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3g6s5h | if time travel were invented in the future wouldn't someone have traveled back in time to give us the technology earlier? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g6s5h/eli5if_time_travel_were_invented_in_the_future/ | {
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"Theoretically, yes.\nThen again, that person could realize that time travel could end the universe as we know it, and then re travelled to stop himself from travelling.\n\nBut more than likely, I'd say its pretty much irrelevant because time doesn't actually exist. It's a man made system for keeping track of the day."
]
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[]
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||
3vw8p1 | where do shares get their worth from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vw8p1/eli5_where_do_shares_get_their_worth_from/ | {
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"text": [
"Stock price is determined, in theory, by the inflation-adjusted value of all future dividends. \n\nIn reality, many companies never pay dividends, so it's often just a lot of guess work and group consensus... which is why the stocks aren't stable."
]
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[]
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||
2uzxf0 | why does the u.s. government spend ~$600+ billion on military and limits nasa budget to ~$18 billion | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2uzxf0/eli5_why_does_the_us_government_spend_600_billion/ | {
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"In the entire history of the United States of America, nobody has flown a flying saucer or other space ship into a building or facility on US soil, nor has any intergalactic government beheaded American citizens in an attempt to get their way.",
"There's really not a simple answer to this other than it revolves around politics and world events. The United States has a large military and world-wide presence in many countries, which ha significant cost associated with that.\n\nMost Americans want the NASA budget to be increased and explore beyond our planet but there are politicians who don't see the importance to this and short-sighted on the bigger picture.",
"You know the same companies that make spaceships for NASA make missiles, ships, and fighter jets right?\n\nBasically, whats happening in the world right now (ISIS, war on terror, keeping the world peaceful) is much more monetarily important than doing stuff in space."
]
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25aica | what sort of evolutionary advantage would humans have, if any, had our eyes evolved to see higher and lower wave lengths on the light spectrum? and why did the current human eye "stop" at the what we call the "visible light" spectrum (780-390 nanometers)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25aica/eli5_what_sort_of_evolutionary_advantage_would/ | {
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"Through the course of evolution, various photosensitive pigments evolved through various random mutations. Their chemical properties make them sensitive to light in those wavelengths. Other animals are sensitive to slightly different wavelengths.\n\nWhy not other wavelengths? Well, eyes and the visual processing centers of our brains are really expensive...a lot of energy, complexity, and real estate goes into making it all work. More wavelengths would resent in a more complicated eye and more brain devoted to making it work. While there might be some upside to a broader range of vision, evolution has decided that the resources required to make it happen are better spent elsewhere."
]
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188m20 | what in plants make them have the innate desire to reproduce? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/188m20/eli5_what_in_plants_make_them_have_the_innate/ | {
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"Plants don't have a \"desire\" to do anything.\n\nIn some plants, the \"sperm\" gets blown off the plant by the wind, and hopefully carried to a waiting plant. In others, water has a similar effect. Some plants have their pollen carried from one plant to the next by insects.\n\nNone of these happens because the plant *desires* sex. They all just happen. If some genetic or environmental change took place that made these things no longer just happen, then the plants concerned would die out."
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6flrw6 | why is so much money spent on the military budget instead of on advancing science and technology? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6flrw6/eli5_why_is_so_much_money_spent_on_the_military/ | {
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"Roughly half of the military budget is in R & D, if not more. That means it is directly funding Science and Technology. A massive amount of the technology that you use, including the internet that you are reading this on was an invention using military budgets. "
]
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2qb6oq | how can jobs ask for you race, religion, sex and orientation? | Whats the possible reason? I've been told so as to meet a quota of any option but how is this not sexist, racist or etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qb6oq/eli5_how_can_jobs_ask_for_you_race_religion_sex/ | {
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"text": [
"They ask about it so they can show that they *aren't* discriminating based on those things. The [EEOC](_URL_0_) info is entirely optional & should be kept separate from the application when it's being reviewed during the hiring process.\n\nThe aggregate data can then be analyzed to see if the company has discriminatory hiring practices.\n\nNot hiring one Asian woman isn't discrimination but if you see that Asian women *never get hired*, then there's a problem."
]
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[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Employment_Opportunity_Commission"
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|
380uvu | why some british/english folks (especially commentators) pronounce a simple -a ending word as -er. | If you watch football/soccer as much as I do, it starts to get into your brain a little bit.
Example: China = "Chiner". Costa Rica = "Costereeker" Aston Villa = "Aston Viller"
They pronounce "America" correctly though, so I don't get it. Pls explain. Hopefully anyone British? :3
It's not a stereotype over here, just.... interesting. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/380uvu/eli5_why_some_britishenglish_folks_especially/ | {
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"I had a proff from caimbridge. He would call beta beter and theta as theter. I don't know why but your question is valid ",
"I've spent some time observing this people. I've noticed that this peculiar trait of inserting an 'r' sound manifests itself most often when they attempt to say a word ending with a vowel sound (usually one of the 'a' sounds) followed immediately by a word that begins with a vowel sound. With seemingly paradoxical tradition, however, the pronunciation of the 'r' when a word indeed ends with such a letter is often omitted or softened out to imperceptibility. ",
"Accents! Not all of us pronounce words in this way. Northern people like people from Yorkshire or even Bristonians for example will have a twang in certain word endings. "
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a4wfi5 | why is it that you can eat 500 kcal worth of cholcate and still feel hungry but when you eat 500 kcal worth of other foods (like eggs, chicken, etc) you get full? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a4wfi5/eli5_why_is_it_that_you_can_eat_500_kcal_worth_of/ | {
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"The chocolate we eat as a treat contains mostly sugar, which is very easy for your body to digest and use right away, while the other foods you've described are more complex and require more time to be broken down in your body.",
"My take is that chocolate is not a filling option (don’t forget it melts pretty easy, so it might go down as a liquid) so it goes through your body quicker than a usual healthy meal. ",
"There are two issues at work.\n\nThe first is that the feeling of 'fullness' is literally that: how much the bulk of food fills up your stomach. 500 calories worth of chocolate doesn't take up much space, so it doesn't make you feel full.\n\nThe second is the rate at which you digest food. Generally, carbohydrates digest faster than fats which digest faster than proteins.\n"
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4h8pyv | is acid in stomach necessary for digestion? what happens with digestion when you take proton pump inhibitors to reduce acidity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h8pyv/eli5is_acid_in_stomach_necessary_for_digestion/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes. If you do not have enough acid in your stomach your food will not break down enough to be absorbed by your intestines. This can result in malnutrition, damage to your intestines, gas as bacteria are processing more things, and many other symptoms and conditions. It is very important to take proton pump inhibitors as directed because their intent is to bring you stomach acidity down to proper levels, not to put it below them. "
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7e4jxu | would tattoos on someone with a weak immune system fade slower than on someone with a excellent immune system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7e4jxu/eli5_would_tattoos_on_someone_with_a_weak_immune/ | {
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"text": [
"A few weeks after you get the tattoo the pigments that remain have been eaten by immune cells which get stuck and stay in a layer of your skin. So the 'immune process' is over and done with in all individuals long before the tattoo degrades. \n\nThe fading is (afaik) mostly due to unrelated breakdown of the pigments (sunlight being the biggest factor) and is not due to the immune system. "
]
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715mz1 | why aren't inflatable objects ever just flat? ex: why do air mattresses have ridges instead of just being a rectangular prism? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/715mz1/eli5_why_arent_inflatable_objects_ever_just_flat/ | {
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"Air-supported structures generally have flexible materials that contain the air and the air pressure pushes outward equally in every direction. This means that a wall of the container will naturally want to bulge outward. Anchors within the container can keep it from just becoming a sphere but every part that isn't tethered will bulge."
