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2u7she | why there is not much news about japan's debt compared to greece's? what is the difference? | Japan's public debt is 226% of GDP and Greece's is 175%. Shouldn't we be more worried about Japan defaulting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u7she/eli5_why_there_is_not_much_news_about_japans_debt/ | {
"a_id": [
"co5w6k2",
"co5wbll"
],
"score": [
5,
2
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"text": [
"People are worried that because of the way the EU is structured, Greece defaulting will bring down all of Europe. Japan defaulting would be bad, but mostly for Japan. Greece defaulting could bring down the EU which would be many times worse than either Greece or Japan defaulting alone.",
"In addition, due to the Eurozone being a structured organization in which all members' destinies are basically intertwined (like Kitworks said), the Greek debt can be exploited by the rest of the dominant EU members for profit. They can't really exploit Japan's debt on that level as far as I know."
]
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[],
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7j48iq | how are no 2 key and lock ever the same ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7j48iq/eli5_how_are_no_2_key_and_lock_ever_the_same/ | {
"a_id": [
"dr3htoy"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Ye have been misinformed. Many are the same, and if ye try the same key in the same brand of lock thousands o' times, ye'll find another that fits.\n\nAhoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: if every lock is unique and requires a different key to open in, how does a skeleton key open any lock? ](_URL_4_) ^(_6 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How are key/door/locks makers manufacturing so many keys/locks etc. without ever repeating a combination? Or do they repeat them and hope no one will figure out they have the same key combination? ](_URL_2_) ^(_7 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: How do padlock companies make so many locks, yet ensure that your key only opens your lock? ](_URL_0_) ^(_43 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: is every house key completely unique? How is this done? ](_URL_1_) ^(_11 comments_)\n1. [If locks are supposed to have a unique key for each one, how do master keys work for multiple locks? ](_URL_3_) ^(_2 comments_)\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2j3gpc/eli5_how_do_padlock_companies_make_so_many_locks/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rzqx3/eli5_is_every_house_key_completely_unique_how_is/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rkxzv/eli5_how_are_keydoorlocks_makers_manufacturing_so/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/37szim/if_locks_are_supposed_to_have_a_unique_key_for/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3omzyv/eli5_if_every_lock_is_unique_and_requires_a/"
]
] |
||
73m8xq | what is the difference between the fundamental particles such as boson, quarks, ect? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73m8xq/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"dnrjgzp"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"They have different masses, different spins, different couplings to the various forces of nature (strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravity), etc."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
zglc9 | wins above replacement (war) statistic in baseball | Basically what it is, and how its calculated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zglc9/eli5wins_above_replacement_war_statistic_in/ | {
"a_id": [
"c64ea3c",
"c64eg2q"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Wins Above Replacement is a statistic which tries to answer the question, \"if *so and so* got hurt, how many wins would that team lose by replacing them with the next best option?\", so it ideally represents how many wins that player is providing to his team over his replacement.\n\nCalculating it requires adding together a couple of difficult stats to calculate, but melds together base running, fielding, and hitting stats that generally represent the players contribution to the team, not just his AVG or how many homers he hit.\n\n[Source 1](_URL_0_)\n[Source 2](_URL_1_)\n",
"There a several different ways of calculating it, but the basic idea is this: In baseball you can try to measure how much a player helps or hurts your team (how many hits, how many doubles, how many times they strikeout, and so on). For every event that happens, they try to assign a total number of additional runs it makes, and from the total number of runs try to estimate the number of \"wins\" that makes (usually they figure 10 runs is about 1 win). That is the \"wins\" part. \n\nThe second part is \"above replacement.\" It isn't good enough to consider how valuable having a player on your team is compared to not having that player, because even if you didn't have that player you would have *someone* in his position playing. What you look for is the cheapest possible option for that position as a comparison. In other words, what sort of production do you expect from a borderline minor leaguer who will be paid the league minimum. This is considered \"replacement level.\" Wins above replacement attempts to measure how much *extra* value a player gives a team compared with signing a league minimum player (it is important to note that \"replacement level\" also depends on what position you play and what league you are in. A replacement first baseman in the National League will not be expected to hit the same as a replacement shortstop in the American League). The thought is that even if you fielded a team composed of only borderline minor/major league players, you would still expect them to win about 40 games per year at a major league level (and have a payroll of about $12 million for their 25 man roster).\n\nIt is really easy to confuse *above replacement* with *above average* and you don't want to do this. The average major league player is not replacement level --usually they are about 2 wins above replacement level. If you look at a site like [Baseball reference](_URL_1_) or [FanGraphs](_URL_0_) they have descriptions of how they calculate it specifically, but it can get a bit heavy quickly."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/",
"http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-WAR?urn=mlb,211211"
],
[
"http://www.fangraphs.com/library/index.php/misc/war/",
"http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/6063"
]
] |
|
1usrny | how is a banana 74.906% water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1usrny/eli5_how_is_a_banana_74906_water/ | {
"a_id": [
"celax74"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Living things are composed of cells, as you probably know. A cell is basically a sack of gel-like fluid called cytoplasm, enclosed by a membrane which is made of something called a phospholipid. There are structures and proteins and stuff floating around in the cytoplasm that let the cell actually do things, but most of its actual weight is cytoplasm.\n\nThe cytoplasm is mostly water, with some stuff dissolved in it. Hence, bananas and people and trees and bacteria and whatever are mostly water. There's also fluid between the cells (I forget what it's called), and that fluid is also mostly water.\n\nSo, basically, if you think of like... a bucket of salt water with a bunch of water balloons in it, that's what we're made of.\n\nThe reason we aren't all mushy is that some cells build structures around themselves that are rigid. Bone is an example, as is chitin which is what many animals use for their exoskeletons and shells. Plant cells have a wall of cellulose around them, which is similar to chitin. Cells also have an internal structure called the cytoskeleton that helps them maintain their shape."
]
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[]
] |
||
15jhjo | why online translators are so terrible at translating | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15jhjo/eli5_why_online_translators_are_so_terrible_at/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Translation is really tough. You aren't just trying to replace words with their equivalents, but you have to keep the grammar right. Most importantly, it isn't about translating words so much as it is about translating meaning. And to make it even more difficult, sometimes you can't translate certain phrases easily because the other language might not have it.\n\n",
"I speak 4 languages fluently and am pretty good(Hold a conversation) at 2 more. Does this mean I never make mistakes translating from one to another? Quite the opposite, each language has its own specific grammar and syntax and they don't always overlap 100%. Now English isn't my first language but this probably looks fine to read and understand, but should I translate into German or Arabic I'll run into difficulties on how best to word it, and I may have to completely change the structure of the sentence for it to make sense. Now as a person I can think for a few moments over what different sentences sound most like what I'm trying to translate, but the free translation programs can't do this. It has to be an instantaneous translation with the rules of language inputted. The program sees a word and translates it and the others within a sentence and then tries to piece it all together. But no language translation software has 100% of the rules of the language fully understood. As for every rule there is an exception and so on.\n\n\nA brief example of this is the Irish language. In English there is the past present and future tense, but in Irish there is past, present future and the everyday tense. The everyday tense cannot be translated perfectly into English as there is no equivalent tense, but we know enough to be able to translate as a person with understanding of both languages, but a computer program cannot do this as accurately.\n\nELI5: Translating is really difficult and not all languages have the same grammar and syntax so you will run into difficulty."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
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||
32wv7z | why is it cruel to give a dog cordectomy surgery (de-barking), when it's perfectly ok to chop their balls off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32wv7z/eli5_why_is_it_cruel_to_give_a_dog_cordectomy/ | {
"a_id": [
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"cqfd09e",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Would you rather have your balls clipped or your vocal cords taken out?",
"Giving a dog a cordectomy is of no benefit to the dog (it's just for the owners) but has plenty of chances for post-operative complications. It's also completely unnecessary - in 99.9% of cases excessive barking can be dealt with through proper training and behaviour modification\n\nDe-sexing on the other hand provides plenty of heath benefits to a dog (such as reducing the risk of cancer, etc, etc) and is also a much safer form of surgery. It also has the advantage of not unnecessarily (or accidently) adding to the already large problem within the shelter / rescue system. ",
"For one, it removes an important ability that could save the dog from physical harm or allow it to be found from a distance if it is trapped, hurt or lost. ",
"Well it's pretty normal for a person to be voluntarily sterilized. When's the last time you heard of someone voluntarily having their vocal chords removed? \n\nSpaying and neutering is to prevent puppies having no home. Barking is how dogs talk. If you don't want your dog to bark, don't get a dog. "
]
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[],
[],
[],
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||
3f82cv | how did the (2003) iraq war lead to the rising of islamic state? | How did the 2003 Iraq War lead to the rising of Islamic State?
EDIT: Also did the fact that the government installed after Saddam was oppressing the Sunni majority. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3f82cv/eli5how_did_the_2003_iraq_war_lead_to_the_rising/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctm82dg",
"ctmhwaj"
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"score": [
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3
],
"text": [
"It didn't.\n\nThe Syrian Civil War lead to the rise of ISIS. People from all over the region (including people who had tried and failed to run a successful insurrection in Iraq) moved into Syria and took up arms against the Syrian regime. The forerunners of ISIS included people who had been in that failed Iraqi insurrection. They proved to be successful at fighting the Syrian government and other Syrian factions, took and held territory, and began to grow in power and resources. Eventually they moved back across the border into Iraq, and the Iraqi security forces proved unable to stop them.",
"One theory I heard, is Saddam kept things in line, although immorally. If somebody tried to rise up, he would execute them. Meaning he was the sole leader, the strongest. When he was taken out, a government with no real backbone was put in, and all these previously silenced people could rose up. \n\nExample. North Korea, anyone who doesn't sing the great leaders name daily is executed. So the UN takes out Kim, his military, and replaces it with a democratic government. Now all the people who were previously silenced view it as an opportunity to take over during this transition. "
]
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[],
[]
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|
eu7ch5 | why is the black light called "black", when it is actually blue/purple? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eu7ch5/eli5_why_is_the_black_light_called_black_when_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"ffm6lba"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Because it isn't *really* purple. It just bleeds into the visible spectrum at the blue end. The majority of the light given off is ultraviolet. This kind of light is invisible, with only a small amount of visible blue light coming from the bulb, giving an impression of \"black light\"\n\nUV light also causes some materials and colors to shine brightly, further solidifying the blackness outside of the brightened area.\n\nNaturally, the term \"black light\" is not a scientific thing, it's an industry term for ultraviolet light that makes it sound cooler."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
3ge3oj | the battle of stalingrad (lack of russian armor) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ge3oj/eli5_the_battle_of_stalingrad_lack_of_russian/ | {
"a_id": [
"ctxb7rr",
"ctxbltb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Armor in general NEVER does well in urban areas. Armor is most effective when large formations can use their speed to maneuver around strong points and concentrate where they are most useful.\n\nA city allows none of that to happen. And gives all the advantages to the defender. ",
"Most of the fighting in the battle of Stalingrad happened inside the city itself where armor is not all that useful. Tanks are powerful in open country because they can bust a hole in the enemy's lines and then move into their rear areas and wreck their command and supply units. Inside a city a tank is basically reduced to being a mobile pillbox, and one that's fairly vulnerable at that.\n\n[Operation Uranus](_URL_0_), the follow on operation that lead to the encirclement and destruction of the German 6th Army made extensive use of armor. In this case Soviet tanks (with infantry support) broke a hole in the flanks on both sides and then raced to meet in the middle, forming a pocket that trapped the bulk of the German forces inside. This kind of high speed high impact fighting was what tanks were meant for, so it's how the Soviets used them in this case."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Uranus"
]
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||
5munjo | why tint car windows? is this purely cosmetic or for privacy reasons? | No flair as I am in mobile. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5munjo/eli5_why_tint_car_windows_is_this_purely_cosmetic/ | {
"a_id": [
"dc6hgbs",
"dc6j7ox",
"dc6k5uk"
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"score": [
9,
3,
7
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"text": [
"cosmetic, privacy, and it also keeps the car cooler, and prevents sun damage to the interior of the car.",
"Keeps UV rays from damaging the interior. \n\nIf you live in an area that gets super hot, it really does make a difference. ",
"Texas checking in. Without tint on your car windows you will in all probability catch on fire. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
246cbl | the exact purpose of histamine, and why it can become harmful to allergic peoples? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/246cbl/eli5_the_exact_purpose_of_histamine_and_why_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"ch411yg"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Histamine is a chemical in your brain that tells your body to respond to harmful intruders. It's what makes itchy bites swell and feel hot.\n\nUnfortunately it can also have more serious effects, when it feels that the intruder is more harmful. If It' a peanut you've just eaten, your body thinks it should swell your throat to stop more getting through. This can stop you breathing, known as anaphylaxis, or anaphylactic shock.\n\nSo histamine is important for fighting dangerous intruders, but in the case of allergies, it can make mistakes and cause your body to overreact."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
8jrzk0 | how do animals know not to breed with their own siblings? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8jrzk0/eli5_how_do_animals_know_not_to_breed_with_their/ | {
"a_id": [
"dz212ro",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"How do you? Our brains are wired to not naturally be attracted to family.",
"i have heard animals can detect compatible DNA with pheromones and such. Including humans. ",
"Well, some animals actually undergo sex with their own relatives or siblings. Some kind of meerkats and mongoose keep their breeding ground within the family itself, differentiating family or the herd with their distinctive odour. While some animals follow the \"unwritten law\" about not breeding with their own offspring, some do actually do that. This phenomenon is also called the \"Oedipus complex\" named after the king Oedipus. Some kind of monkeys have been found to show this behaviour. \n\nWhile, this is the case of animals which are wild and free, in captivity it could be entirely different.",
"In nature if offspring come out with genetic deformities they usually just die soon. Either unable to take care of itself or easy prey.",
"If an organism is predisposed to find the idea of mating with a close family member attractive, that organism is likely less fit than one who finds close family members repulsive to mate with. So over time, the organisms that were disgusted by the idea of having sex with a family member tended not to do it, which meant that that trait had a greater chance of passing on. Overtime, the most evolutionarily successful organisms were those who did not mate with their siblings.\n\nIf you're asking how an organism knows that another one is related to them, that's a different question that I can also answer if you'd like.",
"It's probably the **Westermarck effect**.\n\n*The Westermarck effect, or reverse sexual imprinting, is a hypothetical psychological effect through which people who live in close domestic proximity during the first few years of their lives become desensitized to sexual attraction. This phenomenon was first hypothesized by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck in his book The History of Human Marriage (1891) as one explanation for the incest taboo. Observations interpreted as evidence for the Westermarck effect have since been made in many places and cultures, including in the Israeli kibbutz system, and the Chinese Shim-pua marriage customs, as well as in biologically-related families.*\n\n[Westermarck effect](_URL_0_)",
"Some animals don't. Certain species, when kept in captivity, have to be kept apart from their siblings or you risk inbreeding. Box turtles are one example, and I believe that's the case for a few other reptiles as well.",
"The true answer is: it depends on the animal\n\nNot all animals avoid incest, and it's not harmful to all animals like it is to humans. \n\nEven in humans, one generation of incest is not harmful. It's when you have multiple generations of incest in a row. \n\nMost animals do avoid it, but the way they do is different based on the animal. Some animals can detect close relatives by smell. Others will separate from parents and disperse when they reach maturity and thus simply avoid incest by physically not being around siblings. "
]
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2ow6gv | how can a hacker use 'brute force' methods to crack passwords like hotmail when i get locked out after a few failed attempts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ow6gv/eli5_how_can_a_hacker_use_brute_force_methods_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmr1u9t",
"cmr4feh"
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"score": [
18,
8
],
"text": [
"they steal the entire database, they don't try to hack it through _URL_0_",
"You don't brute force the web interface. You compromise the database through some exploit (SQL injection being an extremely common method) - and extract the password hashes. Once you have the password hash, you can rapidly try possible passwords to see if they match the hash- if the hash is unsalted, you can get [tables of hashes and their associated passwords](_URL_1_). If the password is in [plaintext](_URL_0_), any compromise of the database immediately compromises all user accounts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"hotmail.com"
],
[
"http://plaintextoffenders.com/",
"http://project-rainbowcrack.com/table.htm"
]
] |
||
1xj0x7 | did fruit and vegetables evovle too? | Ive never heard of it before | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xj0x7/eli5did_fruit_and_vegetables_evovle_too/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfbr57v"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Those are parts of plants and trees and trees and plants did evolve. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2swakb | the euthanasia debate | what I mean is what are the views of both sides | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2swakb/eli5_the_euthanasia_debate/ | {
"a_id": [
"cntgsod"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Could you expand a bit... this isn't really a simple thing.\n\nThe two main sides are -\n\n1) Human life is sacred regardless of condition... therefore there is no \"right to die\" and euthanasia is just a fancy word for \"murder\".\n\n2) Each human should have total control over their life... including the right to choose to end it. Euthanasia is a right to be exercised when someone no longer wishes to live... but cannot do the deed themselves."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5hn1ic | how do fish and other aquatic creatures control their buoyancy in order to maintain or change their depth without really swimming? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hn1ic/eli5_how_do_fish_and_other_aquatic_creatures/ | {
"a_id": [
"db1dkpb"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"They have swim bladders that control their bouyancy. Very interesting, you should Google it!"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
279v5e | how come the helios probes don't get sucked into the sun? | I recently read that they are still orbiting the Sun after being sent roughly 30 years ago. I kind of understand that Earth's satellites don't get sucked in by our gravity because of the orbital effects created by the Sun, but that leaves me with the question I'm asking now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/279v5e/eli5_how_come_the_helios_probes_dont_get_sucked/ | {
"a_id": [
"chyr2ry",
"chyr9b1"
],
"score": [
2,
5
],
"text": [
"We launch satellites from Earth. Just like a lightly dropped spear from a Ferrari roaring on top speed have the same speed as the Ferrari, the satellites also have the initial orbit of the Earth itself. In fact negating the orbit around the Sun itself is much harder than simply leaving the Earth gravity. You might wanna play SimpleRockets to experience it firsthand",
" > I kind of understand that Earth's satellites don't get sucked in by our gravity because of the orbital effects created by the Sun,\n\nThis seems to be where your misunderstanding is coming from. Satellites orbiting the Earth do not rely on the gravity of the Sun to do so. If we teleported the Earth along with all of its satellites to a region of deep space, far from any star, moon, or other object, those satellites would continue to orbit Earth just fine (meanwhile everyone on earth would die pretty quickly... the sun is important!).\n\nSatellites orbiting the Sun do so based on the same physics as those orbiting the Earth, and the same physics by which the Earth orbits the Sun... so lets look at those physics!\n\n******\n\nImagine throwing a baseball while standing on a large, level field. For the sake of this thought experiment you throw the ball perfectly horizontally. After the ball leaves your hand it will arc downward and land some distance away. Now imagine shooting a rifle perfectly horizontally. Once again, gravity will pull the bullet downward until it eventually strikes the ground, but it travels further. It should be clear that the faster you shoot your projectile the longer it goes before it hits the ground.\n\nNow take a step backwards and zoom out a little. When throwing the ball you can easily think of the field as being flat, but really it is a portion of a sphere. If you go in a perfectly straight line long enough without curving down to follow the earth then you'd wind up high in the air (and eventually in space). Luckily, gravity prevents this from being a real problem for day-to-day activities, and the Earth is big enough that we can pretend like the floor is flat even though the Earth isn't.\n\nWhen it comes to satellites, though, we shoot them far faster than any bullet (well... maybe some of the fun rail gun bullets go faster... any \"normal\" bullet). Over the distance that it takes the satellite to drop a foot in elevation it has traveled enough that the surface of the Earth is a foot lower, too! (at least for a circular orbit). Orbiting is based on this idea—the rate at which you are falling is equal to the rate at which the ground recedes due to its curvature."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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|
28o8ms | why do i sneeze when i comb my hair? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28o8ms/eli5_why_do_i_sneeze_when_i_comb_my_hair/ | {
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"text": [
"That sounds like a personal issue ",
"Do you sneeze if someone else brushes it for you?",
"I do this too sometimes, just like you described in your comment to isi75. The only thing I can think is that a lot of the nerves on your head are pretty long, maybe you're triggering one that connects both the hair that's being tugged and your nose. ",
"Stimulating the scalp causes increased blood flow to the head. Increased blood flow to the head means increased blood flow to the sinuses. Increased blood flow to the sinuses means enlarged blood vessels stimulate the nerves of said sinuses. Stimulated nerves in a sensitive person's sinuses is cause for a few good sneezes."
