you're a sheep herder, and you want to make sure that at night, all your sheep are in the pen and none are missing.\n\nWell, one way to do this is in the morning, to take a rock and put it into a bucket whenever a sheep leaves the pen. Then, in the evening, remove a rock from the bucket when a sheep enters the pen. If there are any rocks left, then that many sheep are missing.\n\nThis method is one way to perform an *abstraction*. That is, you've now associated one rock to one sheep. There's some *value* that can be applied to both the rocks and the sheep. We call this a \"number.\" The philosophers have debated for millennia on whether numbers actually exist, but that doesn't matter here. What matters is that there's this *property* of your group of sheep that is the same *property* that your collection of rocks has. You can then change this property in the same way to both groups, and the resulting changed property is still the same in both groups. Remove a sheep and remove a rock, and both groups are still the same. We call this property a number.\n\nSo, we already have two ways to represent this number. One way is by collecting sheep together. Another way is by collecting rocks together. Can you think of other ways? Well, there's a lot more types of things we can use. Apples, people, cows, lines on paper... You get the idea. But, this direct equivalence method can be difficult when we start getting very large groups.\n\nWhat if I decide that a large rock is the same as some group of small rocks. I need to be exact here, so I put aside a group of small rocks as a reference, and then I can exchange that same group size of rocks for a large rock, or a large rock for that group size of small rocks. This allows me to use far fewer rocks to represent many more sheep, cows, or whatever else. I can even continue to use this method more and more. One even bigger rock is the same value as the same group size of the big rocks. I can keep going forever, I just need different distinguishable things to represent my group sizes. Maybe an Apple is a group of large rocks, and an orange is a group of apples.\n\nAt this point, it's getting tiresome coming up with, remembering, and managing all these different object types, so I get a brilliant idea. I draw boxes on the ground, and go back to just using stones. I start by putting stones in the first box, and then when the number of stones in that first box is the same as my reference size, I remove them and put one stone into the box to its left. I can do this for any number of boxes and only stones. At any time, I can also exchange one stone in a box for a group of stones in the box to the right.\n\nAnother tiresome annoyance is this reference group of stones that I'm using. It would be nice to remove that. Well, I have a certain amount of fingers, and it's very easy to determine if a group of stones is the same size as my number of fingers, so I choose to use that. Now I always have my reference group with me! However, it's important to acknowledge at this point that the group size I chose is completely arbitrary! I could have chosen any size, but I chose this one simply out of convenience. Remember this for later.\n\nLet's skip forward a bit and we now have pens, parchment, and the concept of associating arbitrary written symbols to have meaning. Well, now we can invent *numerals*. We invent a symbol, and this symbol represents a group size. If we apply what we learned from using stones, we only need one numeral for each number of stones we could have in a square, plus a symbol to represent an empty square. Since the number of stones in a square cannot get larger than the number of fingers we have, we only need that many symbols: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.\n\nNow, on parchment, we can draw boxes, and write those symbols in those boxes. Or, we can eliminate the boxes and just write them next to each other. We've now invented a very powerful way of representing numbers. I can now say I have 43 sheep, and keep track of them easily!\n\nLet's go back to what I wanted you to remember, though: we just chose our group size arbitrarily. This arbitrary value is the \"base\". A base is just the number of symbols that we use in one \"box\".\n\nComputers don't have fingers, so using the same base isn't really the easiest thing for them. In fact, the easiest base has just a pair of symbols, \"off\" and \"on\" which we represent as 0 and 1. It takes far more of these numerals next to each other to represent the same number, but that's fine for computers because they can have billions of these numerals in a very small space. In the case of my 43 sheep, a computer would say there are 101011 sheep. We call this number system \"binary.\"\n\nIt would be nice, though, if these binary numbers were easier to see by humans, because often humans need to inspect the numbers stored by a computer. We could use our normal decimal system, but there's a problem with that. There's no easy way to translate a binary value to decimal. Something simple in binary like 1111 is 15 in decimal. 10000 is 16. As the numbers get bigger, the equivalence gets harder to intuitively \"get.\" This gets particularly difficult if you're looking at a large number of binary digits and you're not sure where the dividing line is between two different binary numbers.\n\nWell, in decimal we often make large numbers more manageable by putting a comma every 3 digits. Instead of 264329, we can use 264,329 and it's easier to see how large the number is. What if we did the same with binary. 101011 is now 101,011. That's a bit easier to see. But wait, we actually have symbols that we're already used to for representing those numbers in the groups. 101 is 5, and 011 is 3, so I can write 53 instead of 101,011. There are 8 total symbols for this system: 000 001 010 011 100 101 110 111 so we use 0 through 7 to represent them. This is base 8 because there are 8 symbols. It's also called octal.\n\nBut, why use groups of 3? Again, that's arbitrary. Maybe humans can handle groups of four instead. This means we need twice as many symbols, which is 16 symbols. Generally we just start using letters, so 0-9 and then A-F. We call this hexadecimal. Our binary number 101011 when in groups of four is 10,1011 or 2B.\n\nThe same number is 101011 in binary, 43 in decimal, 53 in octal, and 2B in hexadecimal. It's also the same as how many sheep I have, or how many stones are in my bucket. The relationship between hexadecimal and binary is that it's very easy to convert one representation to the other, because 2 is 10 and B is 1011, thus 2B is 10,1011. This is a special relationship between these base systems because a group of 4 binary digits is the same as one hexadecimal digit.",
"Edit: I just realized what subreddit I was on. Woops.\n\n\nThere are a bunch of great answers here. Let's try one more. Computers use numbers to store info. Let's say you want a computer to keep track of, I don't know, what season it is. The computer stores this data as a number. If it's winter, it stores, 0. If it's spring it stores 1. Store 2 for summer and 3 for Autumn. \n\nComputers use binary though, so these values are actually 00, 01, 10, and 11. \n\nSometimes there are more than 4 values though. What if you need to keep track of something with 16 values? Maybe it's keeping track of not just the season, but also if the you have appropriate clothes, and if you don't, can you afford to buy new ones. Given 4 digits the first two represent the season, just like above. The third represents whether you have clothes or not, and the fourth represents if you have enough money.\n\nWith this system, it's pretty intuitive to say that 1101 means Fall, no clothes, and money. I can look at the second to last digit and tell that I don't have clothes without even knowing what season it is! In decimal, this is really unintuitive. Instead of 1101, all I would see is 13. Now 13 doesn't tell me much, but it is convenient. I can store all of those pieces of data in just 2 digits! To get the information out, all I have to do is convert back to binary and voila! It's right there. \n\nBut what if I had a way to store all of the data, not in two digits, but in 1? I can do this by using a number system that has 16 unique digits. This is base 16! 13 in base sixteen is represented by the 'number' D. Just telling me D, I can learn that it is autumn, and I need to go buy clothes, and that I can afford them! That's some efficient storage! \n\nBecause four digits of binary fit perfectly into a base 16 system, it makes it a really convenient match for storing data. If you wanted, you could use a base 32 system as well! That would allow you to keep track of 5 different pieces of information in just 1 number. However, a base 32 system is pretty cumbersome. Base 16 is big enough to be useful, but not so big a human can't understand it.",
"OMG something I know about!\n\nSo base 2 uses '0' or '1'. -2 numbers \nbase 16 uses 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F -16 numbers\n\nThey are VERY conveniently interchanged when the binary number is viewed in a group of 4 digits.\n\nEx: \n11001010 - CA (typically written 0xCA showing it's base 16) is broken down to:\n\n1100 - C \n1010 - A\n\nPeople were referencing base 10 a lot but that isn't a part of the question. \n*Edit:Formatting*",
"My ELI5 attempt.\n\n----\n\n**First, what is base 2 and base 16?**\n\n - Base 2 means a single digit can only represent 2 numbers (0 and 1).\n - Base 16 means a single digit can represent 16 numbers (0 to 15)\n\n----\n\n**Why does bases matter?**\n\nThey don't! Really! They're just different ways of representing numbers. For any specific numerical value, it can be written in any number of bases. For example, the number 9 can be written as \n\n - 1001 (base 2)\n - 100 (base 3) \n - 21 (base 4)\n - 14 (base 5)\n - 13 (base 6)\n - 12 (base 7)\n - 11 (base 8)\n - 10 (base 9)\n - 9 (base 10)\n\n----\n\n**Wait we only have 0-9 digits. What about higher bases?**\n\nSimple, we just use alphabets to represent everything higher. Again, nothing special about them. We could have easily invented different symbols to represent numbers. So, if we have Base 11, we'd add A, Base 12 we'd add add A,B, up to Base 16 we'd add A-F.\n\n----\n\n**What's special about Base 2 then?**\n\nBase 2 is especially special to us because of computers. Computers (until recently*) have only been able to understand things as either \"ON\" or \"OFF, or \"0\" and \"1\" as they're based on electric signals. Understanding Base 2 is critical to conceptually understanding how to work with computer calculations and other digital applications.\n\n----\n\n**Aren't Base 2 numbers really ... long?**\n\nYes! Because we're limited by how many unique digits are available to represent the infinite numbers we know of, some numbers can get really really really long. The number 255 (base 10) would be represented by the \"1111 1111\" in Base 2, which is more than double the length of digits! Not to mention, difficult to read really easily.\n\n----\n\n**Why not just use Base 10 then?**\n\nWe don't use Base 10 in these circumstances because there's no easy way to convert Base 2 numbers into Base 10 numbers without fully comprehending the actual number it is representing. And it turns out, we can do better in an easier way.\n\n---- \n\n**How?**\n\nWe solve this by doubling the range of numbers each digit can represent. Lets just pretend all our digits are made up of 2 symbols (remember when I said we can use whatever we wanted?). So 00 = > 0, 01 = > 1, 10 = > 2, 11 = > 3. Since we have 4 possible numbers, we'll call this \"Base 4\".\n\n - \"11 11 11 11\" in base 2 becomes \"3333\" in base 4\n\nBut what if this isn't enough? What if we use 3 digits? (000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111 = > 0, 7). Since there are 8 different numbers, we'll call this \"Base 8\"\n\n - \"11 111 111\" in base 2 becomes \"377\" in base 8\n\nStill not good enough... can we do better if we grouped into 4s? \n\n - \"1111 1111\" in base 2 becomes \"FF\" in **base 16**\n\n----\n\n**Oh hey, I remember Base 16!**\n\nYes! It is just a shorter system for representing numbers. Base 16 is naturally a mathematical byproduct of squaring 2 3 times, but in this case it's really just **the number of permutations you can get with groups of 4 base 2 digits**! That's the special relationship you're looking for. And now we simply need to remember 16 different sets of 1s and 0s to convert from Base 2 to Base 16.\n\n - 0000, 0001, 0010, 0011, 0100, 0101, 0110, 0111\n - 1000, 1001, 1010, 1011, 1100, 1101, 1110, 1111\n\nCan be mapped to\n\n - 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8\n - 9, A, B, C, D, E, F\n\nAnd thus creating a numbering system that compresses Base 2 numbers in an easy and efficient method for us.\n\n----\n\n**Why stop there? Why not 32?**\n\nWell, we still can use 32, but that would require remember numbers all the way from A to V, which is a bit unwieldy, so we don't use it ever. ~~Also, try remembering numbers in groups of 8 and you'll find we're limited in our comprehension.~~ Also, if you try remembering all the numbers in groups of 5 base 2 digits and you'll find we're quickly limited by our reading comprehension as there're 32 permutations in total!\n\nEdits: \n\n - hopefully making things more clear at the end regarding base 32 and why 16 is more prevalent for notation purposes.\n - fleshed out base 16 section\n - omg such a fail. Base 32 is 5 digits not 8.\n - more errors in converting 9"
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1i4igx | how are boneless chicken wings made? | Just wondering because I think I ate the bones... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1i4igx/eli5_how_are_boneless_chicken_wings_made/ | {
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" Boneless chicken wings are simply breaded pieces of chicken breast.",
"from boneless chickens obviously...\n\non a serious note, its just a regular chicken wing that has had the bone removed after cooking but before serving. "
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3km5u2 | why does the whole world seem to show more sympathy for 9/11 than other tragedies that have happened? | Maybe I just haven't paid attention when it occurs for other things, but all across the world there are memorials for 9/11 and not for other horrible events that have happened it seems. (Ex. the Indian ocean tsunami in 2004. I haven't heard anyone say anything about it since it happened and it killed 60x more people) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3km5u2/eli5why_does_the_whole_world_seem_to_show_more/ | {
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"Undoubtedly, 9/11 has resonated so widely and so enduringly because it was as impactful *metaphorically* as it was physically. \n\nThe terrorist attacks 14 years ago were a deliberate affront to the idealism of the western world. People in the west implicitly believed that the space they occupied was safe stable and held a future more promising than it ever had. Remember, in the two decades before the attack, the US and the rest of the western world had enjoyed unrivaled prosperity. We had vanquished the \"evil of communism\", the economy was stronger than it ever had been and wars were a thing fought in far off lands and only undertaken for the lofty goals of humanitarianism and expanded democracy.\n\nAl Qaeda struck at the very heart of that. Even nations not directly victimized by the attacks had their optimism irreparably shaken. In a sense, 9/11 was the day the modern world lost its innocence. We were rudely awakened to a world we had been ignoring for twenty years. A world full of wholehearted disagreement with the ideals upon which we had built our global society. \n\nIn contrast, the Indonesian Tsunami, while far more deadly in terms of raw numbers, was a force of nature. There was no message it sent, no political agenda being spread. While tragic, it did not have the same paradigm-shifting impact. \n\nIt's also worth noting that the tsunami took place well after the events of 9/11, in a much more cynical global climate.\n\n**TL;DR**: 9/11 was about more than a loss of lives. It was about the death of the idealism of the western world. ",
"Planes crashing and buildings collapsing make more striking visuals and are more memorable than deadly weather, especially since simular disasters happen several times a year and are hard to tell apart. ",
"This answer is pure conjecture; there isnt really an objective answer to this question; but I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that it has to do with the hurricane of propaganda that followed after it. We very quickly had an evil face to blame for it justifying us declaring war to seek the \"terrorists\". Since all the news outlets were perpetuating this same thing, it was thought to be public opinion that Muslims are evil, and you'd be crazy for saying that all things considered, 9/11 pales in comparison to things like the Indian tsunami of 04, mass genocide in Africa, holocaust, etc. There is a very strong culture of patriotism in America that is almost fanatical, that is thanks to propaganda.\n\nOf course; that's not to say that everything about the situation was purposely done to \"herd the sheep\"\n\nI think it comes down to the fact that people are scared that they're not safe (and they're right). Things like school shootings or the boston marathon bombing are big because of that right there; it could be ME that dies next. Not as personal when it's a bunch of African children half way around the world starving to death. Totally selfish point of view; but then again most people selfish whether they want to admit it or not.\n\nAlso, most of us who are old enough to read this probably remember that day; but not many people alive today remember the holocaust, or hiroshima bombing, pearl harbor. Its likely very fresh in our minds compared to other \"tragedies\""
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337829 | in the days before photo and video and widespread communications, how did people know who was royalty/wanted by the law?? | Even when the king/queen was disguised in regular clothing, people in rural areas somehow knew who they were (according to books/movies). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/337829/eli5_in_the_days_before_photo_and_video_and/ | {
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"Kingdoms were much smaller than they are today. But many subjects would not have recognized their monarch without their standards and entourage. Today is very different, the Queen of Canada is known throughout the world and addresses Canada and the other parts of the Commonwealth in a Christmas address ",
"People in general weren't very mobile. You tended to be within a short range of your home town, so people knew you. Depend on when in history, and where, strangers were generally viewed with suspicion, because only traveling merchants, con artists and criminals traveled between towns.\n\nAs for royalty hiding, more a movie thing. When I travel to the country of my heritage, locals instantly know I'm an American. Even if I dress in something simple like jeans and a t-shirt, the way I walk, behave etc gives it away. Don't even have to speak.\n\nPeasants are working people, rough hands. Royalty wouldn't have that. Even in America, as recent as the 1930s, affluent Americans and working class Americans spoke with very different accents.",
"Hand drawn wanted posters were what various Nobles and Lawkeepers used to find wanted people. \n\nAs for Royalty, that is fiction. Beyond those in the Capitol and the Highest Nobles few would recognize the royalty, and most of them would not do so without them being in proper regalia. ",
"In ancient China, actually a lot of peasants did not know the face of their own king. So unless they were told by the king's attendees, they would have no idea that the person they have just seen is their king."
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4mqws2 | why do drugs/sugar etc have highs and comedowns/withdrawal, but orgasms just level out? | Orgasms are a much more powerful rush of dopamine and feel way better but you don't have that dreaded hangover that can be so depressing and painful. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mqws2/eli5_why_do_drugssugar_etc_have_highs_and/ | {
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"I think most stuff that naturally gives you pleasure doesn't have comedowns. Like exercise for example. ",
"Probably because they are completely separate systems of the body. \n\nEating sugar does release dopamine,. Buy it also boosts your insulin levels, boosts the metabolic processes. And overall is the digestive system.\n\nOrgasms target the reproductive system as well as the cebtral nerve system \n\n\nNote: not an expert, just not 5 years old",
"You might want to improve your orgasm game. How is your testosterone level? Are you eating enough B vitamins and animal fats to keep that level healthy? \n\nWhen your T levels drop, so do your orgasm intensities. Multiple times with my LTR I cum so hard the room goes dark and I can't move for quite some time. ",
"When it comes to drugs that hijack the reward pathway or drugs that may influence the reward pathway, you don't particularly suffer immediately from withdrawal. Acute abusers of addictive drugs don't suffer from withdrawal while chronic abusers, if not taking the drug, suffer from withdrawal. Importantly, those who are addicted to sex and/or orgasms also suffer from withdrawal, only if they are addicted to it. Similarly, a gambling addiction works the same way. Most of the time, these withdrawal symptoms are a result of not having the drug in the system because the neural circuitry (the way your brain is wired) changes due to abusing said drug. While drugs themselves physically change the way your brain is wired, these other addictions can do so non-physically.\n\nSimply stated, you really only suffer from withdrawal when your brain becomes reliant on a specific stimuli. For example, consistently activating neural circuits via a physical method or non-physical method that leads to the dependency of that system on the stimulus. When the stimuli is no longer present, you suffer from withdrawal.",
"Your body has evolved so that sex doesn't decrease functioning. It's a *good* thing, especially if you're a male. The more and with more mates, the better, since it means more babies. What doesn't mean more sex and babies is getting killed by a predator while you're recovering from being depressed after sex. So there's a balance between feel-good and feel-good-then-shitty. You get the sex drive, but without the risk and handicap."