]
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7c0s0s | how would losing a limb (or multiple limbs) affect blood flow and oxygenation of the body? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7c0s0s/elif_how_would_losing_a_limb_or_multiple_limbs/ | {
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"The body has baroreceptors inside the arterial walls which regulate the pressure of the circulating blood. These receptors keep the blood pressure in a specific range via multpile mechanisms like renin-angiotensin-aldosterone, systemic vasodilation/comstriction via nitric oxide etc. If you loose a limb, the blood pressure may rise at first but the body will adapt in no time using these mechanisms. So it wont necessarily effect excercise capacity. ",
"It would not have a noticeable difference in many cases, provided its healed properly.\n\nRemember, our body is really good at adapting to changing conditions inside and outside of itself. \n\nThe thing with oxygenation is that our body wants carbon-dioxide and oxygen at the same time. How much we have of both is detected by cells along our blood steam, and then the message is sent to our brain really quickly, and very often. The message is telling the brain how acidic our blood is, and that acidity is the result of having different amounts of carbon-dioxide and oxygen (and other factors, but this is a ELI5); more oxygen makes it less acidic, and more carbon dioxide makes it more acidic . Your blood acidity wants to be a jusssst the right level at all times, so when our cells exchange their carbon dioxide for oxygen, our blood acidity naturally lowers. To counteract this, we breathe in more oxygen, returning it to jusssst the right level. This applies to every little part of our body, from your head to your toe, as all these cells want to live in a comfortable environment. \n\nWhen you lose a limb, you lose the cells which send the message to your brain, along with the muscle, tendon, and other tissues which require that message to be sent. Your brain can only tell how much the messengers want oxygen, not where or how many cells need to be oxygenated. As a result, a loss of a limb makes the body work a very small amount less than if it had that limb. This is also true for blood pressure/flow, because there is less muscle and other tissues to deliver this oxygen to, and take carbon dioxide away from. \n\nWould it make cardiovascular exercise easier? It would eventually make no difference, as your brain and heart get used to there being less cells which need monitoring and the transfer of nutrients (not that they can directly measure these in any way). Depending on the amputation (let alone recovery time), your body will change its breathing patterns and heart pressure/beat to be just a tiny bit smaller... probably not even noticeable, and it wouldn't make a difference.",
"When your arm gets chopped off at the rotator cuff, does the arteries and veins in your shoulder reconnect to re-complete the loop?"
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40665g | if i buy 10 lottery tickets am i 10 times as likely to win? instead of 1 in 300,000,00 is it 1 in 30,000,000? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40665g/eli5_if_i_buy_10_lottery_tickets_am_i_10_times_as/ | {
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"Yes. It's a probability:\n\nP(Winning lottery) = Your tickets / total number of tickets\n\ni.e. 10/300,000,000 = 1/30,000,000\n\n\nMultiply that fraction by 100 to get your percentage chance of winning.",
"There are only 292 million distinct numbers, so you could buy a ticket for every possible outcome for less than the grand prize money.\n\nYou just have to hope you don't end up sharing the jackpot if you want to come out ahead on the deal.",
"TLDR- Buying 10 Powerball tickets makes you about .000005% more likely to win, not 10 times more likely.\n\nHere's the logic- If you buy a lottery ticket with 1 chance in 175,711,536 of winning you have 175,711,535 chances of *not winning*.\n\nIf you buy 10 tickets you have 175,711,526 chances of *not winning*. \n\nThis represents an improvement of\n.00000512203166455910240060177%, not \"10 times as likely to win\" as OP questioned.\n\nOK, let's look at another way. Assuming the odds are 1 in 292 million to win (for PowerBall), the 1st ticket has a 1 in 292,000,000 chance to win. The 2nd ticket has a 1 in 291,999,999 chance to win because we now know that the numbers from the first ticket aren't winners. Playing that forward, the 10th ticket has a 1 in 291,999,991 chance to win, not a 1 in 29,200,000 chance to win.\n\nThe only way to significantly increase the odds in your favor is to purchase a massive number of tickets. In 1992, a group of people attempted to game the Virginia state lottery buy purchasing 5 million of the possible 7 million numbers in an attempt to win the 27 million dollar jackpot. Since then, most lotteries have prohibited the sales of large numbers of tickets to individual buyers.\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"I don't understand why everyone is so fixated on \"No, you have X chance of losing\"... it's a complementary event. In other words:\n\nP(losing) = 1 - P(winning)\n\nObviously, if you don't have a winning ticket, you have a losing ticket. The basic premise of the answer remains the same... yes, you are 10x more likely to win with 10 tickets instead of 1... but 10 times a very, very small probability is still a very, very small probability."
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3n409i | what is that 'bhurrrrr' sound from someone's lower tummy when he gets diarrhea? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n409i/eli5_what_is_that_bhurrrrr_sound_from_someones/ | {
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"It's all the bubbles of gas moving around. Your intestine is really long! Your poop and the air produced digesting it has to move it's way through. When you have diarrhoea your intestines are flushing themselves out far more quickly than normal so you can hear the air gurgling through more often. Your intestine moves things through with something called a peristaltic wave, it's kind of like the way a worm moves. It's that wave pushing the air along that you can hear. "
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2xrz7p | what does migraine/epilepsy do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xrz7p/eli5what_does_migraineepilepsy_do/ | {
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"Migraine headaches and epilepsy are two very different conditions. \n\nMigraines are painful conditions where the brain experiences discomfort to the point of pain and possibly disorientation, although you can still partially think and function in most cases. \n\nEpilepsy is like a lightning storm in your brain where a seizure locks it up and prevents it from functioning properly at all. \n\nNot sure if you're looking for more than than in this answer."
]
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2k23rg | what's going on in canada right now? | I've been camping for a few days and just got back to civilization (which for me is a major city in the USA). I'm seeing a lot of news references to a Canadian soldier who was killed in Canada. Lots of great images and posts about patriotic pride among Canadians as far as how it was handled. But I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what happened. Can anyone give me the story in not too confusing a way? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k23rg/eli5_whats_going_on_in_canada_right_now/ | {
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"It just happened today. It's literally the top story on /r/news, /r/worldnews, /r/canada, _URL_0_, _URL_3_, _URL_1_, _URL_2_ and pretty much every other source of news in the English speaking world.\n\nSome nut shot some random soldier on guard near the Canadian parliament. He was shot & killed. They suspect he may be tied to Islamic extremist/militant groups.\n\nThere's not really anything complicated going on with it."
]
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dg0pjq | why are so many successful companies and corporations willing to bend to the chinese government? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dg0pjq/eli5_why_are_so_many_successful_companies_and/ | {
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"Money talks. The Chinese market is a huge market share and labor is so cheap, it makes sense to work with their government to utilize it for cheap operating costs and increased profits.",
"Because those companies need to expand to show growth. The market in China is almost four times larger than the United States. So it makes sense to sell products and services in that market.\n\nThe problem is that to do so, they need to follow the guidelines of what is acceptable to the standards of the Chinese government. Most companies would rather follow those guidelines and sell in the Chinese market rather than stand up against the censors and lose out on the profits to a competitor willing to do so in its place.\n\nTL;DR: Money.",
"Money so in the case of activition and blizzard there is about 130 million American gamers. There are 600 million Chinese gamers. When your religion is the almighty dollar that's all that matters.",
"You have lemonade stall, you sell lemonade. Your chinese friends supply you cheaper lemon than your neighbour. Your chinese friend invest plenty of money to help you setup your stall and materials for lemonade. Your neighbour and your best friend don't have that much money to help you or have time to help you. But your chinese friend can. You owe him something.",
"The chinese are a very large group of people which means that they are a huge source of profit. \n\nA companies main goal is making money if that means supporting china they will do it.\n\nIts wrong and the customers only way of protesting is not buying their goods",
"Money money money money money Money money money money money Money money money money money Money money money money money Money money money money money and MONEY!",
"Public companies are only beholden to their shareholders, not their employees, customers, country of origin, or to any moral stance. This goes so far that the shareholders can sue the CEO if he / she acts outside their best interest. \n\nWhat is their best interest you ask? It's money. \n\nChina is providing a lot of companies with cheap labor and access to its large market, and no matter what their employees, customers, or personal ethics may say, they're legally obligated to chase that filthy Chinese money.",
"They are the 2nd largest market in the world now after the US, and unlike the US being allowed to trade and operate there is conditional. If you aren't in favor of the Chinese government, you don't get to make money from their people. In contrast, even if you're critical of the US government you're still free to operate and trade here.",
"Three big reasons. Which all come back to money.\n\nThe first reason is just money. The Chinese economy is $15.54 trillion (US) - that's $15 540 000 000 *000* \\- and is second only to the US (which is $21.41 trillion). The entire world is about $80 trillion. This means that China is about 19% of the world. For small companies, there's enough business going somewhere else - but if you're a big company, not being in China might mean giving up 19% of your possible income. Which is a lot of money.\n\nThe second reason is growth. The US economy isn't growing that fast - but China is. This means if you want to be a bigger company, the US won't help you there - but China will. The way we decide what makes a good business right now, growing matters - a business that is growing faster is better than one growing slower. China is a good place to grow.\n\nThe third is unity. Most countries, if you fight with them them, might make things hard for you in their country. China will not let you do anything. The worst the US has ever done to a company is to split it up, or force it to do business through an American company. China has told companies they can not do business - at all - in China. Many times.\n\nBecause of all of this, the Chinese government holds a lot of power when dealing with companies: they can say \"If you accept our way of doing things, you will get 20% more money, and more over time. If you don't, you will not do business in China. Ever.\" And for a long time, that's been a good deal.\n\nAnd if you, as one person, don't like it; there's not much you can do right now. Boycotts might work - but you're fighting against Chinese buyers. In order for a boycott to succeed, you would have to get enough people to match the number of Chinese people - which isn't easy. It will be interesting to see how the Blizzard \"Free Hong Kong Mei\" protests work, because that could cause China to block the game, cutting away some of the money Blizzard could make in China. But at least so far, nothing else has worked - because China holds a lot of money, and plays to win. \n\n\nEdit: fixed the amount - thank you [inflatablegenepool](_URL_0_)."