]
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[],
[],
[],
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6gnj05 | why is it that presidential elections' votes are done via points for each state rather than just total votes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gnj05/eli5_why_is_it_that_presidential_elections_votes/ | {
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"That way rural people are represented as well. Most people in the US live in major cities. People in major cities have *very* different priorities than people in rural areas. They see the world differently and want different things. The people who invented the electoral college knew that with just the popular vote people who didn't live in major cities risked having their voices silenced. ",
"The constitution were written in the late 1700s when the world were very different. The United States of America were as the name suggests a union of the different states and not its people directly. The states did have very different laws and the voting rules were very different. So you could not compare votes directly. There were also practical problems as it might take weeks to travel across the US. So sufficient information about the candidates were not easily available to every citizen. The candidate might even had died before the election without everyone getting the message. And if there were an undecided election then reelections would take a long time.\n\nSo the solution to this was the electoral collage. The states would elect their own spokespersons however they saw fit. These people might campaign for themselves as they could attend public debates and talk to the community. After the election they would go to Washington DC and might attend debates between the presidential candidates to see what candidate is best for their constituents.",
"In the United States, people don't vote for president. States vote for president. That's part of the basic structure of our government, laid out in the constitution.\n\nWhen we go to vote for president, what we are actually doing is voting on how our state will vote.\n\nThis was part of what was required to get enough states on board to approve the Constitution back in 1789. There was almost no inherent power in the national government, and the state governments had the power. While that has shifted some, the basic structure of the government has not.",
"Short answer: It's really hard to count all those votes back in the 1770s. Also the system let the founding fathers tip the scales in-favor of smaller states. Back then the south was no where near the population of the north east yet was significant to the country. The electoral collage system provided a way to adjust that balance. Also provided a safety net in cases a highly undesirable candidate won a popular vote but was very-much unfit to serve. The Romans used a similar system and much of the constitution was modeled after the roman republic.\n\nOne thing to note: Chances are the founding fathers never intended for you to have a vote: Not a land owner? Nope no vote, Woman? no for for you, Poor? Nope no vote for you (Poling station was a days coach ride away and cost money)... this list goes on. "
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ctyi52 | i thought big forest fires were natural and healthy for ecosystems every now and then, so why is everyone really upset about the amazon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctyi52/eli5_i_thought_big_forest_fires_were_natural_and/ | {
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"Amazon fires are to clear it for growing more soy or raising more beef, etc. and it has been going on for DECADES not weeks, months, or years!"
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jioi0 | how does aligning a car work? | What is it, how is it re-aligned, and why does the car pull if it is off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jioi0/eli5_how_does_aligning_a_car_work/ | {
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"Aligning a car means making sure that all the pieces that hold the front tires in place and that let them move when you turn are keeping those tires in the correct position. If the tires are not correctly positioned for the specific car they're on, it can be hard to steer and it can cause you to lose control or have less control when braking.\n\nThere are three positions you have to get right in order for the car to steer correctly:\n\nCaster: This is how the tire sits in relation to the shock absorbers or struts that connect them to the main body of the car. The struts are positioned more or less up and down (vertical to the ground) and connect to the wheel at the axle. The tires can be adjusted so that the shock absorber/strut appears to lean forward, be straight up and down or lean backward relative to the tire.\n\nCamber: This is how straight the tires themselves sit up and down (vertically). They can lean in at the top, with the tops of the tires angled toward the engine, be straight vertical, or lean out at the top so that the bottoms of the tires are angled toward the engine.\n\nToe-in: This is how the tires sit relative to each other from front to back. They can be toed-in, as if you were standing with your toes pointing toward each other like this / \\, straight on as if you were standing with your feet evenly apart and pointing straight ahead, like this | | , or toe-out as if you were duck-walking with your toes pointing away from each other, like this \\ /.\n\nEach individual position has to be very carefully set, and varies from car to car. And it can be difficult to get each one right without disturbing the other positions. But when you get it all lined up just right for the car you're driving, you should be able to take your hands off the wheel at highway speeds and the car should drive straight ahead without drifting unless something in the road causes it to change. And if you hit the brakes while you're driving without your hands on the wheel, the car should not pull to one side or the other, assuming your brakes are in good condition and equally worn.\n\nCAUTION: It is NOT a good idea to drive without your hands on the wheel, and is just given as a description of what should happen. OTOH, if you are in a place at a time when you can do it for a very short period of time safely, it's a good way to quick-check your alignment.\n\n[Useful image](_URL_0_)",
"In answer to the second part of your question, if the tires are not aligned, they pull the car to the side the same way a sticky wheel on a shopping cart does - the angle of the tire forces it to roll in a direction you don't want to go, and it drags the frame along with it.",
"Aligning a car means making sure that all the pieces that hold the front tires in place and that let them move when you turn are keeping those tires in the correct position. If the tires are not correctly positioned for the specific car they're on, it can be hard to steer and it can cause you to lose control or have less control when braking.\n\nThere are three positions you have to get right in order for the car to steer correctly:\n\nCaster: This is how the tire sits in relation to the shock absorbers or struts that connect them to the main body of the car. The struts are positioned more or less up and down (vertical to the ground) and connect to the wheel at the axle. The tires can be adjusted so that the shock absorber/strut appears to lean forward, be straight up and down or lean backward relative to the tire.\n\nCamber: This is how straight the tires themselves sit up and down (vertically). They can lean in at the top, with the tops of the tires angled toward the engine, be straight vertical, or lean out at the top so that the bottoms of the tires are angled toward the engine.\n\nToe-in: This is how the tires sit relative to each other from front to back. They can be toed-in, as if you were standing with your toes pointing toward each other like this / \\, straight on as if you were standing with your feet evenly apart and pointing straight ahead, like this | | , or toe-out as if you were duck-walking with your toes pointing away from each other, like this \\ /.\n\nEach individual position has to be very carefully set, and varies from car to car. And it can be difficult to get each one right without disturbing the other positions. But when you get it all lined up just right for the car you're driving, you should be able to take your hands off the wheel at highway speeds and the car should drive straight ahead without drifting unless something in the road causes it to change. And if you hit the brakes while you're driving without your hands on the wheel, the car should not pull to one side or the other, assuming your brakes are in good condition and equally worn.\n\nCAUTION: It is NOT a good idea to drive without your hands on the wheel, and is just given as a description of what should happen. OTOH, if you are in a place at a time when you can do it for a very short period of time safely, it's a good way to quick-check your alignment.\n\n[Useful image](_URL_0_)",
"In answer to the second part of your question, if the tires are not aligned, they pull the car to the side the same way a sticky wheel on a shopping cart does - the angle of the tire forces it to roll in a direction you don't want to go, and it drags the frame along with it."
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df59e7 | why is off-brand toner not good for a laser printer? | I have cleaned several different laser printers and experienced first-hand the yucked-up drums caused by generic branded toner cartridge. Pop in proper genuine toner afterward, and print problems are gone. I was always frustrated with printer companies when I would ask for help, being told, "we can't help you unless you are using genuine toner...you need to use genuine toner to ensure proper printing", but they could never explain *why*.
I kind of feel like this could be flagged as chemistry as well, because it's obviously the makeup of the toner...? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/df59e7/eli5_why_is_offbrand_toner_not_good_for_a_laser/ | {
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"Why? Because genuine toner and ink have a quality control and standards that are set by the printer manufacturer. Off brands may be as good and cause absolutely no problems, but they may also be made up of nothing but tar and lost dreams of a Scotsman named Dave, and cause your printer to have a meltdown. The only way to guarantee that the cartridge won't cause any issues, and the only way to hold liability for it, is if you use a branded and quality controlled cartridge."
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9pkyei | the american education system since preschool. how does college work, what’s the difference between middle school and high school, and such things? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9pkyei/eli5_the_american_education_system_since/ | {
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"Okay, so Preschool is before kindergarten, so that’s like a tutorial and kindergarten is like the first level where you walk around and get a bunch of different info about how to school. Then you have grades 1-12. Usually Elementary school goes from 1-4th grade, 1-5th grade, or 1-6th grade, depending on where you are raised. Junior high or middle school is either grades 5-8, 6-8, or 7-8, again depending on where you go to school at. In high school, you go from grades 9-12, 9th grade you are a Freshman, 10th grade you are a Sophomore, 11th grade you are a Junior, and 12th grade you are a senior. After you graduate, you have the choice to go into the Armed Forces, college, or into the workforce. If you go to college, you can go for 2 years or less to get an Associate’s degree or a certificate, 4 years to get a Bachelor’s degree, 6 years to get a Master’s degree, or 8 years to get a Doctorate or a PhD. If you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or something similar, you must go to med school, law school, or something similar. Then you take an exam like your MCATs or BAR exam before going into residency or working at a firm. Hope this helps!",
"Following preschool is Kindergarten, which focuses on social skills and getting kids used to the idea of school by play-like activities like singing, dancing, drawing, blocks, etc.\n\n\"Grade school\" or \"Elementary school\" covers grades 1 through 4 at least, and up to grade 6 in some places. They usually involve students sitting in desks and being taught specific subjects; starting with very basic numbers and math, the alphabet, basic biology and history; and leading up through advanced reading comprehension, basic algebra, various natural sciences and social studies.\n\n\"Middle school,\" which used to be called \"Junior High School,\" bridges the gap between elementary school and high school. It some places it can start as early as 5th grade; in others it doesn't start until 7th. It introduces students to high school concepts; like multiple classrooms for different subjects, personal lockers, greater homework responsibilities, more after-school activities. In many ways it's just an easier high school.\n\nHigh school is grades 9-12. It often offers students a choice of what classes to take. Students have more responsibilities, more homework, longer projects, harder tests. Eventually the hope is to prepare students for college or a career.\n\nThis is a very generalized overview; these things are different in different places, there is no universal standardized format.",
"Preschool is kind of a child care that's slightly educational. Not mandatory, but common. About age 4. \n\nKindergarten is the first official grade, not mandatory but extremely common. About age 5.\n\nElementary school is grades 1-5\n\nMiddle school, grades 6-8\n\nHigh school, grades 8-12\n\nCollege is basically going to university. There's certain required classes, but otherwise it's mostly tailored towards your chosen career",
"As a Texan it goes like this. Preschool is for parents who cannot stay home with their kids because of work. Public Elementary is babysitting for parents who cannot afford a private school. This is for children ages 5-12. Middle school you might get a bit of an education if you live in a decent area, but mostly it's to expose you to extra curricular activities and see what your interests are. This is for 12-15. Hopefully you develop a skill in middle school. High school is for 15-18 year olds. This is to prep you for college. Band, football, art, etc are a big deal. But you can coast through it and not do a whole lot. Then after that you can go to community college, which is something of a joke, it's for kids who didn't do well in school or didn't have the money for University. University is for those kids who grew up and actually figured out what they wanted to do with their lives, but it costs a lot of money. So your parents have to be loaded or you have to be really dedicated to making your shit work. School is mandatory until you're 18, except in special cases. We also have a \"no child left behind\" law, which has made standardized testing most of the curriculum. All schools receive tax money based on their standardized tests, the better your kids do the more money you get. So now the American education system is just a series of paper tests to try and get the most amount of money from the state that you can get. It's awful and the amount of people who don't get a decent education is deplorable. ",
"Different states and areas will implement the school system differently, not to mention drastic differences between public and private schools.\n\n**Preschool -** Public preschools are a rarity. Most preschools are private meaning you pay for them out of pocket. The difference between a daycare and a preschool is somewhat blur as most daycares today tout rather robust educational content and what is a toddler really going to learn anyway? Their main purpose is to keep them clean, fed, and alive.\n\n**Elementary School** \\- Generally grades K through 5, intended for kids from 5 to 11. Teaches basic educational concepts. Basic math, basic science, basic social studies, etc. Most of the education is provided by a single teacher, though special subjects like language, computer, art, etc., may be provided by a specialist in a different room. The purpose here is to get them used to the structured environment of the school, and also get a feel for the level of education that is appropriate for them (move up a grade, get held back, advanced vs remedial education etc.)\n\n**Middle School** \\- Generally grades 6 through 8. Here individual subjects will have their own room and own teacher that specializes in teaching in that subject, allowing the kids to get a more in depth education on the topic as well as preparing them for the kind of teaching environment they will experience in high school and college. Kids may also be offered some minimal level of choice in elective classes (music, language, etc.)\n\n**High School** \\- Generally grades 9 through 12. Often structured after a four-year college in the sense that: the various years are called Freshman, Sophmore, Junior, Senior; kids must earn a certain number of credits in a certain number of subjects to graduate; kids have greater choice in the specific kinds of classes they can take, including core subjects. Subjects in high school get more specific and advanced. You take \"Biolopy\" and \"Chemistry\" instead of just \"Science.\" You take \"Algebra\" and \"Calculus\" instead of just \"Math\" etc. General goal here is to prepare them for entrance into some sort of college.",
"Hi, I worked in a public school system for almost a decade and my wife taught preschool for years and is currently a Kindergarten teacher. Semi relevant, I'm also a school board member, so I have a general idea of what's up.\n\nThere is a lot that has changed over the years with schooling, and how everything works together. One of the major changes in the past quarter century is the implementation of standardized testing. In an effort to make sure that everyone is taught the same things we test students throughout their school career to make sure they are learning things that others are learning. This is an attempt to make sure that all students are on a level playing field and that different schools are not teaching wildly different things.\n\nSince then, we have implemented other standards to help even things out, like No Child Left Behind. In Ohio, we have the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee which has changed ways in which schools handle early education.\n\nWith that said, here is a basic rundown:\n\nPreschool - not mandatory but if you can do it, I highly recommend. Preschool is a sort of introduction to school with no assessments. Kids can get a feel of classroom life, learning how to interact with other students, listen to teachers, be apart from the primary care giver... without the pressure of having to be graded.\n\nKindergarten - mandatory in all but 5 states. This is the first time grades are brought into the picture. The purpose of Kindergarten is to get a child ready to learn. In some states there is real teaching done so that students get a jump-start for the standardized testing.\n\nGrade school - ranges from 1-6 depending on the district. This is basic rote learning. Letters, spelling, numbers, math, facts, basic principles, stuff you just need to know. How many states are there? What is 5x7? What is the capitol of Nevada? Stuff like that.\n\nMiddle school - the grades in between when grade school ends and high school starts (usually 7-8 but sometimes starting in 6th grade). This is where a bit more complicated information starts to be introduced. Algebra, Geometry, science with experiments to teach through demonstration and to teach the scientific method, deeper dives into history with more cause and effect type information. Part of the reason to pull these students out of elementary school is to prepare them for high school. Class structure is similar with a teacher specializing in a subject (elementary teachers teach all major subjects with things like gym, art, music... taught by specialized teachers). Students have to go from class to class across the building to switch subjects, but in an effort to keep crazy 13 year olds away from brooding 18 year olds, they split the younger ones into middle school.\n\nHigh school - usually 9-12 but I have seen dedicated 9th grade buildings and the high school is 10-12. This is where the depth taught in middle school is expanded. Complex math, advanced reading analytics, essay writing is refined, politics/government classes are usually added in high school or at least expanded upon, science is broken down into fields (Biology, Chemistry, Geology or Earth science, Physics...) and taught at a greater depth. High school is where a lot of emphasis is placed in life after school. What does the student want to do in life? Do they need college or a trade school? Is the military the right path? What about just joining a trade and working? Classes can be offered to help students learn about trades, or even take some college classes from a local Community College. \n\nK-12 education is there to make sure that citizens have a basic knowledge of most things, and some depth of knowledge. It is all about learning and knowing things. \n\nCollege is known as Higher Education, and was created to teach people how to think at a higher level. The reason a lot of jobs want college degrees is because traditionally college prepared people for management and leadership roles because it went beyond just teaching facts. People with college education were looked at as people with a higher skill set. The concept of 'go to college to get a better job and have a better life' meant a lot more a generation ago. Not everyone went to college, with manufacturing, farming and trade jobs being the bulk of the US workforce. College has been redefined a bit over the past decades and now a Masters Degree is looked at like a Bachelors was, and a Bachelors Degree looked at like a High School Diploma was. \n\nGranted this is my take on things, but I hope it helps."
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dyln0x | what would be the consequence of not developing symptoms in response to infection or disease? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dyln0x/eli5_what_would_be_the_consequence_of_not/ | {
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"Your symptoms are signs that your immune system is working. \n\nIf you got the flu, and you had no symptoms (ie no immune system), the end result is the infection would grow to lethal levels. It would take more and more resources your body needs to survive (and/or would be directly attacking your body’s cells without resistance)."
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4wg2of | how do blind people know where to put their fingers to read brail? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4wg2of/eli5_how_do_blind_people_know_where_to_put_their/ | {
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"I've always wondered why there is braille on the signs indicating where the restrooms are located at the Tim Hortons I frequent. I get why it would be on the doors to the washrooms themselves, but surely blind people dont walk around unfamiliar areas running their hand along every wall until they come across the arrow sign pointing to the washroom. ",
"Braille on signs is set at a standardized height and format. They learn through kinesthetic repetition where to \"look\" for said signs. It is the same process that you used to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard. \n\nFor documents and such there are indicator symbols in Braille that tell you which end of the page is up, what paragraph you are on, and the like. ",
"I work at a large international airport. At the main gate leading onto the aircraft parking apron, the sign directing the vehicle driver where to swipe his security badge also has the same info below in Braille. I have a good chuckle every time I drive through there. ",
"I'm a certified teacher of the visually impaired. Students are taught to scan a page tactilely like a sight person is taught visually. They find the beginning of the line of braille read half way with their left hand. The right hand takes over as the left hand then goes to the beginning of the next line. ",
"I think a better ELI5 is why the hell is there brail on a drive up ATMs?? That scares the shit outta me. Like, what is the idea behind that?"
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5xw0q3 | what keeps a healthy person's lungs from filling up with fluid? | Why are older people more susceptible to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xw0q3/eli5_what_keeps_a_healthy_persons_lungs_from/ | {
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"A common cause of fluid building up in the lungs is congestive heart failure (CHF). CHF is essentially when your heart is unable to adequately pump blood throughout your entire body. As we age, our hearts become more and more \"worn out\", and some people are prone to this more than others.--think of it like a rubber band, the more you stretch it the less elastic and effective it becomes. Once the heart is unable to pump blood to the body it begins \"backing up\" into the lungs leading to increased pulmonary pressures. The increased fluid pressure then pushes fluid into the alveoli (sacs that normally fill with air) leading to fluid in the lungs. "
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aa15mt | does sitting/working in a dark environment during the day affect your sleep cycle in the night? also, does your brain feel the difference between a darkened room and if outside was naturally dark 24 hours daily? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aa15mt/eli5_does_sittingworking_in_a_dark_environment/ | {
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"Ah I just started reading a book on this. Check it out: _URL_0_\n\nI don’t have complete answer for you. But the book is super interesting. "
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426aaz | how do winter tires work? you'd think on ice all tires would be evenly slippery... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/426aaz/eli5_how_do_winter_tires_work_youd_think_on_ice/ | {
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"If you are talking about spiked tires it might come as no surprise that the spikes digs into the ice, giving a better grip. \n\nWhen it comes to non-spiked winter tyres though it depends on the blend of rubber in them. Regular tyres get stiff in cold wether and dont grip as well as it does when they are warm. Therefore, winter tyres contain a different blend that is softer in cold whether, but is on the other hand not as good in warm wether."
