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3812i6 | what mechanism in the brain allows a child to absorb a language to be able to speak it without being formally taught? why and how do we lose this ability? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3812i6/eli5what_mechanism_in_the_brain_allows_a_child_to/ | {
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"I wish I'd noted where I read the article but didn't. Per what I read, there are over 300 sounds in all known human languages. Supposedly a baby naturally embraces those it hears during the first couple of years of its life as being familiar and being language but later wouldn't -- by then sounds of a foreign language would just be so much ambient noise unless and until the child understood it was learning a new language. ",
"So, it's been hypothesized and theorized by many linguists that there is the \"critical period\" of speech development. Basically, from about six months to 1.5 years (or so) the brain doesn't really distinguish between language sounds in the sense that to the person at the age, ALL language sounds are valid sounds that they \"hear\" but don't distinguish between the language(s) their parents are speaking or any other language sounds. At about 1.5 years the brain starts to narrow and categorize them as \"these sounds are the language system they're speaking\" and \"those other sounds are meaningless in the language system(s) I'm constructing\". This solidifies and somewhere between 11 and 14 it becomes nearly impossible to acquire a language without an accent.",
"We don't lose the ability. Go immerse yourself in a area where *all* the people speak a foreign language. You'll pick it up with having being \"formally\" taught.",
"2 parter so here we go: \n\nThe brain undergoes a process called neural shedding several times in your life, at about 9 months, again at 3, 12 and 21 if I recall correctly (+- a year). Each time the brain loses neurons that it deems unnessesary. The first neural shedding at 9 months eliminates some of the neurons in auditory processing that are also used in speech recognition. For an example as an english speaker there are sounds in Chinese I simply cannot differentiate, Indian dialects are another example. The reason is I did not hear those sounds before I was a year old, my brain said \"don't need these\" and disposed of them. After all the brain sucks up a ton of energy, it needs to be efficient. Thus as you age your brain becomes more efficient and loses plasticity such that learning new things like language becomes more difficult. \n\n2: Learning of a language. \n\nChildren learn language from context not from vocabulary and grammar tables. The thing is, so do you. Learning language by memorization is inefficient to the student but is easy to teach and quantify. That is why classes are taught the way they are, it is difficult to measure progress with a more free form class. If you immerse yourself in a language you will learn it rather quickly because of this. \n\nBut if you are over ~21, you won't lose your accent. "
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1agy5n | how the grass is still alive after being covered by snow for months? | Since it can't get any sunlight, how does it all not just die off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1agy5n/eli5_how_the_grass_is_still_alive_after_being/ | {
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"same way trees stay alive without their green leafs. it stores up food for the winter and chills.",
"There is a rule in chemistry, for every 10oC you raise the temp of a reaction, you double the reaction rate. The reverse is true, the colder, the slower the reaction. \n\nSince it is so cold in winter, the metabolic reactions (the plant cells eating) are so slow, that a small amount of food is enough to hold the plant for the whole winter. ",
"grass stores nutrients in its roots. the stored energy is used to resume growth when winter is over. its enough fuel to send up a green shoot and begin gathering energy from sunlight again. "
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1xpyu8 | how do 0's and 1's (binary code) carry and transmit so much information? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xpyu8/eli5_how_do_0s_and_1s_binary_code_carry_and/ | {
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"How do we do it? Volume.\n\nA bit can't carry a lot of information -- just a single binary value, on or off. But you put lots of them together, and you can transmit a lot of information.\n\nIt's exponential -- powers of two. If you have eight bits, that's 2^8 which means you can store a value between 0 and 255. That much information lets you store any single character of written text.\n\nSo, by the time you get into billions or trillions of bits, such as what can be stored on your phone or computer, there's a great deal of information that can be stored and transmitted.",
"Short answer: By using a lot of them.\n\nThe 1s and 0s are grouped in some way, depending on how the data is represented. Generally, for uncompressed, unencrypted data, they are broken down into groups of 8. These groups are formally known as octets, but are often referred to as bytes. Some applications break them down into 16- or 32-bit groups instead.\n\nOnce the binary is broken down appropriately, it is up to the application to determine what each subunit represents. It could be a number, where math can be done on the binary. It could be text, where the code goes through a look-up table to the human-readable representation. It could be a colour code for an image. Generally, it's up to the application or protocol.\n\nOne way to get more data with less bits is to use compression. Here, math is used to convert repeating patterns in the data into smaller data. This translates CPU power into storage space, as the computer needs to do a little more thinking to handle the same amount of data."
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579ab0 | colombia peace deal | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/579ab0/eli5_colombia_peace_deal/ | {
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"The Colombia peace deal would have ended a 50 year war between the government and a group named FARC. The conflict started because a group of people were not happy with the government and how they were treated , so they started a communist guerilla group to combat the Colombian government . Over the years FARC resorted to drug trafficking, kidnapping,extortion, and other illegal activity to fund their war. This marked a period of great violence in Colombia that killed over 220,000 and displaced millions. The \"No\" camp thought that the piece deal offered too much immunity to the FARC members, some of whom could face war crime charges , and they were willing to give up a chance for peace in order to get justice . This is because a lot of people have been personal affected by the conflict. The \"Yes\" camp basically said the concessions given to the FARC members is a small price to pay for peace.\n\nEdit: As some people below mentioned, the vote does not mean peace will not happen, it just means the accord which has been negotiated for the past 4 years was not accepted. The current president still has promised he will bring an end to the conflict and is working to do so. ",
"So the president and the leader of the FARC guerilla group sat down over 4 years to try and stop the civil war. They reached an agreement which basically let all of the warlords and fighters free and with no consequences. A large part of the argument of the no side was that warlords would not be charged with war crimes. Also I should add that most of the population viewed the FARC as thugs and didn't want them to get away with their pillaging. They wanted justice and most likely the people who voted yes just wanted to end the war whether they were happy with the outcome or not.They margin was less than 0.5% of the total vote that it was rejected and now they might have to revise it.",
"There's also recent news about how the Manager for the \"No\" campaign (yeah they had one) recently admitted in an interview that they hired consulting firms to implement an advertising strategy where they instilled fear and indignation in different sectors of society, thus misinfoming the public about what was in the peace deal and what the the outcome of it would be. This is currently under investigation by our equivalent of the DOJ.\n",
"The two sides in question are the Colombian government and the FARC/ELN. The start of the conflict goes all the way back to the 1950's. Government crackdown on rural communist groups led them militarize and combine into the FARC.\n\nMost of the conflict has been asymmetrical fighting, think assassinations, quick raids and terror bombings. The FARC turned to the drug trade and Kidnappings to finance their operations, and saw the height of their power around the 80's with the height of the drug trade. \n\nI'm going to gloss over the rest of the conflict in order to start talking about the peace deal. For the last 2 decades the FARC has been waning to the point of being practically broke now. The decrease in violence led the two sides to begin brokering a peace deal in Havana, Cuba.\n\nOne of the main components of the deal, and perhaps one of the reasons it was rejected, was its goal of reintegrating FARC fighters into society. It included a provision that any fighters who admitted to war crimes would be given much more lenient sentences. The FARC would disarm and become a political organization receiving government funding, and new electoral districts would be created that would essentially guarantee the FARC political representation "
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38iwj3 | what makes pewdiepie so popular? | No disprespect to the guy, I admire him for his success, but how can so many people enjoy his videos? I find them incredibly childlish and pointless. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38iwj3/eli5_what_makes_pewdiepie_so_popular/ | {
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"The reason you find him childish and pointless is because his videos aren't made for you. PewDiePie is actually something of a genius because he knows his audience inside and out and knows how to entertain them. His target? Teenagers. They eat his stuff up because they're still at the stage where randomness is the funniest thing around. Sure, they'll grow out of it when they get a bit older, but there will always be more teenagers to take their place.\n\nEDIT: Had to do a bit of cleanup, but I also want to add that teenagers can be some of the most loyal fans around. My younger cousin (she's 14) loves PewDiePie and talks about him to anyone who is willing to listen. That kind of rabid word of mouth isn't usually something you get from adults, and since PewDiePie is so good at making these kids laugh, they're singing his praises in schools all across the world. That's some seriously powerful marketing.\n\nEDIT #2: Guys, replying to me and saying \"I'm a teenager and I don't like PewDiePie\" means nothing. I'm in my mid twenties and I don't like nor do I use Twitter. Just as well, very few of my friends - who are in their mid-to-late twenties too - use it. However, the fact remains that millions upon millions of people in my age group use and enjoy Twitter. Your personal preference is not necessarily representative of your entire age group.",
" > I find them incredibly childlish and pointless. \n\nThat's his selling point. He is supposed to scream like young girl on a roller coaster. You simply don't expect wits and skills from PewDiePie, all you expect would be those exaggerated reactions. \n\nThe following are also the factors. Bandwagon effect: He has the highest subscribers in youtube which makes more people to visit his channel simply due to the popularity. Attractiveness: Some may say PDP is hot and that would increase his number of subscribers. ",
"Here's a good video from 2013 on the subject, covering both what people are already saying here and some quirks of the YouTube algorithms that helped him out. \n_URL_0_",
"1. YouTube monetizes channels by how long viewers watch and how many videos in a row they watch. So a game play through broken up into 10 minute intervals ranks high on YouTube standards.\n\n2. Felix is considered international by YouTube so he's shown to more countries than if he was just in the US.\n\n3. He knows what his audience wants and gives it to them."
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5mwbo3 | what would deep space look like to the naked eye? | light years away from any star, would space mostly look black or would it be just stars in every direction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mwbo3/eli5what_would_deep_space_look_like_to_the_naked/ | {
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"If you are in interstellar space like halfway between here and alpha Centauri, it would look pretty much like a normal clear moonless (and planet-less) night sky. Without the atmosphere getting in the way the sky view would be a lot clearer, but looking only with your eyes you might not notice that too much. The closest star may look a bit brighter than the rest, but that would be about it.\n\n\nOf course elsewhere in our galaxy it would look different, if you are in a location where stars a closer together, it would look much brighter and if you are in region where there are fewer stars it would look darker.\n\nDeep in intergalactic space, like halfway between here and Andromeda it would like be really, really dark. the only lights you could see would be distant galaxies and not much in the way of lone stars in the sky.",
"Stars in every direction.\n\nThe Apollo astronauts are the only people to have ever been sheltered from both sunlight and reflected earthlight while they were looping around the far side of the Moon. There aren't photographs, but the number of stars visible increased dramatically - compared with Earth orbit - once other light sources were removed."
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2oz0fi | why is the us *still* so wrapped up in overthrowing the castro regime in cuba? | I just read [this article] (_URL_0_) about the US recently trying to infiltrate the Cuban underground hip hop movement to overthrow Raul Castro. I don't understand this. I know historically why the US had bad relations with Cuba, and I know why it can be politically popular for politicians to publicly talk smack about Cuba, but if our intelligence community is executing secret operations against Cuba, we must genuinely think we have something to gain/fear. 2014 Cuba doesn't seem like a threat or an asset, so what is our game? And why did we [deny their aid offer after Hurricane Katrina] (_URL_1_)?? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oz0fi/eli5_why_is_the_us_still_so_wrapped_up_in/ | {
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"I think after housing nuclear weapons pointed directly at the US just off the coast of Florida, probably really messed up our relations for over a hundred years. ",
"People that are still alive from that time period dictate a lot of our foreign policy. 70+ year olds. Also, there's an agining community of people that left Cuba during the revolution that dislike Castro and Communism. They have some sway during election cycles since Florida is an important state in the Electoral System. ",
"Lots of old people still dictate policy, there are displaced rich cubans here in the US that still hold onto the belief that if Castro is kicked out, they can go home and reclaim their lost land and wealth.",
"Mainly because there are still a lot of pissed-off Cubans living in Florida who vote.\n"
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3w3kjy | who decided that vulgar language was vulgar? | F*** could have been the name for a tree, and tree could have been in the place of F***. It doesn't make sense to me. Help me understand please. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w3kjy/eli5_who_decided_that_vulgar_language_was_vulgar/ | {
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"This is a bit like asking who decided what is polite and what is kind and what is mean - they are bound to culture, context and they ebb and flow with social norms. While we can talk about how and why words get put on lists that the MPAA uses in ratings, or that are OK or not OK on broadcast televition, it's nearly impossible to pinpoint the evolution of the meaning of a word, or the change in its interpretation within a culture.",
"This is the same question as why do words have meaning. They are just symbols that represent concepts that common language speakers agree on. Offence is cultural and usually boils down to describing behavior that hurts or embarrasses people. If you got enough people to replace the word tree with fuck while talking it would eventually show up in the dictionary."
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85nlam | why is topology important? | Why is the field of topology important? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85nlam/eli5_why_is_topology_important/ | {
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"Because it is a set of mathematics used in a wide variety of different fields, from biology to physics and computer science.\n\nTopology is the study of how surfaces behave, and how to describe them mathematically. In biology you need that for instance to study how enzymes form, in physics you need it for cosmology, in engineering for material science, in robotics to plan the movements of a robot and so on and so forth.",
"Topology is the study of how things are connected. It affects many aspects of everyday life. To get from one subway station to another on your afternoon commute, for instance, you need to know where to transfer. That’s where topology comes into play. If you model the subway system as a “graph,” which contains a collection of points that represent subway stations and a collection of edges that connect the stations, the topology of the system might tell you that a station that appears on the red line and a station that appears on the green line are actually one and the same. As a result, you can transfer between lines there. You can also use topological methods to study the efficiency of the subway, as well as to learn where to build more stations or where there are bottlenecks at rush hour, etc.\n\nTopology also comes into play if you want to figure out what happens to a model of an object under different conditions. To do that computationally, you have to represent your object with a mesh of triangles. If your object has a hole in it, your mesh should have a hole in it too. To save computational effort, you can use big triangles. As a result, your model will be blocky and not very accurate, but it will be fast to compute. If you are too inaccurate, you might end up closing the holes in your model by mistake. To avoid doing so, you can use topological methods to count and measure the holes in your model, allowing you to make sure that your model matches the object.\n\nThere are topological mysteries about the universe too. Imagine those who thought the Earth was flat. If someone decided to walk forever, he or she might eventually go all the way around the Earth and be surprised to find his or her home again. We know that’s because the Earth is round; it curls around in space and joins up with itself. The connection of the Earth to itself is topological in nature. We don’t know if our entire universe does the same thing. If you traveled outward from Earth for a long enough time, is it possible that you would arrive back at Earth? The answer depends on the large-scale topology of the entire universe.\n\nSpeaking of the Earth, our maps are flat, but our planet is round. This means that every map must sacrifice accuracy in order to make a useful picture that can lay flat on a table or appear on a computer screen. It’s a topological analysis of the map that lets us know what about it is accurate and what is not. The [Mercator projection world map](_URL_0_), for example, shows Greenland to be larger than South America. In reality, South America is about 8.5 times bigger. Yet, the connections between the locations on the map are all correct. That is to say, the map preserves topology at the expense of accurately depicting distances.\n\nAnd finally, topology is important simply as a mathematical puzzle to solve. Sometimes we discover really wild aspects of our own world that match up to these puzzles (such as the 26-dimensional universe that some strands of string theory predict), which topology can help us understand."
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2162im | pigeonhole principle | I was very confused when I heard about this. Hopefully you guys can help! :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2162im/eli5_pigeonhole_principle/ | {
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"Very simple: if you have 10 pigeonholes and 11 pigeons, then you can't put one pigeon in every hole without having at least one hole with two pigeons in it.\n\nGenerally it means that if you try to put M items in N containers where M > N, then at least one container will have at least 2 items.",
"The other explanations are good, but here's a fun example that might illustrate the power. \n\nI claim that there exist, right now, at least two non-bald people in London that have exactly the same number of hairs on their head. I have never been to London and have very little information about it, but I need only two assumptions: (1) there are more than 1 million (non-bald) people in London and (2) no one has more than 1 million hairs.\n\nTo prove it, we make 1 million \"boxes\", labelled with the numbers 1 through 1 million. I put the people in London into these boxes according to the number of hairs on their head - say, if you have 6 hairs, you go in box number 6. \n\nBut because I have more people than I do boxes, the pigeonhole principle says that I must put 2 people into 1 box at some point. But because of how I sorted the people, these must be 2 people with the same number of hairs, and we're done."