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4u8srx | how do shows like the daily show pull clips that may be several years old to make very specific points? | With the second coming of John Stewart on Colbert this week, I was reminded how specific some of the clips they find are. Is there like a data base for every news anchor somewhere? I have no idea. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4u8srx/eli5how_do_shows_like_the_daily_show_pull_clips/ | {
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"This has been asked before and iirc, the answer was that there are companies with the sole purpose of recording TV and categorizing it on servers that shows like the daily show can pay to search through.",
"The simple explanation is that lots of groups put together searchable archives of television programming. There are for-profit and non-profit organizations with different focuses on what footage they collect.\n\nHere's a good example that would be very useful.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\n\n\n\n > The Vanderbilt Television News Archive is the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news.\n\n > We have been recording, preserving and providing access to television news broadcasts of the national networks since August 5, 1968.\n\n > > The collection spans the presidential administrations of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.\n**The core collection includes evening news broadcasts from ABC, CBS, and NBC (since 1968), an hour per day of CNN (since 1995) and Fox News (since 2004). Special news broadcasts found in the Archive include political conventions, presidential speeches and press conferences, Watergate hearings, coverage of the Persian Gulf War, the events of September 11, 2001, the War in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq.**\n > \n > Individuals request loans of items from our collection for reference, study, classroom instruction, and research. We offer DVDs that are duplications of entire broadcasts as well as compilations of individual news stories specified by the borrower. Borrowers pay fees for the items loaned to cover the costs of providing this service.\n > \n > All material of the Vanderbilt Television News Archive must be used within the restrictions of the United States copyright legislation. Copyright Public Law 94-553 Section § 108 (f)(3) includes provisions regarding copyright exemptions for audiovisual works and archiving of television news broadcasts.\n > \n > You can view a bibliography of articles about the Archive and of published research projects that have used the Archive as a resource.\n > \n > **You can browse individual descriptions of program segments.**\n > \nNon-subscribers will need to complete a brief registration form to search the database. **There is currently no charge for searching the database of news abstracts and broadcast descriptions.**\n > ",
"News companies keep transcripts and archives of all of their broadcasts. A significant portion of their revenue is from pulling archived clips and licensing them for rebroadcast. "
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33y0sd | what the hell is going on in baltimore?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33y0sd/eli5what_the_hell_is_going_on_in_baltimore/ | {
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"A black man was arrested on charges of running from the cops. 30 minutes later, his spine was *somehow* nearly severed, and he died shortly later. The police won't say what happened to him. The protests/riots are because black people in this country are tired of being randomly killed by police claiming self defense.\n\nEdit: I have been informed that Gray was being arrested for brandishing a knife. I was confusing him for the man shot in NC a few weeks ago. None of this justifies the fact that he sustained injuries which killed him while in police custody, though.",
"Almost nothing. The city is totally calm today, there is literally nothing happening. \n\nYesterday a few thousand people attended a completely peaceful march followed by a protest outside city hall. The protest was in response to the death of a man, Freddie Gray, who was in police custody. Some people spoke and then most of the protesters either headed back to the place where Freddie Gray died for a candlelight vigil or started back home. At that point, a small number of people broke a small number of windows, including several police cars and a 7-11. Some other people threw around some barricades and shouted at the police outside Camden Yards, startling the people who were there waiting in line to get in for the game. It's possible that they were trying to get arrested, as protesters sometimes do, but as someone who attended I find it far more likely that they were not involved in the protest at all and just used the large crowd and the somewhat antagonistic amount of police in random places as an excuse to make trouble. Some people peacefully blocked a major street downtown, near where some of the trouble occurred, surrounded by police...about a 1:1 ratio of police to demonstrators. \n\nThere were only twelve arrests out of thousands of marchers. There were two reported injuries and there is no indication that those injuries were the result of violence...except for one city paper photographer that allegedly was beaten by the police. It's just as likely that the other tripped and fell. \n\nThere is one picture circulating of a man threatening an Orioles fan with a knife. This appears to have been an isolated incident and the picture has no context...people are assuming that the Orioles fan was just standing there, but we have no idea if that's actually the case. I've been following this pretty closely and I haven't seen anything that indicates that the Orioles fan was actually hurt. \n\nTL;DR basically nothing is going on. The media and reddit have blown it completely out of proportion. ",
"People are downplaying the situation. It was much more than \"just a few\" people causing trouble. It was not \"only at night time\" that the trouble started. It was not \"people from out if town\". I live in baltiless, I'm mobile and can't do much from my phone but the truth is out there, the pictures , videos, and arrest records are aviable to prove what I just stated, all of which you can find on reddit even. I understand that this website has a tremendous left wing bias but I hope this comment stays for a while. \n\nedit, got on my computer now:\n\n[Night time?](_URL_5_)\n\n[night time? (notice the large knife)](_URL_3_)\n\n[Peaceful gang signs](_URL_4_)\n\n[Terribly sad video, broad daylight, I feel horrible for that big fella](_URL_0_)\n\n[another video](_URL_7_)\n\n[another video](_URL_1_)\n\nThese are just the ones during the day, during the \"peaceful protest\"\n\n[Local news report](_URL_6_) “**While the vast majority of arrests reflect local residency**, the total number of arrests does not account for every incident of criminal activity,” according to police.\n\nHmm, guess they were not \"Out of towners\"\n\n[Entire stadium full of people stuck inside the stadium](_URL_2_)\n"
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"http://i.imgur.com/NUZ3cSi.jpg",
"http://a.pomf.se/bduisk.png",
"http://imgur.com/a/AwaLE",
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44zw1t | roswell ufo incident | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44zw1t/eli5_roswell_ufo_incident/ | {
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"During the late 1940s, the US government had a secret project to use high altitude balloons to listen for soviet nuclear tests. One of these balloons crashed near Roswell. The government claimed that it was a weather balloon that crashed. In the aftermath people started to claim that it was an alien ship that crashed and the government covered it up. Some people took this idea and ran with it, leading to a bunch on books and documentaries and the idea eventually entered the public consciousness.\n\nOf course, some people will say that the balloon project was just made up to cover up an actual alien crash site.",
"It's important to understand that the modern version of the Roswell story was invented pretty much out of whole cloth in the 80s-90s. What ACTUALLY happened wasn't nearly as dramatic.\n\nWhat happened *at the time* is this. A ranch foreman named Mac Brazel was riding the ranch and came across a scattering of debris, some rubber, tin foil and string, stuff like that. He didn't think much of it, but a day or two later, he was in town, and found that the UFO craze in the US had just started up.\n\nA private pilot in Washington had seen a bunch of crescent-shaped objects he couldn't identify, and said that they were moving oddly, they were skipping through the sky \"like saucers on the water.\" That was quickly changed in the papers to \"flying saucers,\" and the craze was on.\n\nWhen Brazel heard about this, he wondered if the debris he saw might be significant, and informed the authorities. The military was psychotically paranoid about commies in those days, and didn't know if the \"flying saucers\" were a commie invasion or what, so they pretty much over-reacted to anything concerning it.\n\nSo in short order, an Army Air Force \"intelligence\" officer, Major Jesse Marcel, was dispatched to examine the debris. This next bit is important: Marcel is quoted in the press AT THE TIME as saying that he gathered up ALL the debris and put them in the trunk of his car to take back for analysis. He said they amounted to a few pounds of stuff.\n\nBut because of the commie paranoia and the fact that maybe Marcel had a few too many racoons loose in his dumpster (if you get my drift), Marcel informed the press that we had captured a for real \"flying disc.\" One apparently made of a few pounds of rubber, tin foil, and string. There also was some cloth tape that had odd symbols on it. Well, when Marcel's more level-headed superiors saw the \"flying disc,\" they retracted the story in short order, and Marcel was shown in the paper kneeling in front of the debris, which looked exactly like a crashed flying saucer doesn't. The military said the thing was just a crashed weather balloon.\n\nAnd that's it. That's the WHOLE story. No massive wreckage, no bodies, just a few pounds of rubber and tin foil that could fit in the back of a car's trunk.\n\nSo flash forward to the 1980s, and you have a bunch of UFO nuts casting around for Exciting True Tales of UFOs they can write books about, and they come across the bare bones story of the Roswell incident. Well obviously, you can't sell UFO books based on a bit of rubber and tinfoil, so they did \"research\" and suddenly \"discovered\" that there had been a huge spacecraft, bodies, the whole conspiracy thing. When they started talking to people who had been involved in the minor incident 40 years ago, waving fame and money under their noses, suddenly these people started \"remembering\" all kinds of details, they'd somehow failed to mention before. And the MODERN Roswell myth was born.\n\nIt's all bullshit, of course, there's not one SHRED of credible evidence that the Roswell incident was anything more than how it was originally reported.\n\nWith one minor exception: it wasn't a weather balloon. Rather, it was a balloon being used by the military for a top secret project called Mogul, which lofted microphones into the stratosphere to listen in on Soviet nuke tests. By the 1990s, Mogul had been declassified, and a couple of people who had worked on the project came forward and positively identified the balloon as one of theirs, they even knew precisely which one it was, based on the winds of the time and the place the debris were found. The mysterious symbol tape? Yeah, that was decorative dress-maker's tape one of the engineers picked up at Woolworth's because it had the lightness, flexibility and strength they needed for one component, and the military didn't have the time or budget to develop or search for anything else.\n\nIt's a non-story, but people have bought into the myth, so there's little chance it will go away any time soon.\n\n"
]
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[],
[]
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||
18esf8 | how cassette tapes produce sound | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18esf8/eli5_how_cassette_tapes_produce_sound/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Let's start with a simplifed description of how the sound is recorded.... a microphone is a membrane with a magnet attached to it close to a wire coil. As sound waves hit the membrane, the magnet moves back and forth, this makes electrons move in a wire, creating a changing electrical current - the pattern of the current is directly related (or *analog*ous) to the sound waves. \n\n1. Take that current and feed it into a little electromagnet. \n2. Now get some tape and coat with with ferrous (iron-containing) powder able to be magnetised.\n3. Move the tape past the electromagnet while the sound is creating a current in it.\n\nResult - the tape will have magnetic patterns recorded on it that are analogous to the original sound wave.\n\nThat's recording done.\n\nNow playback.\n\n1. Move your recorded magnetic tape across a little tightly coiled length of wire (AKA the playback head). \n\n2. As the magnetic fields in the tape move past the coil they will create a changing electrical current in the wire - the pattern of the current is directly related (or *analog*ous) to the patterns recorded on the tape.\n\n3. Feed that current to a loud speaker - a membrane with a magnet attached to it. close to a wire coil. As the current moves though the coil, the magnet will move, making the membrane vibrate and creating soundwaves that hit your ear.\n\nTada.\n\n",
"If you expose a powerful magnet over the cassette tape would it be ruined?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
||
2w3yol | what's the difference between a musical and an opera? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w3yol/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_musical_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cond0e4"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"In an opera, every single line in sung.\n\nIn a musical, it is a mix of spoken and sung lines."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
xvafa | different dimensions | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xvafa/different_dimensions/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5pwonm",
"c5pyayk"
],
"score": [
2,
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"text": [
"according to M-Theory, there are 11 dimensions in the universe (10 spacial dimensions and 1 time dimension)\n\nis this what you are asking?",
"This video does the best job:\n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkxieS-6WuA"
]
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||
1pinzm | why are dump-trucks exempt from damage because of a sticker that says they are exempt from damage? | I see it all the time on the highway and am wondering why even if they do not have a "stay back 100 feet" sticker, they are presumably free from retribution of damage that a stray rock may cause. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pinzm/eli5_why_are_dumptrucks_exempt_from_damage/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd2piqg"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"They are not exempt. Highway truck operators are required by law to secure the entire load. \n\nThis sticker is designed to do two things. \n\n1. Make you conscious of the possibility of flying debris.\n\n2. Make you blame yourself so you don't blame the person really at fault."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1p2k6j | why is it that if i move my indoor tv aerial (digital) just 6 inches, the picture can degrade massively, or even lose it completely? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p2k6j/eli5why_is_it_that_if_i_move_my_indoor_tv_aerial/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccy2tfl",
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"text": [
"There's something that when you move your antenna, affects the \"line of sight\" of the radio waves. Like some electronic wiring, plumbing, even telephone wire and quite possibly some nail studs. \n\nOn the flip side, it is possible that said plumbing helps to amplify the signal that you are trying to get. I can't imagine electrical wires able to help amplify radio waves.\n\nEDIT: by line of sight, I mean the broadcasting antenna shoots out radio waves, (if you're far enough) it travels high and bounces off the atmosphere (I'm not sure exactly how this works, been a while since I've looked into it), and it comes to your antenna. If there's enough stuff between your antenna and the signal, you get crap reception. Think about a tidal wave, stuff stands in the way of the wave and the wave gets weaker and weaker until it does nothing.",
"Because digital is all or nothing. While analog can fad out, digital can not. Chance are you are at the edge of the signal an moving it them few inches are enough for the signal to drop past the CRC correction.",
"It can depend a few factors, firstly;\n\n**Antennas**\n\nThere are a couple of antenna types you can get for indoors, usually these are a single telescopic [monopoles](_URL_2_) and are usually dipoles with a resistor instead of another antenna. They can receive from pretty much every direction apart from directly overhead. (These are sometimes referred to as omnidirectional). \n\nThen you have your [Yagi's](_URL_0_) These are directional antennas (Reflector at the very back, dipole is next, then the rest are directors). When using these to transmit, you have a propagation (the direction of radiation emission) that is very narrow. Almost like a beam, the same works with receiving; and so you have to be pointed pretty much directly at the source to receive.\n\nThen you have [dipoles](_URL_1_) which work in a similar fashion to mono poles only they are more balanced/stable some might argue.\n\n**Weather**\n\nRain and heavy cloud might effect your receiving as certain frequencies have trouble propagating through water. (This is why satellite TV has trouble when there is a storm [also its only got a few milliwatt gain coming from the satellite])\n\n**Misc**\n\nParts in your walls like piping or cabling may be absorbing or reflecting your signal.\n\nEDIT: Example; Say you have a transmission source 20 miles away and 17 miles away there is a tall building. Move your antenna a foot to the left and the building is now in between your source and you, move it one foot to the right and you have a 'line of sight' between you and the transmitter. \n\nThere really are tonnes of things that can degrade your signal. Ionosphere reflections, lorries(big-rigs), cars with crappy alternators, clouds, rain, illegal spectrum usage. Its a big list of possibilities.\n\n**Summary**\n\nThat's about all I can think of right now. The major one is your antenna type. If you are using a Yagi, even moving the antenna slightly is going to make for crappy signal. (This is why they use yagi's for low power animal tracking, you get great directionality.)"
]
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[],
[],
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"http://i00.i.aliimg.com/photo/218502827/Indoor_tv_antenna_HS6116.jpg",
"http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Mercury-ST15-Televee-Indoor-TV-Antenna-Aerial-UHF-VHF-FM-DAB-Freeview-Digital-/00/s/MjUwWDI1MA==/$%28KGrHqN,!h8E7!Qs6CMhBO0m!2GbhQ~~60_35.JPG",
"http://img.weiku.com/waterpicture/2011/11/3/16/UHF_Digital_Indoor_TV_Antenna_634577363210129058_1.jpg"
]
] |
||
23w097 | why do they put signs up that say no turns in places where there are obviously no turns (like a freeway acceleration ramp)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23w097/eli5_why_do_they_put_signs_up_that_say_no_turns/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch13kvc",
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"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Because someone tried it at least once ",
"When you see a stupid sign, or a stupid sticker on something you buy like \"do not swallow\" on an iron, chances are someone has tried it, or someone has tried to sue, because they tried it and got hurt.\n\nWe are not a nation of Einsteins"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
30fs37 | why is certain physical movement (pacing back and forth, snapping your fingers, rubbing your chin, etc.) associated with thinking hard or trying to remember something? | Sorry if my title is atrocious. If you need me to clarify please ask.
I noticed that I involuntarily start snapping my fingers when I'm trying to remember something.