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5y1ghi | how do flat-earthers explain seasons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5y1ghi/eli5_how_do_flatearthers_explain_seasons/ | {
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"The flat earth theory is that the sun is a giant spotlight being shined onto the earth in a focused beam. (Yes, we know it's crazy.) And that beam moves around the circular earth once every twenty-four hours. (Yes, we know it's crazy.)\n\nThroughout the year, the spotlight moves away from the North Pole and toward the \"edge\" (probably the sanest thing in this whole theory) which creates Winter at the polar region, and closer again half a year later to create Summer.\n\nThey have no explanation of how or why the flashlight Sun moves back and forth throughout the year. (Did I mention they are crazy?)",
"\"But what about....?\" is always the wrong way to change someone's mind on *anything*. They don't care - all they know is your answer is wrong. Seasons don't need an explanation - they just 'are'; maybe scientists will figure out the correct answer someday, or maybe not. But there will still be seasons. \n\nLook - there are plenty of actual scientific phenomena that are unexplained and we just accept as 'it is the way it is'. We don't know how gravity works mechanically/atomically (eg we can *describe* it but we don't know the subatomic/quantum mechanics that make it happen - yet). But despite that lack of knowledge, if I jump out of a window, I'm not falling up. Gravity just 'is' that same way seasons just 'are'.\n\nTo a flat earther, that looks like you are cherrypicking your arguments, and as such its completely unconvincing. ",
"Seasons come from outer space. The earth, which is flat, doesn't make them. The earth is just there, floating through space, and when space is hot, earth is hot, and when space is cold, earth is cold. This pulsation of hot/cold comes from the sun. There are angels in the sun's core that operate a bicycle-powered clockwork mechanism that keeps the sun burning. Every so often, the angels take a break and the sun gets a little colder. Less heat is radiated into space. So Earth doesn't receive the heat radiation. That's what we know as winter. The other seasons can be explained by the same mechanism.",
"Another thing I always wanted a flat earther to explain to me is the ability to view different constellations from the northern/southern hemispheres. The way the flat earth model works, both constellations that are visible in the northern and southern hemisphere would be visible everywhere on a flat earth for a specific time of the year.\n\nI asked a flat earther this once, and he told me \"you don't know the right model.\"",
"Explanation isn't always needed. When you're indoctrinated at an early age, the world can easily be twisted beyond belief. These children are often taught to not question anything either. They most likely develop a negative stimuli when consulting their inner curiosity during this time as well.\n\nLiving under a rock also helps solidify those beliefs since there is no experience to contradict *everything*.",
"Wait... these people actually exist? I just thought they were a myth used to make funny memes. ",
"The 'Flat Earth' thing is a recruitment tool to find useful idiots. No joke... If you can get people to believe that photos from space of the Earth are fake, then you got yourself some good patsies for whatever.",
"The flat earth theory is not about a flat earth or NASA conspiracies. It is a way to channel questions about the nature of God into other directions. A flat Earth make no sense, so it must be the work of God, and so God exists. The theory is not a theory, it is a way for the conspiracy nuts to prop up their failing belief system.",
"The flat earth people are not interested in evidence or reasoning. You start with an interesting conclusion, use search engines to pinpoint supporting information, and disregard anything or anyone that gets in the way. Seasons are the tip of the iceberg, a large portion of the human population has borne witness to the roundness of the earth and they are able to rationalize that away, I don't see why a little thing like wildly changing climate is going to get in the way of their sacred worldview. It's more fun to believe some magical shit that makes you special for \"figuring it out\", and the easiest person in the world to bullshit is always yourself."
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3megol | why would volkswagen cheat diesel emmisions testing in the us after they already had an issue with falsely reporting mpg on their diesel models in the past | They just recently were allowed to report the actual MPG for their diesel vehicles in the US again, so why would they risk emission cheating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3megol/eli5_why_would_volkswagen_cheat_diesel_emmisions/ | {
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"ELI5 answer: A kid is discovered to be telling lies, but now he knows how they worked out he was telling lies, he thinks that he can tell them again, and not get caught this time. The kid was wrong, and now he's in big trouble."
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ascpfd | what is the relationship between resolution, frame height and width, data rate and file size? | What I know so far, from watching Youtube videos, is that there are several common resolutions like 720p and 1080p. Those will be 1280x720 and 1920x1080 pixels.
But then why are some videos of the same resolution (and approximately same duration) so different in file size? I am guessing it has got to do with the data rate, but how does it actually work?
If I have a 1920x1080 video with an initial data rate of 8160 kbps and send it through a file converter such that it has a new lower data rate, does it affect the video quality in any way? Can it still be considered 1080p? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ascpfd/eli5_what_is_the_relationship_between_resolution/ | {
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"Compression.\n\n\nVideo data is ginormous: a single frame of 1080p video is ~6MB. That's 144MB per second. \n\nTo make streaming (or anything really) possible video has to be compressed, at lot. \n\nThere exists many different video compression algorithms, but they all allow you to set a target bitrate. The algorithm will try to pack the most quality possible in this bitrate.. Of course, the lower the bitrate is, the lower quality the video will be. Some algorithm are better than others at preserving quality, but they all degrade the video to some extend.\n\n\n > Can it still be considered 1080p? \n\nYes, depending on the compression and bitrate it might look like shit though. That's why video sharing sites often display the algorithm and bitrate with which the video was compressed (the most popular algo is probably h264)",
" > What is the relationship between resolution, frame height and width...\n\nAspect Ratio is the numerical way of expressing the difference between the width and height of an image. For instance, an image with a resolution of 1920x1080 has an Aspect Ratio of 1.78:1, meaning it is 1.78 times wider than tall; this is also sometimes expressed as \"16:9\".\n\nEvery resolution is tied to a specific Aspect Ratio, i.e. 1080p will *always* have an aspect of 1.78:1. However, this rule doesn't remain true \"in reverse\", which is to say that a given Aspect Ratio isn't tied to any one specific resolution. For instance, an image captured at 3840x2160 has double the amount of both horizontal and vertical resolution that 1080p offers, but the aspect ratio remains at 1.78:1, and likewise, 720p also yields a 1.78:1 asepct, it's simply a matter of maintaining the ratio as resolution goes up or down.\n\nFor the sake of comparison, old \"square TVs\" (they aren't actually perfectly square) have an AR of 1.33:1, and the \"defacto standard\" for motion pictures was 1.85:1 for many decades, although other filming standards exist as well.\n\n > But then why are some videos of the same resolution (and approximately same duration) so different in file size?\n\nDifferent codecs reduce video size to different degrees and using different methods, so depending on how the video was encoded, you can maintain common resolution while file sizes change.\n\n > I am guessing it has got to do with the data rate, but how does it actually work?\n\nData rate (bitrate) can be a *part* of it, but it's not the entire story; it is possible for a given codec to use more aggressive or less aggressive compression than another comparable codec without the bitrate changing. So, it's possible for 2 videos to both be encoded at 1080p at the same bitrate, but with one using more aggressive/less efficient compression that will visibly degrade video quality and/or cause issues like mpeg blocking, etc...\n\nEssentially, compression scheme, resolution, and bitrate all effect how video quality works independently of one another. There were some interesting DVD releases marketed under the name \"Superbit\" that omitted bonus material in lieu of using the additional disc space to encode at a higher bitrate. The resolution and encoding scheme didn't change, but they were able to realize improved A/V quality through the use of a higher than normal bitrate.\n\n > If I have a 1920x1080 video with an initial data rate of 8160 kbps and send it through a file converter such that it has a new lower data rate, does it affect the video quality in any way?\n\nYes, as bitrate drops, so does video quality, but whether the difference is noticeable depends on specifics not addressed here.\n\n > Can it still be considered 1080p?\n\nYes, if a video file has a resolution of 1920x1080 and is \"progressive\" (non-interlaced), it is a 1080p image regardless of anything else."
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mpmj9 | what is the difference between an lcd monitor and an lcd tv? | So I know there are... some differences? Like the range of input outputs, that TVs sometimes have nicer contrast rates, but I can't see a HUGE difference between my 22 1080p monitor and my 22 1080p TV. The TV seems to pack a few more pixels maybe? not a huge difference though in playing video.
And yet I see monitors selling for WAY less than TVs. Can someone explain why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mpmj9/what_is_the_difference_between_an_lcd_monitor_and/ | {
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"Only differentiating factor now at this point is whether or not it has to ability to receive over-the-air tv channels. If it cannot do this by itself, then it is just a monitor that can display cable tv and other things that provide a visual source.\n\nHigh end monitors will tend to have a much higher resolution than many HD tv's too I believe, though I may be wrong on this.",
"So they should look exactly the same, the resolution is exactly the same on the same sized screen. Thete are different types, lcd led but that has to do with the light source. Typically there is a florescent light source but the new ones have leds which can be turned on to gry better contrast ratios",
"In general, monitors are designed with a finer dot pitch (ie. the pixels are smaller) than TVs because you are sitting closer to a monitor than a TV.\n\nMonitors also have faster response times.\n\nMonitors will lack much of the fancy video processing that TVs do, because desktop video cards are supposed to take care of that. This is a big cost center for TV manufacturers.\n\nMonitors typically do not have speakers or audio outputs. TVs always do.\n\nMonitors often have a 16:10 aspect ratio. TVs are nearly always 16:9.\n\nMonitors have much tighter tolerances for color consistency across the panel.\n\nMonitors will not support the fancy internet-connected features many high-end TVs have. For that matter, the software driving monitors--including the menus and UI--is a lot simpler than the software driving a typical TV. Simpler software requires less beefy hardware, which lowers cost.\n\nBy far the majority of monitor sales are to OEMs to bundle with PCs. This is a lucrative, stable revenue stream, which allows the manufacturer to accept tighter profit margins on aftermarket monitor sales. TVs do not enjoy a similar stable revenue stream, so profit margins must widen somewhat, which drives up prices.",
"Only differentiating factor now at this point is whether or not it has to ability to receive over-the-air tv channels. If it cannot do this by itself, then it is just a monitor that can display cable tv and other things that provide a visual source.\n\nHigh end monitors will tend to have a much higher resolution than many HD tv's too I believe, though I may be wrong on this.",
"So they should look exactly the same, the resolution is exactly the same on the same sized screen. Thete are different types, lcd led but that has to do with the light source. Typically there is a florescent light source but the new ones have leds which can be turned on to gry better contrast ratios",
"In general, monitors are designed with a finer dot pitch (ie. the pixels are smaller) than TVs because you are sitting closer to a monitor than a TV.\n\nMonitors also have faster response times.\n\nMonitors will lack much of the fancy video processing that TVs do, because desktop video cards are supposed to take care of that. This is a big cost center for TV manufacturers.\n\nMonitors typically do not have speakers or audio outputs. TVs always do.\n\nMonitors often have a 16:10 aspect ratio. TVs are nearly always 16:9.\n\nMonitors have much tighter tolerances for color consistency across the panel.\n\nMonitors will not support the fancy internet-connected features many high-end TVs have. For that matter, the software driving monitors--including the menus and UI--is a lot simpler than the software driving a typical TV. Simpler software requires less beefy hardware, which lowers cost.\n\nBy far the majority of monitor sales are to OEMs to bundle with PCs. This is a lucrative, stable revenue stream, which allows the manufacturer to accept tighter profit margins on aftermarket monitor sales. TVs do not enjoy a similar stable revenue stream, so profit margins must widen somewhat, which drives up prices."
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69k341 | what makes somes piece of work (drawing, music, movie, poem, novel, etc) considered classic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69k341/eli5_what_makes_somes_piece_of_work_drawing_music/ | {
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"The fact that people still talk about it after so many years, make them classic. The popularity of the work defines it. Consider this poem by Robert Frost, \"A TIME TO TALK\"\n\nVery few people know about it. But most of us surely know his \"miles to go before I sleep\"",
"Most expert opinions agree that as long as the content creator (no matter the medium) wore a powdered wig, it is in fact clasic.",
"Works are generally given 'classic' status if they have a significant cultural impact that extends beyond the period in which the work was produced. For a modern example, the Harry Potter novels are considered classics because their popularity and influence are widespread and enduring - the first novel was released 20 years ago and it is still at the forefront of our culture with spin-offs, books, plays, theme parks etc., whereas the Twilight books were insanely popular but it's been 11 years since the first book was released and their cultural relevance has faded away and even the 50 Shades of Grey franchise it inspired has reached its peak, so it's unlikely to be considered a classic.",
"It is a subjective opinion and cultural in nature but the idea is that the work is representative of the style and time period it was created in. \n\nFor example, while there are many artists who used pointillism in their paintings; Signac or Seurat, and their works represent the pointillism movement at that time very well so they are classics now. \n\nTaking music as an example, the Glenn Miller song \"In the mood\" came to represent swing music around the time of WW2. There were a lot of swing songs at the time but In the mood is a good representation of that style and that time period so it's a classic. \n\nThink of any artistic movement and then think about the artists or works which best represented it and you will often find they are considered representative and 'classic'. \n\n",
"\"Classic\" is essentially something that has a lasting cultural impact, beyond its original time or scope. Obviously all art is subjective, but some reasons for a work attaining this sort of transcendent status could be:\n\n* It is considered an outstanding example of a particular genre, school, or scene.\n\n* It is an early or original example of something \"new\", that goes on to help define a genre/technique that is copied by other artists.\n\n* It is one of the early examples of a long-standing \"underground\" genre or scene that attains popular success or influence.\n\n* It is something completely unique, that stands out from everything else in a particular genre or scene.",
"If you can look at art as a kind of mechanism, let's say a light switch on a wall. When you flip that switch a light bulb is activated and it brings light. An art work is classic when no matter how much time has passed, no matter how much dust and grime has collected, no matter how long that light bulb has been turned on and off; when you flip that light switch, the bulb still brings light. Like all mechanisms it will eventually deteriorate and the light will grow dimmer, and after a very long time the bulb might even break as it becomes an ancient relic, but still emit some light. Such is the quality and skill in its construction. Some light bulbs will never break -- think ancient cave paintings. \n\nAll art will eventually shed its context, but art that will always bring light to the spirit of whoever flips its switch is deemed \"a classic.\"\n",
"Just to be sure we're covering all bases; classical refers to specific periods of history in literature, fine art and music. Theres classical Greek and Roman literature which directly influenced the classical literary era of France, for example. When people refer to \"the classics\", most often they're not referring to the works that are considered classic, but works from the era know as the 'classical' era."
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3iz0e7 | why do flies or other insects fly specifically around your head? | I tried searching for this first but to no avail.
I've always wondered this, as someone with a phobia of insects, it has always bothered me that flies, or other insects, have the entire world to fly around in but they insist to fly specifically around your head. Can someone offer an explanation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iz0e7/eli5_why_do_flies_or_other_insects_fly/ | {
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"Your scalp is thin, un-insulated skin filled with tons of tiny capillaries, which serves as a sort of radiator. While your hair keeps some of that heat it, you radiate a lot of excess body head from your scalp. Most insects vision operates in the infrared spectrum, meaning they see heat, not light. Mosquitoes, for example, use infrared to see where your blood is, as your blood is often warmer than the tissue around it.\n\nAlternatively, your face, hair follicles, mouth, nose, eyes and ears are bacterial hubs. These bacterial hubs emit smells that. These smells are attractive to insects that find food primarily through their sense of smell, like flies.",
"Bugs like mosquitos are attracted by the carbon dioxide you breath out. Thats why if you are doing an activity outside like hiking you are more likely to become swarmed around the head, you are pumping out more CO2."
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cubiu0 | how do we know anything past 10k light years exists? | If everything in the 10K light year radius simply disappeared around us, it would take us another 10K years to see that event, am I right? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cubiu0/eli5_how_do_we_know_anything_past_10k_light_years/ | {
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"Yes. Until light / gravitational influence from any event (or sudden lack thereof) reaches us, we have no way of getting that information.\n\nSo, if a 10 LY distant star ceases to shine at this exact moment, you will get to know that in 10 years.",
"Technically you are correct. What we are seeing is, by many accounts, light emitted from dying or already dead stars. If the theory that nothing can travel faster than light, or we do not learn how to pick up things traveling faster than light, there could indeed be cataclysmic events happening in space that we won't know for many thousands or millions of years.\n\nIf someone just decide to turn off the sun (if that was even possible) we would be blissfully unaware for about 8 minutes and 20 seconds, which is the time it takes sunlight to travel from the sun to the Earth."
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3uqmlf | how can fox news spend years lying about planned parenthood and not be held liable when a viewer shoots up a clinic? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uqmlf/eli5_how_can_fox_news_spend_years_lying_about/ | {
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"Because we don't hold people liable for things like that. There's simply no precedent.Fox News never told him to do that action, it didn't even suggest a violent response. To hold them liable would be quite a stretch."
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mxv8f | why dalits (untouchables) are stuck in their plight | My understanding is that Dalits are simply a caste of people: they're no racially or ethnically different from the other castes. And though they're often extremely poor, people of the other castes are often quite poor too.
So given this, why do Dalits put up with their situation in life? Couldn't you in some way pretend to be a poor person of a higher caste and thereby increase your lot in life? I realize this might involve migration - however, this has been done by the poor and destitute since the beginning of history.
What I'm getting at is, caste is a completely extrinsic factor. You can't see it, you can't detect it, and you can't prove it. So why are people still allowing themselves to be labeled in this way, rather than acting to improve it? It's almost like unfairly being labelled the village idiot. Move to a new village, and you're no longer the idiot.
**Edited for clarity.** | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mxv8f/eli5_why_dalits_untouchables_are_stuck_in_their/ | {
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"It's hard to migrate if you can't scrape together enough money for tonight's dinner.",
"India self-segregated professions just after 2000BC the same way Europe self-segregated professions during the middle ages. If your father was a tailor, you were a tailor. If your father was a tanner, then you were a tanner. And so on and so forth.\n\nThe word \"Caste\" is a Portuguese word first applied to the class system of Portugal, then to Europe. When the British colonized India, they saw a system of segregation according to professions but understood it as a racist system because racism was the dominant way of thinking for the British colonialists. Around 1900 they classified the four different professions - priests, governors, merchants, and laborers - in the official census.\n\nUnderneath these professions - denied a professional rank at all - were the Dalits. In ancient times, they were made the out-group so the majority could feel more godly (a kind of mob rule). They don't have a choice over their status given the collective thinking and pressure to think the same. The one choice they had was to change their last name and lie about their \"caste\", and many have and do as we speak.\n\nAs far as I am aware, the poor have not migrated since the beginning of history. They have been told that their state is ordained by God and often died of disease.\n\nRegarding your main point: your caste is understood through your clan (think, your 200 nearest relatives). Your family name and/or place-of-origin indicate your clan. As for moving away, ancient India was a big place, and today, you can find Indians in every part of the world who will know where another Indian comes from geographically and socially just from their last name.",
"It's hard to migrate if you can't scrape together enough money for tonight's dinner.",
"India self-segregated professions just after 2000BC the same way Europe self-segregated professions during the middle ages. If your father was a tailor, you were a tailor. If your father was a tanner, then you were a tanner. And so on and so forth.\n\nThe word \"Caste\" is a Portuguese word first applied to the class system of Portugal, then to Europe. When the British colonized India, they saw a system of segregation according to professions but understood it as a racist system because racism was the dominant way of thinking for the British colonialists. Around 1900 they classified the four different professions - priests, governors, merchants, and laborers - in the official census.\n\nUnderneath these professions - denied a professional rank at all - were the Dalits. In ancient times, they were made the out-group so the majority could feel more godly (a kind of mob rule). They don't have a choice over their status given the collective thinking and pressure to think the same. The one choice they had was to change their last name and lie about their \"caste\", and many have and do as we speak.\n\nAs far as I am aware, the poor have not migrated since the beginning of history. They have been told that their state is ordained by God and often died of disease.\n\nRegarding your main point: your caste is understood through your clan (think, your 200 nearest relatives). Your family name and/or place-of-origin indicate your clan. As for moving away, ancient India was a big place, and today, you can find Indians in every part of the world who will know where another Indian comes from geographically and socially just from their last name."
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esit2b | why does it seem like many lethal viruses start in developing countries but not 1st world countries? | For example bird flu and coronavirus both originated in China, Ebola in Africa. It seems as though the viruses that have the highest mortality rate begin in developing countries. Is this just purely because 1st world countries have better vaccinations and healthcare or does living in a third world country lead to being exposed to more unsanitary living conditions and exposure to carrier animals. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/esit2b/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_many_lethal_viruses/ | {
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"You pretty much answered your own question, but one exposure to carrier animals is Bush Meat. The governments have had campaigns to get them to stop, but it's gone on since forever, it's cultural, and I'd eat a damn monkey if I was hungry enough.",
"It comes down to poor sanitation and the number of people packed in together in proximity to sick people. It gives the germs more opportunities to mutate into more aggressive germs",
"Most of those countries tries have no proper way to dispose of garbage or sewage. Also poorly regulated farms can also lead to these viruses.",
"A lot of it is the number of people living in close proximity to domesticated animals. These viruses tend to be ones that have just mutated in a way that results in it being transmissible to people and sometimes contagious between people too.",
"* lack of health care\n* lack of sanitation\n* lack of clean water\n* lack of an effective government response\n* general lack of infrastructure, roads, telecommunications, etc.\n* living in closer proximity to animals\n* reliance on folk medicine and other alternative cures\n* corruption leading to mistrust of government\n* corruption leading to government denial \n* being sick taking a greater economic toll leading to denial\n* political instability making it difficult for governments to act"
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444d1r | how do radio presenters time what they are saying so that they finish just as the words start? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/444d1r/eli5_how_do_radio_presenters_time_what_they_are/ | {
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"They have a timer which shows a countdown to when the lyrics start. This is called \"back timing\".\n\nThat's only half the story though. The other half is just lots of practice, so they know how fast to speak or how many extra words to add to get their sentence to coincide with the timer.",
"The real answer is... it's difficult. Go listen to college broadcasters just starting out. It's pretty painful. They are obviously trying so hard to stretch their words to make them fit. "
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ew2mkc | why does a tennis ball travel faster when the outside temperature is higher | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ew2mkc/eli5_why_does_a_tennis_ball_travel_faster_when/ | {
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"Air is less dense in warm weather, here in Phoenix if the temps go above 110, Sky Harbor airport starts canceling flights.",
"Tennis balls have gas inside them. The higher the temperature the more the gas inside will expand. The gas can't easily escape so the pressure inside the ball goes up. Higher pressure means the ball deforms less when being hit or bouncing, so less energy is lost.\n\nThink about bouncing a half inflated soccer ball, it doesn't bounce as high as a fully inflated one."