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9gyz7h | can wasps get suffocated by dust or are they more vulnerable to heat the bigger they are? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gyz7h/eli5_can_wasps_get_suffocated_by_dust_or_are_they/ | {
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"It would be great if you could provide pictures of the offending creature for identification purposes.\n\nThe bot is making me type sentences in order to make this request. ",
"\"Utter thug of an insect\" - I'm dying.\n\nSeriously though, they can suffocate, but as they require far less oxygen than we do, that usually takes quite a long time. Many insects are sensitive to heat, however. They can't regulate their body temperatures as well as creatures with more advanced circulatory systems, so it may be that the heat from the lamp killed it.\n\nThe other possibility is that it battered itself to death by knocking around in the lamp itself - insects have quite primitive nervous systems, and it's entirely possible that a good enough shake just forced it to \"shut down\". "
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43uz07 | why is it that if we receive 1000 compliments and 1 insult, we focus so much on the insult? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43uz07/eli5_why_is_it_that_if_we_receive_1000/ | {
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"So the question kinda boils down to \"Why are negative emotions more powerful than positive ones?\"\n\nGood question, I'll attempt to explain. \n\nWe have evolved to react more strongly to negative effects, for example, which gets your heart racing more? Seeing a delicious apple in a tree, or seeing a tiger ready to pounce?\n\nIt is due to the way our brains evolved over time was tailored to one specific thing: Avoid Negatives. Naturally, this resulted in a bi-functional need to seek out pleasurable things. Which is more important in your head, finding something delicious to eat, or avoiding that tiger in the bushes?\n\n\nThere's also social structure at work here however, \n\n\nThink about it like this. If you get $5 for your birthday, that's pretty cool, you're happy.\n\nBut if you get $10, and then someone steals $5, now you're upset.\n\nLosing something is more impactful than gaining something of equal value. Being insulted is like losing something, you lost the chance for that person to compliment you, and not only that, not only did they not compliment you, they decided to do the opposite.\n\nA stab in the back, is more painful, than a hug is enjoyable. Basically. Negative emotions feel stronger because, they are. You expect people to be polite and loving, that's just human nature, and when they are not, it is much more of a shock.\n\n",
"My personal experience, compliments are commonly given due to social norms rather than genuine expression of real enjoyment. Insults go against the grain of social norms, and are therefore seen as genuine each and every time. This is what occurs in face to face interaction. You rarely will get an insult to your face. You will often get praise to your face. There are psychological underpinnings here which go back to our hunter-gatherer days.\n\nThe internet is quite different due to the anonymity. A compliment on the internet is more often genuine due to the fact that there is less social pressure to compliment someone while in company with them. Likewise there is more incentive to express insult toward someone you don't like due to the fact of anonymity.",
"Humans are social creatures, evolved to bond in social groups. We are hard-wired to fear being ostracized from the tribe, because for most of mankind's existence, that invariably spelled death.\n\nSo I assume we are finely tuned to sense such threats, in all their various forms. ",
"I think the other explanations on here are overcomplicating things.\n\nSomewhere along the path to receiving 1000 compliments, you become accustomed to it, or desensitized to it; it's not something special anymore. The 1 insult stands out because it's different.\n\nSame concept as why you might be more likely to remember meeting a person with some unusual feature, such as being over 7 feet tall or having multiple facial tattoos, than you would be to remember running into a more \"average\" person.\n\nTo further illustrate my point, imagine the situation posed in your question is reversed: if you receive 1000 insults and 1 compliment, what is it that you remember?"
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3qps41 | how can us judges "order" state governments (and even the federal government, i suppose) to do things? | I keep reading posts/the news lately about how a judge ordered something to happen. - it seems to be more and more prevalent even. And it makes me unsure if I understand the full extent of what a judge can constitutionally do. - many of my friends praise the actions, but some say it is an overreach of their constitutional authority. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qps41/eli5_how_can_us_judges_order_state_governments/ | {
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"In short, Article 6, Clause 2 of the Constitution (commonly known as the Supremacy Clause) established Federal law as the \"supreme law of the land.\" This means that if a State law ever conflicts with a Federal law, the Federal law trumps it and is the one enforced.\n\nThe courts, both State and Federal, are tasked with interpreting the laws of their respected purview. In these cases, a Federal judge is examining a State law and deciding that it is in conflict with a Federal law and ruling that the State law is unconstitutional due to the Supremacy Clause and is thus not to be followed. ",
"/u/Ansuz07 has a good explanation of how federal judges can declare state law void. \n\nAs for ordering around federal governmental officers, courts are tasked with interpreting the law and saying how it's applied. The executive branch has a lot of discretion in how it enforces laws, but if an officer of the federal government is doing something that is clearly against the law (or not doing something that is required), a court can issue an injunction or writ of mandamus ordering them to stop violating the law or to carry out the law.\n\nMost of the court powers aren't in the Constitution and instead come from the English common law (though some may have been codified by statute at this point). Even the Court's most famous power, the power to declare laws unconstitutional, wasn't established until *Marbury v. Madison* in 1803. \n\nThe general idea is that the government can only act legally and if an officer of the government is acting illegally, then it's not really government action. So in theory a judge isn't ordering the government to do something. Rather, a judge determines what the law means and if a government official is acting outside the law, then it's not government action and the court can order them to stop doing whatever it is they're doing (or not doing). So a Court couldn't order Obama to dedicate more money to the War on Drugs, but it could order the FBI to stop racially profiling if it were doing so in a way that was against the law."
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|
2kb695 | are more expensive brands of bottled water (smart water for instance) healthier than others or is it just a marketing ploy? | Today I had my first bottle of smart water and it tasted essentially the same as any other water, so what's the point of paying more? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kb695/eli5_are_more_expensive_brands_of_bottled_water/ | {
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"All marketing. Most branded water is tap water that has been filtered (like Brita filters, nothing fancy). Brand awareness is incredibly powerful.",
"tap water is gov't regulated, bottled water is not.",
"Smart Water has electrolytes added to it. They probably don't justify the extra expense, considering you can add electrolytes to tap water by adding the right amount of salt and sugar, but that's why they charge more for it.\n\nOther kinds of bottled water are expensive because they are imported from specific springs around the world, where the mineral content may give it a unique flavor. Whether it's worth paying money for a subtle difference in taste is pretty subjective. And a lot of it is just marketing. People feel fancier drinking water imported from a French spring, even if there isn't really a difference."
]
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362247 | why/how is a wired internet connection better than a wireless one? | How do they affect ping? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/362247/eli5_whyhow_is_a_wired_internet_connection_better/ | {
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"In any given scenario, there's no guarantee that wired will ALWAYS be better than WiFi. \n\nThat being said, as a general rule, wired will generally give a better experience overall. This is due to the fact that there are far fewer variables at play with a wired connection. With a wired connection, as long as the cable is working properly, the \"physical\" piece of the puzzle is done.\n\nWith WiFi, however, there's a lot more at play in the physical world that can affect the service. The radio has to be transmitting properly, the antenna orientation can be a factor, where you place the wifi transmitter has a huge impact, going through walls and other materials can degrade the signal, etc. \n\nIt's just a much harder problem to solve and relies on overcoming far more physical limitations. \n\nWired is considered better because you get around all of those issues, with the obvious drawback that you're tethered to where ever your wire drop happens to be."
]
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|
5tjbeh | how do generative artificial neural networks work? (ai that "imagines" images) | I have recently seen a [video](_URL_0_) that blew my mind - ANN algorithm generates an image from text description. And then another algorithm increases it's resolution and makes it almost photorealistic.
And then there was the whole deep art thing.
Can you explain how these things work? I'm talking specifically about generative ANNs, not ANNs in general. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tjbeh/eli5_how_do_generative_artificial_neural_networks/ | {
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"It's very hard to explain a neural network in simple terms. But I'll try my best. I'll have to explain the basics of ANNs in general, though.\n\nA neural network works just like the neurons in our brain - actually, the neurons on our brain **are** a huge neural network. Artificial Neural Networks are the digital version of that.\n\nA **neuron** is a cell that receives multiple inputs from other cells, and based on those inputs, outputs something. These inputs have **weights** - some inputs affect the outcome more than others. The neuron basically takes the sum of all the values multiplicated by all the weights, and puts the result into a **windowing function** - a function that takes the value and spits out a number between 0 and 1, or -1 and 1.\n\nANNs can also have multiple **layers** of neurons - that means the output of a neuron goes to the input of other neurons ahead of it, and so on.\n\nNow this is the part of a neural network that's hard to believe - you can train it to recognize or generate pretty much anything. Just like your brain can learn anything, the learning algorithms in an ANN can train it to do anything - but that requires an enormous amount of CPU time and data. By tweaking around the weights of all of the neurons using a very special algorithm, the ANN can learn to produce better and better results.\n\nNow obviously, an ANN works with just a bunch of numbers. That means you sometimes have to pre-process and post-process your data - by assigning names to certain numbers, for example.\n\nAnd now about generative ANNs: Just like we can learn how to paint photorealistic pictures if we train hard enough, a generative ANN can learn to generate images based on descriptions or other images. But the way we generate an image using an ANN is a bit weird - instead of putting parameters to generate an image, we put in an image (which can be white noise, for instance) and use the generated description to tweak the image pixels, so that the description generated by the ANN is closer and closer to the description we expect. And how do we train it? Simple, just put images into it and adjust the weights so that the description is correct."
]
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] | [
[]
] |
|
doyip7 | when you have an allergic reaction, your body often swells up. sometimes, one’s whole body swells. where does the swelling come from? there is only a certain amount of liquid in your body. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/doyip7/eli5_when_you_have_an_allergic_reaction_your_body/ | {
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"f5rfikn"
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"Broadly speaking... Think of it as three different \"compartments\" or \"spaces\" for the fluid in your body. There is the fluid that is inside of your cells. There is the fluid that is circulating inside of your blood vessels as blood/plasma. And there is the fluid in the spaces in between the cells (interstitial space).\n\nWhen your tissues swell up, fluid is leaking out of your blood vessels/capillaries and into the spaces between and around your cells. The medical slang for this is \"third spacing\" and it can happen when your capillary beds get \"leaky.\""
]
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] |
||
37lapk | do bike helmets work or not? | I've been reading up after seeing this new airbag-helmet hybrid, and it appears that bike helmets don't seem to actually save lives, in fact it may actually cause injuries. I'm not too sure about these claims, as it seems like having a solid piece of protection for your head is a good thing. Do we know for sure if they do work or not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37lapk/eli5_do_bike_helmets_work_or_not/ | {
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"Are you referring to motorcycles or bicycles? As someone who rides motorcycles, and has worked with traumatic brain injury patients who refused to wear helmets...I can confirm that motorcycle helmets can help prevent brain injury and save lives.",
"They work, assuming they're worn correctly, and fit properly.\n\nIf they're not worn correctly, or people think they're invincible with their helmet on, then it might cause more damage.",
"I think if you look at this video you get a nice view on what helmets can do _URL_0_ \n\nHelmets do work and they help to protect your head from severe trauma and potential death. ",
"There are different kinds of helmets, you must remember.\n\nThere are helmets that are designed to [stay in tact](_URL_1_) and those that are designed to [break away](_URL_0_).\n\nThe ones that break away are intended for high speed cycling. When you hit your head, the helmet absorbs the impact and then breaks away (which causes more absorption). The ones designed to stay in tact are usually used at lower speeds (BMX, skateboarding, etc) and provide safety through padding.\n\nYou also have to consider that the number of injuries have gone up with the use of helmets *because* the number of deaths has gone down. We've turned those deaths *into* injuries. That's a win, if you ask me.\n\nSome people cite that wearing a helmet makes them feel more distracted and it makes it harder to hear traffic on the road and therefore they end up in more accidents than they normally would have. I've never found this to be the case, personally.\n\nLastly, there's something called the Peltzman Effect - also known as \"risk compensation.\" This shows that when people are given safety equipment, their risky behavior increases. This has been shown a lot in American Football. Because the players wear such big helmets and protective gear, they play more dangerously and use their heads as the point of impact. 50 years ago, football was played with leather padding on the head. Back then, nobody would dream of using their head as the point of impact when playing football because they knew they weren't well protected. Interestingly, the injury and death rate back then (for American Football) was lower than it is now.\n\nPoint being that the added safety may make a cyclist subconsciously take larger risks than they would normally.",
"Absolutely, the helmets themselves are designed and tested and if you are in an accident involving impact to the head they work as designed (if well fitting) and definitely decrease trauma to the body. there is no question about that. \n\n\nNow the debate occurs when you want to look at overall safety increases in biking and not just injuries sustained in an accident, and apply those to helmet laws. there's numerous factors that don't make things clear cut. \n\n* Risk compensation , that bikers will take more risks because they feel safer thus are more likely to have an accident \n* [Drivers drive closer to people who have helemets](_URL_0_), increasing risk\n* Helmet laws cause some people to forgo biking meaning less bikes on the road. this decreases safety since it a) puts more cars out there and b) more bikes means drivers more familiar with sharing the road and gives the bikes greater presence. \n* factors of ill fitting helmets which can cause accidents or other physical factors, blocked view or other discomfort (I wear a helmet but sometimes it causes a sweat buildup in the pads which can blind me if the pad is compressed, ironically making biking more dangerous)\n\n\nso you have to weigh the risks of possibly increased accident with the risks of head trauma being a component of that accident. ",
"Whether helmets protect you from serious injuries or concussions is not something I can comment on - I have seen cyclists after they crashed, both with and without helmets, go either way. It's just not something I have enough experience in to be making an educated statement. \n\nWhat a helmet definitely does, is protect you from lacerations to the scalp, and depending on helmet type probably ears and parts of the face. And while that might seem like a minor thing compared to possible life-threatening injuries... it's not to be underestimated. From the simple amount of discomfort/pain and possible scarring to the risk of infection... could most likely be avoided by wearing a helmet. ",
"There are several issues:\n\n1) Bicycle helmets are strong enough to protect you if you fall off you bicycle, but not if you actually get hit by a car. The helmet manufactures (specifically Snell) say isn't impossible to build a helmet that will actually protect against a car impact. Instead some cities have reduced the speed limit for cars to 30km/h (19mph). None of the helmet standards consider rotation of the head, which we now know is actually more important that direct impact force. Does that mean the extra padding doesn't help in some cases? Obviously not, but the real question is if it helps in enough cases.\n\n2) The data on the effectiveness of bicycle helmets. One of the better summaries of past studies is [Bicycle helmet efficacy: a meta-analysis](_URL_0_) (I know a pdf is hiding somewhere on the web, but I can't find it right now). The problem with that study is that it's from 2001, and it doesn't do particularly good analysis in forming its conclusions. The nice thing is that it shows how 40 studies all trying to measure the same thing get results which not only differ, but differ by so much that there is no overlap in the error ranges. This makes it clear that there are factors like roads, driver and cyclist behaviour/skill, or how the studies are done that are more important than wearing helmets.\n\nOne particularly frequently cited study is \"A case-control study on the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets\". It claims an 85% reduction in head injury due to wearing a helmet. The problem is that the study looked at head injury rates in two different groups: an HMO, and an inner city hospital. The inner city kids were less likely to wear a helmet, but were also cycling in city traffic, and unlikely to go to the hospital for minor injuries, so showed a lot more head injuries per hospital visit.\n\nThere is also a more general problem with comparing two different groups. For example, there is a frequently cited statistic that 40% of all marriages end in divorce. This was calculated by comparing the number of marriages in a give year with the number of divorces. E.g. 27,513 divorces divided by 63,485 marriages, or 43%. Most people think that the number is reasonable so don't question the methodology. If I were to use the same approach with deaths. 85,524 deaths divided by 132,874 births, I would conclude that 64% of births end in death. Since everyone knows that all births end in death eventually, most people will now realize that the methodology is fundamentally flawed. This is part of the reason that no one else has ever seen injury reductions that are nearly as great and why it drives me crazy when I see people mention this study.\n\n3) Healthier people live longer, even if they take some risks. Helmet standards have actually decreased in recent years because the standards bodies have argued that comfort is more important than impact resistance since people are more likely to wear comfortable helmets. taking this to the extreme, there is a lot to suggest that that best helmet is no helmet. When a helmet discourages someone from cycling, kills a bike-share program, or increases the cost of a school cycling program so much that it has to be cancelled (as happened in Australia), then total health care costs actually go up.\n\nBicycle crashes are obvious, but infrequent. Heart disease is subtle, but common. A 3% decrease in heart disease among frequent cyclists more than makes up for any deaths/injuries from cycling. Estimates are between a $0.07-2.14 savings for every km cycled. The reason the range is so large is that at the low end Copenhagen included their large expenditures on building a better cycling infrastructure, while at the high end New Zealand just looked at reductions in health care spending and road maintenance (apparently bikes are easier on the roads than cars), but no new infrastructure.\n\n4) If you look at cyclist and pedestrian fatalities, they almost always increase or decrease together. And it's changes in speed limits, traffic laws or enforcement, and driver education that change this, not helmet laws (Japan even tested walking helmets for school children and found they had no effect).\n\n5) There may be different benefits for children as opposed to adults who are more skilled and cautious cyclists. the British Cycling Association tracks injuries and deaths of their members and has statistics that show they are safer than walking or driving per km travelled.\n\nI can provide sources for pretty much everything if you want, but I don't have my notes with me. A few web sites that cover some of this are _URL_1_ and _URL_2_\n(I haven't really looked through what political or financial bias those sites may have, but they at least seem to be discussing the right issues)."
]
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],
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"http://i.imgur.com/cAjg7Lr.jpg",
"http://i.imgur.com/Hs2nClt.jpg"
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"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/"
],
[],
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"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11235796",
"http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/hfaq.html",
"http://www.sharetheroad.ca/what-are-the-financial-benefits-of-cycling--s16222"
]
] |
|
8aqqt0 | why does diet soda freeze more quickly than regular soda does? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8aqqt0/eli5_why_does_diet_soda_freeze_more_quickly_than/ | {
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"I'd assume the sugar in the regular soda reduces the temperature the soda freezes at so therefore a diet soda freezes at a higher temperature.",
"It’s probably due to the facr that the sugar concentration in the diet coke is less making it less dense and have a higher freezing point where as the regular soda has it lower.",
"I think you need to provide some kind of evidence that your claim is even true... I’m not convinced it does."