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5r4gfp | can someone explain to me the symbolism and meaning behind mussolini headquarters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r4gfp/eli5_can_someone_explain_to_me_the_symbolism_and/ | {
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"Seems somewhat forboding. Si is yes in Italian, the face is obviously him. Not sure there is much hidden symbolism, seems pretty straightforward, he's big, he's watching down over you and Si is the only answer he is looking for. \nTypical dictator stuff. "
]
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475rhx | how can cockatoo's "imitate" our words so successfully? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/475rhx/eli5_how_can_cockatoos_imitate_our_words_so/ | {
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"Because their anatomy makes them able to produce a variety of different sounds, and they're inclined to imitate sounds (some are more inclined than others and some other birds are better at both). \n\nYou'll notice that some birds might say one word over and over, while other birds know hundreds. Some birds are very difficult to understand while other birds speak very clearly. It isn't just human sounds that birds mimic. Some species have been known to mimic other bird songs, other animals, and even man made sounds like car alarms. If a bird hears something, it might mimic it. If a bird hears something a lot, it might be more inclined to mimic it. \n\nThere's some debate on whether or not birds can potentially understand what they're saying and doing. Some birds will mimic dangerous animals, like hissing snakes. Do they do this because they know that will keep predators away or because those that made that sound were more likely to survive, then make that sound around other birds who then also mimicked it?\n\nThere was a famous parrot named Alex that died a few years ago. He knew only about a hundred words (some birds know thousands and thousands), but he could also demonstrate understanding of the words. He could, for example, tell you if an object was bigger or smaller than another object. But, like the hissing birds, there's some debate about whether he actually understood or if it's just something he picked up without understanding anything deeper (animal communication studies are often clouded by the fact that the researcher testing them might be subtly indicating to the animal what behavior it should do). "
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2si1av | why is it that condensation only appears to gather on the glass surfaces in my bathroom? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2si1av/eli5_why_is_it_that_condensation_only_appears_to/ | {
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"text": [
"It's just the most visible on the glass. Water will condense on any chill surface because when the moisture comes loses it's heat the molecules slow down and go from gas to water.",
"Water condenses on any cold surface, as /u/untide says.\n\nBut I disagree with him that it's \"just the most visible on the glass\".\n\nThe reason you see it most on the glass is because the glass is where the insulation is the poorest, so the glass is colder than the other surfaces in your bathroom.",
"It won't only be on glass but there's more of it on there because the glass, being the greatest (not poorest!) insulator and poorest conductor, will be the coldest as it's unable to absorb as much heat from the environment as other materials, which makes it condense more moisture out of the air."
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azgixk | what's the difference between ravens and crows ? after so many years, i still cannot understand the difference. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/azgixk/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_ravens_and/ | {
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"They are both birds in the crow family, but are generally separated based on ravens being larger than crows on average. Both have multiple species under the name. It's not really a biological distinction, but rather just language distinction similar to dove/pigeon.",
"Ravens are much larger than crows. They have more of a ruff of feathers under their ‘chin’ and when you see them in flight they’ll have a diamond shaped tail,\n\nYou’re unlikely to see Ravens unless you’re in hilly and rocky terrain.",
"The raven has an extra pinion feather, so it’s a matter of opinion (a pinion!) boom tish!\n\nI fought the mods and won! For this comment. They thought it wasn’t educational. Show some respect Reddit!\n"
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3qgnme | what is the difference between smelling cigarette smoke, say, in a smokers car or home, and actually inhaling second-hand smoke from the lungs of a smoker? | Does the scent of cigarette smoke carry any extremely minute carcinogens? I understand smell is just particles coming into contact with receptors in the nose etc. So I'm wondering if those particles are just the same as inhaling smoke but at a much more diluted level. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qgnme/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_smelling/ | {
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"This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user & apos;s privacy. \n\n If you would like to do the same, add the browser extension [GreaseMonkey](_URL_1_) to Firefox and add [this open source script](_URL_0_). \n\n Then simply click on your username on Reddit, go to the comments tab, and hit the new OVERWRITE button at the top.",
"In terms of air pollution, second hand smoke is literally a drop in the bucket compared to emissions from engines and factories. You are probably breathing in worse fumes every time you start a car in the garage or drive in New Jersey. "
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c82qcd | why are thing (like mountains or trees) darker when close, but then brighten as they fade into the distance? | Something to do with light and atmosphere in between the things we're seeing? Googled it and just found an explanation that the closer it is the more true of its color. Makes sense, but how does the color get manipulated the farther away? Is it similar to how twilight is pretty b/c the sun shines through more of our atmosphere at an angle than if @ noon? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c82qcd/eli5_why_are_thing_like_mountains_or_trees_darker/ | {
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"Basically the more distance between you and he mountain, the more light pollution there is. The light “disrupts” the true color or the light reflecting off the mountain. \n\nThe same thing is true for stars. If you live in a big city, you can’t see the stars because the light from the city disrupt/override the light from the stars."
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252996 | why, with the nfl being number 1 in terms of revenue; are superstar players' contracts almost always trumped by that of mlb and the nba? | Contracts in the NBA and MLB often exceed hundreds of millions of dollars (in total money) where it seems like the NFL contracts never exceed 100 mil? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/252996/eli5_why_with_the_nfl_being_number_1_in_terms_of/ | {
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"Different sports leagues have different salary caps, which limit the highest possible salary you can play one player and/or the entire team. They're meant to keep the teams relatively even as far as competition goes.\n\nMLB has no salary cap, which is why the Yankees are always good.",
"Because there are 45 guys on an NFL roster (plus practice squad). There are a lot fewer players in every other sport. So the money available for salaries is being divided by a variable number of players.",
"The typical NFL career is usually significantly shorter than an NBA or MLB career. A game where giant athletic freaks decked out in plastic armor are constantly tackling each other wears the body down pretty fast. In MLB, it's not that unusual to see 10 year contracts signed. A 10 year contract in the NFL would be insane. The average NFL career is less than 10 years.\n\nThe main exceptions in the NFL are really good quarterbacks and kickers. A good QB is just so important to his team, and hopefully doesn't get hit too much. The importance of their position means that some of them are seeing $100+ million contracts these days. And a kicker should hardly get hit at all, so if they're good, they can sometimes play for a really long time. But kickers still don't get $100 million dollar contracts, because decent kickers aren't that rare.",
"The NFL makes so much money *because* it's figured out how to avoid paying wages like that."
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1hm7q8 | how are sperm produced in such an even 1:1 ratio of x to y chromosomes? | It's my understanding that all egg cells are X chromosomes, but sperm can be either X or Y, which is how we end up with males (XY) and females (XX).
What exactly makes the sperm either an X or Y? Is there some biological process? And how does that process yield nearly exactly half and half? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hm7q8/eli5_how_are_sperm_produced_in_such_an_even_11/ | {
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"From my understanding of biology (So take this with a grain of salt):\n\nSperm only have half the number of chromosomes in them compared to a normal cell (Which makes sense. The mother's egg has half, and the fathers sperm has half, creating a full set when together). Sperm are not created initially with half the chromosomes, but instead split off from a full cell with a complete set of chromosomes from the father (So, a normal cell with both an X and Y chromosome). When this cell splits to make two sperm with half a set of chromosomes, one cell get's the X and one cell gets the Y, and thus you get a 50/50 split each time."
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8b674z | 3 questions about bacteria and physics | 1. How do bacteria move without muscles ?