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3v6s2r | how did the enola gay avoid the blast and the shockwave of the atomic bombs it dropped on hiroshima and nagasaki? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v6s2r/eli5how_did_the_enola_gay_avoid_the_blast_and_the/ | {
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"Because it dropped the bomb from 30,000 feet in the air. It exploded nearly 5 miles below where it was dropped from.",
"The bomb fell quite far, which takes a rather long time.\n\n > The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy containing about 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium-235 took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at about 31,000 feet (9,400 m) to a detonation height of about 1,900 feet (580 m) above the city.[129][130][131] Enola Gay traveled 11.5 mi (18.5 km) before it felt the shock waves from the blast.[132]"
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1qmeie | why is the south tip of south america so warm when it's somewhat close to antarctica? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qmeie/eli5_why_is_the_south_tip_of_south_america_so/ | {
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"Climate for [Ushuaia, Argentina](_URL_0_) (aka The Southernmost Settlement in the World): \n\n > Temperatures average 1.6 °C (34.9 °F) in the coolest month (July), and 10.3 °C (50.5 °F) in the warmest month (January). \n\nTell me more about these warm temperatures. ",
"Patagonia pretty cold bro"
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3cvxm8 | why the hell can't my ipad(offline) be an am/fm radio? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cvxm8/eli5_why_the_hell_cant_my_ipadoffline_be_an_amfm/ | {
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"The iPad doesn't have the right chip for receiving AM or FM radio signals. Even if it did, it could only receive FM using the headphones as the antenna. It doesn't have enough space for an AM antenna, which has to be a few feet long at least. ",
"It does not have a radio chip in it designed to pick up the frequencies emitted by radio stations. \n\nYou might be able to plug in some headphones and listen to radio, having it use the headphone wire as an antenna, but it depends on the device, and you'll definitely need a third party app. ",
"So, tablets and computers have come a long way. There's software to do almost anything! \nThe trick is, certain things must be handled by hardware. \nThings like wifi require wi-fi receivers... and the hardware to capture the specific type of hardware used in your router to send the signal. \nYour phone actually uses different bits of hardware for Cell phone connectivity, wi-fi, and bluetooth. \nThe thing is, adding hardware like this costs money. \nThey could easily add the hardware in, but, it would cost money. You can get FM receivers on Amazon for as little as 10 bucks! but let's assume 20 bucks, since apple likes to use good (expensive, maybe overpriced, but good) hardware. \nThat means every single iPad would cost 20 dollars more to make. \nWhich is fine, if enough people want the feature. \nBluetooth isn't neccesary for a tablet to work, but it's an easy thing to use accessories with, so, they include it, despite the extra cost! \nThing is, radio isn't something people usually use a tablet for. So, they'd be sacrificing 20 dollars of profit, PER iPad, to include the hardware it needs to catch the radio signals. \nThe software portion would be easy, but they'd never stop losing that profit. \nThere were [13.3 MILLION](_URL_0_) ipads sold in 2014. \nThat means it would have cost them 266 MILLION DOLLARS in profit to include the FM transmitter. Now, if anyone would avoid buying an ipad because of that, it'd be a problem, and they'd lose profit. But, the profit lost from people who wouldn't buy an ipad because it couldn't pick up radio is most likely significantly less than 266 Million dollars. \nSo, to summize- They need hardware to pick up radio waves. Hardware costs money, and not enough people want the feature for Apple to justify spending that money."
]
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[],
[],
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2zn6zg | how will self driving cars ever be able to drive on snow and ice? | The road surfaces can change and stopping distance can suddenly be greatly increased. Perhaps at lower speeds they will be fine, but at highway speeds, I just can't see it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zn6zg/eli5_how_will_self_driving_cars_ever_be_able_to/ | {
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"I suppose there would have to be sensors in the wheels to sense different road conditions. \n\nBut even then, it is hard to imagine a computer driven car reacting to changing conditions during a blizzard or something like that. \n\nPersonally I hope the whole self driving car for everyone doesn't become reality in my lifetime. ",
"First, a lot of the self driving car thing focuses on specified conditions and being able to control them. \n\nSecond, it is possible to adapt control algorithms for other conditions. They could automatically be linked to road condition sensors and weather reports, or auto-detect and compensate for slipping. ",
"Road surface changes aren't that big of a deal, most cars nowadays are already thoroughly computerised. I think the main thing holding back snow-condition robotic cars is visibility. If you can't see the lines on the road, the car loses its points of reference, and only sees white, while a human who's used to these elements can use common sense."
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81sh8w | what does it mean when someone says they had to relearn how to walk, eat, etc after a serious injury? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81sh8w/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_someone_says_they_had/ | {
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"It means exactly that.\n\n\"Use it or lose it\" applies to *everything*. If you don't exercise, you lose muscle. If you don't use a thought process, you forget it. \n\nThink about how you hold your feet wearing flipflops versus winter boots. Unless you live in a dorm and wear flipflops in the shower, you will probably trip in the first couple of steps in flipflops after wearing boots all winter.\n\nThere is a simple way to quickly prove it to yourself: Walk a good distance with only one shoe on. (One flipflop and one thick-soled boot gives great results.) After a while you will get to the point where your body is used to the lopsided stride and you'll start being able to move faster. Now put your other shoe on. You'll notice that your first couple of steps will feel strange and you'll be very slow for a bit. "
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[]
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6nxyhn | can you cook the nutrients out of food? where do they go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6nxyhn/eli5_can_you_cook_the_nutrients_out_of_food_where/ | {
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"Only to a limited degree. Heat destroys some vitamins, and lots of enzymes. Most of the macronutrients (protein, carbs, fat, fiber) are still there.",
"Yes you can, it just depends on the length of cooking. As you heat something up, let's say meat, you start to break down all the little fibers and molecules. The first to go is the fats. As they reach a high enough temp, the fat molecules excite enough to go into their liquid state. Fats are just carbon chains hooked together to form very large energy molecules. Think of several metal chains hooked together via a lock. As you keep heating the chain, the heat starts breaking links off of the chains (and breaking the lock) these free carbons oxidize turning into CO2 or they purge their Hydrogen (making water) creating pure carbon, it has burned. Next are sugars that undergo the same process, just at a higher temp. Vitamins and proteins go after that due to them having more complex structures and different atoms (Nitrogen, phosphorus, etc), I.e they are more resistant to heat. Minerals vary. Some can withstand a lot of heat, but if you go long enough the structures can break down and convert to a gas or become innate. Most Salts do survive any cooking process. If we take table salt as an example: we salt the steak and it dissolves into Sodium and chloride. As we burn the steak, water evaporates and the salt crystallizes, returning back to salt.\n\nNow this isn't always bad for the food, for instance grill marks on a steak is the destruction and caramelization of these nutrients, but it takes a lot of time and intense heat to destroy a whole steak.\n\nTl;dr while burning, the carbon converts to charcoal (pure carbon) and CO2. Since a majority of the nutrients are carbon based, they will break down, into innate compounds, at differing temps."
]
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[],
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m4cbx | the mexican drug cartel wars | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m4cbx/eli5_the_mexican_drug_cartel_wars/ | {
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"ok, so you've decided to sell jellybeans to everyone at school. Your business is very successful, until you find out that someone else is selling jellybeans too. You have a choice, compete, or just fuck them up so they can't sell them. The teachers find out you're selling beans, so they create/enforce the rules that you can't sell the beans. You beat up on teacher, and leave their mangled body lying in public, as a warning to the other teachers not to stop you from selling beans.\n\nBeans = drugs, teachers = police.",
"You LOVE jelly beans and will do anything to eat them. In fact you believe it's your right as a human 5 yr old to eat them all day everyday whenever you want. \n\nYour parents forbid you from eating them because of some stupid shit Dr. Oz said on TV. They give you lunch money to buy apples. \n\nSome kids at school specialize in getting and distributing jelly beans. You start dealing with these kids cause you dont give a shit about apples, you want your jelly beans. \n\nOne day you're walking to school, coming off a light suger buzz when another group of kids approaches you, asking where you get your beans from. You tell them because you feel everyone should have jelly beans if they want. \n\nWhen you get to school, your jelly bean suppliers beat you up, tie you upside down and violently castrate your prepubescent genitalia before slowly slitting your throat. You bleed out in agonizing horror but not before you realize your limbs are being hacked off and your parents were probably right. Fuckin' know-it-all assholes. ",
"Well, this is one of the unintended international consequences of prohibition. Millions of dollars of profits from running drugs like cannabis, cocaine, and heroin get funneled into organized criminal gangs which have sourced production of those drugs to various places in Mexico.\n\nThe problem is that there are definitely specific places where it's easier for them to bring their product over the border. These places could be referred to as part of crucial trade routes used by these gangs. Motivated by very large profits, they battle with other crime syndicates for control over these trade routes and the money they represent.\n\nThis problem was exacerbated in recent years by the president of Mexico declaring \"war\" on these cartels and using the country's military to enforce laws against them. These organizations are so rich and powerful now though, that they are simply bribing or killing anyone who gets in their way. Thousands of innocent civilians, political figures, journalists, and especially police officers are being brutally slaughtered to protect these trade routes - all because America is trying to control who uses what kinds of drugs for arbitrary reasons.",
"ok, so you've decided to sell jellybeans to everyone at school. Your business is very successful, until you find out that someone else is selling jellybeans too. You have a choice, compete, or just fuck them up so they can't sell them. The teachers find out you're selling beans, so they create/enforce the rules that you can't sell the beans. You beat up on teacher, and leave their mangled body lying in public, as a warning to the other teachers not to stop you from selling beans.\n\nBeans = drugs, teachers = police.",
"You LOVE jelly beans and will do anything to eat them. In fact you believe it's your right as a human 5 yr old to eat them all day everyday whenever you want. \n\nYour parents forbid you from eating them because of some stupid shit Dr. Oz said on TV. They give you lunch money to buy apples. \n\nSome kids at school specialize in getting and distributing jelly beans. You start dealing with these kids cause you dont give a shit about apples, you want your jelly beans. \n\nOne day you're walking to school, coming off a light suger buzz when another group of kids approaches you, asking where you get your beans from. You tell them because you feel everyone should have jelly beans if they want. \n\nWhen you get to school, your jelly bean suppliers beat you up, tie you upside down and violently castrate your prepubescent genitalia before slowly slitting your throat. You bleed out in agonizing horror but not before you realize your limbs are being hacked off and your parents were probably right. Fuckin' know-it-all assholes. ",
"Well, this is one of the unintended international consequences of prohibition. Millions of dollars of profits from running drugs like cannabis, cocaine, and heroin get funneled into organized criminal gangs which have sourced production of those drugs to various places in Mexico.\n\nThe problem is that there are definitely specific places where it's easier for them to bring their product over the border. These places could be referred to as part of crucial trade routes used by these gangs. Motivated by very large profits, they battle with other crime syndicates for control over these trade routes and the money they represent.\n\nThis problem was exacerbated in recent years by the president of Mexico declaring \"war\" on these cartels and using the country's military to enforce laws against them. These organizations are so rich and powerful now though, that they are simply bribing or killing anyone who gets in their way. Thousands of innocent civilians, political figures, journalists, and especially police officers are being brutally slaughtered to protect these trade routes - all because America is trying to control who uses what kinds of drugs for arbitrary reasons."
]
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24a34l | if an orgasm is just a cocktail of chemicals in our brain, and narcotics are essentially the same thing, why do we build a tolerance on the latter, and have to take more, but an orgasm is always an orgasm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24a34l/eli5_if_an_orgasm_is_just_a_cocktail_of_chemicals/ | {
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"text": [
"My orgasms do get weaker if I have then frequently. If I go without for a while the next one is stronger."
]
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[]
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||
2kmuw9 | what is it about alcohol that makes me feel tipsy and uninhibited? also, why do some people become aggressive under the influence of alcohol, while others get giggly, and still others become weepy? | Got about half a bottle of wine in me and I'm wondering why I feel the way that I do. I tend to be a really giggly drunk, but what makes me different from the aggressive drunk or the weepy drunk? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kmuw9/eli5_what_is_it_about_alcohol_that_makes_me_feel/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Alcohol inhibits motor reflexes, and also shrouds your perception. You become more disconnected with the world, which in turn, makes you think less about the world. You act like your true self, like you would in an empty room or with your best friend without caring about consequences. That's why different people exhibit different moods.\n\nIt also depends on how 'suppressive' your behaviour is. Some people are really as chilled and laidback as they show themselves to be, and such people are often not much affected by a decent amount of alcohol. Others might get violent only after 2 beers, like my crazy ex..."
]
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[]
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|
618jin | if two people use the same piece of software, how can only one of them have problem with bugs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/618jin/eli5_if_two_people_use_the_same_piece_of_software/ | {
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"Because they are using different computers. Say you have installed the same bathtub as your friend, but yours spurts out too much water because you have a higher water pressure in your house.",
"Different versions of the software would be the first thing to look for. \n\nYou might also have different versions of libraries (.Net and DirectX are used by a lot of Windows programs).\n\nSimply how you use the software, what settings you're using in it. \n\nAlso the hardware. If a program assumes it will perform some computation before it's finished loading a file, a bug might only occur on a computer with a fast disk. \n\nAlso just general settings on your computer. Maybe the program assumes your computer and a server are on the same timezone. ",
"My favorite example of bugs is in the original Civilization game, Ghandi was a peaceful leader with an aggression rating of 1 out of 10 (or something else low).\n\nCertain circumstances (discoveries, treaties, whatever) could lower everybody's aggression level, but this would make Ghandi's rating a negative number.\n\nThe developers hadn't thought about the need/possibility of storing a negative number in that situation so it rolled over the the highest possible number, and Ghandi nukes everybody. \n\nThis is typical for software bugs, software isn't released that doesn't work after a quick test or normal circumstances. But unusual circumstances can cause issues which would go unnoticed. "
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[],
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3o620f | how come iphones have become the signature brand for apple and not macs anymore? | The iPhone is the franchise star for Apple. How come Macs get bumped over in favor of iPhones in recent years? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o620f/eli5_how_come_iphones_have_become_the_signature/ | {
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"Because they sell WAY more iPhones than they do Macs and they make **WAAAAAAY** more money off iPhones than they do anything else combined. ",
"While the original Macintosh computers were incredibly revolutionary at their time, it was a market that other companies, especially Microsoft and IBM, were competitive in. So Apple did well with the computers, but then in the early and mid-90's they made a lot of bad business decisions that left them a distant second, even after Steve Jobs came back to Apple.\n\nWith smartphones, though, before the iPhone they were largely a business device (think Blackberries) and not a thing that everyone used. But the iPhone made smartphones a thing for everyone, and quickly became the icon of consumer smartphones, and the flagship product of the company.",
"As everybody said, they sell way more iPhones. Here it is by revenue by 2014:\n_URL_0_\n\niPhone: 56%\niPad: 20%\nMac: 11%\nThe rest: 13%\n\nAnd that's with Mac sales being higher than they've ever been. The iPhone is huge business."
]
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"http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/apple-breaks-revenue-iphone-and-ipad-records-in-q1-of-2014/"
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6v65g9 | why does injected anesthesia burn once it's in the body? | I recently had a small surgery on my foot and it seems like a bit of a paradox that the medication for reducing pain causes so much upon injection | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v65g9/eli5_why_does_injected_anesthesia_burn_once_its/ | {
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"text": [
"So this is actually super interesting. \n\n**a demonstration first**\n\nGo and get 2 forks. Run one under cold water, and one under hot water (just hot, not scalding). Now spoon them together so the prongs overlap and touch both to the skin of your forearm. \n\nI'll wait...\n\nHaha. \"Burns\" doesn't it? Don't worry, you didn't do any real damage. It's a tactile illusion. \n\nYour skin doesn't have \"burn\" receptors. It can't tell when it's touched something so hot you're burning. Instead what it does is sense when you have the sensation of both hot and numbness which is also cold. This is the feeling of cells dying from heat. Your body then interprets this as a burn. But cold and hot sensation close together feels the same way. \n\nIn the anesthesia, your body reacts with a warming sensation caused by the uptake drug (I think) that Vaso dilates bringing more blood to the area. The nerves then start to go numb and cold and your body thinks of that as \"burning\" just like with the forks. \n\nCool right?\n\n"
]
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|
6607ua | why do camera lenses need so many elements? why can't they just bend the light with one piece of glass? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6607ua/eli5_why_do_camera_lenses_need_so_many_elements/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"All the lenses allow it to be adjusted to zoom in and out, as well as focus at a specific distance"
]
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||
1ghf7p | electrolytes | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ghf7p/eli5_electrolytes/ | {
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"text": [
"It's what plants/people crave.\n\nBut really electrolytes are molecules that when in solution break down in positively and negatively charged ions. These ions allow for electricity to flow in the solution because the ions flow from one electrode to the other.\n\nTable salt is a very common electrolyte. It's NaCl which breaks down into Na+ and Cl-."
]
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||
2vzw5a | how does powdered alcohol work? | If you snorted it what would happen? Would it smell like conventional alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vzw5a/eli5_how_does_powdered_alcohol_work/ | {
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"Cyclodextrin is a sugar-like substance that forms rings that can encapsulate molecules. These rings are hydrophobic on the inside and hydrophylic on the inside. What this means is they stay stable when dry, then break apart quickly when they get wet, releasing what's inside. This has been used for years for quick-release medicines but has just recently been applied to alcohol.\n\nIf you snorted it, the cyclodextrin rings would break apart once they hit the moist tissue in your nose, leaving the alcohol, a solvent, on these sensitive tissues. In other words, it would be EXTREMELY PAINFUL. Serves you right for sticking alcohol in your nose. ;)"
]
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|
718og5 | does cooling a sealed bottle/can of soda and then letting it come back to room temperature cause it to lose carbonation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/718og5/eli5_does_cooling_a_sealed_bottlecan_of_soda_and/ | {
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"text": [
"No.\n\nThe sealed bottle or can is much closer to an enclosed system than an open container - it can stay very well carbonated for months. It would be a reasonable simplification to say that the carbonation hasn't changed at all.\n\nHowever, there is another property that is important, Solubility. When you open up the can, the drink itself will lose carbonation due to relatively low levels of CO2 compared to the container it was stored in as time goes on. When the drink is colder, CO2 (and other gases) are more soluble. So, as the temperature increases, there is less dissolved CO2, which likely causes the impression that the drink was less carbonated to begin with."
]
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||
bl5m2d | what is it about certain faces that make you instantly think you will not like the person when some faces you instantly like without first talking to them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bl5m2d/eli5_what_is_it_about_certain_faces_that_make_you/ | {
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"text": [
"There are multiple reasons for this. One reason might be that someone who has similar facial features to the faces your talking about, you know to be not a good person. Think television, and movies, or the like. If someone in a movie is depicted in a certain way with certain facial features, people who you see who have those facial features, you will unconsiously associate with the movie's depiction.\n\nThis explaination is esspecially true for young children, because children are much more maliable than adults.\n\nThis is also why stereotypes exist: Racial, ethnic, religious, polital, societal, or otherwise. The way you've previously seen people act, is the way you expect people to act in the future."