Is there an explanation for why this sort of behavior is associated with "jogging your memory"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30fs37/eli5_why_is_certain_physical_movement_pacing_back/ | {
"a_id": [
"cps0yol"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Think of it as if you have three centers: moving, intellectual, and emotional. If the moving center is distracted with motion, your intellectual center is freed up to pursue its goal. That sounds kind of new agey but I think for me it helps explain why I can more easily solve problems or write song lyrics while driving or in the shower."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
9tyku8 | how are elections results verified? like what prevents a government (including the usa) from just saying "hey this guy won and here are some numbers that we made up to prove it" | Not that I'm a conspiracy theorist or anything, but as a citizen of the U.S. that has seen a few close elections, what confidence should I have that these numbers are legitimate? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9tyku8/eli5_how_are_elections_results_verified_like_what/ | {
"a_id": [
"e9029dw",
"e908snc"
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"score": [
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3
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"text": [
"Elections are conducted on a state- and local level, so the US government wouldn't really have a way to announce the results, or rig them generally without getting hundreds of precincts in on it, even for a low-level race.\n\nThere are usually audits and various other ways to confirm the official vote count, and typically, hand recounts in very close elections.",
"In the US each major party, campaign, or issue can send representatives to polling places. The media as well as third-party organizations related to voting rights and legal oversight can also send observers. The observers do a couple different things:\n\n * Watch/observe how the polling place is operated. Make sure laws are followed, people aren't struck from the rolls without reason, ballots aren't discarded without reason, etc., and\n\n * To observe and/or participate in the counting and tally process to make sure the tallies are accurate. \n\n * They can request to participate at any and/or all polling places relevant to their campaigns.\n\nIf an observer feels either part of this process is not meeting their expectations they can file complaints in court to see to it things are run properly and/or that more transparency is mandated.\n\nAs a little bts info, polling places are usually based on precinct, township, city, and/or county. Precincts are non-political districts drawn within a county based simply on population. Where I live each county is expected to draw precincts that do not exceed 2500 persons, and the lines are revisited every couple years. Some precincts are split if they have too many people, especially in urban areas. Other precincts in my area have only 100 or 200 people because those areas are rural and spread out. Either way, precincts are each assigned a polling place and usually include a public meeting area like a school or church. \n\nCounty, city, township probably don't require an explanation. Each state is a little different in how voter rolls are broken down to the local level.\n\nMore info here: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/policies-for-election-observers.aspx"
]
] |
|
1ohqkn | why is old frozen meats from the freezer considered bad? what happens to the meat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ohqkn/eli5_why_is_old_frozen_meats_from_the_freezer/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccs1axa",
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"score": [
5,
19
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"text": [
"Unless packaged really meat left in a freezer for too long will get [freezer burn](_URL_0_). The freezer burned spots are basically where all of the moisture has been pulled out of the meat. While freezer burned meat is safe to eat the texture and taste will be adversely affected.",
"1. Aging, \n2. Bacteria,\n3. Water crystals,\n4. Freezer burn\n\n*1. Freezing doesn't stop bacterial growth or meat \"aging\" completely. Enzymatic reactions are still happening, albeit at a much slower rate, this causes many of the proteins inside to change properties which confer flavor and texture, thus giving meat that \"old\" taste.\n\n*2. As for bacteria, it will remain semi dormant but still reproduce unless the temperature is very low (at least -19°C), and toxins or any other bacterial waste will still be present and unaffected, with the potential to make us sick when consumed.\n\n*3. When you freeze meat, microscopic water water crystals are formed as the liquids reach freezing point. If that point is reached fast (As in a blast freezer, IQF or submersion in liquid nitrogen), said crystals will be small and not harm the meat's tissues and cells, on the other hand, slow freezing processes cause large water crystals to form. Large crystals act as blades that rupture cell membranes and let the juices inside out, drying the meat and making it tougher.\n\nLastly, temperature changes in frozen meat also affect quality. Expansion and contraction caused by temperature changes make the tissues grind against the water crystals, and the jagged edges cut the muscle fibers, eventually leading to a pulpifying effect that turns meat into sludge over time.\n\n*4. Meat that is not vacuum packed or otherwise sealed completely in an airtight container will lose humidity in the areas that are exposed, those areas will turn black and dry, and even while not harmful per-se, freezer burnt meat becomes undesirable for consumption.\n\n\n\nSource. Certified HACCP inspector with 12 years experience working at a processing plant."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freezer_burn"
],
[]
] |
||
75omb5 | how is it that babies have more bones then adults? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/75omb5/eli5_how_is_it_that_babies_have_more_bones_then/ | {
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"text": [
"How many bones do you have in your body?",
"As we grow our bones fuse together. All of the ones from when you were a baby can probably still be identified with a Keen eye in your adult skeleton. It's also why babies don't have kneecaps until a few months.",
"A couple of bones, primarily in the skull, fuse together to form one bone. They're in multiple pieces because it makes the head a little easier to push the baby out, but they eventually fuse together to form one skull.",
"Babies have portions of their skeleton that fuse together as they mature. Two bones can fuse into a single bone but not the other way around. \n",
"When you are born, you have lots and lots of tiny bones. As you get older, they get bigger and merge (fuse) together. \n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is an x-ray of a human fetus. Notice how the hips are 4 separate bones and how the bones in the baby's knees and elbows do not connect, etc, "
]
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[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.buyamag.com/graphics/human_fetus_x_ray_image_1.jpg"
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||
cp1swd | what causes the shower to make that high pitched screech when you turn up the heat a bunch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cp1swd/eli5_what_causes_the_shower_to_make_that_high/ | {
"a_id": [
"ewmr9in"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"Bernoullie's principle states that a faster moving fluid is at a lower pressure than a slower moving one, so the speed of the water through the pipes lowers pressure enough for the hot temperatures you're requesting with the shower knob to turn some of the water to steam which is then heard as a screech."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
30bzbd | respectability politics | What are respectability politics? I have read the Wikipedia page on the topic and I have read the Bill Cosby pound cake speech excerpt and I still do not understand entirely the concept of respectability politics. I have gotten a sense that they are viewed as bad or harmful by the marginalized communities that they affect, but I don't understand why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30bzbd/eli5_respectability_politics/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpr2ges"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"So respectability politics tends to come up in activist circles around the issues of racism and homophobia.\n\nWhen someone says \"respectability politics\" they're talking about efforts by people of color, or by LGBT people, to portray themselves to the dominant group in society (white people and straight people) as \"normal\" and \"just like you.\" Now respectability politics is inherently negative, it's not something you yourself would admit to supporting. You *accuse* other people of promoting respectability politics. \n\nSo like when Trayvon Martin was shot, the media brought up that he was wearing a hoodie and listened to rap music and smoked weed. Activists would say \"why are you even talking about that? Does wearing a hoodie or smoking weed mean someone deserves to be killed?\"\n\nBeing anti-respectability politics means that you're arguing that black people or gay people don't have to be normal and mainstream and \"fit in\" to straight white society in order for them to have rights. Even if you're a walking stereotype, you still deserve rights and protections.\n\nFurthermore it argues that, for example, black folks aren't disadvantaged in society because they sag their pants or listen to hip hop or speak a certain way. Black folks are disadvantaged because of pervasive racism in the system. So anyone like Bill Cosby who says black folks just need to clean themselves up and act more white (act more *respectable*) and then they'll be treated equally, is deluding themselves. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
568nai | why does brightness and staring too much at a screen produce eye fatigue and headaches? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/568nai/eli5_why_does_brightness_and_staring_too_much_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"d8hck4h"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"This is what's known as computer vision syndrome. \n\nWhen you're staring at the computer screen for hours at a time, your eyes have to stay focused on it. The muscles that focus and move your eyes are fast-twitch muscles, and aren't really designed to focus the way we do on computer screens. \n\nIIRC, when using a monitor, our eyes have to focus and refocus thousands of times an hour. We also tend to blink less, so our eyes dry out\n\nAs far as the light goes, it's the blue light that gets ya. Blue light penetrates father into the eye than red light. \n\nTo help reduce this, there are things you can do:\n\n1. Make sure you have the correct eyeglass prescription. \n\n2. Every 20 minutes look at a point 20ft away for 20 seconds and blink 20 times. \n\n3. Get a pair of computer glasses that filter out blue light. Gunnar makes good computer glasses, and your optometrist probably has a coating that has the same effect. \n\n4. Place a light behind your monitor. \n\nSource: semester long report I had to do about Computer Vision Syndrome.\n\n It's totally possible I got some things wrong since Im on mobile and don't have my report handy or access to the journal articles I used to write it.\n\nEdit: [Here is a pretty good source on Computer Vision Syndrome](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4170366/"
]
] |
||
tu21y | why a certain kind of music is "sad" or "happy" or any other emotions, regardless of the lyrics ? | Listening to pink floyd right now, and it's always making me feel high. So I was wondering : Why ? We (almost) always agree to say that a song is sad, or happy, eneretic, nostalgic... Regardless of the lyrics. Even if we don't know the song (so we don't have a personal history behind the feeling)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tu21y/why_a_certain_kind_of_music_is_sad_or_happy_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4ppzly"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Chords usually have to do with it. Usually, minor chords, especially minor thirds, are associated with sadness. \n\n[Curtis et al](_URL_0_) posited that a minor third mirrors human speech patterns expressing sadness. \n\nThe abstract: (emphasis mine)\n\n > There is a long history of attempts to explain why music is perceived as expressing emotion. The\nrelationship between pitches serves as an important cue for conveying emotion in music. The musical\ninterval referred to as the minor third is generally thought to convey sadness. **We reveal that the minor\nthird also occurs in the pitch contour of speech conveying sadness.** Bisyllabic speech samples conveying\nfour emotions were recorded by 9 actresses. **Acoustic analyses revealed that the relationship between the\n2 salient pitches of the sad speech samples tended to approximate a minor third.** Participants rated the\nspeech samples for perceived emotion, and the use of numerous acoustic parameters as cues for\nemotional identification was modeled using regression analysis. The minor third was the most reliable\ncue for identifying sadness. Additional participants rated musical intervals for emotion, and their ratings\nverified the historical association between the musical minor third and sadness. These findings support\nthe theory that human vocal expressions and music share an acoustic code for communicating sadness."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://ase.tufts.edu/psychology/music-cognition/pdfs/Curtis&Bharucha2010Emotion.pdf"
]
] |
|
6csoyv | why does the skin tone of a butt darken towards the butt crack ? | Similar to armpits and such | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6csoyv/eli5_why_does_the_skin_tone_of_a_butt_darken/ | {
"a_id": [
"dhx7bny"
],
"score": [
13
],
"text": [
"It looks like this was answered on this sub [here](_URL_0_) in December 2014"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p60fl/eli5_why_is_the_skin_around_the_anus_more_brown/?st=J318GRD5&sh=7fcb0535"
]
] |
|
ehgi8x | why can’t we digitally store our memories and see a visual representation of some sorts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehgi8x/eli5_why_cant_we_digitally_store_our_memories_and/ | {
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"fcj5cjy",
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"text": [
"Science hasnt really caught up to that. We dont really know exactly where and how memories are stored. If we did we would be able to cure dementia. I've often wanted something similar but yeah until we understand the brain it wont happen.",
"The brain isn’t a computer. neurons aren’t switches. We don’t really understand how it all works.",
"Let’s start with what a “digital” recording is. You may store a picture in a digital medium - this requires something called “encoding” in order to make computers understand what they’re looking at in order to display it. A simple example is a map; let’s say you wanted a picture of a checkerboard. You could encode this as an 8X8 grid, with (say) the number 1 for white and the number 0 for black, ending up with something like this:\n\n1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0\n0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1\n1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0\n0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1\n1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0\n0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1\n1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0\n0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1\n\nThe computer reads this information and draws a white square every time there’s a “1” and a black square when there’s a “0” - at the end you should have a checkerboard pattern that you recorded. Congratulations, we have “encoded” then “decoded” a simple image!\n\nNow that was a very simple example, normally you’d have to encode all kinds of shapes, colors, and in the case of video, many pictures in sequence (24-120 a second), each with their own shapes, colors, and values. In the computer world, this makes encoding much more complicated, and so you need special programs installed to see recordings of videos and such. If you ever used a computer and saw that you “need a codec,” this is what they are talking about - “codec” is short for (en)code-dec(oder). \n\nWhew, ok but what about human memories? In fact, you can get a sort of “map” like the above in a very specific part of your brain: your eyes (yes, there are parts of your eyes that are considered to be part of your brain! Fun fact.). Light enters your eyes and the image of what you are looking at is projected onto what’s called the “retina” which is just rows upon rows upon rows of specialized brain cells that “encode” much like we did with the checkerboard example above. However, if you think about it, this isn’t a memory. The memory is formed when this image is conveyed to your brain, where it undergoes a much more complicated, biological “encoding” much like more complicated videos that have to have special codecs on computers for recording or viewing. When others say we don’t understand how the brain works, this is part of what they mean - we don’t know enough about the biological “codec” that stores these memories.\n\nSome more fun things to think about is that the way we store memories isn’t purely visual; we store memories in multi-sensory ways, which means yes, we remember what we saw, but also what we smelled and heard, what we touched and possibly tasted. We also store along with that some less obvious things, like what we felt at the time, what it means, etc. A cool part about a human memory is that it’s kind of a self-contained model of the world that’s NOT just a image - you can easily change some details of the memory and still have it make sense. You can extrapolate what might have happened if things did not occur as you remember them. Example, let’s say you had a cheeseburger with your friend Mark the other day. You can imagine what would have happened if you had a chicken sandwich with Mark instead (provided you’ve ever had a chicken sandwich). Moreover, you can imagine a lunch with an entirely different person, at a different location, in a different context - and your brain will pull from other memories, or even stored abstract knowledge to help you fill in the details. Think about what daydreaming entails. What fantasizing is. It’s no small wonder we have trouble figuring out how our brain stores this stuff because it is, on a very basic level, so very different from what stored “data” on a computer is. At best with very large, high-quality computer files, our codecs let us store a large amount of video/audio data in an efficient amount of space; in our brains, every last item within a memory is linked to other memories, ideas, and concepts the extent of which we have only begun to discover. \n\n(That said, we’ve made some huge leaps that sometimes get us very blurry images of things that we have seen in the past... but only really in cases where we already know what to look for and with the aid of repetition on trained algorithms that absolutely would not work outside of a lab setting - but I’ve already done and awful job of ELI5 so we’ll just leave it here)",
"We don't understand how memory is stored in the human brain.\n\nEven if we did, we don't understand how to build devices to electrically \"talk\" to the brain and extract the memories.\n\nEven if we did, the process might be too dangerous for healthy humans.\n\nThis tech is probably at least 100 years away from being practical, although that doesn't stop Elon Musk from [trying](_URL_0_)."
]
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[],
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"https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html"
]
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||
snplm | video and audio codecs | Why do so many different types exist? Why is there no simple standard which everyone uses? And why do media players only play certain kinds of codecs and not all of them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/snplm/eli5_video_and_audio_codecs/ | {
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"A file format, or a codec exists so that computers know how to read a file. Think of it as a book. The general idea is that the file format tells the computer how to read the book, using a specific language. Just like with languages, they are used because many have sprung up over the ages, and people tend to pick certain favorites. Some are more widely known, and some die out. However, these languages have all been created, and with different intents in mind. Some information needs to be very clear, and will use a language that doesn't compress it at all, simply listing out, pixel by pixel, and frame by frame, how an entire movie is going to play out. However, this is a lot of information that needs to be stored. Other formats exist to reduce the size of the file, and help it be moved easier, and played with more ease by computers. Most codecs that do reduce the file size will do this by changing large areas of similar colors into a box of one color, reducing the amount of colors, removing pixels, removing frames, or other means of leaving information out. The reason not all players can play all codecs is the same reason as no one knows all the languages there have ever been. If some kid made a codec in his basement whilst bored, it plays about as much importance to major companies as if you made your own language with a friend matters to a library. \n\nIf you want to know more, or if you need examples using numbers or images, please leave a reply. Also, if you would like to learn any accurate terminology, or if you want me to correct my answer in such a way as to satisfy any one otherwise prone to criticize the slightest error in description, please do say so! ",
"Your computer processor, by itself, doesn't know anything about video or audio. All it knows is ones and zeros. It needs to be taught how to read ones and zeros off your hard disk and turns those into pictures on the screen or sound coming out your speakers.\n\nIt turns out that it takes a lot of space to write out a description of all the pictures (video) and sounds in a movie on your hard disk. To try to make it take up less space, smart people have come up with different ways to describe what we see and hear.\n\nFor example, since the pictures that make a movie change really quickly, which is what tricks our eyes into thinking we're seeing things move on the screen, most of the things in the picture don't change from the picture that came before it. Because of this, we really only need to describe the picture once, and then describe the things in the picture that changed. If we do that, then the amount of space needed to describe all the pictures (video) will be much smaller.\n\nComputers have been around for about 50 years now, but they've only been able to play video for about 25 years. Over that time, screens have become much more detailed, so the videos we're playing have got more detailed along with them. At the same time, the people who program computers have learned from each other to develop more clever ways of describing the more detailed video and sounds in less space.\n\nWe call the ways to write out video and audio on a hard disk \"codecs\" which is short for coder-decoder, where the \"code\" in this phrase refers to the format in which the video and audio is written in. Since a movie has video and audio, you need to include both of them together (sometimes with subtitles as well) putting them inside a container. This introduces a third codec, which describes the container.\n\nYour question asks why there isn't a simple standard that everyone uses. There's a funny saying that goes \"the great thing about standards is that there's so many to choose from!\" which is exactly the problem we have in the video and audio world. The companies in the world that make devices have tried for a long time to choose just one that they will all use, but it's quite hard to agree because they are usually good in some ways but bad in others. On top of that, for a long time, none of the codecs were particularly good at all, so no one could agree because it was hard to decide which was the least bad.\n\nIt seems that everyone is starting to agree that a codec called MPEG-4 might be the best way to go, but some people are worried that the people that own MPEG-4 might start charging a lot of money to use it. We shall see."
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1ilr37 | [meta] a note about the moderation policy | Since we became a default subreddit, we're now getting a lot of traffic from newcomers. Which we love. However, it's become clear over the past day that a lot of the new people aren't quite clear on two important aspects of our moderation policy. Specifically:
* Casual racism, sexism, and such things are not allowed, regardless of whether or not you were making a joke. (This includes posts about OP and his sexual orientation.)