2. If bacteria is nearly weightless, how come it sticks on surfaces and doesn't flow with the wind ?
3. Also if i shake something hard, will the bacteria on it fly away ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8b674z/eli5_3_questions_about_bacteria_and_physics/ | {
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"1. Bacteria move using thermal energy inside any liquid, you know cold water goes down and hot water goes up, that generates enough energy to move the bacteria. Some bacteria have a tail called a flagella which it uses to propel itself around. Some have many oar like structures called cilia that it uses to move around.\n2. It depends on the type of bacteria, some bacteria secrete a glue like substance that glues them to surfaces, some have nothing of the sort and can be suspended in air. Some are suspended in air using droplets, like when you sneeze. \n3. Not necessarily, some bacteria get stuck on something and you just can’t “shake it off”. Most commonly, bacteria prefer wet stuff than dry stuff, but that does not mean that if shake your phone that you will get rid of most bacteria.",
" > How do bacteria move without muscles ?\n\ntiny chemistry powered propellers called \"flagella\" \n\n > If bacteria is nearly weightless, how come it sticks on surfaces and doesn't flow with the wind ?\n\ndrag is a function of size. at the scale of bacteria, different forces are far stronger. things like surface tension, electrical potential, etc. that you don't need to concern yourself with are much more powerful in the tiny world of bacteria.\n\n > Also if i shake something hard, will the bacteria on it fly away ?\n\ngenerally no. more effective is removing whatever the bacteria are living in. water, body oils, etc. \n"
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1w1cuz | why are all images from space static? shouldn't we be able to make a video of a galaxy turning or a supernova exploding? | The recent "sudden" supernova made me wish once again that we could see these things in action. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1w1cuz/eli5_why_are_all_images_from_space_static/ | {
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"We can simulate such things, but galaxies rotate at a rate of hundreds of millions of years per rotation. Supernova do happen more quickly and we do have time lapse pictures of them over several years to show what is happening.",
"Things in space move incredibly fast, but the distances in question are so vast that they barely seem to move at all. That's why you can't watch a galaxy turning.\n\nAnother issue is that, the further away something is, the less light that reaches us. To take extremely distant photos, the exposure time is very long. Most videos are shot at 24-60 frames per second, which just isn't nearly enough time to see anything.\n\nAs for why you can't see video of certain phenomena. The sky is huge and it would be technically very difficult and extremely expensive to watch the entire sky in high resolution and in video all the time. Just storing all those images would take ages and ages.\n\nEDIT: Distances are VAST, not FAST.",
"The problem is that the size and scale of these events mean that, though they do occur at great speed, they appear static when viewed from far away. \nThink of it like this: when you see an airplane flying through the sky, it doesn't appear to be moving very quickly, but is in fact moving at several hundred miles per hour. If you were to somehow suspend yourself motionless in the air at the same altitude of the passing jet, you would see it fly past at it's true speed. \nNow, extrapolate that to something the size of a galaxy. First, they are unimaginably far away (billions of light years in some cases) and are also unimaginably huge - many tens of thousands of light years in diameter. Therefore, even though the arms of the galaxy are rotating at great speed (~170 miles per *second* in the case of the Milky Way), their sheer size and distance mean that they appear static to us."
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3lh56u | if you're on the receiving end of a bribe, what's to stop you from just taking the money and not doing what you were bribed to do? | Seriously, what stops you from taking the money, saying "Ha-ha! Sucker!" and then threatening to report the guy who bribed you to the police if he tries to do anything else to make you do whatever it was he wanted you to do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lh56u/eli5_if_youre_on_the_receiving_end_of_a_bribe/ | {
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"The threat to report someone is hollow because you would go to jail for taking the money and usually if someone wants something badly enough to bribe you for it they'll want it badly enough to make your life shitty if you did that to them.",
"They will kill you\n\nNo one in the future will try to bribe you\n\nThey may report you to the authorities",
"In the short term, nothing.\n\nIn the long term, you will have made a powerful enemy, and word will get around that you cannot be trusted to honor your word.\n\nAlso, someone shady enough to offer bribes probably has no qualms about resorting to illegal means to resolve their disputes.\n\nFinally, you have to account for how you got that money somehow. They might not call the cops, but a tip to the IRS would be another matter."
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arz68j | how do t-shirts not have a seam along the torso when button up shirts do? | In other words, do do you make a closed loop of fabric around your body if you don't join the fabric anywhere?
If you look at a dress shirt there are seams that run vertically under your arms. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arz68j/eli5_how_do_tshirts_not_have_a_seam_along_the/ | {
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"My t-shirts have seams under the arms too. They're just stitched in such a way that they are much less noticeable.",
"The fabric is woven as a tube with the right diameter for that size of tshirt. This is only done with regular fit men's/unisex t-shirts as they are the same width all the way from chest to hem. With shirts, as well as slim fit and most fitted women's t-shirts they are made up of different shaped pieces that are sewn together to create curves that follow the contours of the body."
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4c1zn2 | why do costco and sam's organize as clubs instead of regular stores? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c1zn2/eli5_why_do_costco_and_sams_organize_as_clubs/ | {
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"They are actually making their money mostly on the membership fees, not on the goods they sell. About 75% of Costco's earnings come from their membership fees. The margins on the items they sell are low, and kept purposefully low. They sell tons more in money in goods, but since the margins are low, they really make their money on the memberships\n\nIt's basically a \"subscription\" service. Much like a gym membership. They gym makes their money by you paying to use the gym, and provides the \"goods\" (ie the equipment) to you at low/no cost.\n\nIt's a very successful model. High volume customers gain tons from this model since they can use it a lot, just like a gym rat can use the gym a lot and get a lot from their membership. A low volume customer doesn't do much in either, so you just sit back and collect their membership fees without having to pay much to have them as a member.",
"It started out as high volume discounts. Buy a gallon of mayonnaise and you'll save some money. Now they have several selling points: Exclusivity, more/better services, higher quality than regular\nstores, and bulk purchase discounts.\n",
"I have a second question, but related. I may have to post this on /r/legaladvice... Does this mean they can have discriminatory policies that would otherwise be illegal?\n\nI'm thinking about how certain golf clubs can ban women, or the boy scouts can ban gays because they are both \"private clubs\""
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6xshag | who invented the internet and how is it owned by nobody? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xshag/eli5_who_invented_the_internet_and_how_is_it/ | {
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"The inventors of the internet are Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf. \n\nInternet is not a single thing. It is a set of thousands of other things. No one owns it. A nice analogy would be agriculture. No one owns agriculture, agriculture is a set of techniques. \n\nThe parts of the internet are owned by various people and companies though, like Facebook, Google, etc, but I think you know that.\n\nEdit : replaced a word.",
"The Internet is a network of networks. It's all owned by someone, but no one owns the whole thing.\n\nYour ISP has a network which it owns, the cables to your home may be owned by them or another company which your ISP pays. Your ISP has a bunch of routers to make sure messages go to where they need to go.\n\nYour ISP probably has their own ISP which allows them to connect to the wider Internet.\n\nAt the top of all of this you have the backbone providers. They own the cables and equipment that allow networks across countries and even continents to connect to each other. They connect to other backbone providers. They don't pay each other for access to their networks since their connections are mutually beneficial.",
"The Internet were not invented in a single project with a few people but developed gradually though a lot of incremental steps. These improvements are still ongoing. As computers started to be developed it was natural to let them connect together over telephone wires instead of having human operators relay the messages between them. But to improve reliability in case one connection got broken either by accident or by an enemy attack routing protocols were developed that allowed the computers to reroute data throughout the system depending on its current state. And as computers became more common universities started connecting together. They developed new protocols for file transfer, text transfer, searching, emails, etc. Old standards were improved or replaced. When computers became even more common commercial and private actors also started connecting computers together. But since most of these are too small to maintain their own connections around the world phone companies started offering Internet access where they were responsible to send the data to the receiver. So Internet was and is an effort from lots of different people, universities and companies and each of these organizations are responsible for a tiny part of the big network.",
"Who owns the economy? Nobody. Who invented it? Various people invented various parts, but they all work together.\n\nWho owns global diplomacy? Nobody. Who invented it? Various people invented various parts, but they all work together.\n\nLike these, the Internet is a system of numerous different things that are all designed to interact with each other. It's not a single technology or a single object. However, certain bits of the technology (and of the governance structure) are especially important, and we may praise their inventors.",
"[This Kurzegesagt video](_URL_0_) has a good overview in ELI5 terms."