]
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||
xn307 | why can i hear a thump when i look at this picture? | _URL_0_
This one is pretty famous, but I seriously still don't get it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xn307/eli5_why_can_i_hear_a_thump_when_i_look_at_this/ | {
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"It's a phantom thought signal. The image shakes when the tower hits the ground, adding realism to the image and causing your brain to fabricate a sound that fits the image without waiting to receive a real signal from your ears. It's an interesting trick that shows just how much of your sensory input is likely fabricated.",
"If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because your brain knows it's supposed to be there. From experience your brain knows that large things hitting the ground make a \"thump\" noise. So, when the tower hits the ground, your brain imagines the \"thump\" it knows should be there due to the object's mass.",
"Close your eyes and you won't hear it.",
"I don't hear anything. Is that unusual?",
"There is an perceptual effect called [the McGurk effect](_URL_0_). In short, it is how things you see affect things you hear. It does not specifically explain this image because the McGurk effect is mostly for speech sounds (i.e. hearing someone say \"bee\" but seeing a silent video of someone mouthing the syllable \"vee\" results in the perceiver hearing the syllable \"vee\"). \nThe effect your referring is also caused by your brain's tendency to make assumptions: Your brain knows that when something heavy falls, it makes aloud thump, so it goes ahead and starts the signal needed to perceive a thump before it actually perceives the thump. Essentially, it's your brain jumping to conclusions.",
"\"Hmm, maybe this guy has some sort of synethesia or is just cra- \"\n\n[click]\n\nTHUMP\n\n:|"
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3c1yqo | when a site has a 'hug of death' there are too many requests at once, does the server actually crash, or it is still serving but the queue is so big it becomes a bottle neck and only a fraction reach the site? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c1yqo/eli5_when_a_site_has_a_hug_of_death_there_are_too/ | {
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"Damnit, that's a great question; I've always wondered that. From my experience, kind of both, then crash. First, bottleneck, only a few users, etc. Then some users get booted for no reason. Then complete crash. That's just an observation. ",
"It could be either, really, and a lot of it has to do with what server software is in play and what you are running *on* that server software.\n\nI maintain such servers for a living, and I find that some actually crash while others just get bogged down. ",
"Unless there is a bug somewhere in the server software, it shouldn't crash. However, there is often plenty of bugs, so it happens. Especially with small websites who never really tried to see what would happen if they had too much traffic.\n\nUsually, what simply happen is that some requests get dropped. There is indeed some kind of queue and the server won't be able to respond to all the request in time, so some are ignored.",
"It really depends, because web sites can actually have layers—like pie!\n\nA simple web site can be made of stuff that doesn't really change. Like [my dumb little homepage](_URL_1_)—it's the pie equivalent of a tin pie plate full of whipped cream: just some html files and some images. No databases, no programs, no fancy forums or really anything to do but click some links. All things being equal, sites like that are pretty resistant to being hugged to death, because there's not much to them. The web server just has to send the page and the page's image and maybe a tiny bit of CSS (and maybe a font or two). Modern web servers are very, very good at serving simple pages like that made up of things that don't change—they can cache them and send them out to lots of clients at once. They can generally do that for as much bandwidth as you've got available.\n\nMore complicated sites have more layers. Like Reddit! If my dumb little homepage is a whipped cream pie, Reddit is a 12-layer key lime+cherry+apple+turducken pie. Putting aside how many actual physical servers reddit uses (it's a lot), Reddit is a collection of lots of different applications working together. A web server application serves up the static stuff—the unchanging boring HTML and CSS, some of the images—and a couple of different databases work together to summon up the kind of stuff that changes a lot—like the comments. Other applications handle things like thumbnail scraping, making sure votes get recorded, making sure everyone reading threads can see votes that get recorded, and tons of other tasks that make reddit look and act like reddit.\n\nOf course, reddit can't hug reddit to death, but reddit is actually a relatively simple site—though it's enormous. But reddit's popularity means that when a link gets voted enough, it can send hundreds, thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of visitors to an unsuspecting, unprepared site.\n\nIf the site is simple like my dumb homepage, what happens is that the web server spits out pages as fast as it can, which is often fast enough to keep up with the demand—until things either stabilize or the site \"runs out\" of bandwidth. That's when so many people are clicking on it that the network connection going to that server is full. When that happens, you'll generally see errors generated by your own web browser, because it can't reach the site.\n\nMore complicated sites—like an image gallery that uses some php to generate the moving bits, or a neat visual web application that some person wrote where you can click on the screen and draw pictures, or whatever—fail in different ways as they get busier. Usually, the underlying web server is fine, but the appliction part gets overwhelmed and runs out of memory, or the server's disks can't keep up. Sometimes, if the application uses a database like MySQL, the database isn't configured to handle the load (maybe the admin never expected the site to get so popular!) and it spits out weird \"too many connections\" errors rather than serving up its queries to the application.\n\nGenerally, in that case, you'll see \"gateway errors\" or \"internal errors,\" which is the web server telling you that something's wrong with the application side and it's very sorry but it can't do what you're asking it to do within the period of time it's supposed to wait (the timeout period). Since the timeout period has elapsed, it's giving up and apologizing.\n\nThese kinds of problems occur when there might be plenty of bandwidth available still to the server—but some component of the web app is overloaded.\n\nSometimes—particularly when you're dealing with a web site that's not a typical application like a forum but instead something weird and cool (like, say, a neat graduate school CS project that does fancy visualizations)—stuff does indeed actually crash, rather than just time out and give up. The kinds of errors you see when that happens can be all over the map, from regular 404 \"not found\" errors all the way up to awesome cool debug pages you're not supposed to see unless things go really, really wrong.\n\nGenerally, when reddit hugs a site to death, you're seeing something related to a dynamic part of that site—a database or an application—breaking under load, and the errors you get back are generally from the static web server beneath the application telling you that the dynamic part of the site is broke (though generally not in a way that makes any sense to anyone who's not a sysadmin).\n\nSometimes, it takes manual intervention to fix the problem, which is why sometimes reddit hugs a site TO DEATH and it's gone for minutes or hours—the person who made the page has to restart an application or reboot the server. Other times, particularly if the problem is just bandwidth-related, it'll fix itself as things stabilize.\n\n**tl;dr** - web sites have layers (like pie!) and usually the more complex the site, the more layers. When reddit hugs a site to death, it's because one of the layers (maybe a database, maybe an application, maybe even something on the server itself) ran out of resources and stopped responding in a reasonable amount of time. Sometimes something crashes, but not all the time. Internet—it's complicated!\n\nedited to add - grammar brain fail. too much pie.\n\nEdited^2 - in case anyone is wondering what effect this is having on my dumb little web site, here's some stats as of about 11:40am CDT on July 4. [Overview](_URL_3_), [per page](_URL_12_), [traffic flow](_URL_9_), [referrers](_URL_7_). (This is from my [Piwik](_URL_2_) installation, which is a free self-hosted alternative to Google Analytics.)\n\nIf you want to see something neat, rather than just my dumb homepage, [check out my noir-styled Elite Dangerous fan-comic \"Fangs,\"](_URL_11_) hosted on the same server.\n\nEdited^3 - I'm being asked what the web server is behind my dumb web site. [Here's an explanation](_URL_1_/about.html). It's a home-built i7 quad-core with an SSD and 16GB of RAM, running Ubuntu 14.04 server. The web stack is [HAProxy for SSL termination](_URL_4_) - > Varnish for caching - > Nginx.\n\nEdited^4 - Here's some updated stats from about 13:45 CDT. So far, this post has thrown about 8400 unique visitors to my dumb homepage. [Page view stats](_URL_5_). [Total stats](_URL_10_). [Visitor breakdown by hardware](_URL_0_). [Visitor breakdown by OS & browser](_URL_8_).",
"The server shouldn't really crash (in theory).\n\nThe networking hardware on their side might not have enough memory to store all the incoming requests for as long as it needs to before the server can respond to them. In ELI5 terms, imagine that the networking hardware is like a big ring full of marbles. The server takes marbles (requests) out of one end of the ring as fast as it can, while on the other side of the ring, more marbles are being added (more requests). Eventually, if the ring is being filled up with marbles faster than they're being taken away, the ring will have no more space for new marbles, and those new marbles must be 'dropped'. Going back out of the analogy again, this means that your request for \"cats.html\" was never serviced, because there was never enough room left in the networking hardware's memory to put the request.\n\nBasically it's all variations on that theme.",
"There's a few causes of this:\n\n1) too much traffic saturating the connection. This would be like when you are trying to game but someone else is torrenting porn and it clogs up your internet connection. Servers generally have gigabit or 10 gig connections these days, so unless it's on ancient server hardware, this is likely not the case anymore.\n\n2) Apache workers can't keep up. Apache is the webserver, which spawns only a set number of workers. Proper tuning matches these to the server hardware, but basically only a set number of processes can handle a request at once. Say there are 20 workers, only 20 requests can be rendered at once. Once the 21st request comes in, it waits for one to process before starting it. This becomes a big problem when the webservers are not optimized, but a hug of death will definitely flood this. Other servers, such as Nginx, handle a thousand workers easily, but this only offloads the problem to the backend (which is where you get 500 \"bad gateway\" errors.\n\n3) Backend can't keep up. There are a variety of causes for this, such as a database being overwhelmed and crashing. There's too many to go into depth here but they are similar in nature to #2\n\n4) Server becomes overwhelmed with CPU or disk usage, which is another form of not being optimized. The webserver is allowed more max resources than the server can handle. Either the CPU becomes overwhelmed with requests (if you have 4 cores, and 20 requests, it can only work on 4 at once), the disk can't keep up (this isn't terribly likely when only databases are involved since disk caching helps a lot), or memory runs low. Memory is the worst because the server will start using swap. Once memory usage gets near 100%, the server begins swapping pages of memory onto the hard drive. To give an idea of how inefficient this is, SSD vs memory (cached = memory, buffered = raw disk):\n\nTiming cached reads: 28126 MB in 2.00 seconds = 14077.44 MB/sec \nTiming buffered disk reads: 1230 MB in 3.01 seconds = 409.22 MB/sec\n\nIn the case of memory usage, this also hangs the CPU as it is spending more time swapping memory than serving the actual request. Servers rarely outright crash, but they effectively come to a halt as there is too much to process. Servers tend to crash due to bad memory, hard drive issues, bad kernel driver, and such.\n\nThe common hug of death I've seen, in Linux land load average refers to a 1/5/15 minute average of server load, where server load is the queue of processes waiting for CPU time. Say you have a quad core, but you have 6 processes all wanting to use CPU time, the queue would be 2, and if it remained this busy for one minute, the 1 minute load average would be 2. I've seen servers hit with a DDoS that get around 900 load average and higher. That's effectively what the hug of death does.\n\nThere's other factors like their hosting provider cutting them off (if it's shared hosting and disrupting services), or using a CDN account that flags the traffic as a DDoS, those aren't crashes either but are service provider intervention.",
"ELI5:\n\nSometimes the server is coded bad. Too many requests = out of memory.\n\nSometimes the server can't scale. Too many requests = runs out of resources to service everything and things time out.\n\nSometimes the server can dynamically bring up more servers. Too many requests = more servers come up.\n\nSometimes a server in a large server cluster crashes. All load is given to other servers, they get overloaded and crash one at a time. All that redundancy and still everything goes kablooie.",
"There are some really great responses here, but some of them are a bit lengthy and go a little more in depth then I would probably tell my 5 year old.\n\nThink of it like this, you have a question for me, but the only way we can respond to each other is by writing on sticky notes and handing them back and forth to one another. So you write your question to me, physically hand it to me, and I write my answer and physically hand it back to you.\n\nGreat! Now bob down the hall has a question so he comes in and hands me a sticky note, but you want to ask another question so you also hand me one. Now I am REALLY fast at writing, so I write down both answers and hand them back to the two of you, no problem. \n\nNow suddenly word gets out that I am a great source of information on a particular subject, so 100,000 people come and all hand me sticky notes all at once with questions on them. Again, I am a really fast writer, so I can dish out some answers relatively quickly.. but not that quickly.. so your answer will take longer for me to get to... infact, with that many sticky notes flooding in, I might drop some because there's simply too much going on at once."
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28s7gt | the dalai lama. | who is he?
how was he chosen? who was the first Dalai Lama and how did that start? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28s7gt/eli5the_dalai_lama/ | {
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"The core idea of Buddhism is that certain beliefs and attitudes -- for example, the belief that you are separate from everyone/everything else, or desire for physical pleasures -- basically trap a person (not the physical body, but the spiritual essence) in the world and in the suffering that comes with the world. People who are trapped this way live, then die, then are born again into new bodies over and over.\n\nAccording to Buddhism, the only way to break this cycle is to remove all of the beliefs/attitudes/etc. which attach you to the world. That point is called Nirvana, and achieving Nirvana frees a person from the world and the cycle of rebirth, so that they are perfectly at peace, and when their current body dies they simply are gone, like a fire that has been put out (the word Nirvana literally refers to blowing out a candle).\n\nA person who becomes enlightened about all of this without help is a Buddha; when people say \"the Buddha\" they are referring specifically to one person, Siddhartha Gautama, but Buddhists believe there have been other Buddhas.\n\nOne Buddha in particular, named Avalokiteśvara, is said to have refused to move on until he had helped every other being achieve Nirvana. So even though he has become enlightened and could stop being reborn, Buddhists believe he continues to reincarnate over and over to continue helping others.\n\nAccording to Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara. When the current Dalai Lama dies, monks carry out some rituals they believe will point them in the right direction to find him reborn again. When they think they've found him again they carry out some tests (like showing a mix of objects, some of which belonged to the Dalai Lama, to see if the potentially-reborn Dalai Lama recognizes them).\n\nThe person in charge of the search is the Panchen Lama, who is also believed to be a manifestation of a Buddha (Amitabha), reincarnating over and over (and one of the Dalai Lama's jobs, when necessary, is to find the reborn Panchen Lama after the current one dies).\n\nAll of which basically means that the Dalai Lama is treated as the leader of Tibetan Buddhists, and they attach a lot of importance to him and believe he is willingly staying in the world, and suffering the pain of living in the world and being reborn over and over, to help others."
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6jmj3v | can you get bipolar disorder from drug use or does drug use show bipolar disorder easier? | When you hear about drug users (atleast from my perspective) many of them have bipolar disorder. But again before their drug use they have not been treated or verified they even have this. So can this disorder be heightened by drug use or highlighted as a reasoning for drugs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jmj3v/eli5_can_you_get_bipolar_disorder_from_drug_use/ | {
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"Considering you can't \"get\" bipolar disorder, we'll lean toward the fact that people afflicted such as myself prefer to use drugs as a way of stabilizing moods. \n\nMany people don't even know something is even out of the ordinary, so it's not a diagnosis most seek out. "
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3wr5w5 | why is the hijab viewed negatively and not as simply another accessory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wr5w5/eli5_why_is_the_hijab_viewed_negatively_and_not/ | {
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"I belong to the camp that thinks that if a woman chooses to wear it because of her volition, no one has a right to tell her she can't.\n\nHowever, the reason why hijab is viewed negatively is partly because it kind of shifts the blame onto a woman for stirring a man's passion, by displaying parts of her body. It doesn't place the onus of control on the man. Sort of like the whole \"Well, the way she was dressed, she was clearly asking for it\" reasoning. So basically, what you're saying is that a woman's body is a source of trouble and shame, and she needs to hide it to ensure that she is treated right by men.",
"I assuming it has a negative reputation and connotation these days, both because of the women who are forced to wear it, and the fact that there are dipshits out there who think that wearing a hijab automatically makes you a terrorist. "
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7jtmyv | why are we only searching for planets that share the earth's definition of sentience? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jtmyv/eli5_why_are_we_only_searching_for_planets_that/ | {
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"Nothing leads us to believe that life can't be 'started' in other ways. But we only know of one so far so we're starting there.\n\nThink of it more as highlighting some potential planets rather than dismissing all the others"
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1561ke | how is it possible to convert light to sound? | In light (no pun) of a recent [thread](_URL_0_) in /r/science, I'm curious and a little confused by how light can be converted to a vibration. Please, help me out with this concept. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1561ke/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_convert_light_to_sound/ | {
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"I had to read through the thread to find the TL;DR, but /u/Qesa eventually gave it to me:\n\n > TLDR: Laser heats up carbon nanotube which rapidly cools due to its high surface area:volume ratio. This results in the CNT rapidly expanding and contracting, hence sound.\n\nSo, it isn't that light is *turning into* a vibration, rather, that it is casuing a vibration.",
"Completely unrelated, but there's an interesting apparatus easily built that involves lasers.\n\n1. Point laser at a window from another building\n2. Window vibrates minutely when people speak in the room that the window is in.\n3. minute, detectable vibrations in the laser beam position can be received and recoded as audio waveforms."
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2pk1bp | how is putin so popular in russia when his actions are clearly damaging for the russian economy? | Opinion polls show that most Russians live in some parallel world where the west carries out an information war against Russia, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, which is led by a nazi government that is killing it's own people for no reason. In their world, the MH17 was shot down by the Ukrainian air force. Putin is only trying to protect human rights in Ukraine (diplomatically) and he is being sanctioned by greedy evil western leaders and bankers for that.
They also consider their state run media to be highly objective and neutral and no matter how far fetched or fundamentally flawed the stories are, they will always believe the Kremlin line.
Considering Russia is not North Korea, more than half of the citizens have mostly unrestricted access to the internet, how is this possible?
EDIT:
For people saying I am brainwashed by the media: I don't inform myself using only one source. I get my information from multiple sources (including RT) and base my views after processing that information with my own brain. I never said the west was perfect, I think it's actually the worse place on Earth to live in, however, except for all the other options. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pk1bp/eli5how_is_putin_so_popular_in_russia_when_his/ | {
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"Mostly because of Kremlin propaganda. It is like they are basically saying that they are just fighting for Ukraine Russians rights and all bad things are because of other countries and not because them.",
"Ask yourself, how did Hitler get so popular? I am not equating the two; however, one must keep in mind the power of a charismatic leader, and the power of a powerful and dedicated media. ",
"What on earth makes you think their perspective is wrong ? Consider, there's more to life than an economy but if you listen to western media that's all they talk about (well that and terrists, but you get the picture). Also factor in that the Internet is not exactly a hotbed of reason and fact. Finally, consider how many people believe Fox News no matter how fundamentally flawed and far fetched their stories are. \nRussians are not so different from the rest of us. We all believe what suits us as long as it is presented in a way that permits self delusion. ",
"if i would be russian i would like Putin too\n\nhe gives the russians the feeling like russia means sth in the world\nand dont think our news are less polarized/manipulated then theirs",
"The exact same way that every single other nation on this planet does it?\n\nYou can say this about every country - \"Why do Americans have national pride and pride in their government when they are trillions in debt, have a ludicrously bad education and healthcare, etc etc militarized police killing black people etc etc SOPA rabble rabble.\" \n\nIn spite of all the bullshit many people still perceive Obama as this heroic figure trying to stand against this tidal wave of crap. As if he's not part of the machine, but a lone entity resisting it. \n\nThat is how people around the world tend to perceive their leaders. Often they are not unaware or fully illusioned about the bullshit going on - they just don't see the charismatic leader as part of that bullshit. Russians tend to view Putin as a leader who cut through the layers of ineffective bullshit that the dying, bloated USSR left behind.\n\nIt was very similar with Sadam Hussein. For many years he was seen as a very progressive leader who was all about electricity, literacy, healthcare, science, public universities, and so on - essentially the man with a plan to drag Iraq out of the Stone Age. (And in all honesty, he had a significant time where he most likely did a lot of good for the people). \n\nThe answer to your question that avoids circlejerking about how brainwashed people are and how Putin is like Hitler... is that Putin did good things at a critical point in time and made a good first impression. That tends to earn a ruler a large leeway for militaristic, zany bullshit. Putin's rise coincided with Russian growth and better quality of life all around Russia, meaning that many young adults today went through their impressionable years at a time where Putin genuinely felt like a badass savior. This means he has to do a whole lot more bad shit, like a ton more, before public opinion starts to shift. \n\n",
"The fall of the Soviet Union was a shock to many people in Russia, and many people there dream of a return to the days where their country was a superpower that didn't need to fear anyone. And they respect strong leaders who bully other countries more than they give a damn about \"human rights\". In another words they would rather be hungry than to be seen being pushed around by Western powers.",
"I would like to ask you the same:\n\nWhy do you think EU/Obama is so popular when their actions are clearly damaging for the EU/USA economy?\n\nThe point you miss: you think they are right. Same people in Russia think Putin is right. But the problem is both sides are wrong.",
"Actual internet penetration level is much lower than \"more than half\". The official stats is 60% of Russians use internet, but that's misleading. It only means that there are ~80 mln internet users/accounts/access points. So, for example, I account for maybe five or six out of the 60 mln (smartphone, tablet, internet at home, a couple of 3G/4G USB-sticks). \n\nHaving said that, the majority of internet users in Russia don't use it as a source of information about what's going on. They use it for lolcats, youtube, social networks, online gaming, etc.\n\nThe amount of people who actually use the internet as a source of news and are able to compare different points of view and make up their own mind about stuff is very low. I'd say maybe 10%, 20% at best.\n\nAnd everyone else gets their news from the state-controlled mass media. Mind you, in Russia we only have a tiny handful of independent/opposing media (a few newspapers and radio stations, no country-wide TV channels).\n\nIn the US you have MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, so you can theoretically watch everything and compile a more or less objective picture of what's what. In Russia, we have at least three Fox News-like channels that are broadcast throughout the country and together provide hourly news bulletins that support Putin's actions.",
"Remember the fall of the Soviet Union and the subsequent government was a horrible catastrophe for the average Russian. Crime became rampant, life expectancy dropped, millions of jobs and perks, took for granted under socialism were suddenly gone, corruption was unpunished... It's important you get the picture.\n\nThen came Putin who fixed a good part of that huge mess. He tamed the oligarchs and the economy grew again. He also brought Russia back into the forefront of world politic, which gave Russians a sense of pride no one could ever dream of since an eternity.\n\nWhatever we think of him and his methods, it's undeniable that the years preceding his grab of power were disastrous. Like, much much worse than what could happen to Russia currently. It's not a stretch to say millions of people saw him as a kind of saviour and the momentum of popularity he won is comfortably far from waning.",
"In the last 10-14 years russians were lived better than ever in history. And they still remember all shit from 90s.",
"Just because they have access to Internet, they probably don't know a foreign language so fluently that they could read foreign news. How many languages does the average American know?\n \nSecond, people all over have the tendency to only hear what they want to hear. And who wants to hear that they themselves are at fault for the country's problems? Very few, so when some semi-credible news source says that it's all the fault of \"the others\", that gives them comfort. Why do so many Americans follow Fox news?",
"Sounds a lot like why some Americans believe Fox News.",
"Each countries government brainwashes it's citizens into believing they are living an ideal life and everything they are doing is for the best intentions. Yes even the country you live in.",
"Maybe instead of asking why Russians believe the things they do, you should ask why you believe the things you do. \n\nHint, the answer's the same. Russia's media is no more or less biased and driven by political agenda than ours. Their leaders are no more or less driven by power and profit than ours. I guarantee you there are Russians posting on Russian internet sites this exact same question about you.",
"Russian masses are perfectly logical in supporting Putin in a \"what's the alternative?\" sense.\n\n1. He is physically attractive, disciplined, and has an alpha-male personality, which contrasts favorably with all of his predecessors. That's worth a lot in appearance and personality-driven cultures, including Russia.\n2. If Russia is to ever solve its myriad internal problems, including corruption, Russians believe it will take a forceful leader like him to accomplish that. Putting oilgarchs in jail and seizing their property worked for him for a while, although most realize that Putin is personally corrupt as well.\n\n3. Russians have learned over centuries how to express their actual disrespect for government officials privately, in the form of sarcastic jokes and stories, while professing allegiance in public. Suffice to say that the have been redditing in private long before Reddit.\n",
"Same way President Reagan was popular when he was president and wrecking the economy.",
"Because most of the bullshit you are told by the media is just anti-putin propaganda."