* Casual use of slurs is not allowed, regardless of whether or not you intended them to disparage the group they reference.
Doing these things is very rude, and may make it difficult for you to continue posting in this subreddit. If you weren't planning on doing them, this thread won't be that important to you; continue on with your happy posting. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ilr37/meta_a_note_about_the_moderation_policy/ | {
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"Well put Amarkov. One thing we are going to have to do is be a little more liberal with the ban hammer, and then ask the questions after we filter out the negativity. Don't even put us on your radar. Be nice.\n\nOne other important thing to remember is that **this is a community effort.** Reporting things that violate these guidelines and **messaging the mods** with links to questionable content is the best way to help us out!",
"As someone who has only recently discovered this subreddit, it has a feel like /r/askreddit, which has a lot of this type of comments. I feel like the idea that this subreddit is a serious only subreddit needs to be conveyed to new readers/commenters",
"OP is a... great guy?",
"So I shouldn't post anything I wouldn't say to a five year old?",
"Glad to see you guys take this route! I was worried about how being defaulted would change this place, but it's not too bad so far.",
"This is one of the reasons I love this subreddit so much. Huge swaths of reddit are unreadable due to blatant trolling, racism, sexism etc. It's very difficult to participate in any discussion that is dominated by those antics. Thank you for providing a higher bar of quality.",
"ELI5's [Eternal September](_URL_0_) has begun."
]
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1kkcvm | what determines the order of elements in the name of a compound? e.g. why is carbon monoxide not oxygen carbonate? | I've spent as much time trying to figure out how to word this question as I have wondering about the answer. There's no particular reason for my question, it's just got me wondering. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kkcvm/eli5_what_determines_the_order_of_elements_in_the/ | {
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"To answer the question directly Carbon Monoxide is one Carbon Atom and one Oxygen Atom.\nOxygen Carbonate is one Oxygen atom (i think, technically i dont think you can actually have oxygen carbonate) and one carbonate molecule, which is Carbon and three oxygens.\n\nSo they're different.\n\nNaming stuff in chemistry is part understanding what different words mean (eg carbonate does not mean 'has a carbon attached' in the same way oxide means 'has oxygen attached')\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd from what I recall of organic chemistry and hydrocarbons is part making it up as you go, with the parts being pretty much interchangeable. There tends to be a pattern to maintain standard more than anything else. But honestly as long as you've named all the component correctly the order is just what is easier to say.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nThis is my simple understanding from college several years ago, i do welcome corrections and additions :)\n"
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate",
"http://www.chemguide.co.uk/basicorg/conventions/names.html"
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6vp302 | how do cells know where to stop being liver/lung/etc and start being skin/bone/etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6vp302/eli5_how_do_cells_know_where_to_stop_being/ | {
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"They express certain genes that will exhibit the functions of whatever cell they are to become. Not every cell is going to express the same genes, even though they will all host the same genes. Every tissue type hosts a few types of cells that make it up. What genes are expressed cause them to be formed into their final product. After differentiation there are regulatory genes and growth genes which pick up the growth and every day functions aspects of the cell."
]
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||
bwvy4q | why are wall clouds/hail clouds green? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwvy4q/eli5_why_are_wall_cloudshail_clouds_green/ | {
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"Have you noticed how the color of sunlight seems to change throughout the day. The sun doesn’t change, it’s how much of the Earth’s atmosphere the light from the Sun has to travel before hitting your eye. The atmosphere is very very thin compared to the size of the Earth. At noon the Sun is brightest white/blue because it’s going through the least air. At sunrise/sunset it is orange red because it goes through more by coming from the side.\n\nClouds are made of water vapor which shift light towards a blue color.\n\nThunderstorm clouds, the types capable of producing hail or tornadoes are very tall clouds.\n\nBecause they are so high up they can get a lot of red light hitting the blue cloud.\n\nRed light + Blue filter = Green color."
]
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[]
] |
||
jiw1r | raid configurations | I don't know if this is even possible, but I know there are multiple types, just not what makes one better or worse or different than another | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jiw1r/eli5_raid_configurations/ | {
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"[Not even two days ago](_URL_0_)",
"I'll give it a shot, since the last one was a bit complicated.\n\nImagine that your hard drives are 3-ring binders, and the different pieces of data that you want are printed on individual sheets within that binder. For this example, you need the information that's on pages 5-10 of this binder, and a page takes a negligible amount of time to read. If a person gets sick, then their binder gets destroyed.\n\n**Single Drive Setup**\n\nOne person has your binder. You say \"I want to know what's on pages 5-10\". The person has to go to page 5, read, turn the page, read again, turn the page, etc. until all information is read.\n\n**Raid 0**\n\nYou split your binder into multiple binders (5 for this example). The first binder contains pages 1 and 6, while the second binder contains pages 2 and 7, and so on. You pass the 5 binders to 5 different people and say \"I want to know what's on pages 5-10\". Each person flips to their page that lies in that range, and prepares to read. You can get all of your information without any page turning (except for the initial lag, or *access time*). If anyone gets sick, their information is lost and you cannot get it back.\n\n**Raid 1**\n\nYou have two separate binders, each identical and containing pages 1-10. You give them to two separate people so that if one of them gets sick and can't read, then the other one can read to you. Once the other person is replaced, their binder can be replaced with a copy.\n\n**Raid 5**\n\nThis is a little more complicated, and this example is a little different than reality. You split your binder up into 5 separate binders (like in our raid 0 example), and then make copes of each one. Each of the 5 people have one binder of their own, and then a copy of one of the others. If nobody is sick, then each person reads from their own as requested. However, as long as only one person is sick at a time, the information they hold is still available, it just has to be read by a person who is already keeping track of their own binder. Once that sick person comes back, then the copy of their binder can be used to make them a new one so that they can read from it again. If two people are sick, however, then pages are missing, and cannot be recovered. Everyone has to carry around 2 binders instead of one.\n\n**Raid 10, 0+1, 01**\n\nYou set up 5 people exactly like in the raid 0 example, and then set up another 5 the same way. As long as both people that carry a certain binder don't get sick at once, all data is recoverable and can still be read efficiently.\n\n\n**Writing**\n\nThe more binders you have, and the more split up the data, the harder and more time consuming it will be to add information.",
"[I'll just leave this here](_URL_0_)",
"[Not even two days ago](_URL_0_)",
"I'll give it a shot, since the last one was a bit complicated.\n\nImagine that your hard drives are 3-ring binders, and the different pieces of data that you want are printed on individual sheets within that binder. For this example, you need the information that's on pages 5-10 of this binder, and a page takes a negligible amount of time to read. If a person gets sick, then their binder gets destroyed.\n\n**Single Drive Setup**\n\nOne person has your binder. You say \"I want to know what's on pages 5-10\". The person has to go to page 5, read, turn the page, read again, turn the page, etc. until all information is read.\n\n**Raid 0**\n\nYou split your binder into multiple binders (5 for this example). The first binder contains pages 1 and 6, while the second binder contains pages 2 and 7, and so on. You pass the 5 binders to 5 different people and say \"I want to know what's on pages 5-10\". Each person flips to their page that lies in that range, and prepares to read. You can get all of your information without any page turning (except for the initial lag, or *access time*). If anyone gets sick, their information is lost and you cannot get it back.\n\n**Raid 1**\n\nYou have two separate binders, each identical and containing pages 1-10. You give them to two separate people so that if one of them gets sick and can't read, then the other one can read to you. Once the other person is replaced, their binder can be replaced with a copy.\n\n**Raid 5**\n\nThis is a little more complicated, and this example is a little different than reality. You split your binder up into 5 separate binders (like in our raid 0 example), and then make copes of each one. Each of the 5 people have one binder of their own, and then a copy of one of the others. If nobody is sick, then each person reads from their own as requested. However, as long as only one person is sick at a time, the information they hold is still available, it just has to be read by a person who is already keeping track of their own binder. Once that sick person comes back, then the copy of their binder can be used to make them a new one so that they can read from it again. If two people are sick, however, then pages are missing, and cannot be recovered. Everyone has to carry around 2 binders instead of one.\n\n**Raid 10, 0+1, 01**\n\nYou set up 5 people exactly like in the raid 0 example, and then set up another 5 the same way. As long as both people that carry a certain binder don't get sick at once, all data is recoverable and can still be read efficiently.\n\n\n**Writing**\n\nThe more binders you have, and the more split up the data, the harder and more time consuming it will be to add information.",
"[I'll just leave this here](_URL_0_)"
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1m4zhm | why is it okay to re-use your drink cup at a buffet but not your plate? | I go to buffets often. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m4zhm/eli5_why_is_it_okay_to_reuse_your_drink_cup_at_a/ | {
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"Serving utensils can touch the plate and transfer contamination back into the food source. Not so with drinks."
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ccl0h2 | how do medical examiners know that a victim was still alive when cuts/bruises etc occured? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ccl0h2/eli5_how_do_medical_examiners_know_that_a_victim/ | {
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"Because cuts and bruises will look different depending on whether or not blood was flowing to them. If you're dead than your heart has stopped beating which means blood is no longer being pumped around your body which means any cuts or blows will look very different.",
"Heart pumps when you're alive. Blood leaks, pools, spills, and all that fun stuff. Person dies, heart stops, no more moving blood.",
"Antemortem injuries will become inflamed, but injuries made after death won't. Bleeding wont occur postmortem except in the scalp where there is a lot of blood or due to gravity. It can also occur if the head becomes bloated due to drowning. \n\n_URL_1_ \n\n_URL_0_"
]
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"https://www.academia.edu/2364375/Distinguishing_Between_Antemortem_Perimortem_and_Postmortem_Trauma",
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||
51z27n | what causes the urge to fidget? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51z27n/eli5_what_causes_the_urge_to_fidget/ | {
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"Nutritional deficiencies can have a lot to play.\n\nMagnesium deficiency is well known to cause twitchyness-like behavior:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Its a natural reaction through your nervous system little impulses and such almost like putting electricity through say a wet noodle, makes it move about.\n\nThere's also a biological and evolutionary method, basically if you sit still for too long blood begins to pool, veins and arteries are cramped and clenched... So the more you fidget the less of a risk there is for developing a blood clot. Its basically a mini survival instinct.\n\nWhen its cold, fidgeting and shivering causes you to keep warm through movement and keeping your blood circulating. The reason this works is the same reason fidgeting helps you from forming a blood clot.",
"I have bounced my leg for as long as I can remember and it seems to relax me and keep my weight down.\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Since this is ELI5, and my son is five years old and \"fidgets\" I thought I'd say exactly what I would say to him. \n\n--------------\n\nSometimes when someone moves around a lot, like tapping their fingers, or touching their arm, it means their body has the wrong kind of energy and it wants to use it. \n\nSometimes it means something else, like it can be a sign of autism. These fidgets are called \"stims\" because they stimulate your senses and help you relieve tension or even as a way to show emotions that you can't fully express with words. Some common stims are rocking back and forth, swaying, teeth grinding, and hand flapping. \n\nSome stims or fidgets can sometimes be so hidden that no one else but that person knows, like swallowing, sniffling, or moving their tongues around in their mouth. These are so automatic that the person does them subconsciously and it's difficult for them to stop. Some can be bad or harmful to your body like picking your skin or pulling your hair or even banging your head. \n\nIt's okay to fidget or stim as long as you are respectful to those around you. And it's okay when other people stim too, just let them be them if they aren't bothering anyone. \n\n---------\n\nMy son has ASD and has lots of fun stims! \n",
"i haven't seen it mentioned, but in some situations it can be tied into the \"fight or flight\" response. You may find yourself fidgety in a situation where if you really think about it, you don't want to be there.",
"One of the main psychological reasons for such behaviour is dissatisfaction with current state of mind. Whether it's a physical or psychological discomfort. Our attention has limited power and by moving our body we distract ourselves from what we don't like. Most of the time this happens subconsciously, again because we don't pay attention to the present moment.\nThere are myriads of ways we attempt to distract ourselves.",
"Pattern repetitive motion has a calming effect (eg. bouncing your leg up and down). Some people with anxiety exhibit this behavior. This is just a pet theory of mine - I don't have sources to back it up.",
"Functional neurologist/chiro here. There are several reasons including neuropathology like anxiety and depression, but many of these stem from a reduction of activity in given regions of the brain/a lack of inhibition of brain regions. An example of this may be more evident in people who fidget more w one side/hand than the other: The frontal lobe inhibits activity of the anterior temporal lobe (which is a part of the brain responsible for aggression and/or impulsive movement), if you have an insufficiency in frontal lobe activity, that portion of the brain may not suppress the actions of the anterior temporal lobe quite so much, so you fidget more on that side. It gets quite a bit more complex than that, but it's a good example.",
"There's one study suggests some people will subconsciously fidget when eating at a calorie surplus. They tend to be the ones with \"high metabolism\".",
"The main theory comes from research into ADHD, a mental health problem where people will fidget too much. The urge to fidget is believed to be a natural drive from part of the motor system of the brain (an area called the basal ganglia). The drive is toned down by the prefrontal cortex (the PFC) - the most evolutionarily advanced \"control center\" of the brain. A simplified version of the theory is that in ADHD, the PFC is not active enough due to too little dopamine (a brain chemical) and so the basal ganglia is not inhibited as normal. Normal fidgeting would likely involve a similar process. \n\nRef: Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology. 4th Ed",
"You might want to ask on /r/askscience. You might not get an ELI5 answer, but you'll get a lot less uninformed speculation. I don't mean to disparage well-meaning people who try to answer, but well-meaning people can be mistaken.\n\nJust to put in my two cents: I've read that children with ADHD *need* to fidget in order to concentrate. I don't know why."
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6bgl8k | why is there no other color for pee? | It's always yellow or clear. Why not black (if we drink black coffee), etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bgl8k/eli5_why_is_there_no_other_color_for_pee/ | {
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"I have had both clear and yellow pee, as well as red. What do you mean? Would coffee actually make pee turn black?",
"Pee contains substances extracted from your blood by your kidneys. These are what's left over after some parts of your food and drink have been metabolised. That said, [blue urine is a thing] (_URL_0_), and I have personally had fluorescent green urine, after I was injected with dye for a particular type of eye examination. ",
"Because we've evolved to use as much of what we eat/drink. The kidneys filter out what we don't and we excrete the waste, which is generally the same thing (urea, etc). The more waste the more deep yellow the urine is, the less waste (and thus more water) the clearer. \n\nSimilarly, feces tends to be brown because of the excess hemoglobin (iron) from dead blood cells... regardless of what you eat (for the most part). ",
"There actually are a lot of different colours for pee (but they are usually because the person is sick): \nreds if they're bleeding (or have eaten beetroot), dark orange/yellow if dehydrated, black/dark brown if severely dehydrated/contains bile, (or past heavily bleeding), other colours of brown if mixed with faeces (this is nasty - can be due to a fistula), bright yellow can be due to loss of vitamins (or if you've taken a multivitamin or drunk certain energy drinks), white if there's puss or potentially a yeast infection. I've seen greeny coloured urine too, but I think that might have been due to a severe UTI and it was more likely puss that was discoloured. I've also seen once or twice bluey/purpley coloured pee but that might be from chemicals I'm unfamiliar with.\n\nBut if you're asking why is it that when you drink coffee your pee isn't coffee coloured, the answer is you don't want it to be. When you ingest something your body breaks it down into its smaller components, which it then uses, stores or excretes. These smaller components are taken and used by your body for lots of different processes. If you just pee'd out the coffee as it was it means your body isn't absorbing anything, which is bad. Your pee is mostly water, but also salts and other metabolites no longer needed. These used up things are no longer the colour of what they came from, because they have been altered/broken down by the body and used/excreted.\n\nSource: work in microbiology. I seent it."
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e807rt | what exactly happens in our brains when we get bored? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e807rt/eli5_what_exactly_happens_in_our_brains_when_we/ | {
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"This is a great question. I would also like to know. I suspect we dont know and its an area of ongoing research. I did see a study where people were given the choice between boredom and small levels of self harm. People chose self harm over boredom. I'll try to find it and post it",
"three comments......no upvotes or downvotes shown......why the fuck is this at the TOP of my feed? The last one was about vagina dentata, same case. weird.",
"If I had to take an educated guess, boredom is kind of like coming off a, wait, ELI5 style; when you feel good it's because there's special things like dopamine in your brain that make you feel all warm and happy. When you get bored, your brain has slowly turned off the flow of what makes you feel excited and reached what could be lower than ground state aka boredom.",
"The \"nothing seems interested\" boring type have many people with depression. I know from that it's bc a lack of the \"good feeling hormones\", so even if you do something you normally like, your body don't produce the hormone that much that it feels so good that you completely enjoying it.\n\nBut I don't know if this is for healthy people the same.",
"There's actually a function of the brain designed to essentially help you focus on tasks efficiently and one to help you regulate your emotions, in really basic terms when you get depressed, the part of your brain to help you complete tasks stops working efficiently and this is a similar process for procrastination and I'm suspecting boredom, it gets harder to do tasks which restricts dopamine which means that your cells are not becoming efficient at distributing it so less is released.",
"Hey! Vsauce, Michael here! Why do we get bored? And why does it matter?\n\nI don't know if it directly answers your question. But it's an interesting video in a format that I think really fits the ELI5 concept. _URL_0_",
"\"Boredom\" is very subjective, has multiple variables, and is different from person to person because we are all just a little bit different from each other. \n\nIn order for each brain to be functioning \"optimally\", we all need various levels of sleep, hydration, nutrition, exercise, and even sun exposure (kind of like a plant! Some plants need a LOT of sunlight, others need a shady corner. All are different) or even human interaction! If these are out of whack for that particular person, that brain (and body) will not perform as optimally. \n\nOnce those basics are covered, we can move onto: mental diets. What are we feeding our brains? All of our brains have all of these different neuronal networks, kind of like highways, streets, and even back alleyways or country roads based off the learning and experiences we give it. The more you travel a certain path, or if you have a higher interest in a certain path, the easier it is to access that path, and the path will become bigger, stronger, more connected. So, over time, a country road can turn into a super highway depending on how frequently you travel that path. This doesn't mean all roads/behaviors we travel are healthy. Sometimes we may confuse boredom with trying to avoid feeling something. \n\nSome people find certain things more interesting than others (partially due to all of our different mental maps and roads we've created, and partially because we are all different, er, plants), so it's easy to pay attention to things we are interested in or have the experience for. \n\nOther things are just plain boring because it doesn't interest us or we don't have the level of experience in order to appreciate it, so we have to call on our mental reserve to practice sustained attention on that boring something. This mental reserve runs out for all of us if the activity is too long, and we get grumpy or impatient, etc. So, try to sandwich those really boring activities with rest breaks, and reward yourself AFTER you've completed that activity with something you enjoy to give your brain that boost you need to continue to do that really boring thing.\n\nIf you find yourself bored, there's a few things you can do: \n\n- see if you need to rest or relax or take care of the basics (hydrate, eat, sleep, exercise, etc.) We are more likely to become bored or disinterested (or even impatient) if our basics aren't being taken care of. It's kind of like your bodies way of saying \"I need something.\" \n\n- do something you enjoy (go down that super highway you know you love!)\n\n- do something new (make a new road!)\n\n- check in with yourself. A lot of modern culture thrives off of that \"need\" to do something new. We have created a culture that is addicted to dopamine. Boredom isn't necessarily bad. Check out [this article](_URL_0_) for more info."