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3ntetk | when evaluating bird intelligence, how do we know parrots are not simply mimicking phrases phonetically, given the proper cues? | I've read about intelligent parrots, who could ask existential questions and understand basic concepts and theories a human toddler could. But how do we know they 'understand' what they're saying, instead of just 'parroting' things that seem to be in context? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ntetk/eli5_when_evaluating_bird_intelligence_how_do_we/ | {
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"Alex the African Grey Parrot is probably the best example. He was able to ask and understand a question about himself (What colour am I?) he made up new words for things he didn't know (He knew Banana and Cherry, but not Apple, so he called an Apple a Banerry), he practised English when Alone in his room, he asked to be taken places and got upset when taken elsewhere.\n\nAlex is deemed to be one of the most impressive examples of animal sapience. He exhibited more than just basic mimicking. His Wikipedia page can tell you more:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: Should probably have elaborated a bit better. What makes this special is the choice to do something Not for survival, but for Learning. He had no reason other than curiosity. He actively chose to study, to learn and to implement the learning in new ways that the teachers never predicted. He didn't just mimic, he formulated his own fresh answers (See above, Banerry) based on the information he had. It's far more than base instinct. And it's animals like these that deserve our respect, and protection."
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73t5iy | why do people care about the difference between shaken and stirred? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73t5iy/eli5_why_do_people_care_about_the_difference/ | {
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"Without getting into personal opinions, which are subjective, there's a difference between shaking and stirring. \n\nShaking agitates the ice in the drink more, which causes it to melt faster. This results in a colder, more diluted drink. It also introduces air into the drink, which can make it frothier or fizzier, especially if there's something in there like dairy or egg.\n\nStirring mixes the ingredients together in a calmer manner, so less ice melts and air isn't introduced. Stirring results in a slightly warmer, but less diluted drink without foam or froth.\n\nFor most drinks that are just liquor and mixers, you probably want to stir so you don't dilute them (they'll still be pretty cold). For most drinks that involve dairy or egg or are supposed to be light and frothy, you'll want to shake to aerate them. For drinks that you want to be really cold and don't mind if they get diluted some (e.g., a martini for some people), you can also shake.",
"If you're referring to cocktails--\n\n Shaking a cocktail that has ice causes the ice to fragment and bruises the drink, causing the more bitter flavors to come out. Fragmented ice melts faster, so your drink gets watered down faster as well. You should always stir a drink that has ice in it. Only some drinks without ice should be shaken.\n The benefit to shaking is more even distribution of the flavors, so you won't have that last swig all gin or all olive juice in a martini, for example.\n\n ",
"I'll try explain this by using the same drink as an example rather than going in to the reasons why certain drinks are stirred and others are shaken. It's only fitting that I use the Martini Cocktail for the explanation as many will be familiar with the famous line from James Bond, \"shaken, not stirred.\"\n\n**Stirred Process**\n\nAll the wet ingredients (in this case, vermouth and spirit) will be added to a mixing glass before filling it with as much ice as possible. The ingredients are added before the ice to avoid uncontrolled dilution that would occur if it were to be done the other way round. \n\nPreferably the ice will be large blocks or cubes as smaller blocks of ice will melt much quicker during the stirring process causing the drink to be over diluted before its reached the desired temperature. The bartender will test the drink for correct temperature and dilution during the stirring process before double/fine straining the drink in to a chilled cocktail glass and adding any garnish. \n\n**Stirred Results**\n\nStirring results in a transparent and more viscous Martini as it hasn't been aerated at all. This means it'll feel thicker and almost silky on the tongue. \n\nEven though the process takes longer than shaking I would personally choose a stirred Martini as there is more chance of the Bartender making it well. This is due to them having more opportunity to test the drink and control dilution. \n\n\n**Shaken Process**\n\nAll the wet ingredients are added to a cocktail shaker or Boston glass before adding as much ice as possible (again, to avoid uncontrolled dilution). The same requirements regarding good, large, ice pieces apply. \n\nThe lid is put on the shaker (or tin to top the Boston glass) and it'll be shaken vigorously until a frost starts to form on the shaker/tin. The drink will then be tested by the bartender before double/fine straining the drink in to a chilled cocktail glass and garnishing. \n\nNote that with a shaken Martini, there is not much that can be done to fix the drink after testing if it doesn't taste right. Especially if it's down to over dilution. \n\n**Shaken Results**\n\nA shaken Martini will be opaque rather than totally transparent due to the shaking process causing aeration. These small bubbles cause the drink to feel less smooth on the tongue. Eventually they will rise to the top and disappear but not before the drink has risen in temperature. \n\nShaking a Martini also causes small fragments of ice to break off in to the drink which amplifies the importance of fine straining it before serving. Many bartenders overlook this so it is something else to take in to consideration regarding the texture/feel of a shaken Martini. \n\n**Conclusion**\n\nStirring is the longer of the two processes which gives the bartender more control over dilution and temperature. When this is done correctly it will result in a smooth, silky drink. \n\nShaking is a faster process with less control over dilution and temperature. Shaking aerates the drink resulting in a less silky texture. \n\nIf both techniques are used correctly there should be very little difference in the flavour profile. \n\n*source: bar support, head bartender, restaurant owner, consultant over 15 years.*"
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6rzuto | what accounts for the price difference and quality of gas from different stations? (chevron or shell stations seem to be a bit pricier when compared to say 7/11 or am/pm) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rzuto/eli5_what_accounts_for_the_price_difference_and/ | {
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"supermarkets *tend* to subsidize their petrol. a little. because they know that if you come in for gas, you're more likely to head into the store to pick up some stuff, and if you came IN for stuff, you're more likely to buy gas on the way out. \n\nthen you get the BIG refiner owned and operated sites. BP. ESSO. TEXACO. the big ones, that own and operate their own stations. they get their own gas directly from their own refineries, shipped with their own trucks. they have the least overheads, and the least profit margins, as they're only trying to out compete other A+ producers. \n\nthen you get the smaller, but still massive chains, who can afford to buy their gas in bulk, when the prices are lower, and store it, for when they need it.. after all they increase the prices IMMEDIATELY it goes up, but wait a while when it drops.. to maximise profit. \n\nthen you get the small guys who have to buy a tank of gas, pay for it to get shipped quite some distance, and charge what they can. they have to pay their staff, pay to have it shipped, and don't have a corporate overlord to bail them out if one month is a little lean. \n\n\nplus there's the \"proximity to a freeway paradox\". \n\nyou'll notice that there's a price curve, wherein gas prices are lowest a certain driving distance (usually about a 10 minute drive) away from a freeway where prices are lowest. \n\nCLoser to that, and they have enough traffic that they can increase the prices a little, because they're the last station before the freeway, and people tend to check late. \n\nfurther away from the freeway, and they have to pay more for increased shipping, and can increase the price for a \"convenience fee\". i.e, they can put the prices up because they're the only station in the area. "
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2cqjsc | why are there so few trades in the nfl as opposed to the nhl, mlb and nba? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cqjsc/eli5_why_are_there_so_few_trades_in_the_nfl_as/ | {
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"One reason might be how different each team plays in football compared to the other sports. In baseball, for example, if you trade someone, they should be able to fit into the new team right away because every team plays basically the same way. Football playbook is the most complicated therefore trading someone to a new team requires them to become acquainted with the new plays and \"feeling out\" their new teammates which may take a long time and football season is only 16 games.",
"A big problem with the NFL is the salary cap. When a player signs a 4 year deal with 10 million dollar signing bonus, 2.5 million of that bonus counts against the cap for each of the 4 years. if you trade someone, all that leftover money counts against the cap right away, and it's harder to make that math work in the NFL than in the other sports."
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dlivew | how a women giving birth to triplets or more, does not have her stomach ripped apart from having so much humans inside her? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dlivew/eli5_how_a_women_giving_birth_to_triplets_or_more/ | {
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"Twins are born underweight\n\nTriplets are born significantly underweight\n\nIn the even rarer cases of excessive multiple births, they're born dramatically underweight. Until recently, there was a good chance many of them wouldn't survive.",
"multiple child births are usually born premature before they're fully developed. so the mom isn't delivering 3 8lb babies. triplets usually are born in the 3lb range."