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7or8xv | nano tubes/nanotechnology in products today | When I hear that companies have/are using nanotechnology in their products, whether that is anything from clothing to super cars, I always think of miniscule robots like movies lead me to believe.
So are we living in the future where we actually have quote-unquote robots that can move around and repair damage and replicate and that? Or is this just some kind of new glue or something that marketers are just spouting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7or8xv/eli5_nano_tubesnanotechnology_in_products_today/ | {
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"Nano- refers to whole things which are smaller than fractions of a millimeter, or making materials with properties on the scale of nanometers. For example, a robot that's only 0.1mm (100 microns) wide. (A sheet of paper is about that thick.)\n\nManufacturing of individual parts smaller than mm size is possible, although kind of expensive. Clockwork Watch parts and the components inside modern computer memory and processors for example. However, making a whole robot at this scale is very difficult to do. There fact that it can't be done with mass manufacturing (yet) is why it seems obscure.\n\nNano-construction can also refer to materials with special properties at the nano- level. (Millionths of a millimeter, ~0.001 microns). Carbon nanotubes and fullerenes (molecular carbon hexagon sheets) are examples of this. Again, the main reason that makes these technologies obscure is they're really difficult and expensive to make, so they're not part of our lives much. \n\nBut these are problems chemical and manufacturing engineers are working hard on, and big companies are investing money into because there's lots of great, useful, and profitable, technologies to be found if we can get it working."
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6applg | expansion of universe: is there an origin point? | Many videos and simulations I've seen show it as a balloon being blown up i.e. spherical expansion. If it works like a sphere, is there an absolute center point everything accelerates away from?
Do we know? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6applg/eli5expansion_of_universe_is_there_an_origin_point/ | {
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"Everything is expanding from everything I think, not a single point they're all moving away from. As far as a location for the big bang, it was sort of everywhere at once. Space itself expanded and still is. That's my understanding at least",
"NVM, figured it out. So galaxies and matter-y things are like toys scattered in different depths and position in a kids' ball pit, where balls are growing in size, pushing toys apart in all directions. And the balls here are spacetime. So it's just space between stuff expanding, not the toys/matter.\n\nSo 3-dimensional center point in the pit, if it exists, has still little to do with expansion... or does it? For furthest of toys, it's most detectable, since they move away from this point relatively the quickest?\n\nPerhaps I didn't figure it out at all.",
"The space we live in is the skin of the balloon. The center of the balloon you think of kinda does not exist, at least, not in the physical world we know of.\n\nObviously, skin of the balloon is 2d(as proven by the fact you can draw on it), and our world is 3d. To make that balloon example work, you're gonna have to ignore one of the dimensions in our world for a bit. As balloon inflates, every single point on the skin gets further away from each other, and, on the skin of the balloon, there is no center. Similarly, in our 3d universe, every point is getting further away from each other, and you could kinda think it like expanding 4d balloon with 3d surface... but imagining that is hard, so we just strip one dimension away to get regular balloon which is easy to imagine.\n\nAnd there is no center. All points are equally getting further away from each other. While you could imagine 4d balloon we're on the surface of, this 4th dimension doesn't actually correspond to anything physical afaik, so this center point in 4th direction you could think of, it doesn't exist."
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3nkya8 | how can tesco sell at cheaper price than other places? how do they gain profits? | Or any shopping market that sells cheaper than the others. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nkya8/eli5_how_can_tesco_sell_at_cheaper_price_than/ | {
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"Well seeing as how mark up on most products is about %100-%300 percent. Discount retailers will typically buy excess stock at a discount and then sell it for only a %70-%85 mark up thus still making a killing.\n\nTrust me if you ever see the at cost price of stuff you're buying you'll feel ripped off"
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aaiw49 | why, when you’re trying to think of the name of something and it’s eluding you, if you put it out of your mind, the answer will pop into your head? what’s the science behind it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aaiw49/eli5_why_when_youre_trying_to_think_of_the_name/ | {
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"Not sure but when this happens to me I go through the letters of the alphabet to jog a response 🤓",
"Thomas Edison would often take a nap when he was stumped so that his subconscious could work on it...\n\nYour subconscious mind will keep working on a problem long after you leave it... It is known as incubating the problem. \n\nMany idea people report that their best ideas come when they are not thinking about their problem.\n\nSo the answer is your subconscious sometimes does a better job at accessing your memory than your conscious does.. We tend to put up our own mental blocks in our conscious mind that our subconscious doesn't have to deal with..."
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deshlc | why they tear up random rectangular strips of the highway just to fill them back in again with lesser materials. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/deshlc/eli5_why_they_tear_up_random_rectangular_strips/ | {
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"They needed to get to something under the road. I guarantee you they aren't just digging up the road for the fun of it, they need to go through it for a reason. Replacing the material is necessary but using somewhat less durable material is much easier.",
"Two reasons: as others have said, it's to get to underground utilities, whether thats to tie in, repair or replace them. The other reason you may see this is if an area of asphalt has failed. In that instance, they'll mill it, repair/replace the base and replace that section.",
"Probably isn't actually weaker asphalt, but a weaker base. When they backfill for a utilities trench there are numerous reasons why they might not get the gravel as packed as the original road was, all to do with trying to get heavy compaction equipment into a narrow trench. They'll cover it with top tier asphalt, but it'll sink more than the rest of the road.",
"In countries where corruption is rife, road repairs are easy money for politicos who team up w sleazy contractors"
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9wk32o | how can you get pregnant while menstruating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wk32o/eli5_how_can_you_get_pregnant_while_menstruating/ | {
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"Sperm are not a fluid, they are little swimming single-cell creatures. Since they can swim, they can navigate into a little crease in the uterine lining and wait for more favorable conditions.",
"Ovulation (egg release) comes around 14 days after the start of menstruation in a 28 day cycle. (Menstruation occurs about 14 days after ovulation regardless of cycle length). The length of menstruation varies between women and cycles. The length of onset of menstruation to ovulation varies as well, which is one of the reasons periods are not always “clockwork”. Imagine a period lasting 8 days (not too crazy), during a cycle that would be 21 days (again, not crazy), and ovulation is actually occurring during menstruation on day 7. Sperm+egg+lining that grows and flourishes over the next 14 days during which implantation occurs = pregnant, not another period!\n",
"Sperm can live up to 5 days inside a woman. Women usually ovulate around day 14 of your cycle but we aren't robots and every body and cycle is unique. Your cycle starts on the first day of your period, allowing 5-7 days for your period, not everyone's is predictable so you could ovulate sooner than 14 days hence being able to get pregnant. I'm not sure you can technically get \"pregnant\" as in fertilization and implantation while you are on your period because in a normal cycle you don't ovulate while menstruating. So pregnancy is happening in the days following your period while sperm still is alive inside you and you ovulate earlier than the average 14 days. It's just not worth the risk unless you have charted your cycle, start date, ovulation etc and it's pretty consistent every month. Women with regular cycles can avoid pregnancy quite effectively with natural family planning but there is always a chance. One thing I think sex education needs to work on is helping young women actually understand their cycle and how ovulation determines the times you can actually get pregnant, right now it's more like you have sex, you are going to get pregnant when in fact it's only a couple days out of the cycle where pregnancy is possible. \n\n\nThat's one thing that kind of sucks about continuous birth control, it's main method is to prevent ovulation but I am taking a new FDA approved med that is allowing my endometriosis and menstrual cramps to come through so obviously it's messing with the concentration of the birth control in my system. I have no freaking idea if I'm ovulating or not, hence the reason if you aren't sure you are fully protected just use a back up method, it's not worth the chance."
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2ycnoa | why can i read comments on reddit for hours and not get tired, but the second i start reading a book on the kindle i can't make it through a chapter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ycnoa/eli5_why_can_i_read_comments_on_reddit_for_hours/ | {
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"Because our brains are wired to only pay attention to things for a short period of t...squirrel!",
"You are straining your brain when you attempt to understand the plot, character development and remember the past events. A reddit comment doesn't typically have the depth of a good story.",
"Reddit has interaction, a book does not.",
"Because cat pictures. ",
"Reddit offers a kind of simplified version of a book (Not exactly).\n\nThe title of the book becomes the heading of the topic in Reddit.\n\nFew things follow that. (Index).\n\nPro Comments/Anti comments. (Which are mostly direct to the point).\n \nAs you progress past the heading and index(you may have your own ideas about the topic).You get better understanding without thinking too much. \n\nIn contrast to a book on Kindle you have to start from the beginning and join the pieces of the puzzle straining your brain. ",
"You've completely atrophied your capacity for attention. Neural pathways in your brain need to be trained just like muscles. Since you don't use your brain for engaged, thoughtful activity such as long periods of reading, you've now trained it to be satisfied only through tiny snippets of content. ",
"Make sure you have adequate light and can see the print clearly. On a kindle you can increase print size if needed. I have noticed as my eyesight has faded with age that I sometimes seem to find it difficult to take an interest in books I expect to enjoy, only to realize rather belatedly that the real problem is I am struggling to see the words.",
"In addition to the short attention span problem, the light from your computer monitor could play a part in it. ",
"It's because of the lighting. Your computer screen is a bright white light, similar to what you'd see from the sun during the day. You brain tells you that its daytime and keeps you awake. When you switch to your kindle, the screen mimics a sheet of paper, producing very little light at all. Your body recognizes it's not daytime anymore and starts producing melatonin which will help put you to sleep. \n\nThis can be seen with the program 'flux' that you can put on your computer. When the program is running it dims the screen to a more natural sunset-like color that will let your body believe it's night time and you will get tired as you spend more time on the computer."
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cvrgrg | why are rivers considered gateways or otherwise associated to entering the underworld in several cultures and religions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvrgrg/eli5_why_are_rivers_considered_gateways_or/ | {
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"Long ago, boats were often the only feasible way to make long journeys, since roads were terrible and motors nonexistent. So when people thought about going to a different land, it was over water.",
"Concise pirate explained part of the probable reason quite concisely - The underworld/afterlife is a very long way away. Boats are the best way to go long distances. \n\nBut why rivers then, and not oceans? I think this is probably because rivers are absolutely vital for human life, especially in the early days when mythologies were still being created. Settlements were built on floodplains, the most fertile and accessible places. Rivers supplied relatively safe drinking water and could be used to soak the crop fields. Oceans would not be favourable, since the salinity prevents it being used easily for crops and prevents it being drunk. Oceans often tend to be associated with dangerous and angry things, while rivers with calm and life-giving things. Hence why ocean gods are invariably absolute bastards, while river gods tend to be quite nice. \n\nAlso important I think is that rivers are pretty one-way. You can go downstream easily, but to go upstream requires a lot of work, especially in strong currents. Rivers therefore would naturally become associated with long journeys that you can't come back from. Rivers are also crossable sideways, not just lengthways - Charon boats you across the Acheron, not down it. Rivers represent a boundary between two places, one where you can see the other side but can only access it via a boat. Oceans are vast and empty, though, and in the time that the seeds of mythologies were being sown, its probable that people weren't really aware of lands beyond the ocean. They might have hypothesised it, but most people would never travel far enough to see one, and even those who travelled far on land might not associate the place they end up with being the other side of a sea from where they started, unless they have excellent map skills and a compass.",
"Travel - they were fundamental to travel in ancient times.\n\nLife - the presence of a river, and particularly alluvial plains, was critical to the start of civilisations. From the Nile, the Yangtze, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, the presence of a river was literally life vs death.\n\nBoundaries - rivers defined borders, travel beyond one was difficult, they separated tribes, provided protection.\n\nPassage of time - the winding of a river and flow of water are easy to analagise to the flow of time.\n\nReflection - much like mirrors, the reflection has a significant place in mythology and folklore, combining both a boundary and a form of self-perspective.",
"They were common borders between countries, places, regions, and they were commonly used for travel/transport. Both tie into gateways, as places ones travels and crosses."
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276n8b | what's this new 'global supervirus' i'm hearing about? (more info in comments) | They say to update your antivirus and don't open email attachments when you don't know who it's from to protect yourself from it. Isn't that just like any other virus?
Also, is it just to get the creator(s) money or is it like a hacktivist or something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/276n8b/eli5_whats_this_new_global_supervirus_im_hearing/ | {
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" > what's this new 'global supervirus'\n\nBullshit, basically.\nBut stuff like this is good every once in a while to remind the common folk to *use their brain* when operating a computer IMO. Basic stuff like you said (antivirus, don't open weird emails). But working in tech support you start to lose hope in humanity."
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3gouzb | if i built a tube from space straight to the surface of the earth and then removed all the trapped air inside of it, what would happen to someone who stepped into the tube? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gouzb/eli5_if_i_built_a_tube_from_space_straight_to_the/ | {
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"It probably wouldn't make a perceptible difference. Just think of the difference in effort to walk 5 feet horizontally basically only fighting atmospheric resistance and jumping 5 feet where now your taking gravity into account and you can start to visualize how much of the force required to reach outer space is to overcome gravity and how much is there to overcome atmospheric resistance ",
"A person, no, but a spacecraft, yes. Without air resistance the rid up would be way easier. The big problem is that such a structure could never exist and going straight up is so fuel inefficient that any fuel saved would be lost from having to make such a massive course correction to achieve orbit.",
"Absolutely. Take your cylindrical tube and inscribe a helix within it. It is now almost trivial for any craft to reach space. May as well let the air in too. "
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41712f | why don't we have hover craft yet? | Like in Halo they have alien vehicles that produce antigravity?
Why hasn't someone created something with an electromagnet that interacts with earths own magnetic field to hover etc.?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41712f/eli5_why_dont_we_have_hover_craft_yet/ | {
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"As of now, even with our limited technology, it's just not practical financially and commercially. ",
"The Earth's magnetic field is extremely weak on a local scale. Not enough to lift anything against the force of gravity. ",
"If you haven't noticed, Earth's magnetic field is very big but can barely move a magnetized needle, never mind lift a hovercraft. Beside this, what other ways do you propose.",
"It's not that easy.\n\nIf you want to make a hoverboard per say, and make it magnetically. You would need a surface that could interact magnetically with the board. Making the board impractical because it's only useful on one terrain.\n\nThere's also the fact that it isn't needed. Hover boards are cool, but it would take time and money to make one as opposed to just using a conventional skateboard or vehicle to get around.\n\nPlus the Covenant in Halo had been around for thousands of years before the game had started. Making their technology way more revolutionary.",
"At the surface of the Earth, the Earth's magnetic field has a strength of 58 microteslas. For comparison your average fridge magnet has roughly 100 times that strength at around 5 militeslas. \nThis means that there is simply not enough magnetic force available to push off. \nIt doesn't matter how much strength the magnet you are holding has if there is nothing there to push off of.",
"It's extremely difficult for air traffic controllers to regulate the amount of airplanes and helicopters already in the air without them crashing into each other. With hover crafts, while closer to the ground it would be very difficult for everyone to be driving around in something like that and try to regulate it themselves without crashing into each other left and right"
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8nxib1 | why do reporters at press releases always shout questions as the interviewee is walking away? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8nxib1/eli5_why_do_reporters_at_press_releases_always/ | {
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"Well it doesn't cost anything to shout it out. And on the tiny off chance they pique the interest of the person they're questioning they might get a response. So it's only upside to ask a question.",
"They *almost never* get a response from these types of questions. However this is often when you start hearing some of the most emotionally loaded questions. Sometimes if the person is in a particular mood or the question strikes the right nerve a response happens.\n\nUnlikely, but there's really nothing to lose from the reporter's standpoint so why not try?",
"\"Outrage as leader of the Labour Party REFUSES TO ANSWER allegations that he has kept Madeleine Mccann chained up in his basement for the past decade and intends to feed her to Cthulhu\" - every Daily Mail headline for the past 3 years"
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37xckc | why does facial skin require different care products than the rest of the body? | I was washing my face today and ran out of face wash, and it got me thinking, why does the face require such different care products than the rest of my skin.
Why do we have special face moisturizers and face washes?
Is it a scam to get us to buy more cosmetic products? Or are there legit differences in the skin?
I for one had horrible acne on my face as a teenager, but none on my body, so I'm assuming there's some sort of difference and your body seems to 'know' in some sense what skin is face skin vs. body skin.
But I have no real clue what the science is.
Anyone know?