]
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3h382d | how are mushrooms comercially produced? | I understand that mushrooms are a fungus and grow on dead stuff, but how are the mushrooms I buy in the store grown? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h382d/eli5_how_are_mushrooms_comercially_produced/ | {
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"You can grow those in regular dirt. I have some in my garden. All they need is enough moist ground, calcium etc. ",
"Check out this quick video showing how they're grown: (from How It's Made: _URL_0_ ",
"I have a friend who commercially produces portabello mushrooms. He starts with 15 pound sterile blocks of substrate which looks like peat and manure, inoculates them with a syringe filled with spores in distilled water; after the mycellium fully colonizes the block, he adjusts the humidity in the grow room and the blocks begin to fruit. ",
"Follow up question why can't we grow morels in a similar way?",
"I grew commercial white and brown mushrooms for 12 years on a farm in Scotland that produces around 200,000kg of mushrooms a week. As with most farms these days the crops are grown on metal shelves in either long poly tunnels or more substantial cement block. There is typically three or four rows of shelving each with three or four levels. The shelves can be upto 40m long and 1.3m wide. The mushrooms are grown on a combination of compost and a thin casing layer that sits on top of the compost. The compost was supplied to us by a specialist company and its made of straw, chicken or horse manure and some gypsum. Once the compost has been processed the mushroom mycelium is added via inoculated grains of wheat to the mix. The casing soil is usually bog peat, if you try and grow mushrooms without the casing layer the mycelium will never fruit. When the raw ingredients are delivered we filled the shelve with an awesome machine that combined the raw materials consistently in perfect layers on the shelves. Once the filling is complete we used sophisticated computer controlled air conditioning to simulated growing environments to encourage the mycelium to do what we want at each stage of development. While this is happening we also add water for the first four or five days. If we did everything correctly the first crop is ready for harvesting after about fifteen days after filling. A house will produce three flushes of mushrooms over a thirty day period the the house is emptied cleaned and refilled. I'm on my phone in the bath (now cold) and this is my very first post so please forgive any mistakes."
]
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c1kbuo | how can i use the touchscreen of my phone even after putting on a screen guard or a protective mirror on meaning i’m not directly touching the touch screen? | Edit: Protective glass, not mirror. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1kbuo/eli5_how_can_i_use_the_touchscreen_of_my_phone/ | {
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"There are 2 types of touch screens, 1 of them works by touch, the other one is more complicated one.\n\nPhones use the more complicated solution, as this allows you to use a nice looking glass screen.\n\nMultiple times a second, your phone sends an electric signal on an layer behind the screen, starting in an corner, and then detects it at the other corners.\\*\n\nSince electricity is predictable, the signal always comes in at the same voltage and time.\n\nThis changes when you hold your finger near the the touchscreen, because your finger will alter the electric field, and change the voltages received at the other ends of the screen, then the device applies a smart calculation to see where you touched the screen.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\* In most phones, the way this gets done is even more complicated, as most phones support multi touch, see [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)"
]
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive\\_sensing",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitive_sensing"
]
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|
avsa5r | what exactly does the variance of a data set tell someone? | Let's say you're trying to determine how calibrated people are at measuring a specific objective. When all the results are measured, what exactly does the variance of the data set mean? How is this different than the Standard Deviation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/avsa5r/eli5_what_exactly_does_the_variance_of_a_data_set/ | {
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"Variance is a measurement of how spread out the data is. There's a old joke about three statisticians firing at a target. The first guy misses 2 feet to the left. The second guy misses 2 feet to the right. The third guy says \"I hit it!\" While their average shot is in the middle, the variance of their shots is very high. \n\nVariance and standard deviation are closely interrelated. Standard deviation is the square root of the variance. ",
"Why is it necessary to find out the square root of the variance (standard deviation)? "
]
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[],
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2a4r3e | why do i pick up radio frequencies when i touch a speaker jack | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a4r3e/eli5_why_do_i_pick_up_radio_frequencies_when_i/ | {
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"It's not radio frequencies (or so I hope).\n\nfrom a [similar ELI5:](_URL_0_)\n > \nWhat the speaker is picking up is not the electricity your body produces, it is picking up current from the rest of the house. ... the phenomenon is known as AC Hum. The tone you hear is a very weak 60Hz signal coming from the power lines, and passing through your body. In continental Europe, you would hear a lower frequency 50Hz hum.",
"Everyone else here clearly doesn't understand what you are saying. \n\nI have experienced this too. It happens to certain speaker systems. The wires going from speaker to speaker are sometimes just the right length to pick up on some frequencies. \n\nInstalling extra **ferrite bead's** should stop the issue. ",
"It turns into an antenna. I had the same problem. Living near a radio tower, my guitar amp would pick up classical music plugged in, no mater what I did."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16hnnr/why_does_touching_the_jack_of_my_speaker_make/"
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||
3l3zec | how do people buy multi-million dollar homes? | I don't understand how one would even go about financing a multi-million dollar home. Do people exclusively play cash for these homes? If so, does that mean their net worth is so great that they can afford to invest such an obscene amount of money in one investment (vs diversification of other markets)?
If these homes are financed, how does that go? What's it like to close escrow on a $10M asset?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l3zec/eli5_how_do_people_buy_multimillion_dollar_homes/ | {
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"They are usually mortgaged the same way most homes are. Even if someone has millions of dollars and is capable of paying cash for their home, they would mortgage it because the money can instead be invested for a larger return that more than makes up for the mortgage interest over the length of the term.",
"I know someone who lives in a $4M home. They put $625K down (profit from sale of previous property)and were able to finance the rest on a 15 year mortgage. Interest was 2.85% as long as they set up an auto-pay. It's pretty much the same as mere mortals, just on a bigger scale. ",
"Compare percentage of 10 million to a billionaires worth. Compare what the average homeowner makes per year compared to what they owe on a house. Which is obscene?"
]
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[],
[],
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|
a2atnv | why does the sunlight feel hotter on somedays and otherdays you cant even feel its heat when sunlight touches you. | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2atnv/eli5_why_does_the_sunlight_feel_hotter_on/ | {
"a_id": [
"eawlpyn"
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"text": [
"Mostly humidity. When there's a lot of water in the air it reflects and refracts a lot of the light which makes it not as intense and directed (side note- water is the single largest contributor to the greenhouse effect) On a day with very low humidity the light hits your skin directly with relatively low resistance."
]
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[]
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|
21ty3j | why are prisons fully-funded while schools are under-funded? | Clarification: many schools are forced to cut programs due to budget constraints and children often can't afford to buy a hot lunch... in contrast, most prisoners are provided with completely free educations and free meals. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21ty3j/eli5_why_are_prisons_fullyfunded_while_schools/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Could you explain what exactly you mean by \"full-funded\" and \"under-funded\" in this context. There are also TONS of prisons and TONS of schools and they are all funded in different ways, so could you be more specific about what you're referring to.",
"They are all funded in that they operate. Im sure there are prisons that would love more money to operate. Seeing as many of them are overcrowded they need money to expand. They arent getting it and thus you could call that underfunded. Schools arent all under funded, many do have money. They have enough funding to operate but ideally they need more for new textbooks etc. \n\n\nBasically there is no real under funded or fully funded here. Prisons and schools could always use more money to better what they do. They both have things they wish they had more money for. However they are both funded enough to operate."
]
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[],
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d6tm10 | why does usa have a terrible social security system even though it's one of the wealthiest countries in the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d6tm10/eli5_why_does_usa_have_a_terrible_social_security/ | {
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"text": [
"Greed, Lobbying (Legalized Bribery) to Lawmakers to keep it that way. The Social Security system also is by design unwilling to pay benefits until 65 years old (Or unless you win in court when they deny benefits)",
"Money. Private companies have spent a lot of money and time over the past few decades for politicians to deregulate that industry and allow private companies free reign. Over time, greed takes over and these private companies can keep pushing the boundary to see what they can get away with, and apparently there is a number amount for politicians to stop caring and giving these companies stupid amounts of profit.",
"'I dont believe the rich should be taxed cause I plan to be rich one day.'\n\nThat's the general idea of it anyways. We are a screw you I got mine culture",
"Politics and society, American society is based around self reliance and the individual, basically people are responsible for their own situation more in America than other societies. This attitude has been reinforced by some politicians associating social policies with communism meaning that even what would be considered normal policies are rejected. - _URL_0_",
"Because when people are poor they have to accept worse and worse offers of employment. Someone who is financially independent can walk away from any deal that is unfair. Someone who owns a house and has 6 months of savings can walk away from really bad. Someone who can't go 1 month without income has to accept literally any offer no matter how tilted the allocation of the value created from a deal.",
"I think it's from a dysfunctional political system, and by that I don't mean that the people who are politicians are dysfunctional. I think that a system in which you have to equally opposed sides is not very functional. In a system in which you had to form a coalition to form a government on a regular basis you would have more of a mandate to accomplish something. Instead we have a very even tug of war. The first amendment is also problematic in allowing undue financial influence in policy making.\n\nIf the US were to start over, I think it would be irrational not to form a parliamentary system.\n\nThe systems we do have in place came from a time of desperation—from the Great Depression. Many of our social safety nets, our regulations, etc. come from the 1930s and have not been expanded since. Our legislative branch is so dysfunctional that many of the advancements in basic modernity (from integrating schools to same sex marriage) you've seen in the last century have been decrees from the Supreme Court. It's about as coherent a political system as ancient tribes going to wise sages and asking their opinions or going to an oracle. Their role has become oversized because of how dysfunctional the legislative branch is."
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d3to5n | people who buy domains and sell them for a lot of money if they get huge traffic, how do they do it? how does it work. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3to5n/eli5_people_who_buy_domains_and_sell_them_for_a/ | {
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"What exactly do you mean by \"selling if they get huge traffic\"? \n\nBuying domains is quite cheap, all you need to do is find a few unique domain names that *might* take off big in the future, and buy them up and sit on them until someone (or some company) decides they want to use that domain. They then would contact you and attempt to work a deal to purchase that domain. \n\nThat said, a domain name itself usually doesn't get \"huge traffic\". For traffic to come in there usually needs to be content that people use. So something like Reddit for example, would have been created and relatively worthless to start, but as it became popular the website *and* domain became worth quite a bit of money. \n\nAlternatively, if you predict a domain name that a company might want to purchase in the future based on content they create or publish or whatever, you can buy that domain ahead of time and sit and wait to see if you're prediction was right.....your guess might be wrong but all it takes is selling a single domain for a few thousand to fund buying hundreds of other domains for a few years. That kind of purchase is quite small to most entities looking to buy the domain.",
"Go register a domain name. In fact go register 1000 names. Pick good ones that are interesting and you think companies would find valuable.\n\nWait until some company thinks it's valuable enough to pay you for it. Cash out."
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5efaxh | what goes on chemically in a wire that allows a certain signal to be transferred? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5efaxh/eli5_what_goes_on_chemically_in_a_wire_that/ | {
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"A wire is a conductive material, which means that electrons are able to freely pass from one atom to another. It's most helpful to think of electron flow as a tube filled with say marbles, and every time you push a new marble into one side of the tube another falls out the other side basically immediately. This is more accurate than an example where you have an empty tube and you roll a marble all the way down the tube. So when no electricity is flowing, like if you have a light switch turned off, all of the atoms are holding on to all of the electrons they can hold. As soon as you start to force electrons into one side of the wire, then you start a flow of electrons that continue to flow through the wire and to whatever device you are powering. The copper or whatever metal acts sort of like a bucket brigade at that point. \n\nNot a chemical reaction, all of the reaction occurs either between the chemicals in a battery or in a power plant. \n\nIf you have any follow up questions let me know! \n"
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2ba3kw | evolutionary purpose of clothing? | Most of us dress everyday without asking questions. I imagine we do because we picked it up watching others but then why did those around us start it in the first place?
Couldn't find any other substantial/scientific answers in other subreddits. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ba3kw/eli5_evolutionary_purpose_of_clothing/ | {
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"Clothes obviously were an invention that increased our survival rate. It provides warmth, shelter from the sun and can be in the form of armour to protect against other humans or animals.\n\nWe continue to wear it today due to the benefits of warmth, protection from sun, social norms and for the sake of modesty. Make no mistake, there is nothing mysterious about the origins of clothing.\n\nEdit: /u/wagglebush makes an interesting suggestion of mate selection, similar to birds creating nests to impress mates. This is an interesting point that may have been a factor too.",
"A few reasons:\n\n1. Keep us warm.\n2. Protection from the sun.\n3. Protection from your enemy's weapons.\n4. Improve your chances of finding a mate.\n5. Support your dude parts. Some guys need support.",
"I'd imagine it was to keep the body warm in the winter, and covered from the sun during weather, shoes to protect the feet. Mostly environmental protection. There's probably a lot of historical speculation on this, but that's my best guess.",
"Clothes \n\n- Allowed us to move to new places, expanding out of our cradle of civilization. Putting on animal skins enabled us to better endure cold and protect our babies. We could function for more of the year and do things like gather food and leave our shelters in the bitterest of conditions, if not giving us a competitive edge, at least putting us on equal footing with the local mammals.\n\n- Allowed us to avoid some injuries. In the fight for life a bad scratching from thorn bushes or a horrible rash from sliding down a rockface can be deadly, leading to infections or more blood loss than if some of that skin is unbroken or preserved. \n\n- Allowed us to carry more things. Pockets and pouches and sleeves meant more places to put something portable like firemaking equipment or knives or root-digging implements. \n\n- Protected us from the sun as our own skin variations came into play and we lost body hair.\n\nAnd finally, became a means of communication by allowing us to recognize roles in society despite different languages. The shaman of a tribe, its war leader, and its poor worker caste weren't hard to pick out, and that helped lend groups of humans a structure for their culture and society that helped with complex interactions outside of their tribe."
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a1z62k | why do broken bones need 4-6 weeks in a cast when no pain after 2? | ELI5: as the title says. How come broken bones such as wrists and ankles etc need to be in a cast for 4-6 weeks when there is no pain after only a 2 or so weeks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1z62k/eli5_why_do_broken_bones_need_46_weeks_in_a_cast/ | {
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"The break is still there. It takes time for cell division to happen across the whole bone to heal. Even after it is healed take it easy because the bone will be weak around the break.",
"It takes time. We're not marvels wolverine. We can't even heal in days. It takes weeks. But fresh out the cast, myself I give it a few, 3-4, weeks extra staying really easy with it. I don't wanna risk that crap again."
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8ck9s5 | what’s the reasoning behind the existence of school uniforms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ck9s5/eli5_whats_the_reasoning_behind_the_existence_of/ | {
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"Kids don’t have to worry about looking cool and having their socioeconomic status on display. People will have to get to know you to judge you instead of what you wear.",
"When I was in school it was to keep kids from getting picked on for not being able to buy trendy clothes",
"Uniforms are an equalizer- kids already have a nasty habit of self segregating based on erroneous things- i imagine its to prevent these from happening ",
"It evens the playing field for kids that come from poorer families because everyone is wearing the same thing. Also, in my school it forced parents to buy weather appropriate clothes for their kids or the school would help provide them. In another school in my area each grade had a different color shirt they were required to wear so it was easier for the teachers to know where they were supposed to be.",
"School uniforms can be used for a variety of reasons:\nIn larger gang-filled-towns uniforms can be used to make members of gangs less clear (in a previous school they were so against uniforms but afraid of gangs that you couldnt even wear pants that were not of Blue, Black or Kahki color.)\n\nDecreasing bullying because of different clothes in schools.\n\nAnd not worrying about dress codes.\n\nThere could be a variety of different reasons, the last two are the most brought up ones but I have personal experience with the first scenario."
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489t21 | why can't our brains comprehend the fact that space is infinite? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/489t21/eli5_why_cant_our_brains_comprehend_the_fact_that/ | {
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"Well, for starters we're still not 100% certain that it is. There's a pretty good chance it is, but we can't categorically prove it yet.\n\nSecondly, the percentage of human history that we've spent contemplating such ideas is very small. Modern humans have existed for, roughly speaking, 200,000 years. For the vast majority of that time we have been preoccupied with the basics of survival.\n\nThose individuals who survived to pass on their genes were the ones who were good at surviving the hazards of their environment, finding sufficient food and water, attracting a suitable mate, and raising suitable, successful offspring.\n\nNone of those activities required our brains to become intimately acquainted and comfortable with the concept of infinity. Our brains needed to be good at other, much more mundane stuff, which is why so much of advanced science \"doesn't make sense\" - at a fundamental level they aren't the kinds of ideas we're wired to deal with on a natural, instinctive level.\n\nIt's only since our cultures have developed to the point that day to day survival is not really a concern that we have the luxury of stretching our big grey muscle in the direction of the more complex parts of our existence. Kinda hard to find time to develop higher mathematics when you have to also worry about becoming something else's dinner...",
"There's just nothing comparable in our daily life. And the problem doesn't start at the infinite space. It starts a lot smaller: the size of a country, the size of a continent and the size of the world are hard to comprehend. Even worse the distance to moon or mars. \n\n\nI don't think many people really comprehend what it means that mars is on average 200 000 000 km away. That's a 23 year journey by car. And that is just our nearest neighbor in space. \n\n\nWant to visit the next solar system, alpha centauri? On the Autobahn in a good Mercedes that would only take you about 5,000,000,000 years. That's about the age of the earth. That means as far as we know humanity will never get there, we'll never meet alien life even if it exists in the next solar system. \n\n\nFor us humans the space around our solar system is infinite, you'll be able to go straight forever. Just understanding the scale of things right around us is almost impossible, comprehending the scale of a infinite Universe is impossible, because it's so far outside our comfort zone. Even if you know those facts it's impossible to imagine the scale of the universe, maybe some people can, but i definitely can't and i did try a lot. \n\n\nI guess comprehending infinity isn't that bad, space just keeps going. On the other hand it's really hard or even impossible to comprehend what that really means. Maybe the meaning of an infinit space is more a philosophical question, because humanity will always be stuck in a very limited space in that universe. ",
"Infinity is a concept. In a way, we understand it for what it is: an idea.\n\nRegarding the fact we can't **visualise** infinity has to do with the way our brain is made. Humans are different to other species because our brain is slower, to be able to process a huge amount of data brought by our senses. The real thing that sets us appart is : \"Pattern Recognition\". Images, shapes, sounds, words, texture and all other patterns are processed so we can recognise what we're dealing with when our senses send us input.\n\nNow, when we try to visualise infinity, we can't simply \"keep going\". Our brain doesn't accept an \"infinite pattern\", because it was made for finite patterns, such as shapes or quantities.\nWe can't even visualise huge quantities or huge numbers without having a scale to rationalise with patterns. For example we use Football Fields, Solar Masses, Light Years and others to scale up or down the units to compare an object to.\n\nSo we understand infinity but we can't visualise it, same way we can't visualise \"Nothing\" or \"Emptyness\". Our brain needs a definite pattern to hold on to.\n\nI hope this is clear enough.",
"Funny enough, if space was finite (yet to prove), then our brains couldn't comprehend it either since the first question that comes to mind is \"if it finishes, what lies farther ?\"\n\nWell, if the space is finite, there's no \"farther\", and this is to me, even more mind-boggling that an infinite universe."