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7mtrki | how exactly does a preservative preserve food and what exactly is a preservative? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mtrki/eli5_how_exactly_does_a_preservative_preserve/ | {
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"All a preservative is, the whole thing, is something that makes stuff not go bad as fast.\n\nThe two most common preservatives are sugar and salt. They work by soaking up all the water so there is no water left for bacteria, fungi, etc. to use to grow. No water, no growth, means your food lasts longer.\n\nI don't know enough about the other types of preservatives, so I'll pass the baton.",
"Echoing what the others say, it's all about \"available water\".\n\nSalt and sugar does the same thing - draw water away, or make the water too salty/sugary for bacteria to live in it.\n\nThings that change the acidity kind of does the same thing - they make the water inhospitable, so the bacteria can't live in it.\n\nYou can also make a mix of the two, using a bit of vinegar and a bit of sugar.\n\nDrying something also takes away the water.\n\n\n* This is what is done with jellies and jam and fruit preserve and a lot of other things - olives too.\n\n\nThe only thing that's different from all of these only works on things that are sterile - you can cover the outside in something that's toxic.\n\nThe toxic thing can be a mold, strangely enough - because the mold makes toxins to protect itself, so other bacteria and molds can't survive. But it means you have to cut the outside away when you want to use it, and then you can't leave it, because you've opened a door for bacteria and different molds to \"enter\".\n\n* Camembert is like this - the outer layer is a living mold that kills everything else.\n\nThe toxic thing can also be residue from smoke because the thin outer layer is toxic, the bacteria can't enter. We can take a big bite of it, though, because the layer is very thin, so there's not enough toxin to affect us.\n\n* bacon and fish are often preserved like this",
"Water activity (percentage of water) aside, some microbes do not thrive in super sugary (fruit preserves & jellies), super salty (brined olives) or acidic environments. So yeah, while salt can pull water from foods, it's a touch more complicated than that. Please note that we're talking about food borne microbes, not extremophiles.",
"I'm confused about all these comments saying sugar is a preservative I've heard it before and I don't doubt it, but doesn't it feed the bacteria? I swear if I just leave a sugar connection out it will get nasty quick",
"What I'd like to know is how they preserve lettuce in bags, because they have to do *something*. If I buy a head of romaine and chop it and put it in a bag, it will last a day or two tops before turning brown, limp and useless. If I buy [a bag of chopped romaine](_URL_0_), that shit stays perfect for up to two weeks. And yet, every single bag says \"Preservative-Free\" on it. ",
"So there are a few different types of preservatives, but at least as far as food goes they're generally either anti microbial or anti oxidants.\n\nanti microbial preservatives make the food inhospitable to things like bacteria, mold etc. In this case its usually an acid of some sort. Bacteria tend to like very specific PH ranges, so making the food a little bit acidic slows them down. This is no different than pickling or making jams or whatever, we just know what we need to add and how much rather than relying on processes like fermentation. \n\nAntioxidants exist to keep fats from going rancid when exposed to oxygen. They can work in a few different ways, but a not uncommon one is reacting with metal ions that can speed up the process of oxidation. \n\nCitric acid does both which is why it's pretty commonly used. \n",
"No one seems to be talking about saltpetre (potassium nitrate), which is also used to make gunpowder. It is surely a toxin, but we use it in the 1/25 ratio to salt range to cure meats such as ham. It can be injected, but if rubbed on in several stages, it leaches far into the flesh on its own. Note: saltpetre can be harvested from guano, or even made from pouring stale urine over mounds of feces mixed with grasses and leaves.",
"Jumping in here, and speaking almost strictly from a microbe standpoint (as opposed to oxidation or chemical degradation) salt and sugar are already mentioned at length and they preserve food by making water unavailable to microbes because the concentration of salt or sugar is too high.\n\nAnother very common preservative what I don't see mentioned is acid. Low pH also prevents microbes from growing - particularly dangerous ones. This is one reason why you will see anything from baby food to beverages to mayonnaise with acid added especially citric, phosphoric, vinegar, lemon juice, and a favorite ascorbic (aka vitamin C). PH is also a primary reason that beer and wine cannot harbor pathogens although alcohol helps a lot with that too. \n\nSpeaking of which alcohol is a great preservative and is primarily reason homemade (highly alcoholic) eggnog won't kill you even if it's kept in a bottle for weeks or months. \n\nThe preservatives you may be asking about are chemicals like potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate which prevent microbes from growing via chemical means. ",
"While a lot of these comments do help define the preservative process, there are some major processes that are being excluded from answers here that would be more than helpful at elucidating why spoilage occurs in the first place. \n\nWhen talking about spoilage, it is very important to consider the chemical structure of each chemical species in debate. For instance, the reason why water is evaporated from most foods to help \"preserve\" the food is due to water being a glorified alcohol. In other words, the molecule H₂O contains a -OH group attached to another Hydrogen. In chemistry, -OH groups are highly reactive because of the prevalence of extra electrons on the oxygen atom(In general, any atom with extra electrons is highly reactive). One example the comes to mind is unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats include double bonds which means these 'double bonds' have 2 extra electrons than a normal single bond. Unsaturated fats or -OH groups will attract electron deficient species to their electron rich sites' and initiate bonding. This is where spoilage occurs.\n\nIn complex organic molecules, nature prevents against this bonding by adding other chemicals to prevent spoilage. For example, many leaves and plants contain poly(meaning multi)unsaturated fats. Hint: sites where spoilage can occur!! So to protect against this, α- tocopherol (Vitamin E) is added to chemical species at the site of attack and is often referred to as a natural preservative because it prevents the bonding process mentioned earlier which is also known as autoxidation, and therefore food spoilage. Processing of foods can remove the natural vitamin E, so artificial preservatives are added to these foods in order to retard their spoilage. \n\nA good preservative usually contains an -OH group surrounded by a bunch of bulking substituent groups with lots of extra electrons. To look more in depth, I would recommend looking up oxidation processes and the chemical structure of 'good' preservatives. \n",
"Why does no-preservative \"organic\" milk last several weeks longer than those normal milks ~~chock full of preservatives~~, in comparison? Ive always been baffled by this discovery.\n\nedit- new information learned",
"Makes the substance inhospitable to bacteria/fungus, or slows chemical reactions like oxidation that we interpret as rancidity.",
"The sort answer is that they prevent the growth of bacteria and other microbes. Different preservatives work in different ways.",
"I'm hearing a lot of talk of sugar and salt and acid, but I still have more questions:\n\nSalt based- why do you need multiple salt based preservatives? I assume sodium nitrate, sodium nitrite and sodium erythorbate have a similar mechanism of action- is it just taste based?\n\nWhat about BHT, BHA and TBHQ, how do these work?\n\nHow does potassium sorbate work?",
"Food decays because tons of tiny creatures are eating it and pooping it back out again. A preservative is something you put on or in food that keeps the tiny creatures from eating it and pooping it back out again.",
"Direct this question to r/foodscience for better answers. The water activity answers are close, but not comprehensive as there are many classes of preservatives. Some lower water activity, others absorb oxygen, some chelate metals that could act as cofactors in enzymes or act as catalysts in redox reactions, some disrupt cell wall formation of microbial cells... there are many ways to control what grows in our food, and they are often used in conjunction.",
"If you are talking about some of the stuff with very unnatural sounding chemical names...sodium benzoate and sorbic acid are antimicotics and slow microgrowth. TBHQ or BHT are an antioxiant and slow fat containing products from from getting rancid.",
"Preservatives work by making food unsuitable for microbial life like fungus and bacteria, while preserving it's palatability for consumption. \n\nFor instance if you encased food in crazy glue, it might preserve it, but it would be inedible. \n\nSo a preservative could be anything that makes it hard for fungi and bacteria to grow, and is added to the food. In other words something you treat the food with, versus the way the food is packaged or stored. Tin cans preserve food, but they are not a \"preservative\" in the same way that salt is. \n\nCommon preservatives include salts, acidic compounds or base compounds like lye (lutefisk for instance or maraschino cherries) \n\nSome foods have natural preservative abilities like juniper berries, certain herbs, etc.\n\nThe food ingredient list usage of preservative may also include substances which make the food taste better rather than ones that strictly keep the food sterile. These might preserve the texture, color, or flavor. \n\nMeats are commonly preserved by drying, salting, and smoking. \n\nFruits and vegetables by pickling and brining. \n\nSome foods can be preserved by drying, and treating with sulphur compounds (like dehydrated fruits). Some methods and substances work better for one type of food versus others. \n\n",
"Hey guys, your local verified Food Scientist here. This will probably get buried but there is so much... wrong here...\n\nA preservative on a GENERAL term is anything that prevents food from spoiling.\nA preservative from the food guidelines has specific rules it must follow.\n\nMany things can be used to preserve food. These are broken down into 2 categories: intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external).\n\nExternal factors include: packaging, refrigeration, storage conditions etc.\n\nIntrinsic factors (what I believe the TRUE question is here) include: pH, salt levels, aW (water activity which everyone keeps talking about) etc.\n\nSo? FeartheJet; now that I know what a preservative is, can you list a few common ones? \nSure, common preservatives are: vinegar, salt, sodium diacetate, acetate, potassium sorbate, benzoates. \n\nFeartheJet, why are there so many preservatives?\nWell, random reddit users, preservatives can protect against different things. Some protect against spoilage organisms (things that don't get you sick but do degrade the quality of the sensory of food). Things like aerobic bacteria and lactic acid bacteria. Aerobic bacteria eat the food you want to eat and \"poop\" leaving behind undesirable flavors. Latic acid bacteria do the same but produce lactic acid and gas (the bloated packages), the lactic acid also causes a drop in pH and makes the food \"sour\".\n\nFeartheJet, what other types of preservatives are there?\nWell, there are things to prevent mold growth, pathogens (bacteria that can make you sick like e. coli, listeria and salmonella). There are also antioxidants which prevent rancidity and oxidations.\n\nThe real question people are trying to answer is \"why do bacteria grow\" but food isn't only interested in bacteria. Just because there is low water activity (the available water in the product that can be used for growth of microorganisms) doesn't mean things like mold and yeast can't grow; in fact they prefer lower water activity. Low water activity naturally eliminates the ability for high water needing bacteria to grow reducing competition and making it easier for mold to grow. \n\nSalts and sugar work by reducing water activity. Other preservatives work by killing the bacteria (kill step) , and other preservatives work by preventing the bacteria from growing (bacterio-static).\n\nHope this helps."
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2h260c | difference between fm and dab radios | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h260c/eli5_difference_between_fm_and_dab_radios/ | {
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"Basically FM radio is a more conventional radio technology that uses Frequency Modulation techniques to carry sound information to the radio receiver in analog form.\n\nDAB radios, which are mostly only used in Europe and Australia, carry radio transmissions in digital form using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing [OFDM] techniques to carry sound information in binary data form.\n\nThere are several advantages to DAB including improved reception, better audio quality, the ability to encode other text/data streams with each broadcast, and the ability to carry more radio stations within the same block of wireless spectrum.\n\nSince FM and DAB are fundamentally very different technologies, you can't just listen to DAB radio station on a conventional FM radio or vice versa (unless the device is specifically designed to receive both types of radio stations). Also, not all radio stations broadcast using DAB and you will obviously only gain the benefits of DAB radio when you're listening to a DAB station."
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5lz33j | why do we like to raise two fingers (aka the "peace sign") when posing for a picture? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lz33j/eli5_why_do_we_like_to_raise_two_fingers_aka_the/ | {
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"Because people don't know what to do with their hands. They choose to \"strike a pose\" instead of perhaps appearing awkward. \n\nEDIT: The peace sign is just an example. People the world over use a variety of different signs but for the same purpose. ",
"V for victory. I remember hearing a story in school that the peace sign the other way (\"the fingers\") around was from Welsh Longbow men who used those 2 fingers to great effect in war. Dunno if thats the origin tho"
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68tehn | why organised crime played such a large part in boxing, as opposed to other competitive sports? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68tehn/eli5_why_organised_crime_played_such_a_large_part/ | {
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"Only need to pay one person in boxing to all but guaranteed a thrown match (i.e. purposefully losing). In other sports, you would need to pay more players, increasing your chances of getting caught, let alone increasing the costs of paying them off.",
"It's much easier to convince one guy to take a dive for a boatload of cash than it is to convince an entire team of players to do it."
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5ixbeg | how does air get drawn into our lungs by the diaphragm when we inhale? what's physically pulling the air in our nose/mouth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ixbeg/eli5_how_does_air_get_drawn_into_our_lungs_by_the/ | {
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"The chest cavity is a cavity. It's a closed in area that experiences a change in pressure when the diaphragm pulls down.\n\nThis has a vacuum effect which pulls in air through the nose and down to the lungs. \n\nWhen the diaphragm relaxes, the pressure in the chest cavity pushes the air back out.\n\nSo, when you inhale, the diaphragm and other muscles pull down which decreases the pressure in the chest cavity and draws air down through the available openings.",
"When you inhale, using mainly your diaphragm and some muscles in your chest called \"intercostals\", you essentially create a vacuum inside your thoracic cavity (the space where your lungs sit). This vacuum causes \"negative pressure\" and causes your lungs to inflate. Think of your diaphragm almost like a disc shaped muscle that moves down into your abdomen when you contract it, thus creating the \"negative pressure\""
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6s42am | why do aeroplanes retract their wheels immediately after take off but put them back down so far in advance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6s42am/eli5_why_do_aeroplanes_retract_their_wheels/ | {
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"They need to keep as much of that speed as they can when taking off, and having the landing gear down messes up the aerodynamics of the plane. When landing, they can put them down well in advance because they're trying to slow down, and it probably helps create more drag than if they waited till the last second, plus it would give them more time to make sure it's out properly, and if not, try and fix it before it becomes a problem.",
"As an aircraft is taking off you want to gain speed. Air is particles, and atoms which create drag and slow any object down. They retract their landing gears because you make the aircraft more streamline and allow it to come to speed faster, due to the less drag. It also saves fuel. If something is more aerodynamic it will consume less fuel to propel it. \n\nWhen an aircraft is coming in for a landing, fuel consumption isn't a main concern, so thats out. You are trying to slow an aircraft down. By creating a larger surface area for the drag to act against you are slowing down the aircraft which will cause less stress on the brakes and tires. Basically you retract them to gain airspeed faster and put them down to create more drag to slow the aircraft down. "
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def0wx | how can servers let multiple gamers play together in real time? | Gamers can be across the globe yet if you have good enough internet connection you can play with them, see what each other see and do inside the game real-time without delays. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/def0wx/eli5_how_can_servers_let_multiple_gamers_play/ | {
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"There's a lot of very low level detail, but it basically comes down to sharing the workload between the servers and the player's local.machine (the \"client\") and having each connection to the server processed independently of the others so they don't get mixed up.\n\nIf you're in a game with another person, and they move to the left, the server doesn't send the whole screen. It just sends a message that \"player B moved to the left\" and then your computer processes that instruction and draws the screen for you.",
"You basically have a server with the map and all the events on it. When you log in it sends you all the part of the map Within sight, when you move your client gives the server the coordinates you want to move to and it replies with the updated view. Your character has a clone on the map doing what you do and when you enter another players view you are just part of the map packet he or she is sent at that instance. So when they fire a bullet or spell the server just maps the trajectory and figures out what it is going to hit and if it happens tobe your clone you get sent the new info your character reacts accordingly and your clone copies you.",
"The only data you have to send ad receive at mp games are you and the other players' character positions. Which are very small data packs, small enough to survive the losses of speed, or any other important thing ;when the connection goes worldwide.\n\nTl;Dr\nMP Connections are actually small data packs, they can survive worldwide connections",
"Imagine 2 rooms both identical, you and your parent in room 1 and your friend and his parent in room 2, the parents are in a phone call with each other. \n\nWhen you move a lamp your parent talking on the phone will tell parent 2 what moved and where two. \n\nParent 2 then moves the lamp. \n\nIn this way when ever anything changes the parents update the room so there always the same.",
"There are delays, they're just masked. You always see slightly outdated positions of other players and same goes for you. For other players you are always few metres behind you think you are. That's why sometimes you die behind corners, that's why \"peeker's advantage\" exist etc. It's a massive topic, but too keep it short: what you see on your screen is not what other players see on theirs. It's close, but it's not the same. It matters a lot in fast paced games like Quake for example. There are even examples of players who perform better on LAN than in online matches because of these reasons."