Thanks for helping me understand! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37xckc/eli5why_does_facial_skin_require_different_care/ | {
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"Your facial skin is more sensitive. However with many moisturizers/acne products they are essentially the same, the companies just make more money if they are marketed separately. I wouldn't call it a scam, but definitely dubious marketing.",
"Because when your back breaks out from soaps drying your skin out you can put a tshirt on. When your face breaks out wearing a paper bag over it gives you a lot of unwanted attention. ",
"Not everyone has a skin condition that would necessitate the use of a special face-only soap. But for those who do, they need to use a mild moisturizing cleanser that doesn't dry out the skin, as opposed to plain bar soap which does.\n\nThe skin on your face is several times thinner than the skin on, say, the sole of your foot. Your face also has a lot of sebacious glands, making it prone to blemishes. It's better to use thin, water-based lotion on your face. If you were to use an oil-based lotion on your face, it could clog your pores and would feel greasy and heavy. But lots of people DO benefit from applying thick oil-based lotion on their feet. Water-based lotion wouldn't penetrate all the layers, and would evaporate too quickly to be effective.",
"Facial skin is not only exposed more often to sunlight and as such more susceptible to the aging effects of UV radiation, but it is also typically much more sensitive to hormonal changes in the body, which you start seeing when you hit puberty in your teenage years. The extent to which it is sensitive to androgens depends mostly on genetics, and most of our skin problems resulting from androgen sensitivity relate to problems with the sebum (oil) the skin produces through tiny glands tied to each pore. For genetic as well as anatomical reasons, these problems more often occur on the face -- the chin, the forehead, and the back have the highest number of sebum glands per square inch, but because the face is more visible than the back and we tend to cover our backs in clothing, as well as once again for genetic reasons, sebum production is not typically as noticeable on the back as it is on the face. When the skin overproduces sebum, it creates oily skin, which not only attracts dirt, but also promotes the development of P. acnes, the species of bacterium responsible for acne vulgaris. The underproduction of sebum results in dry skin and its associated skin disorders. Androgen sensitivity and the rate of androgen production are why some of us go through our teenage years without developing acne at all, while others (myself included) still have very oily skin at the age of 25. When factoring in UV exposure and repeated muscle movements we use to create expressions, as well as the fact that the thinnest skin on our bodies is under the eyes and around the eyelids, our faces are much more susceptible to fine lines and wrinkles than most other areas of the skin. \n\nOf course, there's also the fact that in our culture, we place a high priority on our facial skin looking great as it is how we physically present ourselves and a great percentage of our emotions to others, so we tend to desire to take care of the skin on our faces moreso than we do many other areas of our bodies. Hence, companies in the business of cosmetics can produce specialty products targeting our faces and the bags under our eyes and be absolutely certain people will buy them over other products that don't explicitly mention the face as its intended application site.",
"As a follow-up question: any reason for specialized hand soaps and lotions?",
"dunno about it being a scam\n\nwhen i've not had facial lotion for an extended period of time and used body lotion my skin has got spots very quickly. There is definitely a difference. Maybe the skin on the face is thinner",
"The consistency of your skin can change dramatically all over your body, be it your face, palm of the hands, genitals, feet, and so on.\n\nIn the various parts of your body it can range from thin, thick, dry, oily, elastic, stiff, porous, non-porous, contain many or few hair follicles, and you get the idea. \n\nThe skin on your face is typically both more oily and porous than the rest of your body. This combination causes bacteria trapped by the oil on the skin, to be deposited inside the larger pores, which creates acne.\n\nFacial care products tend to differ in that the cleansers tend to be designed more for stripping away excess oil and bacteria without over-drying the skin, while the moisturizers are designed not to clog the pores. This is a very general statement, many cleansers and moisturizers are designed differently as all facial skin is not created equal.",
"IT'S NOT A SCAM!!! it's about the preservatives! The closer to your eyes and mouth a product gets the more expensive and delicate the mixture of preservatives gets. So you'll hardly ever find a water/oil emulsion made for your lips because there's basically no preservative strong enough to stop mould / bacteria long enough that's also considered edible (because you do end up eating most of what you rub on your lips. \n\nAnyway, so you might find washing your face with body soap fine but some wouldn't and the cosmetics companies would consider prolonged exposure to \"body wash\" preservatives to be unhealthy for your eyes.",
"Follow up: Does your facial skin get \"addicted\" to moisturizers?",
"It's complicated to answer. The science of the skin is fairly complex. /u/shy-guys-on-stilts has the best answer here. It all depends on how you feel about your appearance and aging. Good skin is mostly genetic (85%). After that, I generally estimate that 10% is from a healthy lifestyle, then 5% is about the skin care routine you do consistently. Everyone has a different strategy based on loads of information in the marketplace. Me? Don't smoke, don't drink, eat well, exercise, wear sunscreen all the time, and get in the habit of taking care of your skin: cleanse with a facial cleanser (soap is too drying and damaging long term), exfoliate (2x week if you're female, guys exfoliate when they shave so just do the areas where you don't shave), a masque would be great 1x week but not imperative, and definitely moisturizer every day, twice a day. I recommend quality products for better results, but that doesn't mean spending a ton of money. The best products for your skin can be found in your kitchen. If it's good to eat whole foods for a healthy body, then wouldn't it be the best for your skin as well? Use food-grade oils: jojoba is the most similar to sebum, but it's expensive. 2nd best is grape seed oil. Olive and coconut are good, but might feel really heavy on your skin if you skew naturally toward oily skin.\nIs it a scam? A lot of it. But in general, I consider it marketing. Find an esthetician you can trust who can educate you about a good skin care routine.",
"What about products like L'Oréal men and women anti aging products. Do they even work?",
"Thought expirement, let's pretend your elbow is an important part of attracting a mate. Notice how your elbow skin is wrinkled, notice how it becomes dry at times. You could prevent this by adding some simple moisturizer to your elbow....but, oh no! Now your elbow looks shiny and it is noticeable you added a moisturizer to it. Better invest in a product that makes it less shiny using alternative moisturizing agents that are more expensive. \n\nYou also notice your elbow seems more wrinkled as time goes on, it would help to get a product that lessens the appearance of those wrinkles like retinol, more money.\n\nThen you start to wonder how you are going to prevent more unsightly elbow wrinkles from forming, that is going to require some good sunscreen! You apply some cheap sunscreen from the drug store, but you find that adds a sheen to your elbow skin, how embarrassing! Better spend more money to find a sunscreen that leaves a matte finish. \nAfter spending all that money, finally you have a natural looking elbow that looks young and is protected from uv rays, watch the ladies swoon.\n\nBut seriously, it all comes down to how important your face is to attraction and appearance. \n\nAlso, moisturizing isn't even that important, aging is largely due to sun exposure, I can absolutely promise you that a person who uses sunscreen from a young age will look much younger than a person who focuses on moisturizing and wrinkle reducing products. Use a good sunscreen and wear sunglasses, that is all you need.",
"While people seem to be riding the \"it's all corporate lies\" wave. A bit of simple investigating shows that skin composition varies over the human body, age and gender.\n\nThe face in particular is more exposed to environmental influences such as ultraviolet radiation. Facial moisturisers often contain sunscreens to help with exposure and premature ageing.\n\nThe face is also very sensitive, we are less tolerant to moisturisers that don't quickly absorb into the surface, so the composition of facial moisturisers are thinner, especially so for men as they tend to have thicker facial skin than women.\n\nThen different skin conditions require different products to get the best outcome, for example a person with oily skin or lipid charged pores is going to benefit from skin care products that help reduce oil production. (By reducing the skin's need to produce oil.) While dryer (and thus more easily damaged) skin is going to benefit from moisturisers that protect and nourish the surface.\n\nSince the face is a strong communicator of age and other factors (health, tiredness and so on) different products will attempt to address these. Again sunscreen is a good age prevention method, but also ingredients with antibacterial properties can help cope with infections and sources of skin irritation. The amount of facial movement and skin folding can be strenuous on the skin, so these additional ingredients can help with those, where they're not really needed on the body.\n\nFor the majority of people any generic skin moisturiser is going to be sufficient for their body, but they'll find better outcomes with a proper skin care regimen that matches their skin's condition/shortcomings.\n\n**tl,dr:** It's only half bullshit, there is value in getting face-appropriate moisturiser, but it's not miracles.",
"Every face wash I've ever used has irritated my skin, including the really expensive $50 ones. Best advice I ever got from anyone was to NOT wash my face with any kind of soap and water. I splash water on my face from time to time but as a rule I use almond oil to remove make up and to cleanse (blot on, wipe off with a cotton pad, gets rid of any dirt).. my skin has never looked so good.",
"There are some products that shouldn't be used on the face. For example, I have a prescription for Hydroval, and my doctor told me to refrain from using it on my face because it's too \"strong\" (can't remember what he meant by that) and it will thin out the skin, making the veins much more visible when I get older.\n\nDermatologists, please correct/clarify this :)",
"I use different products because I have different skin conditions on different parts of my body. A light facial moisturizer won't cut it on my feet or hands, and the heavy stuff I use on the rest of my body would make my face break out. Body wash is moisturizing, facial wash is anti acne. Though I do use the acne wash on backne when it pops up in the summer.\n\nTheoretically, it's possible to use the same products all over, but I need a more targeted approach, and those divisions between products are handy.\n\nI do break my rule with salves though. If I get a rash, everywhere gets the same salve. Same with Vaseline, if required it gets used all over.",
"It's mostly that faces are oily, but people also set a higher standard for their face than the rest of their body.\n\nSure, you could use a daily exfoliating soap/lotion/cream on your back, but it'd be a lot of money and upkeep thrown at something most people don't see or think about.",
"It really depends, but a lot of the \"science bit\" that moisturisers and cleansing companies use in their ads is nonsense. I have tried not using soap or cleanser, but my skin does appear to need it. Oil cleanses just give me horrible spots, and I finally settled on Clinique soap and moisturiser. It genuinely works better than anything else I've tried, and the solid soap lasts me over a year, so it's good value. Some people don't really need anything, though, and it's probably just genetics. Handy tip, sunflower oil is an excellent light moisturiser commonly used in body and face skin lotions, and it rarely causes reactions on its own, plus it's really cheap to buy a big bottle, so it could be worth a go! Just use enough to soak into your skin quickly.",
"Our face skin is more greasy (seborrheic) than most of the body and it makes it more acne prone. Also is thin so easily damaged. Also is very exposed to sun, number 1 skin's enemies. \n\nThe face is very important psychologically and we'll do anything to protect it. Big pharma take advantage of this to sell thousands of skin products.",
"people know that people look at their faces more than anywhere else on their body, so people like to make their face look nice",
"The face on our skin is thinner and anything getting in or out has a shorter path. For some reason thinner skin on the face was preferred. Perhaps it was due to more facial expressions but who knows. Because of this our face loses moisture much faster. It's also a portal for what is going on inside our bodies, hello acne and rashes. \n\nThe only thing you really need more of is moisturizing but not necessarily in the form of a protective barrier. Drinking more water is the best way to hydrate our skin. Oils work better than creams though if you need more moisture due to dermatitis and what not. As far as soaps goes, it boils down to preference but the less we mess with the skin on our face the better off we are. A simple Castile soap is fine. Nothing super special though. \n\n\n\n\n",
"Even if your face skin was equally as sensitive as the rest of your skin we'd probably still care for it more because it's more noticeable. I have a scar on my leg that doesn't bother me because no one can see it but it'd be a different story on my face.",
"This is less of a ELI5 and more of a LMGTFY.\n\nAnyway, the top comment on here is pretty useless. Shouldn't we have some scientist pop up and give us a five paragraph lecture about skin, right about now? ",
"It doesn't. Not *really*. In fact, you could dab on a bit of olive oil and call it a day if you wanted (that goes for just about anywhere on your body, btw). \n\nIt gets down to comfort and customization. The skin on the face IS more sensitive. Maybe it's as simple as wanting the feel of a lighter cream on your face. Maybe something to help moisturize it, maybe something to cut the oils. \n\nThrow branding in and the turf fights that inevitably follow, and you have a zillion products that do essentially the same thing in each category (of which there are few).",
"Speaking for the eyelids, they are especially sensitive because the skin of the eyelids is so thin. Also, drugs that are absorbed in the skin of the eyelid can permeate through the lids into the eye. (I'm an O.D.)",
"I'm a bit late but I feel this is something to be said, I used to suffer with bad spots on my face.. (Sometimes I still get the odd breakout) but I used every spot/ blackhead face wash known to exist. It would dry out my skin (which I assume its supposed to do, to stop the oil causing spots) but my spots would look sore and just terrible.. SO i started just washing my face with water every single morning and in the nights with plain shower gel and I kid you not It improved rapidly.. All the money i spent on face wash and wipes and creams was all just a scam. I had better results from using general soap and water than I did with all the expensive creams and facial products out there. "
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5cl0fx | in a roll of duct tape, how does the glue stick to the correct side? | when i have a roll of duct tape, how does the glue stay on the outside and not the inside??
made a shitty mspaint illustration?`: _URL_0_
EDIT: holy cow this blew up, so i made a shitty mspaint illustration of the explanation:_URL_1_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cl0fx/eli5_in_a_roll_of_duct_tape_how_does_the_glue/ | {
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"Id assume the outside layer of the tape has a very thin wax like coating that gets sprayed on, which prevents this, but as soon as it is unraveled, it gets air contact which stops the process. but im no duct tape inspector.",
"Between the top of the tape and underside of the tape is a layer called the \"release coating\". In most tapes it is olyvinyl carbamate, but I don't know if that is what is used specifically in duct tape. It's just an anti-cohesion layer that exists precisely for this purpose.",
"I'll wait for the elaborate answer to come along and answer with proof, but, I can say the \"smooth\" side of the tape is coated with anti adhesive chemicals that the other side won't bond to.",
"Duck tape uses \"a pressure sensitive rubber\" that mechanically sticks, rather than chemically. The rubber is particularly good at sticking to itself forming a true chemical bond. \n\nUnfortunately, the rubber gets old and crumbles, \n\nSource, myth busters duct tape specials. "
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4c8456 | what food/nutrients should i be eating each day to make my body function properly | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c8456/eli5_what_foodnutrients_should_i_be_eating_each/ | {
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"For a 2,000 calorie diet:\n\n\nTotal Fat \t65 grams (g)\nSaturated Fat \t20 g\nCholesterol \t300 milligrams (mg)\nSodium \t2,400 mg\nPotassium \t3,500 mg\nTotal Carbohydrate \t300 g\nDietary Fiber \t25 g\nProtein \t50 g\nVitamin A \t5,000 International Units (IU)\nVitamin C \t60 mg\nCalcium \t1,000 mg\nIron \t18 mg\nVitamin D \t400 IU\nVitamin E \t30 IU\nVitamin K \t80 micrograms µg\nThiamin \t1.5 mg\nRiboflavin \t1.7 mg\nNiacin \t20 mg\nVitamin B6 \t2 mg\nFolate \t400 µg\nVitamin B12 \t6 µg\nBiotin \t300 µg\nPantothenic acid \t10 mg\nPhosphorus \t1,000 mg\nIodine \t150 µg\nMagnesium \t400 mg\nZinc \t15 mg\nSelenium \t70 µg\nCopper \t2 mg\nManganese \t2 mg\nChromium \t120 µg\nMolybdenum \t75 µg\nChloride \t3,400 mg"
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67q1na | why, when we're writing or typing something, do we accidentally write/type down what we hear someone say in the room? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67q1na/eli5_why_when_were_writing_or_typing_something_do/ | {
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"Usually when we type, we are using our working memory to hold the info we want to type. Our working memory only has so much space in it that if something new pops up it pushes back the old info and takes front seat; attention also affects this. \n\nThink of it like a bus. What you're trying to type is in the drivers seat (since you're focusing on it) and other things like, where the keyboard is or mouse is is stored in the passenger seat since you aren't focusing on it as much. When someone says something, you begin to focus on that rather than typing and type what they say. What the person said pretty much takes the drivers seat. \n\nThis is also why you forget what your were going to say when having a conversation. Ever think of a good joke or comment in the middle of someone talking but then forget it when they're done? It's pretty much the same thing. "
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6ejdlf | the golden ratio / fibonacci sequence. are the "natural" patterns associated with this number simply selection bias or is the universe somehow guided / structured around them? | If you watch any video on the Fibonacci sequence they typically show the pattern seemingly reoccurring in most aspects of the universe; From the structures of atoms, to our DNA, to snail shells and flowers all the way to spiral galaxies.
Is there something to this or are we just finding things to fit the narrative? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ejdlf/eli5_the_golden_ratio_fibonacci_sequence_are_the/ | {
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"Vi Hart made an [amazing video](_URL_0_) that explains it better than I could. She starts out with the basic math of Fibonacci numbers and how they relate to the golden mean, and continues on to how growth hormones in plants follow natural mathematical patterns that cause their leaves/petals, etc. to follow certain spiral patterns that are also Fibonacci numbers.",
"The golden ratio is largely a myth and doesn't exist naturally as often as some people claim it does. It is an example of confirmation bias. People WANT to see the golden ratio and they end up finding it wherever they look even when it doesn't fit. Almost all claims of the golden ratio disolve away when you actually do some accurate measuring. It's like the moment you think there is something special about the number 23...and then all of the sudden are amazed at how often the number 23 turns up just because you are looking for it now.",
"As far as I can tell, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. There's a lot of mysticism around φ and the Fibonacci sequence and people are finding coincidences that fit the narrative. However, φ does often show up in nature.\n\nWe seem to have an intuition that very simple interactions should result in simple and uninteresting patterns. However, that's only accurate in the context of everyday life. When the number of interacting things is large and/or they interact for a long time, they can produce intricate and beautiful patterns. For example, the interactions between atoms of a soap bubble cause it to take the exact shape that minimizes ratio of surface area to volume. And for evolution to occur, it's enough that organisms undergo random mutations and the best adapted ones have more offspring on average. This results in a slow but definite statistical trend towards better and better adaptation. Over thousands of generations, it can give rise to astounding complexity.\n\nWhile finding elegant patterns in the Universe can be surprising to our intuition, it's not unexpected philosophically. The math that people find profound is usually simple but has unexpected conclusions. We know from Occam's Razor that a priori, logically simpler hypotheses (and mathematically simpler relationships) are more likely. So the weird thing would be if we didn't find many profound mathematical relationships in nature!\n\nφ is actually pretty simple. It's the positive solution to x^2 = x + 1 and it's the ratio of lengths such that the ratio of the larger to the smaller one is equal to the ratio of their sum to the larger one. The reason that some plants follow this pattern is explained in [part 3 of Vi Hart's series on the topic](_URL_0_). The short of it is that new leaves are created in the center at regular intervals and move outwards while repelling each other; a new leaf is repelled mainly by two previous ones, which results in an angle of approximately φ.\n\nThe relation to the Fibonacci sequence is that the further you go in the sequence, the more the ratio of consecutive terms starts approaching φ. This is actually a property of any sequence defined by the relation aₙ = aₙ₋₁ + aₙ₋₂. You can start the sequence with any positive numbers. There's a nifty trick to find the ratio: pretend for a moment that the sequence consists of just consecutive powers of a number, call it q. Then q^n = q^n-1 + q^n-2 so q^2 = q + 1. This has two solutions; the positive one is (√5 + 1)/2, which equals φ. You can also do this for other sequences; for example, if you take a sequence defined by aₙ = aₙ₋₁ + 3 aₙ₋₂ + aₙ₋₃, the ratio you get is √2 + 1. Finding the non-recursive equation for the nth term of the sequence is possible but more involved. You can use a procedure from linear algebra called diagonalization. This answer is already getting long so I won't go into it."
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2frc9p | why were sim cards ever larger than they are now? | I went to Best Buy the other day to replace my phone, which I then upgraded. They cut my SIM card down to fit the new one, so why did it ever have all of the excess? I know SIM cards used to be credit card sized, so why did they need all of the blank space around the actual important part of the SIM? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2frc9p/eli5_why_were_sim_cards_ever_larger_than_they_are/ | {
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"SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module. It is an ID card.\n\nThe reason full SIM cards and credit cards are that shape and size is because they follow the international standard that defines the physical characteristics for identification cards. [link](_URL_0_) They have since updated the standard to allow for smaller SIM cards."
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5utr0n | how do computers divide (mathematically)? | i think I understand how computers can add, multiply and subtract, but I haven't the foggiest of how they solve for division? Can anyone help me? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5utr0n/elif_how_do_computers_divide_mathematically/ | {
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"While chips vary, the most basic operation (integer division) is done with binary long division. This takes a maximum of the number of bits iterations (32 iterations for 32 bit integers) and returns the quotient and remainder, often in two registers.",
"10/2=x \nor 10=(2x) \nor 10= 2+2+... \nx=? \n\nDivision is really just adding the numberator until you reach the denominator. ",
"The simplest slow methods all work in basically the following way. Take the number to be divided (numerator or dividend) and subtract the divisor from it. Do this recursively with the result of each subtraction until the remainder is less than the divisor. This leftover ammount is the remainder._URL_0_"
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1cyilg | why did the stocks dropped after the hacked tweet from the associated press? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cyilg/eli5why_did_the_stocks_dropped_after_the_hacked/ | {
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"The fake tweet said that there had been explosions at the White House, and Obama was injured.\n\nIt's hard to think of many pieces of news that would be more devastating for stock prices! If you were just about to invest a large sum of money by buying shares in top American companies when you heard this news, no doubt you'd think twice - and at least hold off until you know the extent of the blasts and of Obama's injuries.\n\nAnd when people stop buying, but other people want to sell, prices fall, until eventually they fall low enough that someone is willing to buy and take a risk.",
"If the President was suddenly injured and the white house was attacked, I imagine most of the traders became concerned that this would create a rough patch for the economy (Uncertainty always causes a drop in the stock, and what is more uncertain than the white house and president getting bombed?). As such, people began massively selling all their stocks. Since the amount of stocks being sold went up, the price of the stocks went down. \n\nDon't worry though, the prices have already sprung back up once it was determined to be a fake story (with the uncertainty gone, people started buying more).\n\nThe bottom line is that if things are going to become crazy and uncertain, people would rather have liquid cash as opposed to potential cash(in the form of stocks) since the price could drop for any reason. If they have the pure cash, they are more certain their finances will remain the same.",
"Investors dislike uncertainty and bad news. They try to protect themselves by liquidating assets or at least slowing new investments until the future is clearer.",
"Stock prices, very roughly, indicate the expected, future value of a company.\n\nIf there were explosions in the White House, that could mean any number of things that would suck for the economy - terrorist attack, whatever. Anything that sucks for the economy will reduce the expected future value of businesses.\n\nThus, stock prices fall on news of explosions in the White House."