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8ezidr | why would mining asteroids be lucrative? what resources could we find on asteroids that are rare enough on earth to not only make mining asteroids viable, but profitable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ezidr/eli5_why_would_mining_asteroids_be_lucrative_what/ | {
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"I believe, that IF we develop the ability to mine Asteroids, then we help Save the Big Blue Marble, by NOT Raping Her anymore than we have already. Hope this helps...",
"Its not that they are rare on earth. Its that they are difficult to extract on earth.\n\nTake gold for example. Its large density and chemical nonreactivity made most of Earth's share sink down deep into the core of the earth back when it was forming. Gold isn't actually particularly rare in nature, just rare on the surface of a large planet. I would expect it should have about the same abundance as lead in the universe.\n\nAnd one should remember we only have a small chunk of mass on earth with which to play with, only the stuff at the surface. And it doesn't help that a sphere has the lowest surface area to volume ratio of all 3D figures.\n\nThis is less of a problem on asteroids who have no core to deal with.",
"There are metallic asteroids holding Billions of dollars worth of platinum group metals in them. On Earth you need to move literal tons of ore to find ounces of platinum. But these asteroids are much, much more dense with the good stuff, so once you have access you can pull tons of platinum at a time instead of just ounces.",
"Mining asteroids is also great if you want metal in space, like to build a space station or moon base or something. It is so expensive to lift stuff off of the earth. It’s way better if you can find what you need already up there. ",
"Some elements are really heavy and or reactive. \nOn Earth they get so heavy they sink to the mantle over time, or get bonded to stuff that is heavy enough to sink. \nWe have to get lucky for a geological process to bring some up to where we can mine it. \nAn asteroid doesn't sink anywhere, it's in space. \nSo all those elements can be found in the asteroid. \n \nIn particular Iridium would be much easier to get, most of the stuff we have was gotten from asteroids that hit the Earth long ago. \nWe could just go up and snag one and skip the wait. ",
"Everyone has mentioned valuable metals but there is also the rarer gasses. Right now Earth has a helium shortage and it's difficult to acquire more helium because it tends to get dispersed in the atmosphere. A nice frozen chunk of helium could be worth a pretty penny as helium becomes more valuable. "
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694xin | why do particle accelerators have to be so long? why can't the same speeds be achieved with a smaller circle? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/694xin/eli5_why_do_particle_accelerators_have_to_be_so/ | {
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"Think of it like a NASCAR race. If they were to hold it in a very small parking lot, they would be constantly turning, and have to go very slow.\n\nYou can then move it to a very large parking lot, and now you can go faster.\n\nIf you can build a race track, you can go even faster.\n\nThe reason you can go faster is because turning takes away energy. You simply can not go as fast when you are using up energy to constantly turn. You could build a straight track, and get higher speeds, and that idea has been proposed. The downside is you send to particles at each other, and they pass each other once. In a circular track they pass each other thousands of times a second, so you get more collisions. ",
" > Why can't the same speeds be achieved with a smaller circle?\n\nMaking a smaller circle means that you have to bend your beam harder, which requires stronger bending magnets. Additionally, losses to synchrotron radiation increase rapidly with decreasing radius. This is important for light particles like electrons, where synchrotron losses are already going to be high.",
"Swing a yoyo around at its full length. Now pull in some of the length while still swinging it. The yoyo will more quickly complete individual rotations, and so in a radial sense it is moving faster. But you will notice that the force on that string holding that yoyo to its circular is getting larger.\n\nCentripetal force is the one in question, it is equal to (mass) times (velocity)^2 over (radius). So as the radius gets smaller the force required gets greater.\n\nNow, imagine you accelerate your yoyo until it is moving near the speed of light. Not likely, right? Of course not. The tension would get way too much for simple string really soon. As a matter of fact, it'd get way too much for any material really to hold a yoyo in place well before it even got into that ballpark of speed.\n\nA particle accelerator works with subatomic particles, those that can't be broken down further en masse, so their masses are very small. The interesting velocities are necessarily very large, because when you smash together particles that are moving very, very fast, interesting things happen. But so great is the velocity that we cannot afford to \"reel in the yoyo\" if you will with a smaller radius, or we could not produce a great enough force, and the particle would do as a yoyo does when its string snaps."
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27wdih | luxury cars. | What makes them different than standards cars, like a Civic or a Corolla? Why do they cost so much more? What exactly are you paying for when you buy a luxury car? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27wdih/eli5_luxury_cars/ | {
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"A lot of it is the features you can get, like heated and cooled seats, auto-dimming mirrors, sat nav, and things of that sort. The other main difference is honestly just more sound insulation to make it a quieter ride. ",
"I test drive a toyota\n\nThen I test drive a similar Lexus\n\nI can feel the difference in the handling, the control, the throttle, the build quality of every minute detail. There is an element of paying for the logo, but there is no question that there is a build quality difference. \n\nThink of the difference as like building a computer, you can go 75% of the worlds fastest for $500, 85% for $1000, 90% for $2000, and 95% for $5000. The same is true with car build quality. The luxury wont do more, it'll just do the same things in a nicer way, but there is a diminishing return for your money for each step up."
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dj1me6 | why can keloids form around new piercings? are there any non-surgical methods for removing keloids? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dj1me6/eli5_why_can_keloids_form_around_new_piercings/ | {
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"Normally the body has a response to any kind of injury, like piercings--you get a bunch of white blood cells to the area to clean out any bacteria/debris, and then special cells called fibroblasts show up to build out scar tissue (made mostly of collagen) to seal up the wound. Keloids happen when this goes a bit crazy--way too many fibroblasts show up and they make way too much stuff, leading to a big scar out of proportion to the injury.\n\nBottom line is we don't know why exactly this happens. There's probably some genetic basis, since they're much more common in Black and Asian people than other ethnicities/races.\n\nThere's no universal gold standard of treatment, but injecting anti-inflammatory corticosteroids into the scars is commonly done, as is cryotherapy (freezing them off) and using silicone gels/sheets and compression (the last two have mixed evidence). Surgery is usually only used you can't get them another way."
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1ealu9 | why do states so often switch out designs for their license plates? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ealu9/eli5_why_do_states_so_often_switch_out_designs/ | {
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"As technology advances so do license plates. Better reflective materials. Color combinations that have been proven to aid readability. Fonts that are easier to recognize with automatic plate readers for toll collection and police enforcement. Numbers printed on instead of stamped in."
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64yljf | why are people so long is space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64yljf/eli5_why_are_people_so_long_is_space/ | {
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"It cost a LOT to send people into space, around $400 million per mission to the ISS. It's not cost effective to do more rotations on the missions and wouldn't offer much more benefits. Studying how people in space long term effects their growth and ability is very important if we want to send people to Mars or further as they will have to be in space for a very long time."
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22xrrx | how are youtube channels like 'honest trailers' and 'cinemasins' able to operate without copyright issues? | As the title says, I would like to know how certain Youtube channels that directly use content from big movies are able to do it without any copyright issues, and especially since they're earning ad revenue from the videos.
Given that Youtube already has very sophisticated algorithms in-place to detect any copyright infractions, so there has to be something else at play with these channels.
* CinemaSins (_URL_0_)
* Screen Junkies / 'Honest Trailers' (_URL_1_)
I understand how this would be allowed for Trailer-focused channels, because Movie Trailers are supposed to be spread around the web, but using the whole movie's content at will like these two channels do seems like it could cause issues with copyright. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22xrrx/eli5_how_are_youtube_channels_like_honest/ | {
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"Fair use stipualtions allow you to use their content for parody, comment and the like. As long as you're not earning money off their work you're good really. (CinamaSins and similar channels aren't about the movies, it's about the critiscism/content/parody so it's the original work of the creators of the channel that's the draw.)",
"Basically, there are at least two ways this could be done (legally; illegally, there are other ways).\n\nThe channels' use of the content may, under US law, be considered \"fair\". This, however, isn't easy to prove: contrary to popular belief, it isn't automatically fair use if it's supposed to be a parody or if it has extra commentary. If the dispute went to court, the court would have to make a decision by weighing up four different criteria. If it truly is a parody (and merely something that *calls* itself a parody but is actually something else, like a satire -- this is the basis on which Constantin pulled several so called \"Downfall parodies\"), it stands a *good chance* of being found to be \"fair use\".\n\nThe other posibility is that the copyright owners have given their permission, and they may or may not have asked for money for this permission. But the point of copyright law is that it is up to the copyright owner to decide whether or not take legal action. If a copyright owner says, \"Yeah, that's good, we're cool with that,\" no complaint is filed and nothing happens to the video.\n\nRegarding the automated Content ID system, what it doesn't do is somehow magically detect copyright infringement. Rather, if you, say, have a video you want protected by Copyright ID, you have to register it with the system by uploading a reference file (basically a high quality version of the material you want protected plus some other bits and pieces) and telling YouTube what policy you want to be applied to videos containing that material: nothing at all, track only (you get viewing stats for matched videos), track and monetize (you get advertising revenue), mute or block.\n\nLet's say you've given me permission to use a clip from your video in one of mine. I make the video and upload it, and the automated Content ID system detects the match. I now have the option of using YouTube's \"dispute\" option on the match, or simply sending you an e-mail with my video's URL. You can then review my video and then release your claim on it. To prevent the same thing from happening again, you can pro-actively whitelist my channel so we don't have to go through the whole rigmarole every time I upload something."
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d1i3s9 | the cmb is expected to appear isotropic i.e. the same in all directions. as we observe it, it isn't - there's a dipole contribution such that it's hotter in one half of the sky and cooler in the other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d1i3s9/eli5_the_cmb_is_expected_to_appear_isotropic_ie/ | {
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"The CMB is in fact very even from all directions. Surprisingly so. But on the raw data, it will appear hotter in one direction and cooler in the other, because of red- and blue-shift caused by the motion of earth (and the galaxy) through local space.",
"This is due to the Doppler effect. The solar system and galaxy is currently moving relative to material in the early universe. Or it was moving relative to the Earth's current motion. According to the Principle of General Relativity, either viewpoint is equally valid. This motion is, however, much less that the overall speed that the universe is expanding.\n\nThis motion was acquired some time in the cosmological past. In the same way the earth moves relative to the sun, the Earth's motion was acquired as the solar system formed"
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7qnwrn | how can large animals exist in environments filled with poisonous and venomous wild life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7qnwrn/eli5_how_can_large_animals_exist_in_environments/ | {
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"Sure, some animals die from bites/stings/infections..etc, but so do humans. Animals obviously know not to eat plants that will kill them, and they avoid venomous animals whenever possible.There aren't armies of venomous snakes and spiders and scorpions going around killing everything in site just for the fun of it. Animals and plants are poisonous or venomous for a reason; it's either a defense mechanism or a way to capture food."
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||
61inp7 | why do we pinch and twist our faces when we doing things with a lot of force | Example: opening a glas of jam, lifting something heavy, grabing something out of our reach
Especialy mouth and eyes are affected alot. We also seem to tend to make noises and then release them when the job is done. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61inp7/eli5_why_do_we_pinch_and_twist_our_faces_when_we/ | {
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"Trying to use every muscle possible to move or lift stuff . We grunt to breath because we forget ",
"When you're exerting yourself, it's just instinct to tighten up every muscle whether or not they're being used.\n\nSecond, humans are social creatures so we evolved in a way that our facial expressions often represent how we're feeling, so it's only natural to assume that we would show some expression of exertion on our faces when lifting things."
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c5lqtv | drinking laws and ages | In some countries you can drink at 16. I know that is generally beer and possibly wine. But not hard alcohol. Is this true and why so? Also I am going to Italy. How would it work over there? Thank you | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c5lqtv/eli5_drinking_laws_and_ages/ | {
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"I think only Northern Europe countries make distinction between beer and hard alcohol in regards to age, Italy is 18 for everything. \nAlso drinking itself isn't illegal usually, it's selling/serving alcohol to minors, if parents buy for them nobody will care."
]
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[]
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|
970hnt | inmarsat’s role in malaysia airlines flight 370 | After the plane was lost from radar contact, how did inmarsat function to make “handshakes” hourly with the plane? what exactly is a “handshake”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/970hnt/eli5_inmarsats_role_in_malaysia_airlines_flight/ | {
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"Inmarsat is a satellite network. basically every once in a while the satellite asked \"Hey you still there\" and the plane sent a thumbs up. That is all that is required for an electronic handshake, just an acknowledgement of connection, a '1' sent, and a '1' sent back (though usually a little bit more).",
"Oh, one I can finally help with!\n\nSo Inmarsat is a satellite company. Their satellites provide a ton of communication and data collection for all types of agencies/companies, but in this case Inmarsat was communicating with the aircraft. Basically this just means the satellite was communicating periodically with the plane (more importantly, the plane’s Satellite Data Unit, or SDU). The SDU and satellite exchange signals every so often (the “handshake” or “ping”) and the satellite collects the info from the exchange and relays it back to the ground. \n\nNow, when the plane lost contact with radar, this did not turn off the SDU. In fact, Inmarsat continued to receive those satellite pings from the aircraft for about another 6 or 7 hours. This is how they knew that the plane was still flying, or at least operational- the SDU couldn’t communicate after all if the plane had crashed. \n\nIn terms of how they managed to get an estimated flight path of the aircraft from those pings is a lot more math and science than I can cover here, because the pings themselves did not contain this information. But it basically involves calculating the position of the satellite at the time of the pings, and the frequency of the pings. But that’s very very dumbed down. \n\nEdit: words and things"
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9vohzp | how do they move zoo animals in emergency situations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vohzp/eli5_how_do_they_move_zoo_animals_in_emergency/ | {
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"text": [
"With lots of sedation drugs, big flatbeds or enclosed containers, lots of coordination. Nothing moves fast."
]
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[]
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||
fkxxdt | - why does a 4 cylinder motorcycle engine sound different to a 4 cylinder car engine? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fkxxdt/eli5_why_does_a_4_cylinder_motorcycle_engine/ | {
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"Bore and stroke. Bikes have a smaller bore and shorter stroke. Most motorcycles engines are 600-1300cc (4 cyclinder motorcycles). And most 4 cylinder cars are 1.8-2.6 liter (1800-2600cc). They don’t rev as high as the rotating mass of a bike engine has less rotational inertia.",
"Sound suppression is a huge part of it as well. Cars have massively more exhaust hanging on them, and the engine is tucked away. Motorcycles have quite short exhausts and aren't particularly well known for running intentionally quiet. The exposed engine also let's you hear all the gear whine and clakety clack of various parts. If you bogged a bike down with all that, the differences would be much less obvious, and more like why a boxer sounds different than an I4, all else being equal.",
"I would like to add that motorcycles by necessity have a shorter and simpler exhaust system, and more interest from the designers in creating an interesting or emotive noise, compared to a Toyota Corolla.",
"The engine note will have a lot to do with whether the cylinders are in an I4 or V4 configuration, the angle of the V, the firing order, and how the cylinders are collected in the exhaust manifold. All this will have a great effect on when an exhaust pulse is released into the exhaust system and how it travels down and exits to where you hear the note. Additionally, cars are far more likely to have a flat-four configuration, which is relatively rare in motorcycles. The flat-four has pistons horizontally opposed to one another and they fire simultaneously to cancel out primary harmonics (engine vibration). This is going to generate a note that is going to be very rare in the motorcycle world. Flat-four or boxer engines are very popular with Porsche, Volkswagen, and Subaru.\n\n2-stroke engines are far more popular in motorbikes than cars, and they, too, have an undeniably unique sound. Not only does it change how often an exhaust pulse is released, but the valving may also be different, shaping the kind of noise the exhaust is going to generate as it whooshes through those internals. The configuration of the valves in the engine will tune the sound of the exhaust like a trumpet. 4-stroke engines are typically cross-flowed, where the intake comes through one set of valves on one side, and out a set of valves on the opposite side. 2-stroke engines may be valved or valveless, and their configuration is exceptionally important because you want the exhaust to exit completely and help pull in a fresh charge. This is called scavenging.\n\nThere is additional scavenging in the exhaust manifold. A tuned manifold is designed around the firing order so that the pulses go down the exhaust pipe in regularly spaced pulses, each pulse using its inertial to help pull the exhaust out the exhausting cylinder behind it. This increases engine efficiency, also changes the sound. A tuned header will make sure all the pipes are the same length before they're joined at the collector - since the collector is at the back of the engine, the closest cylinder has the shortest distance to travel, and ends up getting a loopy pipe! Or you can forego the whole thing and just combine everything wherever is convenient for the engine packaging, either on the bike or in the car's engine bay.\n\nCars additionally scavenge within the exhaust system with a crossover pipe. If you have a V configured engine, then the two banks will have their own individual headers, and they can be combined in an H, X, or Y configuration. As you can imagine, this has an effect on the exhaust note. By comparison some bikes, especially dirt bikes, use expansion chambers to promote scavenging.\n\nAnother aspect is engine speed. Motorcycle engines are tiny by automotive standards. They're low torque and high horsepower because they have a huge power to weight ratio, and unlike a car engine, you can buy a production street bike with a redline at 21,000 rpm. A piston engine! The damn thing has to move in one direction, stop, move in the opposite direction, and stop again, before repeating the cycle! Up to 350 times a second! And you're leaning over that critical mass with it resting between your legs should that decide to go south... By comparison, F1 cars are currently limited by regulation to 15,000 rpm. Cosworth built an F1 engine for Ferrari that went up to 22,000 rpm but its existence incited the initial engine speed limit before the 2016 season. You have to appreciate that these engines only work in these \"cars\" because they're actually lighter than some street bikes. A couple companies have actually tried putting F1 engines in street legal cars, but with all the weight incurred in meeting street legal regulations and safety, they just weren't powerful enough to get the car moving from a standstill, the cars were too heavy. Digressing, most street cars have a rev limit of about 8,000 rpm before they're likely to self-destruct because they're literally so massive.\n\nFinally, there is the muffler. Its job is to absorb and cancel out the pulses so that the noise level is reduced. These things can be tuned through their geometry and materials. Some mufflers use sound deadening materials like fiberglass - it's like your car is screaming into a pillow.\n\nYour whole engine system is a glorified musical instrument. The ultimate tin whistle."