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76k17e | how can hdds and ssds delete data faster than they can write? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76k17e/eli5_how_can_hdds_and_ssds_delete_data_faster/ | {
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"When you delete something, you're not actually removing it from the drive. Instead, the computer is just telling itself to recognize the space as free and writable.\n\nOnce you start saving new documents, downloading new music, etc. the \"deleted files\" (which are still sitting on the drive) will begin to be overwritten.",
"When you write data to a hard drive, two things happen: the data is written to some sector of the hard drive, and the location of that sector is stored in a table that tells the computer which sector to look at for each file. When you delete a file, the location data is removed from the table. There's no need to actually delete the data from the sector; the computer will treat that sector as free space as long as the location table says no data is stored there.\n\nBy the way, this is why lost data can sometimes be restored. As long as the sector where a deleted file was stored hasn't been overwritten with a new file since you deleted it, you can scan a hard drive sector by sector and read off some of the data that was stored there.",
"It really isn't deleted faster. It's that when it's deleted, it's not really deleted. I'll explain what I mean,\n\nWriting data to the disk is only half of what is going on. You also have to keep track of where on the disk data is stored. That is done with something called an *allocation table*. It's a fancy word for something that basically means \"indexing system.\"\n\nThe disk keeps track of not only the data, but also WHERE it is, so that it can be found later. And when it does, it also assumes that all the storage areas (those are called sectors, but let's not bother with terminology when it's not necessary) that are mentioned in the index are taken.\n\nAnd then you delete something. What happens then is that the index is altered. The areas the file took up, those are now marked as unused. You don't really have to do anything else. Remove the file from the index, and it's effectively gone since it's very, very difficult to find it again.\n\nAltering the index is a really quick process compared to when the file is written to disk to begin with. So it appears as if a delete is a lot faster because...well...technically it IS a lot faster. Because there is nearly no data that has to be altered."
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fd94r5 | why don’t car insurance and car rental companies typically look deeper than age and sex when determining risk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fd94r5/eli5_why_dont_car_insurance_and_car_rental/ | {
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"they actually do. now its cool to place gps and movement sensors around car and send that telemetry data to insurance company so they know real risk - how agressive you ride, including acceleration and extreme breaking or harsh turns",
"I'd say its not really your age that comes in play, but your drivers license date. If your driving without accidents for > 5 years you'll get a rate. > 10 another rate. > 20 another rate (probably getting the best deal possible from this one on). Sex is just idiotic and I'm pretty sure that's not that common these days (in Europe at least). Also, your skills and hard work that got you running a nuclear reactor are not really relevant to this topic because only your colleagues and evaluators will recognize them. Hell, I'm not an insurance company and I'm here scared shittless of a 24 yo running a nuclear reactor."
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4sxapo | how does gut bacteria affect weight-loss or gain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sxapo/eli5_how_does_gut_bacteria_affect_weightloss_or/ | {
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"Well, if there were a person who knew a good answer to that he'd be a rich person and probably a nobel price winner in Medicine. \nWhat we know is that people have different populations of gut bacteria and recent research seems to indicate that obese people tend to have different gut bacteria than people who manage to keep their weight down. Here is the problem: Do obese people have certain gut bacteria because of the things they eat which made them obese or have the bacteria been there first and somehow contributed to those people being obese? \nAs of now there is no definite answer for that and a lot more research is necessary before we know for sure but it looks like the interaction between human beings and their gut bacteria seems to be of greater significance to our overall wellbeing and even state of mind than we previously knew. "
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6gqhxt | why do rainbows split so cleanly into 7 distinct colours? why isn't there a gradient or some sort. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gqhxt/eli5_why_do_rainbows_split_so_cleanly_into_7/ | {
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"A rainbow does not split \"evenly\" into 7. The light is diverged into a full spectrum of wavelengths, even outside the visible range (which is around 700-400nm, or red to blue). In short, the colors between red and violet ARE the gradient, a continuous change in wavelengths. The popular drawings of them in pop culture or children's books are likely an arbitrary choice by the artist. You can of course divide the range of visible light by whatever number to get a proper interval, but I doubt people bother.\n\nEdit: ah, it comes out that the number 7 itself was chosen for a historical reason according to these guys-- _URL_0_\n\nSo, to be more complete, the number 7 is still arbitrary, but it's a tradition.",
"The idea that the rainbow can be divided into seven colours was invented by Isaac Newton.\n\nThe rainbow is a smooth sequence of all the possible primary colours - colours representable by a single frequency of light. There are in fact an infinite number of frequencies in that range. But there are also other colours which are formed by mixing different frequencies. White is an even mixture of all the primary frequencies. Pink is a mixture with more of the reddish end of the spectrum than the rest, but still with all the frequencies mixed.\n\nOur eyes have three different colour receptors, each of which is sensitive to a band of primary frequencies, and the bands overlap. Therefore the colours we see are a very poor representation of the underlying colour. But the fact of three receptors probably contributes to why we see the rainbow sort of divided into about six colours.",
"There is a gradient though.\n\nThe only time they have seven colors are when they are drawn with crayon.",
"Short answer: there is a gradient and the '7 colours' theory is a myth/misconception . Why we teach it in schools to tho day is something I don't know. What we see in a rainbow is dividing of the light into its spectrum , with colours ranging from red, to dark blue.\n\n[This video](_URL_0_) might be more helpful for you\n\nAdditional facts about rainbows;\n\n1) VIBGYOR is actually incorrect terminology. Violet was originally meant in the 'roses are red violets are blue' sense. Blue refers to sky blue or cyan, and indigo was just added to make the number of colours seven\n\n2) there is not actually any violet or purple in rainbows.. However, sometimes multiple rainbows form and the blue of the outer rainbow overlaps with the red of the inner rainbow forming purple, and sometimes even pink"
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5rhf1e | how can companies own the rights or patent a chemical? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rhf1e/eli5_how_can_companies_own_the_rights_or_patent_a/ | {
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"A government must exist that creates laws that say such ownership is legal, then it's sold to that company from the government.\n\nSome things are not legal as property in some countries so a patent is different in every single country and a patent in one country does not transfer legally to be a patent in another country."
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3nrlsl | every time i purchase something small and say no when asked if i need my receipt, why do tills and pay points print the customers receipt any way, just to be thrown away? could you not tell it to just print the merchant copy by default unless told otherwise? | I've wondered this after spending my life watching the merchant throw away countless receipts. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nrlsl/eli5_every_time_i_purchase_something_small_and/ | {
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"Some of the new point of sales systems have this option (print, email receipt, or no receipt). But many of the older point of sales systems automatically print the receipt regardless of what the customer wants. The manufacturers certainly can update the software to have this option, but it's not a huge issue for the merchants. In fact, automatically printing the receipt is slightly faster than asking the customer and then pressing the print button, so it helps move the line along faster.",
"When I worked at Starbucks the till had a print receipt yes/no button. But most POS systems print them regardless because it saves liability issues. Some older/less user-friendly POSes delete transaction records after a specific time so a paper receipt is always given in case the customer starts disputing charges or comes in trying to return things with no receipt."
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1f6rf6 | bose-einstein condensation | What is Bose-Einstein condensation? And how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f6rf6/eli5_boseeinstein_condensation/ | {
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"Think of it like this: you've probably heard that particles are waves and waves are particles, right? This is most obvious with photons, they can be treated as small particles when they have high energy (like x rays) or like long waves when they have low energy (like radio waves). However nothing fundamental changes about the photon, it's neither a particle nor a wave (it's probably something else we don't understand...yet). Anyways matter (atoms) does the same thing, only it's a lot more \"heavy\" so most of the time we treat it as a particle and not as a wave. This is where things get interesting: when you cool down matter (take away energy), just like a photon when it has less energy, it spreads out. If you get a bunch of atoms and you make them all really cold, their wave functions overlap, which means that they are indistinguishable from one another, and presto, Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC). You can think about it as if millions of atoms (most BECs have around 10^6 - 10^7 atoms in them) are all behaving as if they were one giant atom. Most BECs to date have been made with Alkali and Alkaline Earth elements because we can control them with lasers relatively easily. Not terribly LY5 but hope that helps a little.\n\nMaking a BEC is a complicated process typically involving laser cooling, atomic traps, and radio frequency evaporation, but that's for another post maybe. What you do with a BEC varies greatly and I can elaborate on that if people want. \n\nSource: 2nd year PhD student working in a lab that makes BECs ",
"Pretty tough to explain, but Nova did a pretty good documentary on absolute zero where they covered that. [Here is a clip of it](_URL_0_)",
"All particles have a property called *spin*. It can either come in whole integers (0, 1, 2...), or half-integers (1/2, 3/2...). \nParticles with whole-integer spin are called *bosons* and follow rules called Bose-Einstein statistics. Particles with half-integer spin are called *fermions* and follow Fermi-Dirac statistics.\n\nParticles can be in different energy states, and we can think of these as discrete \"energy levels\". Naturally, there must be a lowest level, which we call the *ground state*. \nThe difference in these two statistics boils down to this: *no two fermions may exist in the same quantum state*. That means that if you have two fermions with the same energy and spin, they cannot exist in the same energy level. This rule is called the *Pauli Exclusion Principle*.\n\nBosons, however, do not follow the exclusion principle. So if one were to cool down a large number of bosons, there is nothing stopping them all going into the ground state. \nThis is known as \"Bose-Einstein condensation\", as they are all condensing into a single quantum state. To get to this state is obviously difficult, as it requires very sophisticated cooling methods, but is very much doable.\n\nSource: MSci student.",
"Imagine atoms are ping pong balls.\n\nGas: The balls are flying in all crazy directions.\n\nLiquid: The balls are sort of together in a clump, but are still wriggling around each other.\n\nSolid: The balls are together in a orderly, uniformed structure, and can only vibrate in place.\n\nBEC: The ping pong balls are co.pressed and melted into one giant ping pong ball mass that can now flow and change shape.\n\nBonus\n\nPlasma: The ping pong balls are ripped apart and those new, tiny pieces are flying around, like in the gas state."
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4dtv7m | how does freeway traffic get bogged down if everyone is supposed to be driving 65 mph? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dtv7m/eli5how_does_freeway_traffic_get_bogged_down_if/ | {
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"If you brake at 2mph I have to brake at > 2mph in order to not run into you (because I'll hit my brakes after you not simultaneously). The guy behind me has to slow down faster, etc. Eventually someone comes to a complete stop. \n\nThere are images/animations of traffic in waves. Basically tapping your brakes in dense traffic sends a wave of cars slowing down backwards that can run for hours after the fact. ",
"There are three primary things that cause freeway traffic jams:\n\n1. People entering and exiting the freeway\n\n2. Hazards, including slower traffic, items in the road, and previous collisions\n\n3. More traffic than the highway can handle\n\nSuppose you have a 3-lane wide highway at 65mph. Theoretically, you can accommodate around 50,000 cars per hour. Let's slow it down under each scenario:\n\n1. Bob wants to enter the highway at exit 32, and take a left-hand exit at exit 29. This requires him crossing all three lanes in three miles. Since the road is already very busy, Bob switching lanes causes several cars to momentarily slow from 65 to 55 mph, reducing the capacity of the road by 15%. If there are a lot of cars making similar maneuvers, this can be a significant impediment.\n\n2. Wreck two cars in the center lane, effectively blocking that lane and reducing the speed in the other lanes to 30 mph. You cut the throughput of the road by 68%. This is why you're supposed to pull wrecked cars out of the travel lanes if possible. \n**Slow Traffic Example:** if you have some guy driving a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle at 45mph on the highway, that will reduce one lane to 70% capacity, and another lane to roughly the same (as people try to pass Mr. Flower Power)\n\n3. If the highway is just plain full, people tend to drive slower because they're concerned about keeping an eye on a car in all directions. And the more full a highway is, the harder it is for people to enter and exit, which can reduce speed.",
"It is called \"Phantom Traffic\". Various differences in how people drive, along side merging traffic, and road debris, all factor into a chain reaction of slowdowns throughout the highway. This leads to pockets of heavier traffic that seem to magically clear up eventually.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nFun fact: A way to help prevent phantom traffic, don't use your break unless necessary. Allow your car to slow down on its own. Keep yourself moving as much as possible. You don't need to keep up with the person in front of you, just get to a speed where you can basically coast along with minor acceleration and next to no actual breaking.",
"There are numerous reasons. Here are a few\n\n1. Ghost Jams - Someone brakes, causing the line of cars behind them to break, resulting in a short and temporary jam.\n\n2. Instrument error margin - Just because your speedometer says you are going 65mph, it doesn't mean you are actually going 65mph. Your instrument cluster can be 6-10% off by factory programming. Older cars can be even more off. The speedometer of my 2001 Honda Accord EX is currently 11.5mph off. This was verified through GPS testing and using an OBDII reader and the Torque app.\n\n3. People not using cruise control resulting in varied speed traveled - Someone not using cruise control might vary +- 5 or more from the speed limit.\n\n4. People with reduced cognitive abilities and reaction time. Once you reach a certain age or take certain substances, your ability to drive a constant way is reduced. Old people tend to drive slower, brake for longer distances to slow down, pull out or merge right in front of someone, etc. Someone under prescription medication or alcohol might drive differently too.\n\n5. People over-reacting to seeing a police officer - Unless you are driving in Indiana, going 3-7 over most likely won't get you pulled over. Between the radar/laser tolerance and instrument offset mentioned above, something that low won't be worth it on the interstate. I've been behind people going 1MPH over who slams on their brakes to 10 below as soon as they see a cop anywhere.\n\n6. Car issues - Sometimes your car might break down, causing you to hold up traffic until you can get the car off of the road.\n\n7. Construction zones\n\n8. Funeral processions - Please celebrate your relatives in the life and not in the death. These should only be reserved for public officials such as government, law enforcement, etc. The last one I rode in felt odd as traffic was held up just so an uncle of mine who died from a drug overdose could be transported to a cemetery.\n\n9. Weather and road conditions - Some cars can't handle driving in rain very well. Everyone around them might be driving a newer or more adept vehicle, thus resulting in that one car slowing traffic. Roads wear down with traffic. Potholes and random animals might slow traffic down."
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1rzqb6 | why are the temples on the human skull a soft spot? | I would imagine that after so much evolution, we would have adapted to better protect our own brains. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rzqb6/eli5_why_are_the_temples_on_the_human_skull_a/ | {
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"It allows a baby's skull to deform during birth. The soft spot should close/harden after a few years."
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9x855t | how did mammals survive mass extinction 65 million years ago? | as many of us know, when the 6 miles across asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula, it wiped all the dinosaurs. With this, came the removal of predation and competition for mammals causing them to multiply rapidly. What I never understood, is how did the dinosaurs all get wiped out but mammals did not? Did they not experience the same after effects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9x855t/eli5_how_did_mammals_survive_mass_extinction_65/ | {
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"Mass extinction events tend to be poor for large creatures, but not small ones, as larger creatures tend to be more specialized into specific ecological niches, and also require much larger nutrient pools to survive. The largest mammals at the time were, I believe, about the size of a rat, and scavengers, which have a much more generalized ecological niche than many dinosaurs would have.\n\nShort version is that they weren't subject to the same pressures the dinosaurs were to the nuclear winter, for many reasons, but most of all because they had a 'general' ecological role, where a T-rex obviously needs an enormous amount of nutrition to fuel its body, as do its prey animals.",
"When the asteroid hit, it likely started wildfires all over the world due to secondary impacts, which not only wiped out most of the terrestrial food reserves but also made the air fairly toxic and blocked out a good amount of sunlight causing the non-radioactive equivalent of a nuclear winter. \n\nIf any large mammals existed at the time, they went extinct and we just never found their fossils. \n\nSmall mammals, though, mostly living underground to hide from predators, weren't necessarily killed immediately, and as small mammals usually grow up fast, the mildly toxic air didn't kill them before they could breed.\n\nMore importantly, they didn't need much food, so what little food remained was enough to last them - or probably just a small fraction of them - until the dust settled and the vegetation started regrowing. \n\nOne correction to your understanding: the dinosaurs didn't die out. The big ones did, but the small ones thrived to nearly the same extent as mammals. At least the ones that were able to fly. \n\nYes, I'm talking about birds. ",
"Quite a lot of them didn't.\n\nThe extinction event wiped out species across the board.\n\nIn fact pretty much any species of land animal that was larger than a medium sized dog became extinct during or shortly after the event.\n\nMammals had the advantage of being overall smaller and more adaptable.\n\nIt easy for something small and short-lived like a rat to survive a catastrophe than for a large species of animal which needs to invest a lot of time to rear young and which needs a lot of food to survive.\n\nThe Dinosaurs got not all wiped out, some species of feathered dinosaurs that were equally small and adaptable survived. We call them and their descendants birds.\n\nBeing aquatic or semi-aquatic seems to have helped a lot, also many species of aquatic animals also became extinct as their environment was disrupted.\n\nOne important thing to remember was that it wasn't really the impact itself that killed of everyone. It was what happened in the aftermath. We usually speak of a singular event, but that is in contrast to the millions of years between events. The extinction event as a whole may have been over in a few centuries or millennia or may have lasted longer than modern humans have been around.\n\nGenerations were likely born and lived and died during the event. Which was not so much the impact itself but the climate change and disruption of everyone's environment that killed the animals.\n\nThe dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals that became extinct didn't die all die in a fiery explosion, many lived but had not enough to eat because all the food had gone away. There were less and less of them each year until there wasn't any of them left.\n\nThe survivors were the ones who managed to hang on for long enough until the climate stabilized and they could adapt to the change in environment."