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rtgvd | why is there so much war and genocide with the balkan states/countries/people? | What were some major factors of war in Balkan states/countries? Sorry if it's not so clear but it's been bugging me a bit. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rtgvd/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_war_and_genocide_with/ | {
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"This sounds an awful lot like you're trying to write a history paper. Here's the short version, if you need enough detail for a class it's time to go do some reading.\n\nAs with any contested territory, it almost always boils down to two or more competing ethnic, religious or political groups laying claim to the same territory. In the Balkans, you've got Serbs, Bosniaks, Croatians, Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Coptic Christians, Muslims, Slavs, Albanians and Macedonians, and six or seven sovereign countries, all within a space a little bigger than the state of Montana.\n\nEach of them has been horrifically oppressed and/or ethnically cleansed at one time or another, and many of these groups' cultural histories involve blood feuds spanning decades or centuries."
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822xsr | if dentists never recommend using medium and hard-bristled toothbrushes, then why do they even exist at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/822xsr/eli5if_dentists_never_recommend_using_medium_and/ | {
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"I asked my dentist this very question last week during my check up. His answer was, \"Because people are dumb.\" I can't say whether that's a dentist cop-out answer, but it is a data point for you.",
"Dentures maybe? I know my dad and grandfather both use pretty tough tooth brushes but they don’t have to worry their gums as much when cleaning I suppose (I know they do but they don’t use their hard bristled brushes on them)",
"Doctors advise not sticking anything in your ears, yet Q-tips are still for sale. \n\nCompanies will make and sell anything that will be bought. ",
"Companies provide variety to distinguish themselves. Imagine and Oral B and Crest both just sell toothbrushes. One day, you go to buy a toothbrush, and you see the normal Crest brushes. But today, Oral B has soft and hard brushes. You think, \"It sort of hurts when I brush my teeth, so I'll try the soft brush.\" But somebody else thinks, \"I never quite feel like my toothbrush gets all the grime out, so I'll buy the hard brush.\" Suddenly, Oral B is selling more toothbrushes.\n\nCrest responds by making their own line of soft, medium, and hard brushes. This gives three choices, and for the same reason, now Crest is selling more brushes. Oral B responds by expanding their line. As time goes on, they change their options (not just hardness, but colors, lengths, adding electronic toothbrushes). With more options, they hope to beat out the other brand.\n\nSo even though dentists only recommend soft brushes, both companies are now in a position where if they reduce their variety of options, they stand to lose money. So they offer a range of options, hoping that people will buy their preference, even if it's not the \"best\" option as recommended by dentists.",
"Dentists don't make toothbrushes\n\nFactories do. \n\nThe factory listens to buyers. \n\nIf half the buyers say \"I want Firm\" then the factory makes Firm.\n\nIf it doesn't make Firm, half the people won't buy anything and *the factory loses money*\n\nPeople think they're smarter than the dentist for whatever reason. A common one is \"well yeah, *most* people need soft. But my teeth are Stronger than usual, so they need a Stronger brush\"",
"If stiffer bristles do a better job, you don't have to go to a dentist as much.\n\nJust don't scrub til you get blood and floss regularly is what the last dentist told me.",
"I use different firmness of toothbrushes to clean with. I only use soft ones on my teeth. But toothbrushes are exactly the right size and easy to hold for a number of different kinds of cleaning.",
"Mine actually said to use medium ones, because the soft ones got way too soft, according to him. I think it all depends on the brand, it seems to all be so random. Especially since there is super soft, ultra soft, oh so soft, ridiculously soft...",
"People used to buy hard toothbrushes. Then the word got out that hard toothbrushes are bad. All the toothbrush companies relabelled all their medium and hard brushes as soft. Now I find it difficult to find an actual soft toothbrush.",
"To clean engine parts with? I sometimes buy new hard bristle brushes for exactly that. The occasional bowl clean too...",
"Just asked friend: \n\n“Because dentists used to, then they realised it causes more problems then it helps” \n\nSo I’m guessing people still buy them because they’re stuck in their ways",
"I was told to use a hard one when I had braces to get behind the wires better. Then again they also gave me one of those little ones to use in addition to it.",
"Because it feels so good to mash them hard bristles into your gums after two days of not brushing.",
"Um. What’s wrong with a hard bristled toothbrush? Just asking because I’ve been using them for about a decade. ",
"Why are homeopathic remedies still on the shelf when we know they don’t work?\n\nBecause people are ignorant ",
"I've scrolled through a few of the top comments but haven't seen this answer so sorry if it is a repeat. Hard and medium bristle brushes are for dentures. Just like you shouldn't brush your natural teeth too hard, one should take care not to brush too hard with a hard bristle brush because it can scratch the dentures. Soft bristle brushes are not entirely effective for dentures cleaning. You should only use a soft bristle brush on your gums and tongue, whether you have dentures or natural teeth.",
"Because people buy them. Toothbruth manufacturers aren't run by dentists doing only altruistic acts for the benefit of humanity. They are corporations run for profit. So if there is demand, why not make them?",
"Our patients with dentures find that the hard bristled toothbrushes work better to clean them."
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2zom09 | why do dogs tuck in babies? | how come, when a baby is laying on top of a blanket or in a bed, dogs will often tuck the blankets on and around them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zom09/eli5_why_do_dogs_tuck_in_babies/ | {
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"They are repeating actions they have seen humans do in caring for other members of the \"pack\""
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c1xqms | why can't people with hypertension or even those that have elevated blood pressure donate blood? doesn't the reduction in blood volume in the body decrease blood pressure, why's that bad or dangerous? | Blood drives always take blood pressure and then turn away those whose blood pressure doesn't lower after a period of rest, why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1xqms/eli5_why_cant_people_with_hypertension_or_even/ | {
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"You have to be generally healthy. Uncontrolled high blood pressure is not healthy, as you're at risk for heart attacks, strokes, etc. You CAN donate if your high blood pressure is controlled by medication. [Here](_URL_0_) is the eligibility requirements to donate for Hoxworth, who handles most Cincinnati area blood donations, etc."
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3phblt | when my paycheck gets direct deposited, or i use my bank's bill pay feature, does physical money get exchanged between banks? if it's all just digital records, what stops banks from just making it all up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3phblt/eli5_when_my_paycheck_gets_direct_deposited_or_i/ | {
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"Banks have auditors. There are government auditors who come in to check the books. On the other hand there are elaborate processes where the government can create money out of thin air. They used to print money which was almost as good. But now it is even easier.",
"Well, the main reason is auditors and government regulators and the fact that what you are talking about it very easy to detect and extremely criminal. So, high risk + low gain = not happening.\n\nBut let's take a look at the mechanics of this. OK. so, let's say that the bank just changes the numbers so that, instead of your paycheck being $1000, it's actually $100. That would work, right?\n\nWell, no. You'd notice that, wouldn't you? You'd call and scream and someone would look into it and someone would go off to jail and you'd get your money.\n\nOK, so what about the bank adding a zero or two to someone's balance? Well, the problem there is that there's no incentive for the bank to do it, because they're giving away their *own* money.\n\nSee, every deposit is an asset. And every customer balance is a liability. When you have $1,000 in your account, that's a liability, because the bank owes you $1,000.\n\nIf they just \"make up\" money, then what happens is that they are adding liabilities without a corresponding increase in assets. So, there's no reason they'd *want* to do that, because that money comes out of their profit.",
"I think that /u/Teekno provided the best explanation to the question of why the banks can’t “fudge” the numbers. I’ve worked in a bank before, and I can give an answer to the other questions :) \n \n* Direct Deposits \n \nDirect deposit is done completely electronically through the Automated Clearing House (ACH, for short) system. Every bank has a routing number unique to that company – this info is on your checks, and can also be found online very easily. This system runs during weekday evenings and routes the money to the correct banks. It then deposits it to the account based on the account number. No physical exchange of money takes place. \n \n* Bill Pay \n \nI just wanted to add that there are several ways that this system can work. Which method is utilized depends on your bank and who you’re paying. \n \n1. The first way is via ACH, as described above – if the bank has access to the payee’s account and routing info for bill payments, they can transfer the money directly from your account to the company’s electronically. \n \n2. The second way is via check. In this case, the bank (or whoever they contract to do their Bill Pay service) will print a check with *your account/routing/name/address info* printed on it. This works just as if you’d written and sent a check yourself, except you didn’t have to go through the hassle of getting it written and mailed. They mail it a few days in advance to ensure that it gets where it needs to be in time, and it clears from your account by the same rules as a personal check would (important when things like posting order and overdraft fees come in to play). \n \n3. The third and final way is a mix between the two. Sometimes, the Bill Pay service provider will mail *their own check* (with their company account/routing number on it) to the payee. They will then take the money electronically from your account via ACH on the date that you specified the bill was to be paid. This can create some difficult scenarios if you have insufficient funds; methods 1 and 2 ultimately are between yourself and the payee, since the money is supposed to come directly from your account, so if the money isn’t there then the normal overdraft fees/bounced check fees go in to effect. In this third option though, the Bill Pay provider has already paid the bill on your behalf, and they don’t like being unable to collect the money from you. Having this happen will often result in your ability to use Bill Pay being frozen until you resolve the issue. \n \nThat’s all, hope some of this was mildly interesting!\n"
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8wq6q9 | why are google’s search algorithms so good? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wq6q9/eli5_why_are_googles_search_algorithms_so_good/ | {
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"Before Google, search engines just looked for keywords in pages. This was *really* easy to cheat - people would just put hundreds of hidden words at the bottom of the page to boost their search scores.\n\nA few PhD students came up with the idea of scoring pages based on *how many other pages linked to them*. This *PageRank* algorithm was the core of a new search engine they called \"Google\" which very quickly became better than all the other search engines.\n\nThey then formed a company and got over a billion dollars to expand.\n\nSince then, they've actively recruited the best mathematical & computer talent they can find. They pay them good money & give them the freedom to pursue projects they find interesting, so they're constantly making improvements to the search system."