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aosxe9 | rugby positions | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aosxe9/eli5_rugby_positions/ | {
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"Forwards generally form the 'front line' and are responsible for gaining control of the ball. They also form the 'pack', the players that contest a scrum. The scrum consists of three rows of players. The number 8 is the middle of the back row. He is responsible for controlling the ball in the scrum ready for feeding it off to the scrum half.\n\nThe scrum half receives the ball from the scrum and passes it out to the fly half who passes it to the backs. These two players are half-backs because they both act as the interface between the forwards and the backs.\n\nThe backs are generally smaller and more agile, and are responsible for running the ball forward to score tries.",
"The numbers make sense in the light of the scrum.\n\nFirst row is 1,2,3, (prop, hooker, prop)\n\nsecond is 4,5 (lock, lock)\n\nthird is 6,8,7 (flank, 8-man, flank)\n\n9 (scrum half) gets ball from 8, passes to 10 (fly half) etc.\n\nIn rugby the ball has to be passed (thrown) backwards, so the backs run towards their try line, but pass away from it. If a player is tackled the forwards try to uncover the ball by shoving the opposing forwards towards the try line.\n\nEven if they sub the 8th man, the name of the position stays the same, but the number will be different. That position used to be called a lock, but then they added locks in the second row (4,5) so they stopped calling it that. They've been called middlemen, but it hasn't caught on."
]
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||
6u15xl | why is hydrogen peroxide not painful like other antiseptics (i.e. alcohol and iodine)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u15xl/eli5_why_is_hydrogen_peroxide_not_painful_like/ | {
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"It's diluted with water to about 2%.\n\nAlso, your body has peroxidase, which quickly converts it \n\nto oxygen and water (hence the fizz).\n\nIt's NOT a very effective antiseptic.",
"Get some of that peroxide in your eye, then tell us it's not painful. In case you're wondering how that can happen: contact lens cleaner. You rinse the lens multiple times after using peroxide, so there's only a miniscule amount left, and it can still hurt. ",
"Research chemist here. Please don't use this on wounds. It is an oxidant which can literally break apart molecules in your body. The bottle you may have in your cabinet will be a very low concentration (1-3% maybe) but it is still not good for you. \n\nHigher concentration H2O2 is actually very painful on your skin. I work with 35% hydrogen peroxide every day at work. I have gotten a few drops on my skin several times. Your skin turns white and bumpy and it burns like hell. Feels like fire and hot needles on your skin. \n\nBe careful to not get this near your eyes either. I'm not sure about the lower concentrations, but H2O2 will literally blind you if splashed in your eye. "
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||
6iveor | how come only certain spots have the capacity of sexual pleasure? | Most people's spots in which they feel sexual pleasure are their sex organs, and sometimes other places like nipples, yes? So why can't we feel sexual pleasure *anywhere* on our body? What is preventing my arm from having an orgasm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iveor/eli5_how_come_only_certain_spots_have_the/ | {
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"Nothing but genetics.\n\n\nThere are people who have that problem after injuries or they were born with it. I knew a girl rubbing a spot on the inside of her thigh was enough to cause an orgasm. Never even had to get close to her groin.",
"I would say it has to do with access. If touching arms was sexually pleasuring then you would be turned on frequently. This makes it harder to survive (you're thinking about sex instead of surviving) and it makes actual sexual encounters seem less intense and you might not get off as easily (speaking from the male perspective). The zones that you would normally protect (neck, genitals, torso) are not touched as frequently so it becomes intimate when you allow someone to touch you there.",
"I remember seeing a documentary, I have no idea the name, but it explored this very issue in good depth. In one case, a woman would frequently be able to achieve orgasm while brushing her teeth. Someone better than me at google-fu could find it. ",
"The density and placement of neurons. If you think of your arm as a forest and the trees and sense receptors, then it's a Savanah (loosely populated with trees with lots of space in between.) then, if you consider sex organs and secondary sex organs, there is a much higher concentration of trees, like a densely packed roofed forest. Now, if we consider fire to be an orgasm, it is almost impossible to set the whole forest in a Savanah on fire but relatively easy to set the roofed forest ablaze. "
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87wpjw | how can you determine the difference in properties (hardness/toughness/ductility etc) of different steel microstructures? | By microstructures, I'm talking austenite/bainite/martensite/pearlite etc.
Taking a materials engineering class, and I don't understand the current office hours explanations. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87wpjw/eli5_how_can_you_determine_the_difference_in/ | {
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"At the 10,000 foot level, basically the smaller the components of the microstructure, the harder, less tough, and less ductile the bulk sample will be. The Hall–Petch relation tells us that smaller grains are associated with increased strength. Toughness and ductility are basically similar parameters, especially when you are talking about a single family of alloys, like steels. And, generally speaking, stronger alloys will be less tough and ductile. The same mechanisms that allow them to resist yield mean that they will break more quickly once they start yielding. Again, this is extremely high level and is not universally true. For various steel microstructures, there is the additional wrinkle that certain microstructures are generally isotropic while some are lamellar. Could you go into more detail about exactly what you aren't getting?"
]
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] |
|
1u5bfa | why are you not able to make high-pitched noises/ falsettos when you throat's sore? | I can't sing cause of this. :( | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u5bfa/eli5_why_are_you_not_able_to_make_highpitched/ | {
"a_id": [
"ceenhsl"
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"text": [
"The pain is caused by inflammation and the inflammation impedes the necessary movement of the vocal cords to make the higher pitched sounds."
]
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[]
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|
2km9o2 | what about amniotic fluid allows a baby to breath it until it is born, at which point it immediately begins breathing gaseous oxygen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2km9o2/eli5_what_about_amniotic_fluid_allows_a_baby_to/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Before birth the baby gets its oxygen from the mother through the umbilical cord, tying into her circulatory system. The baby \"breathes\" the fluid which is necessary to develop the lungs and also swallows it to develop the gastrointestinal tract. \n\n[Source.](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amniotic_fluid#Functions_of_amniotic_fluid"
]
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||
41t3s3 | if you get shot why is it better for the bullet to go threw than to stay in the body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41t3s3/eli5_if_you_get_shot_why_is_it_better_for_the/ | {
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"A through and through is easier to heal. If the bullet is stuck inside, most of the time they have to take it out. The extraction process can cause more pain as a result.",
"If the bullet goes all the way through, you have a single, neat hole in your body for the surgeons to patch up. Unless the bullet managed to hit something important like an artery or major organ, you will likely survive any bullet wound which goes all the way through as long as you receive prompt medical attention and get to a surgeon before bleeding to death.\n\nIf the bullet is still inside you, however, you still have a several ounce slug bouncing around as you get rushed to the hospital. It could land on an organ which wasn't hit in the original shot, bruising it or puncturing it, or it could collapse a lung. Worse, one of the main reasons for a bullet to not go all the way through is if it shattered inside your body, which means that, not only do you have multiple paths of shredded organs in your body following all the shrapnel, but you also have loose shrapnel in you, each individual piece of which could cause any of the problems caused by a whole bullet.",
"Also..a through shot doesn't release all if the bullets energy as it strikes. A hollow point that correctly expands release a lot more energy into the body doing more damage. An expanded round also does more tissue damage and can take a meandering path through the body as well.",
"If a bullet runs thru you, then its total kinetic energy was not transferred to you in the form of tissue damage. If it stayed in you, all of its kinetic energy was transferred"
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2ak4oy | what exactly is happening with our bodies/minds when we "trust" someone? | I often hear people say "I'm too trustworthy of people / I trust people too easily" yet at times I also hear "I don't trust anyone / You have to earn my trust".
What causes a human to trust? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ak4oy/eli5_what_exactly_is_happening_with_our/ | {
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"Various external stimuli (such as interacting with someone) and internal processes (memory, experience, etc) cause your brain to produce among other things the neurotransmitter oxytocin, which is primarily responsible for the feeling of trust.",
"brains like to take the path of least resistance, checking out someone's past and interpreting everything they say or do to determine if they are likely to be lying is a lot of work, takes a lot of energy. trusting them means, simply put, not putting in that work. \n\nthough we say \"trust\" as if it is one thing, it's actually quite a few different things. to trust what someone says, to trust that they will do as you ask, to trust them not to do something you don't want, to trust them not to kill you. and it's sometimes conflated with another term \"faith\" people often say \"i trust you\" and \"i have faith in you\" interchangeably...but they are not. though perhaps from the brain's perspective they are (trust is basically faith that has to be earned. but after being earned they act a lot alike.)\n\nso when someone says something and you trust them, what is going on in the brain? well for the brain to determine if you should trust someone, as sad as it may be, it often comes down to whether they are saying something you already believe, or something in line with what you already believe. if they say something you don't already believe this causes a conflict in the brain (this set of memories is saying X while this set is saying Y) to resolve this conflict one has to win over the other. sometimes you will ask them to clarify and try to fit this new information into your existing model, or you may say the old model is wrong, this one is right, because you like this person more. (why you like them more, that varies pending the person, but basically you hold them in high esteem. maybe because they have always been right in the past, or they have a degree in it, or your parents told you to) people who are overly trusting of others (who basically always take the new information over the old information) are known as \"gullible\"\n\nthen there is trust you have in someone not to hurt you. or give you up, or let you down, or run around and desert you. this largely comes down to pattern recognition (every time i needed X this person was there to give it to me, i expect in the future when i need X they will be there to give it to me) sometimes it follows a transitive property (i trust x, he trusts y therefore i will trust y) in short your brain takes the pattern of X and abstracts it to Y (abstraction is something we do well) so if X was always there when you needed him you can expect Y to be as well. different people have different experiences when it comes to trusting (if everyone i know has let me down, that pattern will interfere and i will be less likely to trust someone in the future) so they have different thresholds as to how much someone must do to prove themselves trustworthy. children tend to be the most trusting, since they have never been given a reason NOT to trust you and they have no real knowledge to conflict with what you are saying.\n\njust about everything in the brain comes down to pattern recognition when you get down to the nuts and bolts. \n\ntl;dr: it's all about conflict resolution and pattern recognition."
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5hzjwj | is there a technical limit to how big can the human strength and muscles get? or is it indefinite as long as we always provide all the necessary nutrition and workout? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hzjwj/eli5_is_there_a_technical_limit_to_how_big_can/ | {
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"You can only apply as much force as your ligaments and tendons can withstand. They do get thicker with muscle growth but they also have to not rip off their attachments to the bone. I'm not sure if ligaments, tendons, and attachment points grow at the same rate as the muscle since steroid facilitated muscle growth can be fairly rapid. \n \nBut eventually strength is proportional to cross sectional area. Mass is proportional to volume. Eventually you would get so heavy you wouldn't be able to lift your limbs or yourself. This at the incredible hulk and beyond stage."
]
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||
3gh9nl | why wasn't there any rioting and looting when a nonviolent 19 year old in sc was shot in the back for a few grams of weed? | [Link to story.](_URL_0_) The cop never reported the shooting, then they tried to lie and say the boy tried to run over the cop. This is impossible since he was found to be shot twice in the back. I'm just noting that there was a major difference in the way this was handled by the public. Specifically, there was no rioting or looting as there was in the case of Michael Brown, who had just committed strong armed robbery. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gh9nl/eli5_why_wasnt_there_any_rioting_and_looting_when/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the people in that community didn't care enough to organize a demonstration or a riot, possibly because this killing wasn't publicized enough in the local media for people to even be aware.\n\nThere isn't a riot fairy that goes from town to town deciding when there'll be riots, it's up to the members of that community to stand up and speak out against something they think is fucked up, and if they aren't doing that, then they must not care about the issue enough or have internalized the problem.\n\n",
"The community he belongs to doesn't care? Or they have less contact with police they are more inclined to believe the official report? Maybe they have more respect for police and the system in general? Could be any number of reasons dude. ",
"Pretty good chance that there is a far less contentious relationship between the police and the community in question. There were no riots after the Walter Scott shooting either. Charleston vs Greenville so not sure how valid the comparison is even though both are in South Carolina.",
"just my humble opinion, but whites in america don't have a big \"pull together\" like other cultures do. there are very few things in america to draw white people into any kind of \"cultural unity\" and a bigger push to make sure there isn't any kind of \"white identity\" ( even typing it it just feels white power). So basically, this guy is only one person's son, versus a son of the community as it were."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/sc-cop-killed-teen-with-two-shots-to-the-back-during-weed-bust-and-didnt-even-report-it-attorney/"
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a6sl7j | how did money become a thing that everyone accepts and values? | It would be pretty dumb to accept written paper and food in first place. You give food and get paper. If you really want that paper, can't you produce it on your own?
I mean now you can't, but back in time you could guess... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6sl7j/eli5_how_did_money_become_a_thing_that_everyone/ | {
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"text": [
"Originally, paper currency was backed by the government. That's why you'll see on bills something like \"The government of This Country promises to pay the holder the amount of X dollars upon demand\", the assumption being - in silver or gold.\n\nThese days, paper currency is backed essentially by the police and the government's authority. That's why US bills have the words \"valid for all debts public and private\", or something like that.\n\nThere's also the fact that you have to pay taxes to the government, and the government insists that you pay them in its currency. So there is built-in demand for that currency. You can't just think up your own currency and pay in that, or pay in bushels of corn.\n\nBut *mostly* it's about convenience. Paper money is much more convenient than gold (and bank cards are much more convenient than paper money). As long as everyone trusts in the system - trusts that they can spend the money that they receive - it all works.",
"It's a series of steps.\n\nStep 1.\n\nInitially you barter. You have bread, someone else has chickens. You find each other and agree to exchange some of your bread for their chickens. Now you can both make chicken sandwiches. This is obviously straight forward, but inconvenient because you need to find someone with what you want who needs what you have. \n\nStep 2.\n\nSo we invented the means of exchange. This is something that is itself valuable, that doesn't fluctuate in price too much and that is widely exchangeable. Silver was common in Europe through much of history, but other parts of the world used other things. This is better, but now you need to be an expert on silver as well. You need to be able to check purity, weigh it and accurately figure out what this silver is worth. \n\nStep 3.\n\nSo we invented currency. The government begins minting the silver into coins that are known to be equivalent to a certain quantity of pure silver (never in history have coins contained the exact amount if silver that they were equivalent to). This is much better, now you can simply count coins to accurately figure how much silver you have. But silver is kind of heavy. \n\nStep 4.\n\nSo we invented certificates. Basically you take your silver to a banker (later the government got into this business as well), and the banker gives you his certificate that can be taken back to this banker and swapped for that silver at a later time. Depending on the reputation of the banker (or government) who issued the certificate, this piece of paper is as good as the actual coins. You can give the certificate to someone and they know that they can take it back to the banker and turn it back into coins whenever they like. In most cases, people wouldn't bother to actually convert the paper back into coins for a long time. They'd just pass the paper around as money. But now bankers and governments have all this silver that they've converted into certificates. They can't grey rid of it, but it actually takes up a huge amount of space and is hard to store.\n\nStep 5.\n\nSo we invented fiat currency. Remember back at the beginning we noticed that silver was chosen because it was valuable, stable in price and widely accepted? Well governments eventually realized that they had enough power to bestow these three properties on pretty much any object. Everyone was already using these certificates and finding them convenient. The government could simply declare that the piece of paper was valuable, stable and widely acceptable (with appropriate laws to back it up) and that would become the case. Now everyone could get rid of all the silver they'd been sitting on. The thing to note here is that these sorts of declarations could only be made by government. My neighbour Steve might personally guarantee that my piece of paper is worth $20, but that doesn't mean anything. If the *government* guarantees that my piece of paper is worth $20 and threatens prison for anyone who says it isn't, then my piece of paper *is* as valuable as anything else worth $20.\n\n"
]
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[],
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3gcwfp | gyro stabilizers | This shit: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gcwfp/eli5_gyro_stabilizers/ | {
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"Suppose you've got a bicycle wheel and it's horizontal, and you're holding on to an axis that goes through its center. Somebody spins the wheel really, really, realy fast. You hold it steady while it's spinning, parallel to the floor, with your hands above and below it. Now, if you try to tip it over, to one side or another, it's hard. The faster it's spinning, the harder it is to turn it to one side or another. It wants to stay parallel to the floor. \n\nIt doesn't matter how big your spinning wheel is. You can have a tiny one. \n\nThis can serve as a way to tell you what's up and down, where the horizon is if you're in a submarine or an airplane. The spinning wheel always \"remembers\" what's level and what's not.\n\nA ballistic missile theoretically travels in a perfect path called a parabola, but things like the wind can interfere with that. A gyro can keep it going steady. There's a feedback system, and if the missile goes a bit this way or a bit that way, the gyro notices and circuitry adjusts the directlon of the engine thrust a little until it's flying straight. In other words, the gyro stabilizes the rocket. ",
"I'm on a bad connection so I can't link the video but the gif you linked works like this:\n\n\nThe wheel(s) on the inside of the cube spin really fast so it has a lot of momentum in a certain direction (This spinning also helps keep the cube balanced). The wheel gets stopped abruptly by some sort of brake, and the momentum is transferred from the wheel to the cube, which tips it. ",
"The [Youtube](_URL_0_) video that the gif is from is fascinating and clarifies how it works. The cube can get itself up from rest.",
"When you push an object you transfer force straight into it. To spin a circle you apply (radial) force and the force (centrifugal) spins out straight in a plane, It want's to continue in that same path and it takes force to tip it. Adding 3 (x,y,z) of these to a 3D object, can help minimize tipping with the help of an accelerometer\n\nIANAP "
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/aXpBpR9.gifv"
] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y"
],
[]
] |
|
d1oydm | why do some scars only appear in certain temperatures? | I was talking to my friends the other day about a scar I have from a rope burn I got at a party a few months back. I went to show them but it wasn't there. I could swear I remember seeing it not long ago but it just wasn't there. That night I had a hot shower, looked down and saw the scar that wasn't there earlier. Then that reminded me that one of my friends was telling me how one of his scars on his knee only shows up when its really cold. So why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d1oydm/eli5_why_do_some_scars_only_appear_in_certain/ | {
"a_id": [
"ezotdtq",
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"text": [
"Best guess is skin changing colour - red when hot, pale when cold. Scars don't change colour as they're connective tissue. \n\nIt's always there. Just more obvious when you change it's background",
"Its due to the blood vessels under the skin. In warmth, the vessels dilate and engorge the area with blood, causing a pink or red color. In cold, the vessels tighten up near the skin to perserve body heat by keeping the warm blood deeper. This causes less oxygenated blood (which is red) to be present and gives a blue color like the color in the veins you see in your wrist. \n\nScars tend to be thinner skin so you can more easily see this change where you can't in other parts of your skin."