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1xhr2k | creationist here, without insulting my intelligence, please explain evolution. | I will not reply to a single comment as I am not here to debate anyone on the subject. I am just looking to be educated. Thank you all in advance.
Edit: Wow this got an excellent response! Thank you all for being so kind and respectful. Your posts were all very informative! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xhr2k/eli5_creationist_here_without_insulting_my/ | {
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"When animals reproduce, some of their offspring will have mutations. These mutations may or may not enhance the ability of these offspring to live to reproductive age and have their own offspring. If a mutation happens to make certain traits that are advantageous, the offspring with those traits will tend to reproduce more effectively than those without, and this the traits in question will tend to be carried forward more than other traits.",
"1) All life carries information in the form of DNA. This DNA is used to build the lifeform and can be passed on to the next generation\n\n2) This DNA can change through mutation. Depending on the environment, the effect of the mutation can be beneficial or harmful.\n\n3) A beneficial mutation allows that lifeform to survive in the environment better, allowing it to produce more offspring (that also carry that mutation) than everyone else. This process is called NATURAL SELECTION\n\n4) Over time, the accumulation of these beneficial mutations modifies the organism, this causes new species to form",
"Let the great Carl Sagan explain:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"Regardless of how the universe came into being, we'll engage with evolution as a process.\n\nAt its core, life has one primary objective: reproduce. Your species (be it human or insect) can only continue if you managed to successfully reproduce. \n\nSo life does its best to survive long enough to reproduce. The problem is there are lot of ways to die: Predators, disease, accident etc. etc. So not everybody gets to live long enough to reproduce.\n\nThe ones who do manage to reproduce pass along their genes (essentially the traits that they have which are passed down through reproduction) to the next generation. This is what evolution is at its core. \n\nSo lets say you are a bird, but through random chance your beak is slightly longer and thinner than other birds. Thanks to that beak you are able to get at some of those tasty bugs that live deeper in the trees. Because you can get to food better, you are much more likely to live to reproduce. Your offspring will inherit the gene for the longer beak and (in this simplified example) they will breed with other birds until the longer beak gene is common. \n\nShort Version: Life attempts to survive to reproduce, those individuals that are best at surviving (thanks to random chance and genetic differences) get to reproduce and pass on their useful traits. Overtime species change to match whatever is best for surviving.",
"In nature, we observe the following things:\n\n**1.)** animals reproduce, but they do not reproduce exact copies. children look like their parents, but not exactly. (there is **variation** ) \n**2.)** these differences between generations tend to be small, but also unpredictable in the near term. So a child is taller or has an extra finger, but they're not taller or extra-fingered because their parents needed to reach high things or play extra piano keys. (so the **variation is random**, rather than being a direct response to the environment) \n**3.)** animals often have more kids than the environment can support and animals that are BEST SUITED to the environment tend to survive and reproduce. So if there is a drought, for instance, and there is not enough water, offspring that need less water---or that are slightly smaller and so can get in faster to get more water---will survive and reproduce. (there is a process of **natural selection** which preserves some changes between generations in a **non-random way**) \n\nAs a result, over time, the proportion of traits (what we would now refer to as the frequency of genes in a population) will change, in keeping with natural selection. This is evolution. \n\nThis video is also a great explanation, if you can ignore some gratuitous shots at the beginning, the explanation is very clear: _URL_0_\n\n",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis is a good video that I've seen linked on Reddit before. It explains the mechanics of Natural selection and addresses a few arguments against evolution.",
"This is a rather specific point to go along with the other definitions, but something that creationists may get wrong: evolution and natural selection are not goal-oriented, and humans did not evolve \"from\" anything. Evolution is the process of spreading traits that are favorable/well-suited *for the environment the organism is currently in*. And the trait is considered favorable if it allows the organism to live longer and produce more offspring in that specific place and time. If you're selectively trying to induce offspring to have certain traits in order to reach a desired outcome, that's artificial selection.\n\nAlso, if you don't ask questions, people can't help explain concepts further or point you to good resources for things you want to know more about. ",
"1) individuals of a species vary. they are different from each other. some individuals may be bigger, faster, more colorful, etc. some are more fit than others.\n\n2) these variations are heritable, i.e., they can be passed on to children, because they are rooted in the individuals DNA. \n\n3) not all individuals are able to reproduce: the less fit individuals tend to die more than fit individuals and mate less than fit individuals. ex) female chooses stronger male to reproduce; less fit individual cant outrun predator, less fit individual has a more conspicuous coat color and a predator sees it, etc \n\n4) the individuals that are more fit survive and reproduce (Natural Selection), thus they pass on their DNA/genes, which code for the more successful variations such as larger size, better camouflage, better endurance, faster speed, etc\n\n5) the children are slightly more adapted to the environment, slightly different from their parents. This difference is added upon and accumulates generation after generation. the species thus gradually changes, to the point that if you put the future individuals and past individuals together, they wouldnt be able to mate because they are too different- > speciation\n",
"The question has been answered very well by previous posters, but I would like to add that the idea that you must disagree with evolution in order to be a creationist is false. You can still believe in a creator and understand that small changes in genetics over long periods of time will change a species. I hope you find the answer your are looking for.",
"In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this retard frog-squirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a... monkey-fish-frog... And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you!\n\nSo there you go! You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!\n\nEdit: It's a quote from Ms. Garrison on South Park",
"Hello, awesome redditor, fellow believer here. Good on you for looking into this! I want to say a few things that I've found while learning about evolution that might help give you some context (I'll leave the scientific explanations of your question to people with more expertise than me): \n\n**1)** \"evolution\" in religious talk often is code for \"non-God beliefs\". But many of the answers here will have a very specific, technical answer to your question, because the word \"evolution\" to scientific people is a term for a process in nature -- just like \"flying\" is a very technical process for airplane pilots, but means sitting in an uncomfortable seat for passengers. Two completely different meanings for the same word! \n\n**2)** Like you guessed, some people from both sides of the issue will react strongly because they feel threatened by the answers. They assume you mean the worst for *their* personal beliefs -- or that *your* personal beliefs are the worst-case-scenario for *them*. But you don't have to feel that way! You can look at the answers that all of the facts are pointing towards. \"It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter\" (Proverbs 25:2). If God created the world, then God's okay with you looking into how it's done -- it's like a puzzle! You can feel excited about what you find! \n\n**3)** I can tell from how you asked the question that you're a very respectful person. Very cool! As you continue to ask questions, I want to tell you to keep this up. What you'll find is that each person must answer the question about whether God exists for themselves. Many people will try to say they have \"the\" answer, but it is up to you (and them) to decide for themselves -- and to keep asking questions. Respect where people are coming from, and you can be surprised what you discover. \n\nI have a lot more that I could share -- but I'll leave the discovery up to you. And, like so many of the other kind redditors here, you can always pm me for my perspective. Enjoy the ride!\n\nEdit: I learns how to reddit",
"Just to add, here's an excellent GIF someone else posted earlier today that shows just a part of the evolution of life that led to humans. It's important to realize that evolution is *not* a linear process like that common image of apes leading to men would have you believe. Humans did not evolve from apes, but rather, apes and humans evolved from a *common ancestor* many years in the past. In fact, *all* organisms ever have evolved from a single common ancestor which formed billions of years ago. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nVery simply, it starts out with an assortment of molecules (building blocks for cells) that come together to form the first cell, which is then able to divide and eventually evolve into the many organisms that inhabit Earth today. \n\nThe theory of how the first cell formed is not entirely clear. A theory that many people are taught in their intro biology courses is that early Earth's atmosphere provided an environment that allowed the random formation of these building blocks. An experiment performed by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey around 1953 tried to simulate the conditions of early Earth and determine whether these building blocks could truly be formed in such an environment. Some of the most important ones are called amino acids, and these are the pieces that put proteins together. Their experiment did indeed yield amino acids, opening an important door to explaining the origin of life: The creation of life from non–living substances. \n\nI don't know personally how accurate it is today. I'm just an undergraduate chemistry student, so current research could point towards another theory being more accurate. But this is what I, with my current knowledge, find to be a very beautiful way of explaining the origin of life. \n\nWhether or not you believe in evolution depends heavily on how old you think the Earth is. None of the stuff anyone has posted here would result in humanity's existence if Earth was only 4000 years old. What you do with the information we've posted and what you choose to believe is totally up to you. But I applaud you for leaving your comfort zone and inquiring! ",
"First evolution or survival of the fittest is a concept that was not fully polished by just Darwin and it couldn't have been possible without relentless other scientist in different fields such as chemistry, geology or even astronomy. So consider opening your mind a little to what most people usually say, because the history of science presiding and leading to evolution is pretty strong. Besides, some finicky details are still on debate which makes the whole issue much more interesting and credible, the discovery of Trilobites, micro organism, protein and viruses evolution. Many specific cases indicate that evolution is just slightly more complex than just \"survival of the more fit\" although that is a great analogy to get started on the concept. As far as we know, Evolution is the only way living beings could ever live the way they do and not just perish whenever there is a harmful pressure in the environment.\n\nEvolution is a mixture of both randomized and objective factors which lead to the creation of and extinction of species... All the time, it is a natural mechanism, a way entire ecosystems live on this planet.\n \nFirst : The inheritance of characteristics is not just derived from sexual selection, or survival, strength, resistance to disease, etc. It is merely statistical advantage. But it is understandable why people think it is that way because species which are high on the food chain make it obvious in that way.\n\nBut to be more specific the inheritance of beneficial traits comes from the genetic code in every organic being. When two organisms reproduce they each provide a piece necessary of genetic material (gametes) to jump start a new life. When gametes are mixed together there is a statistical advantage of certain traits over others. [Reginald Punnett](_URL_0_) made this observations through his famous punnet square and experimentation with beans. He determined how often certain traits appeared if he controlled the reproductive partners of his green beans. So there is that, some traits do have statistical advantage over others, but at this point we don't know why the genetic priorities of certain traits exist the way they do yet. Neither this doesn't explain why new species are created, much less develop. It only explained how do we inherited physical traits, but it does spark a much greater idea.\n\nTurns out that the genetic code mutates for countless different environmental reasons. To put it simply: each time DNA is copied, the copy is slightly different, or after some time a cell cannot make the same quality genes it used to. These mutations in the genetic code cause the original traits that were to be inherited to change in random ways. These new, and slightly different random traits could be cancer, could be a new black patch on a mice or it could be anything. \nDarwinism starts to play a big role when the environment pressures organisms to mutate in certain ways. If there is a drought then it could be there is also less food. If there is less food then it is possible that herbivores, who usually don't fight will be better off if they are small because they need less food, or maybe they can hide better. These small herbivores maybe had that random mutation that made them specially small. Since the environment now favors them a little over his competitors in their group they might have a statistical advantage to spread that \"erroneous\" gene that causes \"smallness\". Clearly I put this example to demonstrate that is actually rare that \"stronger\" reproduce more. It could be anything that the environment puts pressure on. So, the more fit is a much better way to say it. Hereby the reason there are so many species. Some have been pressured to be large, some have been pressured to be multi colored and all with a reason and a promise for survival and reproduction in their environment.\n\nNow another very debated point, is that all organisms evolve into other species or organism constantly evolve into complexity like we humans did. That is by no means true. Organism will only mutate into the direction their environment forces them to mutate, or if mutation is un favored by their environment, then they shall remain the same forever or until circumstances change, and some micro organisms have stayed the same... for millions of years. One could say their species although simple, are particularly successful for that. So possibly the only true trait that evolution might actually be constantly polishing is preserving life on earth.\nEvolution is a chain of both random and objective events, which give birth to new species, and preserve others. But as a whole it is the only way life could exist... By adaptation in a constantly changing environment that is the planet earth.\n",
"It's the idea that life changes over time and that certain traits that exist within species can express themselves strongly enough to be beneficial to that species survival. With enough time, a timely catastrophe, or the introduction of new predators/prey/food source, these expressions can become so prevalent in a species that due to geographic separation, it begins to differ so much from its origin that it is another species. Example; zebras look an awful lot like horses. You can even breed a horse and a zebra, although the result is neither horse nor zebra and is infertile. Zebras are particularly adapted to live in their natural environment. It's stripes create an optical illusion when they are in herds that make their position difficult to discern for predators. So they are uniquely adapted to thwart those predators. They clearly share traits with horses, they most certainly shared a common ancestor species, but diverged at some point in the past so that one group eventually became zebras, while the other changed into horses. Make sense?",
"Cockroaches becoming resistant to bait.\n\n_URL_0_\n\narticle tl;dr: A few cockroaches developed a mutation that made the taste of the glucose in traps as bitter. Since they didn't like it and didn't get trapped, they went on to have more offspring. Nowadays, more and more cockroaches have developed this aversion to the sweet traps. And since they aren't trapped, slowly over time the new roaches being born (from the parents with the aversion to glucose traps) don't get caught in the traps anymore.",
"One thing to remember when thinking about evolution is that it happens over *millions*, or even *billions* of years. That's such a long period of time that it's hard for us to wrap our minds around it. I was at the Museum of Natural History in LA a few months ago and I was looking at a dinosaur fossil. I about fell over when I looked at the description of the fossil. It was from 65 million years ago! It just happened to be one of the tiny handful of dinosaur fossils that have survived over the eons. Contrast that with our species: *homo sapiens* is at most 500,000 years old. So if it seems implausible that all these creatures live together with such weird and distinct traits, keep in mind that evolution occurs over an unfathomably long period of time. \n\nAlso, remember that the Earth is 5 *billion* years old, so even dinosaurs were quite recent! ",
"My teacher had us play this little game to explain it. Basically you click (eat) as many moths as possible and the more camouflaged ones are harder to click. They live on and reproduce blah blah blah. \nIt's a relatively fun way to explain it to kids and I would recommend it. \n_URL_0_",
"You know that thing we call dog breeding? How chihuahuas, german shepherds, rottweilers, boxers, poodles and mastiffs were all bred from the same wolf stock in a fairly short period?\n\nWell, evolution is just like dog breeding-- with the same underlying biological mechanism-- except the selection pressure is induced by the natural environment instead of by a human breeder choosing the characteristics they want.\n\nAnimals that are more successful than others, for any reason, are more likely to reproduce, and therefore they have more chances to spread the genes that made them successful.\n\nGet it?",
"Why can't there be a God and evolution? It always seems to be in debate form. Maybe a god created the world and now shit evolves, man.",
"I may be wrong, but I think the thing that trips up most evolutionary doubters is the time scale. It's hard to think about things that occur on a scale longer than our lifetime, so the first thing you must realize is that this occurs over thousands to millions of generations. So keep this in mind.\n\nIt's (mostly) the result of environmental stresses and/or pressures such as predators or temperature among others. Those factors prevent those who are not suited to the environment from breeding so their genes are not passed on. That's why where there is equilibrium, you don't often see evolution. This is why humans have evolved very little, if at all, in tens of thousands of years. Our most recent ancestors that we consider a different species had a lot in common with us, and it was those who were smarter who were able to survive.\n\nIn fact here's a thought exercise. Imagine that Australia, already a great example of divergent evolutionary paths, was once again cut off from the world due to... say... a huge hole in their ozone layer. And lets say we wouldn't be able to see them for another 30,000 years. During that time those who were able to resist the intense UV radiation would thrive, while a larger percentage of those who couldn't would die before they could have children. But also because of the intense radiation we might see some minor random variations or mutations, like perhaps it might become normal for people to have 12 fingers and toes, or smaller eyes, or even bigger eyes with larger pupils with a larger range of dilation. Or more coarse protective hair across a wider area of skin. Nothing extreme, but something people might not notice from day to day, or even generation to generation because it happens so gradually. Over the course of nearly a thousand generations the ozone layer gradually repairs itself, but the people who emerge look almost nothing like the rest of us. It's also possible that during that time there would have been enough genetic divergence that they wouldn't be able to have children with people from the rest of the world. \n\nIt's also possible that this is something the human race has to look forward to once we start spreading out to other planets. A colony on one planet, if it has little contact with other colonies, and more environmental pressures than most, might well be considered another \"race\" of humans after a few thousand generations. ",
"Life forms have some random variation that they pass down over the years. This variation, if beneficial, leads to more offspring in those that have it, and if not beneficial, or downright maladaptive, leads to less offspring. With enough variation the species are so different they can no longer breed and are considered different species. This process takes time and is not an instant change.\n\nIn Dawkins *The Ancestors Tale* he tells a story of a antarctic bird, ranging in color from white, through grey, to black. A black and a white bird cannot mate with one another, but both may mate with the grey (I cannot remember which bird it is).\n\nAlso, he phrases the following rather well: We are not descended from Monkeys, nor are they descended from us, we are both descended from a common ancestor. Or, as the book puts it, a concestor. This simply explains why we have all different kinds of primates and humans.",