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5peblf | creating real fakes images with concaves mirrors | Hi! So my friend sent me this link: _URL_0_ . It's a .gif that shows concave mirrors doing magic... I am really amazed by it, how does it works? How come the light hits the object but your hands go through it?
Thanks for your time! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5peblf/eli5_creating_real_fakes_images_with_concaves/ | {
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"[This](_URL_0_) is a simple diagram which shows how light is reflected to reconstruct a hologram. \n\nBasically the mirrors are set up so that each beam of light coming from the object will meet up right at the opening and reconstruct the original object when those beams enter your eyes. \n\nAs you can see you really have to be around a certain distance and angle from the opening to see the hologram properly. \n\nThe hologram appears 3D because there are two light paths your eyes see, one for each eye. Your hands pass through it because it's just light, there is no physical object there.",
"The way this works is by exploiting the fascinating reflective properties of the parabola.\n\n[Figure 1](_URL_1_)\n\nThe red curve is a parabola. The vertical line in the middle is the “axis”, or center of symmetry. In this 2-D image, the parabola is mirrored about the axis. In three dimensions, you can rotate the parabola around the axis to make a “paraboloid”, which is what the two mirrors in the gif are.\n\nThe point V is called the “vertex”; it's the point where the axis intersects the parabola. The point F, called the “focus” is the key to the whole trick. If you have a mirror in the shape of a parabola, then any ray of light parallel to the axis will be reflected into the focus. These are the blue lines labeled Q. And conversely, any ray of light that starts from the focus will be reflected parallel to the axis.\n\n[Figure 2](_URL_0_)\n\nThis is how the two mirrors in the gif are set up. This image doesn't show the key points, unfortunately. The axis of each parabola runs down the middle of the picture; the two parabolas have the same axis. The vertex of the bottom mirror is the point in the center bottom. The vertex of the top mirror is a point in space at the top — because there's a hole in the top mirror, the top vertex isn't actually on the mirror.\n\nBecause the two mirrors are parabolas, they each have a focus point. In this arrangement, the focus point of each mirror is the vertex of the other! This is the key to everything; they have to be set up in exactly this manner for the illusion to work.\n\nImagine that you are looking through the hole in the top and tracing a ray of light backward from your eye. At the center of the hole is the vertex of the top mirror, which is also the focus of the bottom mirror. Trace that ray of light backward and you'll hit the bottom mirror. But because that ray passed through the focus of the bottom mirror, it will be reflected parallel to the axis — straight up.\n\nTrace it back more and you'll hit the top mirror. The two mirrors have the same axis, so the ray is parallel to the upper mirror's axis too, so it will be reflected through the top mirror's focus. And that focus is the point on the bottom of the mirror. Looking at the illustration, you can see that the end of that light ray is at the same angle as the part that hits your eye, but it's “looking at” the other side of whatever object is at the bottom of the setup. And if you see in the gif when the assembly is opened, the pig is facing the opposite direction from the illusory image.\n\nNow, one thing I glossed over is that the focus is only one single point, whereas the pig takes up space. The result of this will be a little distortion, but as long as the pig is very small compared to the mirrors, it won't be noticeable."
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3r4p16 | why are there a bunch of things on amazon that cost $99,999.99, when that is clearly not the intended price? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r4p16/eli5_why_are_there_a_bunch_of_things_on_amazon/ | {
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"Basically, a lot of people who sell things on Amazon using automated programs to adjust the prices. They may tell their program \"Make this item always $1 more than the lowest seller.\" The problem becomes when two people using similar programs are selling the same item, and the programs adjust the prices to ridiculous levels.\n\nNow, in some cases, one of the sellers might go \"Shit! I'll take the item down and reprice it manually.\" Leaving just one item, still at the ludicrous price, and the seller has no clue because they have too many items to keep track of to notice if one of them is at a stupidly high price.\n\nThis also happens for low prices as well, and usually either ends with the seller just grumbling because they sold something for far lower than they wanted, since the program got into a \"Must be $1 lower than the current lowest\" fight with another program. (They might also just cancel the order and claim that it was an error or that the program malfunctioned, sorry, and then relist it later at a more reasonable price.)\n\nSource: Sold items on Amazon for a company that used one of those programs.",
"It could be an error or intentional. I don't know if it is the same on Amazon, but on eBay if a seller is sold out of an item, they will raise the price to something so ridiculous that people won't buy. This is done to avoid fees for removing an item.",
"Don't know about Amazon, but a lot of eBay stuff is way overpriced for money-laundering reasons. That 100 dollar guitar priced at 1000 will be bought by a dealer from himself or a colleague in order to wash that amount of money.",
"its also to help preserve the listing, if you run out of product or availability you could lose the buybox/spot in purchase order. So they'll raise the price on a popular item even if they dont have it (so that it wont sell).",
"Ive also heard that sellers jack up there price to something ridiculous when they run out of stock, rather than un-listing"
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fg7rth | what is the best way to deal with a panic attack? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fg7rth/eli5_what_is_the_best_way_to_deal_with_a_panic/ | {
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"Writing down my thoughts. Whatever I’m panicking about. No matter how small or trivial. I’ve got pages and pages of “weird chest feeling. Sweaty. Think I’m dying.” Or even just writing myself encouragement “Okay Hawks1523 you know what this is, you know this passes you’re fine try not to worry” helped me. \n\nCrying. Also just getting that emotional release out and crying, after it I’m so tired I basically pass out.\n\n\n\nWell that’s what worked for me anyway.",
"Deep slow breaths, in through your nose, out your mouth. Try to go to a quiet place, and if you can find some where you’re alone and feel comfortable in. Close your eyes if you need to, maybe try and sit down, whichever feels better. And ignore all the sounds and everything around you, just remind yourself that it will pass and you will be okay afterwards. Try and focus on the feelings youre having and try to recognise what they are, and you may find that you recognise them and you can try to counter them. This works for me, i just make myself reassess the situation and make myself realise that it will be over soon and that its just a cluster of emotions that i cant control, nothing worse.\n\nHowever, the other option is to run, cry, move about and just generally panic to release all of the emotions. It all depends on the type of person you are. One of my family members suffers with panic attacks as well and this is their preferred method to calm themselves down. Its just about what works for you.",
"*storytime*\n\nOne time at work (grocery store) one of the new cashiers had a panic attack. They had her sit in the bookkeepers office, which is also where I, the dairy mgr, had to go to make signs and tags and things. So, I come in to do this and the store mgr asks me if she can hang out with me as he needed to go do something more important than looking after the welfare of his subordinates. I say fine, proceed to make my signs. We chatted about various things, what I was doing, how to do it, what running the dairy is like, etc. . She thanked me later and said that the inane chitchat talking had helped a lot, just getting her out of her head."
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ewz2rh | why does your skin get dry when it's really cold outside, but your skin gets drier in hot water than in cold water? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewz2rh/eli5_why_does_your_skin_get_dry_when_its_really/ | {
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"The water question is because the warm water takes the oils off your skin, which is really what makes your skin moist. Source is my memory so please correct me if I'm wrong",
"Cold air has very little water, and is content to have very little water. When it touches your skin it warms up and begins wanting more water. It takes your skin's water.\n\nAs to why warm water dehydrates us, I don't know. My guess would be that it does a better job of dissolving the oils on our skin that keep the water in (I know that warm water does this better)."