]
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[],
[]
] |
|
1kf7sa | what happens to a knife when it is sharpened? | What exactly is "Sharpness" and how does a knife become sharp and then cut through other things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kf7sa/eli5_what_happens_to_a_knife_when_it_is_sharpened/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The thinner the blade, the sharper the knife. More specifically, the smaller angle of the blade, the sharper the knife. \n\nWhen you cut things, the blade gets bend, corroded and chipped. One way of preventing this is with honing steel - it's a smooth piece of very hard metal that helps \"rebending\" the edge and you should do it daily. In every other episode of Kitchen's Nightmares chef Ramsey hones his knives.\n\nWhen the edge is corroded and chipped after prolonged use, all you can do is grab some sandpaper and remove some of the metal to make new edge. That should be left to profesionals."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
due095 | what is a life sentence? | This sounds really dumb, but I don’t understand the concept of a life sentence. It’s quite common to get a life sentence with a minimum time before parole, which isn’t at all life in prison. What length of time is a life sentence, if it’s not the rest of the person’s life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/due095/eli5_what_is_a_life_sentence/ | {
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"text": [
"Life = A minimum number after which you *could* get parole, all the way to life. Contrast 25-Life with 25 years; the latter sets a maximum sentence, while the former sets a minimum, while the maximum is the rest of your life. You can also get life without a chance of parole, which is what a lot of people think all life sentences are; in that case you're in jail forever, period. You can also get a lot of sentences which are not technically life sentences, but which greatly exceed a normal human lifespan, and they're treated as lifers too.",
"You are under permanent prison sentence, but you may be released before you die, however you are not free you are just released under parole any breach of the parole conditions and you are returned to prison to complete your sentence.",
"In the UK at least, it means you spend a long time in prison, but you may be eligible for parole at some point. In that case, you spend the rest of your life on parole so you can be recalled to prison at any time if you commit another crime or break the conditions of your parole."
]
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[],
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|
63xhbo | how is it that we know that one of daggers that king tutankhamen was buried with is made of iron from a meteorite? | How is it that we are able to determine the difference between celestial iron and terrestrial iron? Wouldn't they be atomically identical? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63xhbo/eli5_how_is_it_that_we_know_that_one_of_daggers/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfxrgkv"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The article in question is hard to read, but here's a link: _URL_0_\n\nThe researchers basically did an analysis to figure out **the proportions of iron, nickel, and cobalt**. They found that there was a strong resemblance between the proportions of the dagger and those of meteorites found nearby."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/maps.12664/full"
]
] |
|
4tijf2 | what is going on with taylor and kanye? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tijf2/eli5_what_is_going_on_with_taylor_and_kanye/ | {
"a_id": [
"d5hky19",
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"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"Kanye is a douche to her for no reason it seems, constantly harasses her, said they should have sex in a song and then posted on Twitter that she said she was fine with him doing that. \n\nShe had the very mature and accurate reaction of \"no I didn't, the video of me saying that was before he even released the song and I hadn't heard it, I want him to stop talking to me and don't give a shit what made up narcissistic fantasies he writes about\". ",
"Kanye released his song famous calling her a bitch. She is saying she never gave the okay on the lyric and that it is hurting her image. Kanye said he got approval from her. She comes back saying she didn't, Kim then comes in with the video to protect her man. \nThis is all I got so far, anyone more knowledgeable than myself correct anything I have mistaken or feel free to add anything goes I missed."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
98q709 | why did super gluing a cotton thread to a popsicle stick light my coffee table on fire tonight? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/98q709/eli5_why_did_super_gluing_a_cotton_thread_to_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4hyoqa"
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"score": [
7
],
"text": [
"It's the cotton. Super Glue (at least some brands of it) spontaneously combust when in contact with cotton.\n\nCottons have a lot of hydrogen and oxygen in the molecules, which react to the glue easily. That creates a lot of heat, and fire."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
4imxen | how do computers perform symbolic integration? | In order for humans to do it, we need to use pattern recognition and formula matching, but surely there's an algorithm for that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4imxen/eli5_how_do_computers_perform_symbolic_integration/ | {
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"text": [
"Computers do it the same way. They have a model of what the symbols mean, and the rules for re-arranging them. They don't use as sophisticated a pattern matching as college students, but they can use trial and error at a very fast rate.",
"There's no algorithm that will do *every* integral but there are some fairly good ones which function similar to how humans perform integrations. A subset of integrals can always be solved: i.e. rational functions.\n\nRisch's algorithm exploits the property of exponentials and logarithms in integrals. [A walk through of Risch's Algorithm](_URL_1_)—not really ELI5, but no five year old is gonna ask about calculus.\n\n[A master's thesis on this topic](_URL_0_) notes the earliest symbolic algorithms in the 1960s used a heuristic approach (like humans) with fair results. It also starting in Chapter 2 starts discussing some heuristics that may be employed:\n\n1. Break the problem up using additions (e.g. ∫f+g = ∫f + ∫g) and work on the smaller pieces, though sometimes this leads to problems.\n\n2. Substitute subexpressions that appear multiple times (e.g. ∫(2x+2)exp((x+1)^(2)) = ∫2a exp(a^(2)) which helps with the pattern recognition.\n\n3. Just read the thesis it contains tables of the basic functions that can be looked for and some transformations that can be tried. It's well written to be approachable."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://www.nada.kth.se/utbildning/grukth/exjobb/rapportlistor/2009/rapporter09/terelius_bjorn_09095.pdf",
"http://www.math.colostate.edu/~hulpke/lectures/m676ca/maplerisch.pdf"
]
] |
|
5o0ns9 | why are advertisement on the internet that are scams not against the law? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o0ns9/eli5_why_are_advertisement_on_the_internet_that/ | {
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"dcfoihj",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Nearly all scams *are* against the law, and intentionally advertising an unlawful scam is *also* usually against the law.\n\nThe problem is discovering, and proving, that it's a scam.",
"Various tricks like VPNs, cloud hosting, TOR, and obscure domain registrations (such as .su, .tk, etc) are used to hide the creator/registerer's identity. Also, its so common and low priority that it's not worth cracking down on.",
"Sometimes scams are profitable even if they are illegal because the benefits outweigh the costs and risks. Some examples: \n\n- The famous Nigerian e-mail scams, where someone will contact you saying they need help getting a large fortune out of their country and will gladly share a substantial portion with you if you can give them a little cash to free up the fortune for transfer.\n\n- Scammers claiming to be from Microsoft technical support who talk the victim into giving the scammer remote access to the victim's computer.\n\n- The tax payment scam where the scammer would claim to be from the US government and convince people into making a payment for a phony tax debt.\n\nThese scams benefited from the fact that they were victimizing people in foreign countries, and their home countries were less motivated to prosecute. India finally made a huge bust and shut down the main call center behind the tax scam. The scams were illegal, but low-risk and high-profit.\n\nHere in the US, fraudster Kevin Trudeau made a fortune selling books making bogus claims about any number of topics, usually about health and medicine, but he kept getting busted and kept on going because the fines he was getting were inconsequential compared to the profits he was making. He finally ended up in jail."
]
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[],
[],
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||
e57na4 | what is the benefit of keeping a donor heart beating on a machine instead of just cooled and dormant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e57na4/eli5_what_is_the_benefit_of_keeping_a_donor_heart/ | {
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"text": [
"I was a transplant nurse, and I didn't handle hearts, but with kidneys, there was a much higher success rate with ones that had had continuous blood flow to them. They were still \"alive\" and perfused with blood. With cooled (\"cold ischemic\") ones, they had to \"wake up\" when put into the recipient's body, which can take up to a few days. I'd think that since the heart is a more vital organ, it's priority to keep it beating.",
"One of the cool things about the heart is every cardiac cell can start the electricity that causes a beat. So if one fails, the next one down will take over. Keeping it beating is much easier than to let it stop beating and then getting it to restart again.",
"A heart that is not beating is a heart that is dying. If a heart doesn't beat for too long, the heart dies, and will never beat again \n\nKeeping a non-beating heart cooled just means it dies slower, but it's still dying.\n\nA heart that is beating (and pumping blood with oxygen in it) is a living heart, and a healthy living heart can live a long, long time.\n\nNow, during the surgery to replace a person's heart, the new heart will need to stop beating while it is being put in the person's body. That means that the new heart starts dying.\n\nBut if the surgery goes well, the time when the new heart is dying is short, and it can easily recover.\n\nIf the heart was not kept beating after being taken from the dead person, the total amount of time that the heart was dying will be too long, and it will not beat when it is put in the new person, making that person dead, too."
]
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[],
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||
zoev1 | england and their relation to several countries like canada, australia, new zealand, etc | Why do several of these nations show allegiance to England? They are their own independent nations as far as I always knew. If they were former commonwealths to England, why don't all former commonwealths of theirs show allegiance still? By allegiance I mean they have similar flags, have god save the queen as a national song, and other things. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zoev1/eli5_england_and_their_relation_to_several/ | {
"a_id": [
"c66chvc",
"c66cors"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"This [video explains it](_URL_0_). Warning [shit gets bizarre.](_URL_1_) \n\nThe TL:DR of it is that at one point England ruled most of the world at point or another and these are remnants of that once huge empire",
"The UK - not England."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10&feature=plcp",
"http://cgpgrey.squarespace.com/storage/uk-venn.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1345484622798"
],
[]
] |
|
2dclhk | what does "a 4th domain" mean? | On the front page there's an article about a [new form of virus](_URL_0_) (though the article is a bit old) and how it suggests that there may be a 4th domain of life. But what does this mean? What are the first, second and third domains? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dclhk/eli5_what_does_a_4th_domain_mean/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjo73sg"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"A Domain is the highest (most broad) order of life.\n\nThe three domains are Archaea (early-developed single-celled organisms), Bacteria (more developed single-celled organisms that still lack a nucleus) and Eukarya (everything with a nucleus, single or multi-celled, like us!).\n\nThe fourth domain would include these new Pandoraviruses, which, if it happens, would be the first time we've defined viruses as a type of living organism."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-pandoravirus-giant-01253.html"
] | [
[]
] |
|
6mljy8 | when started a diet and workout, why do you lose weight while still having belly fat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mljy8/eli5when_started_a_diet_and_workout_why_do_you/ | {
"a_id": [
"dk2fung"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"Because you have fat all over your body, not just your belly. It's in your arms and legs and butt and face and back and everywhere else. When you start losing weight, you lose a little bit from everywhere, not a lot from one specific location."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
dgw53i | how does the scent of bodywash stay on us even though we wash it off with water in the shower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgw53i/eli5_how_does_the_scent_of_bodywash_stay_on_us/ | {
"a_id": [
"f3fby84"
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"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"The short answer is that we don't wash it all off. The bodywash tends to leave a thin film on us, and the scenting oil is chosen to be particularly sticky to skin."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
afx6te | non-aerobic respiration | Ik that in yeast, glucose breaks down to alcohol+carbon dioxide+little energy. And that in beer fermentation this creates the alcohol content. But yeast is also used in bread and cinnamon rolls, so how is there no alcohol in those? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afx6te/eli5_nonaerobic_respiration/ | {
"a_id": [
"ee1xu5z"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"There is alcohol in those. And in just about everything you eat. And in you. \n\nIt's just such a tiny amount it doesn't matter. Keep in mind that yeast in baking is used for making the dough rise by using the CO2, and since multiple gaseous CO2 molecules are produced for each liquid alcohol molecule the resulting alcohol concentration by volume will be thousands or tens of thousands of times less than the volume of holes in the bread. \n\nAs bread isn't made entirely of holes, you end up with something like 0.01%v, or probably far less as most of the alcohol will evaporate during baking. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
2cg1jv | the process when a band has finished recording an album, and it is in 'mixing'. | Was reading up on Alice in Chains on Wikipedia and it quoted Jerry Cantrell before the release of Black Gives Way To Blue as saying the album was finished recording and they were mixing the album. What exactly is happening at this stage? Is it a long process? I imagine balancing levels and ordering the tracks on the album, but am sure there's a lot more to it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cg1jv/eli5_the_process_when_a_band_has_finished/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjf4ucm",
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"text": [
"It's raising or lowering the various instruments/vocals on each track to a desired level. This doesn't necessarily mean that all the levels are the same; the producer or artist may want the drums to be louder than the guitar, or vice versa and so forth. In few words, it's making the finished album sound like it should.",
"Each instrument has a Mic recording it. Some have various Mics, such as drum kits, acoustic guitar, or vocals. Once the recording is done, each microphone's gain levels are adjusted and tweaked. Sometimes effects are added in. Then each of these microphones recordings are edited to clean up the sound. Ever notice how the chorus of a song sounds identical to the other chorus's? That is because the chorus is recorded until it is perfect, and that one perfect take is used for the whole song. Most songs are recorded in small chunks, so they can perfect that small chunk. Once all the chunks are recorded, they are \"mixed\" together to make up the complete song. Take all this with a grain of salt, as I am just a basement producer using ableton and an apc 40."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
58khpm | what would happen if you punched someone at the speed of light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58khpm/eli5_what_would_happen_if_you_punched_someone_at/ | {
"a_id": [
"d914k0j",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You cannot simultaneously accelerate to c and have mass. Thus you can't punch someone at c.\n\nHowever, a similar question involving baseball has been [asked before](_URL_0_).",
"First off, this is a fundamentally impossible situation within the universe. Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. \n\nIf your first was moving even close to that, the molecules of air in front of your fist wouldn't have time to be pushed out of the way, so they would create immense friction against your hand, shedding away your skin to the bone, some air molecules would be under such pressure that they break apart, causing a massive energy release in an explosion before you even make contact with the guy's face."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/"
],
[]
] |
||
6jn8up | is there a scientific reason behind the boogeyman fear we get when a part of our body is sticking out of the blanket and/or the bed. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jn8up/eli5is_there_a_scientific_reason_behind_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"djfi4pv",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I don't think there's a scientific reason, only psychological. It's usually the result of a perceived sense of threat - often times from watching scary movies during childhood, or encountering any similar threat-inducing experiences. A limb hanging off the bed creates vulnerability, as it is uncovered - inducing said experiences.",
"There could be the fact that your body parts are feeling different sensations, specifically feeling very hot around your body because of the blanket, but cold on your foot, because of circulating air.\n\nThis can trigger a response in the brain that supposes danger in the loose extremity."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
||
6goanj | why whenever i drink green tea or other types of tea do i almost instantly feel the need to pee? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6goanj/eli5_why_whenever_i_drink_green_tea_or_other/ | {
"a_id": [
"dirslr9"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"In part it's because of the caffeine, which is a diuretic. As soon as the caffeine hits your bloodstream it signals your bladder to expel urine even before the natural mechanisms that regulate water retention have a chance to kick in."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
7sw4nt | why do very light objects take a great deal of force to throw, like very heavy objects? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7sw4nt/eli5_why_do_very_light_objects_take_a_great_deal/ | {
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"because of air resistance. a moving object has energy which is a product of its mass and speed. when the object travels through air, it loses some of that energy in order to push the air out of the way. because of its low mass a light object has less energy and runs out of it more quickly than a heavy object.",
"Some low-mass objects don't require much force at all to throw. Think about throwing a dart - a flick of the wrist is all it takes to send it across the room into your dartboard.\n\nWhat's the difference between a dart and a piece of styrofoam? Air resistance. The dart has an aerodynamic shape, so it cuts through the air without much resistance. A hunk of styrofoam is not aerodynamic, so it feels a lot of resistance. And since it's so light, the resistance is very effective at slowing it down. So the reason you need a lot of force to throw the styrofoam is that you have to throw it *very* fast to start with, so that it has enough energy to still make it to its target even with the air resistance."