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4ng4jc | how did the word english word fanny, referring to a woman's pink bits, changed in american to mean ones buttocks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ng4jc/eli5_how_did_the_word_english_word_fanny/ | {
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"Does it mean buttocks in America?",
"It's not clear to me that the meaning changed in America. Some words changed their meaning in British English while preserving their original meaning in America. Anyway, in this case, the word comes from the diminutive of the female name Frances -- which indicates that maybe the British use is the original.",
"Speculation: Could be the consequence of an immigrant society where lots of people don't speak English as their first language (like in big population centers e.g. NYC). Imagine you're a chorus girl in a dressing room, and the manager comes in and *edit for spelling* crudely shouts GET OFF YOUR FANNIES AND GET ON STAGE and everyone jumps up - you'd be forgiven for assuming in meant 'ass'. I've seen this happen where I live where French & English are both official languages; people often misunderstand a word because they're assuming meaning through context.",
"When in doubt, blame Webster.\n\nFrom what I have learned/recall he changed a lot of the British language in America because he wanted nothing to do with them. \n\nAlso of interesting note is that the American accent is closer to the original British pronunciation/accent of words from the 1700s when compared with today's standard British accent.\n",
"I'll add to this by saying, English spoken in England is not immune to changes. The English accent as we know it is newer than the American."
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2tlyv2 | ingrown toenails | I know they're very common on the feet, but not very common on the hands? Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tlyv2/eli5_ingrown_toenails/ | {
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" > ELI5: Ingrown ***toenails***\n\n#\n\n > I know they're very common on the ***feet***, but not very common on the ***hands***? Why?\n\nWell, toenails typically only grow on a person's feet.\n\nBut ingrown nails are more common on feet because we wear shoes and it puts a little bit of constant pressure on our toes. And toenails are thicker so it's easier for them to penetrate skin.",
"There are a few reasons:\n\n1) Your toenails are thicker and harder than your fingernails, so they are more likely to dig into your skin instead of bending.\n\n2) Your feet are more prone to injury (when was the last time you stubbed your thumb) which can cause ingrown nails.\n\n3) Shoes and socks. Ill fitting shoes and socks can press the skin around your nail onto the nail.\n\n4) Sweat. Our feet tend to be in a damper environment than our hands, which can soften the skin, again making it more susceptible to being cut into by a nail. Sweaty feet also make you more susceptible to fungal nail infections, which can widen your nails, making them push into your toe skin.\n\n5) A lot of people cut their toenails shorter than their fingernails (because it's quite painful when you cut fingernails too short) and this allows the skin to fold over into where the nail is going to grow."
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dhopvw | how does your phone know what time it is if it's battery dies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dhopvw/eli5_how_does_your_phone_know_what_time_it_is_if/ | {
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"Its able to get all that information either from an internet connection or from the nearest cell tower. Mobile devices generally dont have a constant running clock circuit.\n\nElse the phone might keep enough power on backup after the fact to run the clock circuit. I know mine updates off the net or cell signal.",
"Clocks use very very little power so the phone shuts down before all the juice is gone, or there is another small battery used just to keep track of the time.",
"Mobile phones, like computers, also have a RTC (realtime clock) that keeps track of that. This part can actually fail since unlike a computer, in which the RTC is powered by a coin battery, it cannot be replaced on its own. This is pretty rare though; I've only seen it twice, and in both cases the phones were more than 5 years old.",
"In general, a dead phone battery isn't completely dead. It's just very low. The battery still has a bit more power in it, but using it damages the chemistry, so the phone doesn't.\n\nBesides that, phones can get the time from the phone network, or the Internet.\n\nA sim card isn't absolutely required to interact with the network, by the way. It's required for billing, but for instance emergency services are available from any provider, even without a sim card. I'm not sure if getting the time also works that way or not, but it could be.",
"The signal from the towers carry the current time and date.\nDepending on the phone this might be disabled in the options and it won’t do that, the behavior of the phone when you boot it up again set up to not read time and date from the carrier signal depends on the phone."
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49q0ib | how can a crane's counterweight balance different loads if it stays a fixed weight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49q0ib/eli5_how_can_a_cranes_counterweight_balance/ | {
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"There are at least two ways to balance different weights at the end of the crane. \n\nOne is that the counterweight is changed (because they *can* be changed, they aren't set at the crane factory).\n\nAnother is to change the distance between the pivot point of the crane and the load. There are many different types of cranes, but it seems like you are probably asking about a tower crane in this question. A crane does not have to pick things up from the tip of its arm. It can lower the hook from a point closer to the pivot point, [like in this picture](_URL_0_). The closer the load is to the pivot point, the smaller the counterweight that is needed to balance it. So if you can lift 40 tons with the hook dangling from the very tip of the crane arm, you can lift 80 tons with it dangling from the middle of the arm, and 160 tons with it only a quarter of the way down the arm (assuming that the counterweight is the only thing preventing you from lifting heavier loads).",
"By changing the distance of the counterweight from the pivot/fulcrum.\n\nIn a good ELI5 fashion: imagine that a five year old is on a see-saw. His ten year old brother sits on the other end. What happens, of course, is that the five year old is stuck up in the air, because his heavier brother have the see-saw hopelessly unbalanced.\n\nSo, what does big brother do? He moves towards the center of the see-saw, until he finds the right spot where they are in balance. So, even though they have dramatically different weights, they are both exerting a comparable amount of force on each end of the see-saw."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Tower_Crane.JPG"
],
[]
] |
||
144cjx | why does my hot chocolate grow a 'skin' on the top after i leave it to cool down? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/144cjx/why_does_my_hot_chocolate_grow_a_skin_on_the_top/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"It's some of the protein in the milk that has clogged together and as mobyhead1 pointed out dried out.\n\nNow, why does it do that? [Protein](_URL_0_) (link goes to simple wikipedia) is a long chain of smaller things that's called amino acids. The normal state of these long chains are in a curled up form so when they knock into eachother not much happens. \n\nBut when you heat them up (among other things) they lose that curled up form and become stretched out (scientific name is [denaturation](_URL_2_), link goes to regular wikipedia) and start hooking in together and form something more solid like chocolate or milk skin. Same thing is responsible for making eggs solid when you heat them.\n\n[The Science of Eggs](_URL_1_) is an interesting read even if it doesn't actually talk about milk."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein",
"http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/eggscience.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturation_%28biochemistry%29"
]
] |
||
adf7t8 | why does listening to people talking make you sleep? | Ever since I was little I felt safer to sleep when I could hear my parents talking. Or I would go to bed early at sleep overs so I could hear my friends in the other room. Now I put on horror narration videos from YouTube to help me sleep. I noticed others in the comments say that they did the same thing. I can’t seem to find anything online about why people talking puts people to sleep. Is it a primal instinct to feel like others are awake looking out for danger? Or is their some sort of Freudian explanation, that the voices remind us on some level of hearing our parents in the womb? Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adf7t8/eli5_why_does_listening_to_people_talking_make/ | {
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"I would say you are correct in your assumption that people talking allows your mind to rest easier and shut down faster than if it was just silence. It's likely also why students are so easy to fall asleep during lectures when there is a monologing professor.",
"I’ve noticed that also. I’ll lie down and watch/listen to YouTube with the guy talking and I’m out like a light. One possible explanation is that you might have worries in the back of your mind. The guy talking distracts your mind from what it’s worrying over and keeping you awake and you relax and fall asleep. ",
"I think it's an instinctual thing. Having a human voice speaking makes us feel less alone while asleep, and thus makes it feel safer since if something happens, that voice is watching out for us."
]
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[],
[],
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|
tz7kt | globalisation | What it is, why are some people against it, advantages and disadvantages. Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tz7kt/eli5_globalisation/ | {
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"Globalization is the current movement (actually has been developing for a long time, the internet and advancements in travel have expediated it) that connects people and products all over the world faster and with more efficiency.\n\nSome of the problems are offshoring and outsourcing jobs because of human rights problems and some would argue that sending jobs elsewhere is killing domestic businesses. But... it makes sense for a lot of businesses because it is quality work and less expensive labor and materials.\n\nAnother problem countries are dealing with because of globalization concerns trade. China just got into a spot of trouble for dumping solar panels (dumping- exporting a mass amount of product and undercutting local competition because the exporting countries can produce it much cheaper). This can be combatted with tariffs (a tax paid to import goods) in this particular case 31% increase.\n\nVery good and very broad question. Hope what I said made sense.",
"Globalization, broadly speaking, is the movement of the international economy to a freer market, or a market with less trade barriers. \n\nThis has several implications. One of them being it increases the profits of specialization. Specialization is a concept in economy that describes a method of production for an economy, where one concentrates on producing something they excel at (e.g., oil) in return for things they need but can't produce themselves (e.g., weapons, food, consumer products). We all do this to a degree, and specialization is what moved us out of the middle ages into the modern economy. A doctor specializes in the skill of healing, and he trades his skills and services in return for things he otherwise can't produce himself (a house, his car, the milk he drinks). If a doctor had to be self-sufficient, he would also have to own farmland, acquire machinery, gain access to materials, and learn the knowledge required to manipulate them.\n\nHowever, too much specialization can be bad too. For example, an island nation in the Pacific has a particular soil type that is most excellent in producing coffee. So they start to specialize in the coffee trade. As they discover there is money to be earned in coffee, and as they receive money from the coffee they are selling, this nation decides to expand their coffee industry. Soon, the coffee industry may become so big it accounts for 50% of the nation's GDP (the amount of products they produce). This becomes dangerous, because if a natural disaster occurs, and their coffee crop is wiped out, the entire nation's economy will collapse, and its people can now no longer afford food, nor do they have the means to grow it themselves. \n\nOf course, countries never fully specialize in their most profitable crop/product because of things such as trade barriers. These can be natural, such as the cost of shipping food across an ocean, or be artificial, such as a government imposing import tariffs (they tax goods coming in from overseas). So, even though U.S. might be able to produce rice at $1/ton, after the costs of transport + tariffs, this cost may now rise to $2/ton. If our imaginary nation can produce rice at $1.5/ton, it's not as efficient as the U.S., but it's still cheaper. Therefore, because of things like trade barriers, nations won't fully specialize. Now, you can see what might happen if these trade barriers are removed. In a real world example, the U.S. signed a treaty with the Mexico that removed trade tariffs. As a result, many Mexican farmers lost their livelihoods because they couldn't produce as cheaply as American agricultural corporations could. To summarize, globalization, or the reduction of trade barriers give incentives for nations to further specialize. This further specialization creates more exposure for the national economy to crisis and mishaps.\n\nThis leads into the second major implication. As trade barriers are lowered, the competitiveness of companies overseas are increased. Remember, the rice farmer on our imaginary pacific island nation is 'protected' by the trade barrier. With it, his $1.5/ton rice is competing with $2/ton import rice. Without it, he is competing with $1/ton import rice. Although this means the islander inhabitants get to buy cheaper rice, this also drives out local rice farmers and lead them to rely upon foreign rice suppliers. In the real world, the implications are that mutli-national corporations and conglomerates are given more power and more access in local markets. Due to their vast scale, they are able to outproduce everyone else, and thus do so at a lower price (this is know as the economy of scale). Although the local population are now given access to cheaper products, they loose power and become dependent on a foreign entity. \n\nThere are many other factors at play here, but these are the main ones in very dumbed down terms.\n\nEDIT: grammar and spelling.",
"I took a whole class in Globalization!\n\nThere are some island cultures that used to fish lobster (I remember this being somewhere in the Pacific islands, but I could be wrong). There were *tons* of lobsters. So many in fact that lobster was the cheapest thing you could eat there, and only the poorest of the poor ate lobster. \n\nThen outside lands started to find out about this mystical delicious sea creature. Japan was all like, \"Give me some of that lobster!\" And it was crazy expensive to catch a lobster and ship it to Tokyo and still have it fresh and delicious. Through globalization, fisheries began being set up in these island countries. The speed and efficiency at which lobsters were caught were astronomical. The cost started to diminish and now even not-so-rich people were ordering lobster for dinner. Cost goes down, demand goes up. Now repeat that across the globe. You can pretty much step into any market in the world and have the ability to buy a lobster. Globalization made that possible. It made it efficient. It made it profitable. Globalization makes big business happy!\n\nNow, the other side of the coin. Those poor local fishermen? Their businesses were *trashed* by these larger companies. The lobsters were overfished. They became more rare. In a sense, it would be like opening a little mom-and-pop store right next to a walmart. Those local guys who's livelihood depended on lobster were pushed aside for the greater globalization of their craft/business. Those local fishermen, who previously ate lobster because *that's all they could afford*, found that they couldn't even afford to eat their own lobsters they were catching. Globalization makes local communities sad!\n\nTrade isn't the only aspect of it either. You can talk about *cultural* globalization too. Those island communities were pretty exclusive. They had their own things going on, their own cultural identity. When big business came, they don't just set up a fishery and stay isolated. They expand the local community. You might see a McDonalds pop up. You might start seeing the community's *culture* begin to change in response to the shift in globalization. Some cultures might be eaten up and be erased in response to this (*cultural assimilation*). Sometimes the local community rejects this shift. There are no Walmarts in Germany. Walmart *tried* to expand to Germany, but the culture there rejected it.\n\nIn the end, you can apply the lobster example to many aspects of globalization. It makes things cheaper, faster, and more efficient. It also eliminates local identity, local business, and has the possibility to erase diverse cultures, including their way of life, their ideals ... even their language.\n\nThat's why there is such a polar opposite reaction to \"globalization\". It is an amazing opportunity for some groups, but a terrible misfortune for other groups.",
"I teach AP world history and globalization is the key concept of the 20th century. Most people here have done a great job of explaining the economic aspects of globalization. But it would be incomplete to leave out political (the EU, NATO, the UN), cultural (tv, music, movies) and Communication (email, Twitter, facebook,) aspects of globalization.\n\nPeople see the advantages everyday. A perfect example would be a site like reddit. People from all over the world sharing ideas, culture, etc. \n\nThe best example of the disadvantages come from religious groups from all over the world. The argument that society (specifically western society) is too secular, sexual, or non-traditional is made in Dallas, Texas and Tehran, Iran. Some people see being a part of a global community as a good thing, some people see it as a bad thing because it tends to deemphasize the local or regional community."
]
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[],
[],
[],
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|
1d4spg | how holograms can be broken and still produce the same image | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d4spg/eli5_how_holograms_can_be_broken_and_still/ | {
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"text": [
"Optically, holography is letting you see a 3D \"object\" through a window. If you cover up a window, but leave a small peephole, you can still peek through that hole and see an entire scene on the other side. Hologram plates do the same. (This assumes that the holographic image appears far behind the glass plate hologram.)\n\nSo, if you shatter a glass-plate hologram, each fragment acts like a peephole, and the entire scene can still be observed \"behind\" a fragment. However, it won't be 3D anymore, since you can't change your viewpoint when looking through a peephole.\n\nBut ...all of this doesn't work the same with credit-card holograms, \"rainbow\" holograms. In that case you can only preserve the entire scene if you break the Rainbow hologram into vertical stripes.\n\nAnd finally, if you make a hologram of a flat object, and set things up so the image exists at zero depth (at the location of the glass plate,) then of course each piece of the shattered plate WON'T show the entire object."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
27d7ga | why does america have the cia, nsa, fbi and other intelligence agencies, why can't they just have one agency? | I understand that the FBI is for domestic issues and the CIA is for international things, but, isn't there a few other agencies that more or less do the same thing? What's the point of them? How does the US intelligence system function? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27d7ga/eli5_why_does_america_have_the_cia_nsa_fbi_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"chznyvq"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Each agency has a different job, like how the police force and the firemen have different jobs. Could you list some overlapping agencies? \n\nBtw the NSA handles \"national security\" matters"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
cy2g93 | how/where did people urinate and defecate before modern times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cy2g93/eli5_howwhere_did_people_urinate_and_defecate/ | {
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"text": [
"Outhouses, holes in the ground, buckets that were thrown into street sewers, and buckets thrown into fields for fertilizer, or just in the woods. Depends on how far back you go.",
"Outhouses, bed pans/buckets, or just out in the bush.\n\nIn Medieval times sanitation wasn't what is now so waste was often thrown out the window or door right into the streets of London. The Thames was badly polluted.\n\nUrine was also collected and used for a variety of things.",
"Well I think in the 1300's they just put it anywhere and that lack of sanitation brought about the black plague. Rats and fleas."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
ev2san | why do people put fresh-baked pies on the windowsill? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ev2san/eli5_why_do_people_put_freshbaked_pies_on_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"ffszu4l"
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"text": [
"Usually it's when the outside temperature is lower than inside, or there is a wind. It's to help cool the pie before either serving it or putting it in the fridge."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
7184jq | why do you feel run down during a cold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7184jq/eli5_why_do_you_feel_run_down_during_a_cold/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Fighting a cold literally takes a lot of energy, and if it's more than what you're used to using then you feel tired and sleepy. There's a lot going on when you get sick, and the best thing you can do is keep warm so your body doesn't have to spend quite so much to keep you warm while fighting off whatever made you sick.",
"The symptoms you feel when sick, such as fever, aches, and coughing, are not directly caused by whatever microorganism is infecting you - that is your body literally trying to cook the bug to death and fight it off.\n\nMaintaining your core temperature takes energy, generally created by breaking down sugars or fats into smaller molecules, releasing the energy contained in those molecular bonds. If you are sick and have a fever, your body is raising its core temperature, requiring more energy than your basal metabolism provides. This translates into feeling like you just ran a marathon, despite only walking from the bedroom to the bathroom. Your body is using much more energy than it appears to be.\n\nAs your body is fighting off whatever is infecting it, it is generating antibodies and other chemicals it hopes will annihilate the bug. Creating those molecules takes energy. Whatever is left over from the fight going on also must be eliminated from the body - dead viruses or bacteria, dead white blood cells, etc. must be moved to your kidneys for elimination, and dead human cells must be replaced. All of this takes energy to do, and is above and beyond the energy that your body expends for simply existing (basal metabolism).\n\nThis is why you feel tired and run down despite laying in bed doing nothing while you are sick."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
1b2y0g | meta-analysis | Can anyone boil this down to a level that I can understand, and right now, I feel my level of understanding is nil. I do not have a background in research or statistics.
How does meta-analysis compare to a traditional research based study? And I may not even be saying that right.
Edit: Thank you for helping me get a grasp on this! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1b2y0g/eli5_metaanalysis/ | {
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"text": [
"As far as I understand it, research is like doing one jigsaw with a picture of a sloth. Meta-analysis is like gathering lots of jigsaws of sloths that other people have already done, and checking out their differences, trends and other statistical goodies.",
"Let's say that I want to work out whether 5 year olds like french fries. Lots of people have already done studies looking at how much kids like french fries but in all sorts of different ways. Also, any scientific study could be wrong. If some say that kids *do* like fries and others say they *don't*, how do I know which to believe? Instead of doing a new study and adding to the pile I could try and combine all of the studies that have already been done and seeing what I can find. How you actually do that is fairly complicated but that's the basic rationale."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
2b68gc | why do i feel like i don't remember anything for an exam until i sit down for the exam? | Is there something besides stress that leaves me clueless and feeling like I don't remember anything until I sit down and actually start writing the test? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b68gc/eli5_why_do_i_feel_like_i_dont_remember_anything/ | {
"a_id": [
"cj26l34"
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"text": [
"Because it's difficult to inventory your own knowledge and potential decision-making when you don't have a \"target\". Without specific questions and situations to test yourself with, you're just vaguely assessing your readiness without real evidence, which makes it feel very fuzzy and unsure.\n\nIt's like testing your aim with a gun by firing it randomly into the air. It doesn't really make you feel any confidence, because you aren't really being judged. You have no feedback. There is no target to pass or fail with. Once you sit down and actually have a solid problem in front of you, a real situation to deal with, you can actually realize that you are properly prepared (or not)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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