"Not a scientist and only learn about evolution in school years ago. This is my understanding:\n\n1) All organism reproduce.\n\n2) Child organism inherits mostly it's parent(s)' qualities, but with minor variations. This is what we call mutation.\n\n3) Certain mutation leads to better survival chance. Certain mutation decreases the chance. Certain mutation has no impact on survival chances.\n\n4) Not all organism survived until reproduction age. Those who died are deemed \"less fit\" than those who survived past that age.\n\n5) Survived organism will reproduce and hence it's qualities are passed down to their children.\n\n6) Certain groups of the same species stop breeding with each other due to geographical isolation.\n\n7) They continue to reproduce and evolve in isolation for hundred thousands of years and eventually are no longer compatible with each other.\n\n8) A split occurs and we now have 2 different species that can no longer interbreed with each other.\n\nAlso, I am an Atheist that was a Christian, but I don't see evolution proving or disproving creation theories; you can claim God created life by creating the very first single-cell life form, but he certainly did not create animals, plants and animals out of thin air.",
"It should not be overlooked that evolution does NOT deal with the creation or start of life.\n\nNew world creationists argue that a god or gods made animals as they are and dispute evolution. Intelligent design creationists, by and large, will tell you that evolution is a tool used by a god or gods to make plants and animals as they are today.\n\nEvolution is just change over time as dictated by natural selection and one can believe in evolution and a creator god.",
"Think of a field of corn.\n\nA hail storm comes along and knocks down a bunch of stalks but the stronger ones survive and continue to grow.\n\nNow all of the next crop is off spring of the surviving stronger stalks so they'll all be fairly strong.\n\nThen the next year a drought comes along and kills off some of the new crop but the more efficient stalks survive and continue to grow.\n\nNow all of the next crop are off spring of the more efficient crop, who's parents were offspring of the stronger crop.\n\nNow the next crop is genetically stronger and more efficient with water.\n\nThat's the basis of how evolution works. It's tiny continual changes of a living organism that make it better at surviving. But keep in mind, as /u/justthisoncenomore said we're not exact copies of our parents so and random mutation do occur which greatly effect the long term. As great as it would be if we were as intelligent a design as I demonstrated above were actually full of dumb clumsy mistakes that made sense millions of years ago (or maybe never did at all) but we're just stick with today.",
"Evolution is a crappy word for it. It's better called \"natural selection\". This is to distinguish it from artificial selection, which is a fancy word for animal breeding. Most people have a clear understanding of breeding animals; it's selecting cows that produce the best milk, or horses that run the fastest. Over many generations, we are able to change the species itself. For example, our forefathers rode chariots because horses were simply too small to be ridden, but after a few thousand years of breeding for size and strength, you end up with knights and Budweiser commercials.\n\nThe premise behind natural selection is a combination of two things. First, animals have more offspring than the environment can support. Secondly, the environment is harsh. Not all of the animals will have children and grandchildren. This means that animals that are best adapted to their environment will be most likely to produce grandchildren. If their environment is dry vs. wet, or hot vs. cold, then some children will be better at thriving than others.\n\nThis leads over time to animals getting thicker coats of fur, or better perspiration, or increased disease resistance. Anything that makes it easier or harder to have grandchildren will become more or less common in the overall animal population.\n\nSome common misconceptions:\n\n* The environment isn't static, but constantly changing (although pretty slowly). Volcanoes create new islands, lakes dry up, and rivers flood the flatlands. There are ice ages that cool the planet, and global warming that warms things up again. Animals that do well in some environments will do poorly in others, and vice versa.\n\n\n* Evolution doesn't imply \"better\", or even more complex, just more able to survive in the current environment today. Animals change to fit their environment. This can be very specific (moths in London changed from white to black to blend in better against the smog), or very general (animals that live farther north are typically larger, due to better heat conservation).\n\n* The world is far, far older than we can really understand. The Pyramids in Egypt are about as far back as humans really grasp, and even that is not very old when you talk about things like the dinosaurs. It's very easy to mistake a very slowly changing world for an unchanging world.",
"If I could add one thing to all these great responses it would be a way I have used to help people easily dispel the \"came from a monkey\" statement that you hear so often from people who misunderstand evolution. It goes like this:\n\nTo say a human evolved from a monkey is like saying a cocker spaniel evolved from an Irish setter. Everyone knows that all the dog breeds we have now descend from the Wolf as the wolf was domesticated by man through selective breeding to create all the varieties of dogs we have today. The wolf is the common ancestor of the cocker spaniel and the Irish setter. Similarly apes and humans have a common ancestor that was neither ape nor human but rather an earlier form of both. The same as a wolf to current dogs. \n\nSeeing the wide varieties we have created in the canine world from Saint Bernard to Chihuahua and everything in between it should be obvious that given the right circumstances a species can evolve rather quickly. But a wolf would be quite unlikely to have become a cocker spaniel on its own even more so in the short amount of time that humans took to domesticate wolves and crest the different breeds. In the absence of a guiding hand in breeding, wolves would naturally evolve based on natural pressures such as ability to reproduce successfully, ability to survive various climates, find food, etc. These sorts of environmental pressures would slowly drive changes to the wolf over large amounts of time, perhaps even creating different changes in packs that face different environmental challenges. Over time two physically separated packs of wolf could begin to become noticeably different from one another. These would become new species of wolf. \n\nSometimes it helps when you can think of concrete examples in timescales that we are more comfortable with. That's where I have found dogs and wolves to be great for explaining evolution. Most people are familiar with dogs and know they were domesticated from wolves. So simply explaining that nature can provide that same guiding hand to direct changes to animals over time as humans did with the wolf to become dogs it makes the concept easier to grasp and with smaller timescales and wide variety of changes. ",
"Evolution is the observation that new species arise from preexisting species. Evolution is not a theory, it is an observation; there is direct evidence such as the fossil record and the history contained in DNA.\n \nThe theory of natural selection is not the same thing as \"evolution\", it was Darwin's answer to the question of why some organisms have changed over time and why different populations within species sometimes differ from each other. Natural selection is a catch-all term for the consequences of nature on the characteristics of populations. Natural selection can be slow and steady or punctuated by sudden changes in the environment. It can lead to organisms that are more complex than previous generations or those that are less complex. There are a number of variations within the concept of natural selection, but they all share a core principle; the environment \"shapes\" a species. While natural selection is considered a theory, it happens to be the best science-based explanation we have for what causes evolution.",
"To keep it ELI5: Through various pressures (environmental, sexual, predatorial, etc.) and the occasional beneficial and/or benign mutation, any given species slowly changes over time. That is evolutionary theory in a nutshell.\n\nTo elaborate on that beyond the simple stuff but still trying to keep it relatively tame:\n\n1) Genes are hereditary. Evolutionary success requires only that you survive to maturity and produce offspring. The better suited an organism is to its environment and the dangers it poses, the more likely it is to reproduce and pass on those traits. If its genes aren't well-suited it are less likely to reproduce and those genes do not get passed on. This is called natural selection.\n\n2) Mutations happen often. Mutations are random, caused by the imperfect process through which cells replicate and divide DNA. Mutations can either be expressed or not expressed, meaning the mutations can be in parts of the chromosome that codes for actually expressed traits or in the much more common parts that are actually inert and do not affect your traits at all. Thus expressed mutations are rarer than unexpressed mutations, but they do happen commonly enough. Expressed mutations can be anywhere from lethal, detrimental, benign or beneficial. Mutations, so long as they do not stop the individual from reproducing, introduce completely new genetic sequences into the species.\n\n3) Through these two mechanics, natural selection and mutation, any given species will slowly change and adapt to their environments.\n\n4) Successful species must compete among themselves and with others for resources. As such, the species will spread to more areas with more resources as the population grows. Different areas provide different weather conditions, predators, food sources, etc. With sufficient isolation two groups of the same species facing different pressures of natural selection will begin to diverge. Over many generations, these two groups, once one species, will evolve to adapt to different pressures and become similar but separate species.\n\n5) Gradual changes within species and the branching of divergent species compounded over countless generations in billions of years have taken the first forms of life on Earth, single celled organisms, and resulted in the genetic diversity of all life on Earth today.",
"Here's a way to look at natural selection I came up with when I was around 10 years old and mowing lawns to make extra money. I would start mowing at the beginning of summer, and come across lawns full of dandelions. They were almost all standing several inches high, and I would mow them down. Every once in a while, there would be a mutation, a dandelion that either was so short that the mower would go right over it without killing it, or one that had a twisted stalk, that laid down and also escaped the lawn mower. Throughout the summer, there would be more and more of these short or twisted stalk dandelions, and I realized I was seeing natural selection in action. Survival of the fittest in this case was due to a simple mutation, and I could imagine the seeds from these mutated dandelions traveling on the wind from lawn to lawn. This is what I think of any time I hear someone ask about evolution or natural selection.",
"Evolution is very simple. Look at it this way, you are not an exact 50/50 copy of your parents. If you have siblings, were you all a 50/50 copy of your parents, you would all look exactly alike, right down to any freckles or your fingerprints, or your height or your hair or eye color. As everyone knows, siblings are usually very much alike, but not carbon copies of eachother. Even identical twins are not exact copies of eachother, they may have the same exact DNA, and IIRC the same fingerprints, but they are not ever exact copies. They have slight differences between them. \n\nNow, with that said, you can see that undeniably offspring are not the same as the previous generation. This is due to small genetic differences that occur called mutation. Mutation does not imply that you have a hand growing out of the back of your leg or your face, it implies that a gene is simply not the same as the sum of its 2 original parts (from your parents). So, you are different than anyone that has ever lived. Now, when you think about that, you realize that since you are different from your parents, and different than everyone else, the genetic lottery MUST change over time because offspring are NEVER 100% copies of their parents. So, now we have a new generation, still homo sapiens, but the genes you posess and those from each offspring that emerged from the prior generation, are a different batch from the prior generation. Start the process over again and you now have a generation of homo sapiens with yet ANOTHER batch of unique genetic makeup. Since genes control development and adaptation (construed as success in mating/reproduction etc. ) you can see that it only took 2 generations to have a population that had a slightly different genetic makeup from the generation prior to your parents. Multiply this over hundreds and thousands of generations and you get what is called evolution. It is literally a concept that you have to be extremely closed minded to not say, yeah... that makes perfect sense. It is proven on a micro scale and a macro scale with simple life forms such as yeast over the course of months, so as a derivative, it must be true for other more complex life forms. If you drink beer, thank evolution for your beer not tasting like an elephant fart. It amazes me that anyone can believe in creation myths these days when scientific evidence is SO available and there is less than 0 proof for any creation myths barring ancient texts written by shepherds who didn't know enough to boil their water to make it clean and safe to drink, yet somehow their beliefs are still prevalent today because... why? Ancient people had less of a clue what the natural order of our world is than our 5 year olds today. But people still hold on to their absolutely ridiculous belief systems for what reason? Nostalgia? Indoctrination? I'd wager its the indoctrination. ;-)",
"You're probably already drowned under the comments, but If you read this, and if you want to go beyond this ELI5 to deeply understand evolution (which is a simple theory with extremely complex and sometimes counter-intuitive consequences), I highly recommend to you to read \"The Selfish Gene\" by Richard Dawkins. You may (infamously) know him for his atheism, but this particular book of him only talk about science and evolution and has nothing to do with religion. Everything in this book can be accepted by a religious guy who also embrace science.",
"I'm late, but I hope this helps, perhaps it was already said, but these are such common misunderstandings, that they are worth noting.\n\n- THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MACRO AND MICRO evolution. That's a silly straw man, and both work by the same mechanisms. It's like saying there is a difference between walking from Los Angeles to Pasadena or from LA to NY. Same process and mechanisms, but one takes waaay longer. And along those lines is the next one because you always hear, \"well, you can't see macro evolution.\"\n\n- And that is this whole notion, and perhaps you saw the Nye vs. Ham debate, that there is a \"historical science\" and an \"observable science.\" THERE IS NO SUCH FALSE DICHOTOMY. SCIENCE IS SCIENCE! If we were to think like Ham, we might as well throw out all forensics. Matter of fact, his same dumb arguments can be used against him. \"Oh, so you say the world is 6,000 years old? How would you know? Where you there?\"",
" > I am just looking to be educated. Thank you all in advance.\n\nI like you, OP.",
"Wolves. We bred them into the common domestic dog. \n\nNow imagine that process but no one is breeding them intentionally. Nature is selecting them by who survives in that current environment. \n\n",
"Also this gif belongs here: _URL_0_ visualizes quite well how evolution is not linear but a tree.",
"ITT: People who can answer the question and people who can't, so they insult op.",
"OP, I know I'm late to the answer party, but for real watch the second episode of Cosmos by Carl Sagan. He explains it so clearly using obvious, quality examples. Plus you'll learn why crabs in Japan have samurai faces on them. :-) It's seriously IMO the first stop for anyone interested in this subject.",
"A possibly helpful point of view is this: first, consider how your body is \"programmed\" biologically. Very simplistically: we have a code - DNA - that generates our cells and tells our body how to build and repair itself and all its mechanisms.\n\nThis is the improtant thing: if you change the code, you change the body. Think of those - sad and disturbing, but instructional - medical examples where something goes wrong. Like, fingernails and teeth growing out of a tumor, or genetic disorders. Yuck, yes, but *that's what our cells do*. They follow the program written in DNA.\n\nNow what happens when organisms reproduce: the code *sometimes* gets randomly rewritten in the child. Therefore, something changes about the organism. Sometimes, that change is adaptive: it makes the new organism a little faster, or stronger, or able to metabolize something different. In that case, that organization might be a little more lilely to have children and pass on its mutation.\n\nOver time, this process can change a whole *group* of organisms. Especially if they're isolated somehow, those changes can accumulate and accumulate until you get a kind of animal that can't even reproduce any more with its own cousins. Then you have a new species. \n\nAnd this happens *all the time*. You get a great big churning process of reprogrammed organisms, all surviving and reproducing according to their environment.\n\nNow, to the extent that there's something about the environment that's common to all the organisms, that churning will have a direction. To the extent the environment changes over space and time, the churning will just follow whatever defines fitness locally.\n\nAt the very start of things, you get down to chemical facts about DNA and stable molecules and really simple \"organisms\" that are more like little lego models. That's more about how physics / chemistry self-organizes due to the rules and interactions, and how the mechanics of things then results in functional units. Which then interact and cluster, until you get to the stage where evolution in terms of passing on DNA starts.\n\nIn terms of creationism: the problem is the specific choice of Biblical literalism, not believing in a theistic God per se. In my opinion it's in the first place *theologically* incorrect to read Genesis literally, see e.g. _URL_0_ - I'd very strongly recommend you to check that. Evolution doesn't make it impossible or difficult to believe in God, it only makes it irrational to believe in the strange kind of antropomorphic God literalism drives one to. But God as the source of why this amazing universe *works the way it does*, at the deep level, such that we have physics that make life emerge? Not just life: reality is such that ultimately something somehow comes to implement consciousness and intelligence - either because there was a special step somewhere along the line, or because consciousness and intelligence arose gradually, or are always there to some extent. I think that that point of view can lead you to a perspective - which isn't itself scientific any more, but doesn't contradict it - in which reality sort of *breathes* en-souled-ness. There's something alive about it, or directed-towards living. Whatever generates reality, whatever makes it the way it is, is somehow related to that feature. That I think opens up a way in which we can think about a Creator, at our current level of understanding.\n",
"As a former-creationist, I think you'd find the work of Denis Lamoureux interesting [1]\n\n\"Denis Lamoureux, Associate Professor of Science & Religion at St. Joseph’s College, University of Alberta, is a well known contributor to the evolution/creationism conversation. With doctorates in dentistry, theology, and biology, he has been on quite a journey, first seeking and then developing an understanding of the integration of God’s ‘two books’ of revelation – a journey that matches quite well with the purposes of this site! He has written a number of books on this area, with perhaps ‘I Love Jesus and I Accept Evolution’ being perhaps the most readable\" [2]\n\n[1] _URL_1_\n\n[2] _URL_0_\n",
"Hey Everybody, \n\nI'm locking this thread to prevent any more commenting. \n\nOP made a great request, and has received some great responses so far! However the thread has *quickly* turned into an anti-creationist circle-jerk, with a lot of unwarranted aggression and general shit-postery.\n\nCheck out [this post](_URL_0_) for an explanation of why we sometimes lock threads and limit posting in them.\n\nThanks to all that contributed in this one, and apologies for any interesting and productive discussions that get cut short! \n\nFeel free to make another ELI5 post *if* you've stumbled into another interesting area that you want explained!\n\n***\n\n**EDIT:** \n\nFor anyone looking for further discussion and debate, I'd *highly* reccomend checking out the myriad of theological/gnostic/creationist debate and discussion subreddits! e.g.:\n\n* /r/debateanatheist\n* /r/debatereligion\n* /r/debateachristian\n* /r/ReligionVRelationship\n* /r/DiscussReligions/\n\nTo name but a few!",
"This explains it nearly perfectly _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZpsVSVRsZk&feature=youtube_gdata_player"
],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7w57_P9DZJ4"
],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiZdhxkfBCk"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://imgur.com/fVaRprO"
],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punnett_square"
],
[],
[
"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/cockroach-evolution-rapid-pace-roach-bait-failure_n_3327610.html"
],
[],
[
"http://biologycorner.com/worksheets/pepperedmoth.html"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://i.imgur.com/1Tm54OL.gif"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1332"
],
[
"http://cosmos.regent-college.edu/2010/04/22/denis-lamoureux-evolution-and-faith/",
"http://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/wl.html"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1secxi/eli5_why_are_some_threads_locked/"
],
[
"http://imgur.com/OGA6CPT"
]
] |
|
1ct79o | why do bananas have fruits but don't have seeds? | Isn't the point of a fruit to feed the seeds inside? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ct79o/eli5_why_do_bananas_have_fruits_but_dont_have/ | {
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"text": [
"[Bananas do have seeds](_URL_0_). However, we don't eat these kind of bananas. The bananas we eat are sterile, thus, don't have seeds.",
"Most of the fruit you buy has had some amount of artificial selection imposed on it by humans, and was probably grown as the result of cloning rather than planting from a seed. Some fruits have been bred over time to the point of being seedless (bananas, grapes), but again, even the ones that still have them aren't grown from them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://i.imgur.com/X6Grdwz.jpg"
],
[]
] |
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