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5d3nsf | what makes certain notes or melodies in music sound "evil" or "ominous"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5d3nsf/eli5what_makes_certain_notes_or_melodies_in_music/ | {
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"Disonence; or two notes/cords being played that are close together on the scale. If you were looking at the piano and played the notes right beside each other, that's disonence . Now if that is a cord or structure ; it sounds creepy as hell. Source; I took music theory (years ago)",
"As someone who's been playing music on and off his whole life, the answer is both simple and complex. I'll try to make it an ELI5.\n\nIn music, we have culturally defined certain sounds to be \"pleasant\" and \"happy\" and some to be \"dark\" and \"sad\". In general, happy songs utilize a major key and uses major chords, while sad songs use a minor key and more minor chords. Again this is a generalization but to our ears this is the most natural.",
"Like this? _URL_0_",
"In my opinion, it's when the music creates tension by either leaving a series of notes unresolved or overresolved. Basically you just take out notes people may expect to hear in a progression, or conversely add in notes not normally used, while still agreeing with the chords. Generally this will happen in a minor key or certain other nonwestern based music scale structures. \n\nLike another has said, dissonance lends itself to the same effect. However, two notes beside each other on a keyboard doesn't necessarily mean they create this effect, as it depends on your key and scale.\n\nAnother big factor is in the timbre (pronounced as tamber), this is the objective tonal quality of the notes. Imagine how heavier music sounds metallic or industrial, blues sounds raw and unrefined, etc.\n\nI would watch Eraserhead to hear some very eerie and dark, expressive music that really sets the mood for how creepy the scenes are.",
"Alright, been a while since I've explained music, but here goes:\n\nAs someone has previously mentioned, a lot of it comes down to dissonance between notes. For example, playing a E and an F at the same time sounds odd, even though they are both part of the standard C scale. This is because they are only one note apart, which in turn creates a harmony that people would describe as \"ominous\" or \"creepy\". If we analyze a standard C scale, we can find three of these \"ominous\" intervals, all of which are frequently used in horror soundtracks. The first, is of course the half step interval between E and F, and the half step interval of B and C. An example soundtrack for this interval is the classic Jaws score, where this interval is used to increase suspense.\n\nNow, the third interval is found between B and F. If you play those together, you'll hear a dissonance. This is, in layman's terms, called a devil's tritone, but in music theory it's called a diminished fifth or augmented fourth. This interval is used in many horror soundtracks, but can also be found in jazz music frequently, as the interval is part of the viib5 chord, which is often used as a substitute for the V (dominant) chord in minor scales.\n\nNow why do these **sound** dissonant? This has partly to do with expectation. For example, when listening to music, you would probably come across a vi (tonic substitute)-IV (sub-dominant)-I (tonic)-V (dominant) chord progression at least once every hour. However, if we change the chord progression from vi-IV-I-V to vi-IV-I-viib5 (dominant substitute), you'd end up with something that sounds very, very off and slightly fucked up. This is because in the former progression, you expect the tonic to naturally progress into the major dominant chord. What we instead did was move to the minor dominant substitute chord, an unexpected end to a familiar chord progression which creates an \"ominous\" effect.\n\n--\n\nEDIT: forgot the other part of why they **sound** dissonant, it has to do with frequencies, I can't explain that easily. It has to do with how the brain picks up certain notes and intervals. It's a physics/psychology question more than a music question. Read [Funslinger's](_URL_1_) post for a fantastic explanation of how the frequencies play a large part in this.\n\nEDIT 2: [DrivinDownHWY40](_URL_0_) did a better job at explaining this without using confusing music theory and jargon.\n\nEDIT 3: I'll include previous responses I've made in accordance to this here, as a meta post or something:\n\nI'm sorry, this is actually very difficult to explain without prior music theory education. Think of sheet music as maths, intervals in scales are divided into half-step and whole step. A major scale, such as standard C-major would be:\n\nC (1step) D (1step) E (½step) F (1step) G (1step) A (1step) B (½step) C (repeat)\n\nA major chord with this scale in mind would be C E G, which is a CMajor chord. If we look at the previous scale with the steps included, we can see there's 2 whole-steps between C and E, and 1 whole-step and 1 half-step between E and G. What determines whether the chord is major or minor depends on these steps, a minor chord has 1 whole-step and 1 half-step between the first and second note, where a major chord has 2 whole-steps between first and second note.\n\nNow, if we look at the different combinations we can do here, we can see that one sticks out. If we start with B and use the same formula as the C chord (skip every other note) we end up with B D F. Analyze it a bit more and we see that there's the same interval between all these notes. We can't call it a major chord, because the interval between B and D is not large enough, but we can't call it a full minor chord, because the interval between D and F isn't big enough. This chord is called a diminished fifth minor chord in music theory, but transcribed into \"music speak\": viib5.\n\n**On the question whether this is cultural/regional**\n\nYes, an example of this would be in Indian music where the half-step interval is used a lot more in their pop music. A lot of countries have developed their own music theory, which sometimes includes what western musicians would call \"microtones\" (notes that are at a frequency that is not encompassed within western music scales). Japan and India are the two countries I can think of without a google search that use microtonal scales.",
"Since most people seem to forgotten the I5 part, here is my answer:\n\nSounds are vibrations. Vibrations is another way of saying wiggling. When the wiggles of 2 sounds line up, it sounds happy. Even if one sound wiggles 2 times for each time another sound wiggles it still sounds happy. When, however, the sounds wiggle at almost the same speed, then the wiggles hardly ever line up. This makes the sound sad or scary sounding.",
"The main riff in The Moor by Opeth is a great example of diabolus in musica, if you hear it you know what i'm talking about",
"It is a cultural phenomenon. Music has developed slowly over hundreds of years to become what it is today. There was a time when anything but the open fifth sound of an Organum (think monks chanting like in monty python) would have sounded extremely off to a listener. As music has developed, the expectations of the listener have changed with it. A good composer can understand these expectations and use them to create tension and release with the listener.\n\nAs culturally Western listeners, we tend to feel tension when we hear closely grouped clusters of notes. Melodies made out of half steps like the theme to Jaws or the theme to Halloween are examples of this. The theme to Psycho is a good example of half steps being played at the same time. The part being played on violins makes it especially creepy.\n\nAnother often mentioned \"scary\" interval is the Tritone. This depends a lot on context. The first two notes of The Simpsons theme are a tritone, but in that context it sounds dreamy and light. I find tritone movement sounds more ominous when it's done by a low instrument in a downward direction.\n\nIn general there are way more factors in play than just what note is being played. Tone is a huge factor in what makes a melody sound the way it does. There are some videos floating around of someone playing a Skrillex song on piano. It is pretty vanilla sounding music when you take away all the crazy whompy synthesizers, but the tones he uses are what makes his music so effective.\n\nTLDR; There are lots of ways to make music sound scary. All of them depend on playing off listener expectations which are culturally learned.",
"Great question! There are a lot of factors, so it's not so easy to explain. But let's go over some of them.\n\nOne of the strongest ways in which music can manipulate our emotions is based on what we associate it with, for whatever reason. Some of these are easy to understand. For example, if you hear fast music, you may start to get excited because you associate fast music with excitement. Your expectations are also part of this, so if the music is very low and very slow, you might think that it's just too quiet, so when the music suddenly gets high and fast, you jump in a scare! Low sounds are usually associated with darkness and high sounds are usually associated with brightness. I don't actually know why. A lot of music that tries to be \"evil\" or \"ominous\" therefore uses lots of low sounds. Some music tries to create an experience, and these associations and expectations form a large part of this experience. Note that the choice of instruments is important here, too, because a low string bass will have a different sound from a low bass clarinet or bassoon or bass drum. The bassoon might sound more playful, while the bass drum might sound like a heartbeat (reminds you of stressful situations in which you hear your own). Or, you know, a balrog.\n\nSeveral people have answered talking about dissonance, which is when two sounds clash. Dissonance is a natural feature of music, so I wouldn't be so hasty to associate it with being \"evil\" or \"ominous\"! That's because music tends to work on a system of tension and release. You do something in music that causes the listener to expect something -- that's the tension -- and then you do the something -- that's the release. Of course, you can always make a tension that doesn't release the way the listener expects, and that's part of what makes music exciting! There are many different emotions you can draw with tension and release, depending on how you do it. If your music is generally happy-sounding, some tension might actually make it ecstatic. If your music is generally sad-sounding, some tension might make it painful. There are many different ways to make tension, like holding a note too long, or playing a rhythm that expects an answer, or playing notes that clash with each other -- that's dissonance. And, like I said, dissonance can be evil or ominous, but it can also be overflowing with joy, so you shouldn't think that dissonance somehow automatically creates darkness. Rather, you can add dissonance to music that's *already* evil or ominous to help heighten the tension."
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1ps52b | - why don't humans get in heat? or maybe - why are humans always in heat? | Judging by animal breeding with cats and dogs, it seems most animals have a mating season - whereas people ovulate every month and can be mated all the time. But why? Or how did it come to be? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ps52b/eli5_why_dont_humans_get_in_heat_or_maybe_why_are/ | {
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"This is a very good question, and I don't think we quite know for sure. But I believe that the current thought is that it is related to our social lives and behaviour.\n\nHuman babies are very weak compared to most other animals, it takes months before they can walk rather than minutes to days, and a decade or so before they can fend for themselves. So strong families are needed to support these children. If you can't tell when your mate is in season (there are better and worse times to copulate), then you have to stick with them for a longer time, and this should lead to stronger bonds."
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3p40ln | advertisements on the side of buses | Not sure about other countries, but for mine, ever since young I've realised that the ads stuck on the side of the buses have many small holes (if you sit and look from the inside of the bus) and you're able to see out through them to the street below.
Yet, if I were to look the same ad, same bus from the outside on the sidewalk, the person sitting behind the ad on the inside would be blocked off.
It's as if those small circles are making the ad seem like a "one way mirror"
**Edit**: Oh and I forgot to add a side related question. why do they have holes in the first place anyway? Thanks everyone for answering! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p40ln/eli5_advertisements_on_the_side_of_buses/ | {
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"the ad itself has much more surface area than the holes take out. when you look from a long ways away the ad blends together, but when you are close (in the bus) the dots are bigger and you can see out",
"It's because your face is right next to the ad when you're riding on the bus, and your eyes can focus on the light coming through the holes.\n\nWhen you see it from the street, you're like 50 feet away and see the ad, not the tiny amount of light coming through the holes.",
"This privacy is only achieved when there is more light on the printed side than the black. For example, in an internal building, you can't separate 2 rooms such as a boardroom with the Perf vinyl, because the lighting would be the same on both sides. That's why it's always on the face of Buildings and vehicles.\n\nAs a signwriter I use this stuff all the time, unfortunately I can't tell you *why* it works. It just does."
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32gfis | how, through out evolution, did cats learn to fall in their feet so perfectly, if historicaly they aren't so often thrown to the ground with their feet up? | They don't practice it that so much, but still they made a 10/10 landing.
(except for one of my cats, he's retarded) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32gfis/eli5_how_through_out_evolution_did_cats_learn_to/ | {
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"Probably has something to do with the fact that most of our cats' ancestors were perpetually climbing things. Wild cats, the distant cousins of our domesticated cats, are often found climbing trees and mountains. Good climbers need to be good fallers too, if the species is to survive.",
"Biologist here! I must answer a cat question twice a week.\n\nCats are historically and evolutionarily excellent climbers. Our cats' wild cousins spend a lot of time in trees. Being adapted to arboreal life or partially anyway, they need to be able to not only climb well but fall well! \n\nIf you think about their first ancestors who were falling out of trees, those who fell poorly likely broke a limb or their spine and didn't reproduce. Those who landed well passed this on genetically to their offspring. ",
"The ones that didn't, died. This is the answer to all evolution questions. "
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aqatl2 | why don’t people or companies use bamboo instead of normal wood from trees to make more products? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aqatl2/eli5_why_dont_people_or_companies_use_bamboo/ | {
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"Bamboo doesn't grow wide enough to make things like 2x4's or other structural beams used for house-sized construction. You can probably use bamboo after some processing (like you would pulp wood and compress it to make certain plywoods) but this would cost more time money equipment and effort than trimming down a long thick beam from what was once a long thick tree trunk.\n\nAlso, bamboo is hollow in the middle, which gives it less usable material per foot of height, so while it grows taller, you aren't really getting more material out of it.",
"my sister had a bamboo garden that was messing up the water pipes for the neighborhood so we had to take them down, we built a trellis out of them for her garden and made several bongs. bamboo is seriously sturdy and useful and i had no idea until we had hundreds of 15ft pieces.\n\nand we sold the other ~260pieces to some older couple for like $50. "
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tcdlv | why do speakers pop? | I know that they're getting old but is there something coming loose? Is it something with the coil getting torn? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tcdlv/why_do_speakers_pop/ | {
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"Sound is basically movement and vibration. The louder something is, the more it moves and vibrates the material used to direct the source of the sound. When you tell the machine that produces the source of the sound to make more sound than the materials can handle (specifically the cone of a speaker), those materials break down.\n\nHope that helps! \n\nEdit: Just realised you said they were getting old. The same principle holds true over time, even if you're not producing more sound than the speakers can handle. It's a natural breakdown of components, kind of like erosion. You should look into getting your speakers replaced. If they're popping already, it means the cone is torn and needs to be repaired or replaced. ",
"Sound works by moving air. How fast you move it and shake it gives it its tone. A speaker shakes really fast to make the sound. Speakers pop when something goes wrong inside the speaker and it makes it push alot of air at once. \n\n(keeping subreddit theme)",
"Without explaining the various mechanisms of a loudspeaker, suffice to say the voice coil is slapping the back side of the magnet it is wrapped around. This happens when the loudspeaker is over-driven and extends beyond its intended extrusion range.\n\nAging speakers do this because the material that surrounds the cone and allows its movement begins to stretch, allowing the cone and the voice coil attached to it to move outside of the designed range of movement thereby hitting the back of the magnet."
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7svc0e | why is the contents of iron supplements so much higher than the recommended daily allowance? | When doing research for chemistry coursework on iron tablets I noticed that commercial tablets are 200 mg (65mg of iron), and the recommended daily allowance for iron is 8.7 mg. This means that tablets have around 400% of our daily allowance. Why is this not harmful to the human body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7svc0e/eli5_why_is_the_contents_of_iron_supplements_so/ | {
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"Iron supplementation may need to be higher than the general populations requirements if someone needs iron stores replacing if they require more iron due to ongoing medical problems.\n\nAdditionally not all iron may get absorbed anyway (this is what commonly causes dark stools in those taking iron supplements).",
"what it needs and what it can handle are 2 different values.\n\nyou only need about ~10 mg in a day. a typical fortified cereal will have almost 20, and you're in no danger of bran killing you. someone with anemia can be given *hundreds* of milligrams in a day, and toxicity only becomes a concern around 1000 mg",
"They are often used to treat iron deficiency anemia. In this case, your body's iron stores are depleted, and you need a lot of extra to get topped off again."
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3e3q33 | how are some people able to get away with murder and only go away to jail for 4-6 years, then others get 25 - life? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3e3q33/eli5_how_are_some_people_able_to_get_away_with/ | {
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"It heavily depends on the circumstances. Eg. manslaughter is \"less serious\" than killing someone with intent.",
"There are lots of factors that govern how someone is punished for murder.\n\nFor example, if I come home, find a guy in bed with my wife, and stab him, that's a different charge than if I planned to kill him ahead of time, or if I just stabbed him randomly in the street. Acts of passion and things like that get less severe (but still pretty serious) charges.\n\nAnother big factor is the trial. If I fight my charge and take it through a whole trial by jury, I might get a big punishment. If I just plead guilty at the beginning, I'd probably get a lesser punishment. If I really wanted, I could probably agree with the prosecution to plea guilty to a lesser charge. It's a good deal for me because I get less time in jail, and good for the prosecutor because he doesn't have to clog up the courts with my case. \n\nThere's about a gazillion things that affect the time a person will serve for any crime.",
"In the United States, there are both mitigating and aggravating factors. First, the jury has to actually find the defendant guilty of murder. The defendant can submit evidence, such as provocation, mental illness, self-defense, or lack of murderous intent, that proves him to be innocent of murder, or only guilty of a lesser crime.\n\nIf found guilty of murder, there is typically a totally separate second phase of the trial, where additional aggravating or mitigating factors are possible. Mitigating factors might include provocation, lack of a criminal record, unlikelihood of continued violence against others, poor education, and remorse for the crime. Aggravating factors would be prior criminal history, lack of provocation, method of killing, circumstances of the murder, lack of remorse, continued violent tendencies, etc. The defense attorney, the prosecutor, and the defendant himself are all able to speak to the court and make arguments for how the defendant should be sentenced. The judge will take all of this into account as well as sentencing guidelines to decide the final sentence."
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7ta84j | what is marginal benefit? | What are some real world examples for a 5 year old to understand what a marginal benefit is | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ta84j/elif_what_is_marginal_benefit/ | {
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"Would you like a candy bar? Here, have one. Did you like it? Of course you did. The benefit to you was considerable.\n\nWould you like another candy bar? Here. Did you like it? Of course! Did you like it as much as the last one? Maybe not.\n\nRepeat seven times.\n\nWould you like another candy bar? By this point, you might say No -- you're full, you feel sick. The benefit of **one more** candy bar is pretty small right now. But you eat it anyway, because, well, chocolate!\n\nWould you like another candy bar? If you eat one more, you're going to puke up all that delicious chocolate. THIS time, the benefit of **one more** is now negative -- it's a cost, not a benefit.\n\nMarginal in this case means the benefit of **one more** of something.\n\n----\n\nTaxes work the same way. If you're in the 15% bracket, it doesn't mean that every dollar you earned was taxed at 15%; but **one more** dollar will be, and that's your marginal tax bracket."
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2mxn64 | how can philae capture sounds in the vacuum of space? | I'm sure it has to do with vibrations through the probe itself. I'd love to know more. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mxn64/eli5_how_can_philae_capture_sounds_in_the_vacuum/ | {
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"Those recordings from the lander weren't actual sounds per se. They were sounds created by detecting subatomic particles knocked off of the comet by the solar wind and cosmic rays and then converting that information into sound. "
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s2t16 | why does drinking sometimes give me heartburn? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/s2t16/eli5_why_does_drinking_sometimes_give_me_heartburn/ | {
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"because alcoholic drinks destroy the mucus lining of your stomach, allowing your stomach acids to dissolve you from the inside out."
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9wcdfe | what's biomimicry | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wcdfe/eli5_whats_biomimicry/ | {
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"Using nature as a guide for mechanical processes. For example new research on humpback whale fins is leading to a development of specifically shaped wind turbine blades that catch the air better and cause less drag.",
" Biomimicry is a concept that identifies sustainable innovations inspired by nature. An interesting thing to consider is this: imagine designing spring. Biomimicry is a way to study nature creatively and initiate new products and services based off those learnings. An example that Giselle Weybrecht explains in her book, \"The Sustainable MBA\", is that of a bullet train in Japan. The train was functional, however, was very loud and did not use speed efficiently. \n\nInterestingly enough, the designer that was working on this project happened to be an avid bird watcher. While watching the Kingfisher bird dive into water, this designer realized that the long-pointed beak enabled the bird to enter the water making minimal splash or noise. Once identifying this experience, he realized that if the train was physically reconfigured, there was an opportunity to reduce the noise and make the train faster "
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58kp37 | why can't everyone be nice to each other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58kp37/eli5_why_cant_everyone_be_nice_to_each_other/ | {
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"They're some people out in the world who just like to be rude and irritating, that passed onto others and basically you know",
"I'm sure someone will come up with a much more elegant answer. Simply, a few million years of competing for resources (food, mates, territory) is tough to break away from. ",
"I'd say for two main reasons. Humans love to break into tribes. With a clear divide between Us and Them. Typically that creates some sort of feeling of superiority or resentment. \nAnd also, treating someone like crap actually makes you feel good. It makes you feel powerful and important. It's why we like sarcasm and a good comeback. And those little micro-rewards in your brain create long term behavior patterns. \n\n",
"Because without the bad, how would you recognize and appreciate the good?",
"Not everyone deserves to be treated nicely. Everyone knows this.\n\nThe issue is we can't agree on who those undeserving individuals are. This causes injustice.\n\nConsider the opposite question: why can't everyone be mean to each other? Same answer: not everyone deserves to be treated meanly. \n\nTL;DR: we know and understand the benefits of being nice; we just fuck it up rather quickly."
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4ks88f | why does your voice get hoarse when you're tired/sleep deprived? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ks88f/eli5_why_does_your_voice_get_hoarse_when_youre/ | {
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"My guess is that when you're tired, they relax and give you a deeper voice. They could be tired and overworked, making it harder for your voice box to vibrate quickly enough to produce high frequencies. When you wake up, your vocal cords are most likely not stretched and the same thing happens.",
"Your voice can get worn out after a long day, especially if you work a service job, are customer facing, or have to communicate with colleagues frequently throughout the workday. The larynx is what actually vibrates in your throat to create sound, and it works like a vibrating muscle. Like any other muscle, it can get irritated by being overworked. Alternatively, it also has to be warmed up to work at full force. So if you just woke up after a night's sleep or a nap, your larynx is going to need to stretch out and loosen up a bit before you'll have your natural tone back. Hot (not scalding) liquid can help relax your voice a bit, and oddly enough, plain old potato chips help with a hoarse voice too. I think it's something to do with the grease they cook them in, which lubricates your vocal cords and reduces some of the scratchy friction while you speak. This is just a theory though that I've heard from some people who sing professionally.",
"The *vocal folds* vibrate, not the whole larynx. And while there is muscle inside them, they have a mucosa - a layer of sensitive tissue - over the top. Picture this being like the inside of your eyelids - very sensitive to friction, sensitive to drying out.\n\nIf you haven't slept, you've probably been coughing and talking and mouth breathing for *hours* and so your vocal folds get irritated, dry and perhaps swollen.\n\nIf you've just woken up, there is phlegm and so forth to be cleared from them before they work properly.\n\nAs for lubricating your vocal folds, food and drink do not touch them on the way down, unless you have serious issues. If they did touch them, and you don't have a serious illness, you would go into a coughing fit. So honey, tea and *chip grease* (?) don't lubricate your folds. Water does through whole-body hydration, not directly.",
"In my experience, being overtired and or sleep deprived meant that I was often eating or drinking late at night which contributed to acid reflux (GERD). One particular time before I was diagnosed, I had a sore throat so bad that I was concerned I wouldn't be able to swallow during the night. When the dr saw my throat and confirmed I didn't have a fever or test positive for strep, he quickly zeroed in on silent acid reflux. Then it made sense to me after why after a night of drinking or a big meal at a restaurant late in the evening I would be hoarse in the morning. Now I look for signs of reflux because typically for me heartburn isn't one of them.",
"I have a related question: Why does my voice get much deeper the morning after a night of heavy drinking?"
]
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||
1s7dnb | why would increasing the minimum wage "kill the economy" according to companies making record profits? | I do unterstand (does not mean share!) the concerns, especially concerning small businesses, but why do companies that make record profits for everyone but their employees get away with essentially saying they would "go out of business"? Every 5 year old can see there has to be something wrong with that story... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s7dnb/why_would_increasing_the_minimum_wage_kill_the/ | {
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"Most companies certainly wouldn't go out of business, though I don't know of any company that's claimed it would. But there's definitely an argument to be made that it would hurt the economy.\n\n* Firms would lay off workers and produce less, increasing unemployment.\n\n* As firms produce less, they also tend to raise their prices. This would offset a portion of minimum wage employees' benefit under an increased minimum wage.\n\n* On top of cutting costs unrelated to labor when possible, firms would also attempt to minimize the increase in labor costs as much as possible. As an example, I take it you've heard about companies cutting full-time employees to part-time to avoid paying for employees' health insurance under the new Obamacare requirements. Those cuts would likely expand, as part of firms' efforts to cut costs, if the minimum wage was raised.\n\n* Outsourcing would increase, further increasing domestic unemployment.",
"I would wager a guess that it has less to do with the actual impact it would have on the profits of massive corporations, and more on speculation. If you watch how the stock indexes fluctuate, it has a lot to do with speculation. If I'm investing in a company that brings in $20 billion a year, and them raising their wages lowers that by say, $1 billion, that means it's profit/expense ratio will go down. That in turn will hurt investor confidence in the company, and the price will go down. So the minute investors hear of a wage increase, they get scared and sell their stock. This could actually hurt the business way more than the wage increase could, so businesses (specifically, their board of directors), have to play a dangerous game of appeasing the investors who own their company while also doing things as they see fit.\n\nAlso, raising wages means less yachts :)",
"Big companies often have large cash reserves and more employees, so they have fat that CAN be cut and still have funds to last through slow times.\n\nSmaller businesses often run on much smaller margins, have less buying and borrowing power, fewer employees, and have smaller cash reserves, as well as clients that are likely to be much more price sensitive. Higher wages and a hickup in the economy can break smaller businesses much faster.\n\nSo yeah, the fat cats could give less of a damn either way, but its the small guys who wind up taking the brunt of the damage. McD's could afford to pay more, but Bob's burgers down the street might not be able to pay the same wages and still stay in business. Be careful when you shoot high because bullets always hit the ground in the end.",
"It wouldn't. Companies have record balance sheets/reserves right now. Part of their business model is low wage workers. They're trying their best to emulate the poverty wages paid to workers in 3rd world countries. When companies in 1968 paid the equivalent min wage of $10 per hour nobody went broke and the middle class was MUCH healthier financially.\n\nCurrently its just their current business model to pay workers less and stock investors more, do stock buybacks, move money offshore, etc. When Henry Ford paid wages high enough for his workers to buy the cars they were building he didnt go broke, IT EXPANDED HIS BUSINESS. Higher wages isnt making Costco broke. Higher wages wouldnt 'Kill the Economy\" its just not in fashion right now. (Unfortunately for this generations middle class)",
"Companies having to deal with higher labors costs, are less likely to hire new entrants into the work force. Those new, usually young, people are missing work place opportunities useful for commanding higher pay in the future.\n\nFood service is still one of the few areas in the economy where new young workers can get a start. They aren't going to be hired at the union steel-mills or by GM, adults are even delivering newspapers, landscaping companies are cutting lawns.\n\nHigher pay by law means fewer opportunities. That means, some more people get NO PAY. Which creates more poverty, more crime, more violence, and worse, more taxation to house criminals, which offsets any pay increases people are getting by law, because by law they have to pay more in taxes to counter the problems the narrow minded short sighted law created. \n\nMinimum wages laws are about buying CHEAP votes now, with expensive costs for the future. It is NOT about good economics.\n\nNow, these \"record profits\" are not record yields. The dollar is worth less, so the numbers are higher, but the percentages are miserable. Earning $2 billion if profit might seem like a lot, but not if it took $50 billion in investment and $50 billion in borrowing (with interest) to earn that lousy 2%.",
"Use walmart as an example. They jsve millions of employees. Of each employee earned amd extra 1.00 per hr multiplied by 30hrs a week times 50 weeks a yeat that would cost them 1.5billion dollars. Hardly a small amount. That also doesn't account for increased ss payments and now imagine a 6 dollar per hr raise for all those employees. Thats 9 billion extra in costs. Walmart earned 15.7 billion in profit last year. Increase minimume wage and you wipe out a huge portion of their profits. Its not just a small amount. Additionally, if walmart could raise prices now to make more money they would. \n"
]
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|
49ahi2 | how does ransom-ware work in the software programming? | Came across this _URL_0_ and was wondering how exactly does ransomware work. Sure it locks computer and requests money to unlock (can you really trust them by unlocking and believing they wont be back?). Does this happen at the root level or is it in the OS files etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49ahi2/eli5_how_does_ransomware_work_in_the_software/ | {
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"text": [
"It just applies an encryption to all your files, you do not have the key to unencrypt. For ELI It's the same as adding a password to open any files and saying \"I'll tell you the password for X dollars\"\n\nAs for trusting them to unlock - It's rumored they generally do actually unlock your PC, but it's not a guarantee as always - and there's not anyway (that I've heard of) to recover your files once they have done it if you havn't taken any prevention measures (backup ect.)"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-mac-users-have-to-worry-about-malware-that-locks-their-computer-and-demands-a-ransom"
] | [
[]
] |
|
38q3w8 | what are the attorneys doing to get celebrities or people in power get a lighter sentence for a crime than regular person who might get a more severe punishment? | I know often it's the high priced lawyers that are getting these people with money off with slaps on wrists, rehab, a fine or just community service. But what exactly are the attorneys doing to get this to happen? And how come a regular schmuck can't get the same lawyer to do so? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38q3w8/eli5_what_are_the_attorneys_doing_to_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"crwxqs3"
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"text": [
"theres a number of things going on here:\n\n* Rich people can afford an good attorney. Poor people cannot.\n* There is a massive *systematic* bias in favor of rich people. If you come from a wealthy background, the judge, jury, prosecutors, everyone, views you more favorably than they would a poor person in that position. This is due to a number of complicated institutional and psychological factors, regardless of the quality of your lawyer or the merits of your case."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
bytxs2 | why does venting about stress help us feel better? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bytxs2/eli5_why_does_venting_about_stress_help_us_feel/ | {
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"text": [
"Whole you’re waiting for the technical Mumbo jumbo answer, I’d say that it probably has to do with the release of whatever chemical in your brain when you vent. It helps just to vocalize things and puts things into perspective and “get it off your chest” like releasing all that “tension”.",
"From a psychological perspective, you cannot process that which you keep to yourself. As soon as you state it to another person, it has a massive psychological effect on you. Thus, many smaller problems can be dealt with simply by talking about it, as it allows your brain to process what is being said as compared to what it thinks."
]
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[],
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||
29e3yo | if when light ray travels from one medium to other, it's speed decreases/increases, why does the direction of the light ray change? | The question should be self-explanatory, But if any explanation needed, I'll do the needful. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29e3yo/eli5_if_when_light_ray_travels_from_one_medium_to/ | {
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"The easiest way to visualise it is to think about a remote control car driving from concrete on to sand at an angle. The wheels that hit the sand first would slow immediately, causing the car to turn. This is essentially the same way it works with light, as the wave enters at an angle, one \"side\" of the wave will hit the new material first and will slow down or speed up before the other side does. ",
"Because, unless the light wave enters the new medium perpendicularly, then one side of the wave hits the new medium first. When one side slows down first, the other side continues causing the wave to \"rotate\" and change directions.\n\nImagine if you're roller skating and your right foot hits the side of the rink, your left foot will continue at its original speed but the right will slow down, causing your body to spin towards the right.\n\nIf you want to get into the math of the refraction, look up [Snell's law](_URL_0_) ",
"The visual model I like most: Consider a group of soldiers marching in formation - say 10 rows wide and 10 rows deep - marching along pavement in a straight line. The group encounters a strip of deep sand. The group meets the sand at an angle, say the soldiers on the right side enter the sand first. The guys on the right slow down, then the guys to the left of them each slows as they hit the sand. This makes a 'kink' in the front line of soldiers where the guys on the right are going slower than the guys on the left, so the line of soldiers breaks to the right. Eventually, all soldiers are in the sand, still marching at the same cadence, but the whole group is heading to the right of where they were heading on pavement. On the other side of the sand, say they step back onto pavement. The guys on the right meet pavement first, and speed up first. Same thing now happens in reverse, where the first line of troops 'breaks left' until all the troops are out of the sand. At this point they are headed back on the original heading they had when they entered the sand!\n\nNote a few other interesting things here: \n\n1) If they hit the sand straight on, they just slow down but the group of soldiers heads in the same direction. This is the same as light, if it hits a medium straight on, it continues straight (doesn't bend)\n\n2) The whole group of soldiers slows down when they enter the sand, and speeds up when they step out; this is exactly the same for the velocity of light (it slows down by the index of refraction). If the ground is more difficult to march on, they slow more and the group 'bends' more - same as light, where higher index of refaction (slower marching) bends light more\n\n3) the distance between rows of soldiers gets closer together when they enter the sand. This is exactly the same as the distance between wavelengths of light getting 'shorter' when it enters a medium. Remember the light is always oscillating at the same rate (same frequency) but the *wavelength* is not fixed. Wavelength varies with medium, so the light is actually a different 'color' within a medium (you just can't see it there since it is in the medium and not hitting your retina).\n\nNow you are thinking \"but the speed of light is constant!\", that's true in a vacuum; the speed of light within a medium is the speed of light in a vacuum divided by the index of refraction, so it does indeed slow down.\n\nI hope this helps!",
"I found [this diagram](_URL_1_) helpful from the [Wikipedia article](_URL_0_)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law"
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[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell's_law",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snells_law_wavefronts.gif"
]
] |
|
eoxq4p | mobile phone batteries have exploded in the past, how do ev's manage safety of large battery packs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eoxq4p/eli5_mobile_phone_batteries_have_exploded_in_the/ | {
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"text": [
"EV frames are designed such that there is a metal firewall between the battery packs and the driver, similar in function to the firewall gas vehicles have. In both cases, they're only meant to give the people inside a few extra seconds to escape rather than provide the driver with permanent sanctuary from the car which is now incinerating itself. This is one argument against converting existing gas vehicles, designed with no EV firewall, into an EV."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
70fws1 | how do snakes never get in a knot? and if they do, how do they escape? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/70fws1/eli5_how_do_snakes_never_get_in_a_knot_and_if/ | {
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"text": [
"They do, in terms of the actual shape, but they're not stupid or flexible enough to pull it tight, so they just unravel themselves. Snakes aren't string, they have a spine and ribcage to consider and have limited flexibility. Any knot they manage to tie in themselves is loose and easily slithered out of.\n\nSource: had a snake for a few years, fascinating to watch.",
"To make a knot in rope the ends have to move in opposite directions in order to secure the knot. With a snake, both ends are moving in the same direction similar the the motion you use to untie a knot.",
"They are adorable and I'm all for the rising popularity of snakes as pets I just like to make sure people are aware of the work because it's unfair to the snake when people aren't ",
"There is a certain type of eel that can actually tie itself into a knot, it does so in order to gain more pulling strength as it tears through the flesh of whale carcass'. \n",
"In theory could a man twist his peeper into a knot?",
"My cornsnake got in a knot once. I had just fed him, and I did something else, came back ten minutes later, and he's in a knot holding the mouse in his mouth, not wanting to let go, still trying to eat it. If he would have just dropped the mouse he'd be fine. Had to untangle him for him. "
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2mbdpg | how do countries/space agencies choose where to launch spacecraft from? | [Cape Canaveral](_URL_1_)
[Baikonur Cosmodrome](_URL_0_)
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mbdpg/eli5_how_do_countriesspace_agencies_choose_where/ | {
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"text": [
"It has to do with location. You want a place with good weather, you want a place closer to the equator to give yourself a nice boost during launch (since the planet is spinning). \n\nThis allows them to save fuel on the launch. If you tried to launch from the north pole, you aren't getting any boost from the rotation of the planet and you would use my fuel to get to space. \n\nIf you had the launch site say in the midwest or the northeast, you will run into weather problems. You don't want to have to scrub a launch because of a snow storm.",
"Ideally you also want a place that doesn't have a lot of valuable real estate to its east (such as a major population center) that could be damaged if anything goes wrong with a launch. Cape Canaveral has the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The ESA launch site in French Guiana also has ocean to its east. Baikonur has mostly empty desert to its east. Same with Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert in China.\n\nThe direction east is special because spacecraft are generally launched in an easterly direction, to take advantage of the earth's spin. (This is less important if what you're going for is a polar orbit)."
]
} | [] | [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Space_Center"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
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