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53xg0u | what taking and passing the bar exam in american law entails and what the exam is like? | What exactly does the exam consist of?
Edit: I'm aware that each state has its own exam one must pass to practice law. I've also heard that having a law degree isn't required for taking the exam. So what would one study or how would one prepare to take the exam if they didn't have a law degree or have not gone to law school? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/53xg0u/eli5_what_taking_and_passing_the_bar_exam_in/ | {
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" > So what would one study or how would one prepare to take the exam if they didn't have a law degree or have not gone to law school?\n\nIf you're in one the relatively few states that doesn't require law school to be admitted to the bar, you generally have to have an apprenticeship. \"Reading the law\" where you read a whole bunch about law, learn from a practicing lawyer or judge. You work in their office, you study the law and they guide you. Specific number of years required can vary state to state. \n\nHowever most states do require you attend law school, some let you get away with one year of law school plus some amount of reading the law, but mostly you just need to get a law degree. ",
"You cannot just up and take the exam. Most states require a degree from a law school. A few still allow an apprenticeship to count. In Virginia, when I was first licensed, you could read the law and qualify to take the exam if you had an apprenticeship of at least five years (law school takes three), with specific rules about what sorts of activities counted. No one had used the apprenticeship provision in many years, but maybe now that law school has become more expensive some people have gone that route, I don't know. \n\nThere is nowhere in the U.S. where a true layman can self-educate and sit for the exam, and that's been the case for several decades. \n\nAs for what the exam is like, as stated, it varies. Most states require the Multistate Bar Examination, a multiple-choice test that takes a day to administer. Each question of group of questions starts with a fact pattern of about a paragraph or two, and then there are questions about what kinds of laws are implicated by those facts. I'm sure you can Google some samples. \n\nThe other day is a series of essays about that state's specific law. It will have a broader focus, with questions about commercial law, family law, etc., while the MBE is mostly torts, contracts, property, and criminal law -- the stuff everybody covers the first year of law school. There is typically some choice about which questions you answer, not unlike a typical college exam.\n\nMost states also require the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE), a shorter one-day multiple choice test of legal ethics that most people take some time during their last year of law school. \n\nUsually recent law-school grads spend the summer after graduation taking a Bar prep course which reviews all the subjects the Bar in that state will cover, both as a refresher, but also just to learn the legal facts l. Most law schools cover some of that stuff, but they also delve more into policy and history of the law rather than a simple recitation of the difference between larceny and robbery, because that stuff is easy to look up once you know how. "
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2dvo7r | how are there not billions of fruit flies all over the grocery store? | I bring home a couple peppers and an onion, now a couple weeks later I have tons of fruit flies in my house. What does the grocery store do to keep them from infesting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dvo7r/eli5_how_are_there_not_billions_of_fruit_flies/ | {
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"Fruit flies generally go after rotten fruit, not regular fruit, because then they can get through its peel or rind to lay and hatch eggs on the nutritious sugary part. The rents and tear in rotting fruit allow the insides to gives off gasses and esters that strongly attract them. Then their eggs hatch and they breed very quickly, taking only a few days to mature into flies that buzz around the area.\n\nSupermarkets do their best to remove damaged or rotten fruit as quickly as possible, and they usually have a very high turnover of produce so nothing sits around and goes bad like the apple that fell behind the bowl out of ~~site~~ (Edit: sight *sheesh!*) or the pepper that was mishandled and cracked open on the wall-facing side of the counter. \n\nTraffic is also very high unlike areas of our house. The minute the produce section guy spots a few fruit flies buzzing around something, they get rid of it to avoid disgusting their customers. The produce department is not left unattended for the hot part of a full day, unlike our kitchens or larders when we're at work.",
"Interesting question, Fruit flies generally look for fruit which is fermenting, or in more advanced stages being ripe. Whilst a grocery store is in theory a great breeding ground, chances are, the fruit lands in the store, and at any stage eggs are laid in the fruit, but the fruit is purchased and removed from the store prior to the eggs hatching.\n\nThough I would say that the stores management would be actively working to make the environment less attractive or comfortable for the flies, so keeping floors clean and dry, being proactive in cleaning up spoiled fruit, and management of the stock, removing unsold fruit.\n\nI don't know if I have helped answer your question! ",
"But there are.. you don't shop at Aldi?",
"What most people think of as 'fruit flies' are, in fact, vinegar flies. These animals are attracted to rotting fruit, which is their food source. Fresh, partially ripe fruit doesn't attract them much, and cold fruit, which doesn't give off much smell, doesn't attract them at all.\n\nTake the fruit home, allow it to warm up and fully ripen, and the vinegar flies are attracted to it.\n\nReal fruit flies are wasp-like insects, and you will find them at a fruit shop.",
"Also, there is typically a large blast of air constantly blowing just inside the main entrance/exit. This blast of air helps keep insects from entering the store whenever the doors open to let customers in or out. ",
"Grocery stores employ a lot of pest control measures. Just ones you don't typically notice unless you know what to look for. \n\nThere are light traps all over the store. These use light and glue traps to catch insects. To the person that doesn't know what they are, it looks like any other light that shines up on a wall. \n\nThey also use pheromone traps that target specific pests. Fruit flies would be one of these. "
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2i08ct | sharia law | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i08ct/eli5sharia_law/ | {
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"To sum it up:\n\nSharia (Islamic law) deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, everyday etiquette and fasting.\n\nAdherence to Islamic law has served as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Muslim faith historically, and through the centuries Muslims have devoted much scholarly time and effort on its elaboration. Human interpretations of sharia (fiqh) vary between Islamic sects and respective schools of jurisprudence, yet in its strictest and most historically coherent definition, sharia is considered the infallible law of God.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis is a good read, and explains it rather well. There's a clear difference between Sharia Law and extremist, warped sharia law.",
"_URL_0_\n\nI think his/her answer explain about it quite nicely. It's a long answer though. \n\nSome important point from his answer is this: (feel free to add)\n\nSharia is mostly about how muslim interact with God. The brutal punishment that is displayed by people are not the main point of Sharia. \n\nNon muslim should not be convicted with Sharia law, because they do not believe in the same beliefs as muslim, so it makes no sense to convict them with Sharia law. They should have be convicted separately (with their own laws)\n\n----\nAdditionally from my point of view, before muslim started killing people who left Islam or chopping of hands and whatnot, they themself should start waking up at dusk to pray, waking up in the middle of the night to pray, fasting at least two days a week, and doing the long list of stuff that we muslim are told to do for ourselves before starting to imply sharia to others. ",
"My understanding was always that Muslims societies have Sharia law in the same way that we have common law. Basically, imagine if in Western societies, we had never had judges and just had Christian priests arbitrate legal disputes. Over hundreds of years of rulings they would still generate precedents and common understandings and practices, even if those things hadn't been laid out explicitly in the Bible. Moreover, practices and precedents, although widely accessibly for jurisprudence, would still vary between nations and religious sects. \n\nSharia is like our common law, but with judges constantly trying to square their rulings with their holy book of choice. In Islam, it's the Koran."
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1to3gz | how do freight railroads keep track of all those train cars? | How do freight railroads work?
1. Who actually owns freight cars? There are so many with different logos; are they owned by the company that manufactured the products inside?
2. How does the railroad know where all their freight cars are at any given time? I often drive by stretches of track where a cluster of cars will sit for days on end. Does each car have a tracking device on it? Do they follow a strict schedule?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1to3gz/how_do_freight_railroads_keep_track_of_all_those/ | {
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"1. some freight cars are owned by the railroads. Most are owned either by the customer whose freight is being carried or by a third party.\n2. the freight cars have magnetic tags on them which carry a unique ID number. railroads have readers which read the tags and get the car numbers. The railroads usually know generally where the cars are, but not always specifically unless the train crews that\n set out the cars record the exact location",
"Each car has a tag on each side of the car. At every terminal there is a scanner when you enter or exit. It records the time the car arrived, direction of travel and the same thing when it leaves. \n\nWhen cars are set off on route, the conductor must mark the time, date and location the car(s) were set off. This is either faxed into car control, or set in off a device the conductor does. Depending on the train. "
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l0u0m | what is an "ozone day," and why is it bad for me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l0u0m/eli5_what_is_an_ozone_day_and_why_is_it_bad_for_me/ | {
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"Ozone is a gas that, under some specific weather and pollution conditions, can be found in the air we breathe. It's an irritating gas, so it's harmful.\n\nAn ozone action day is a day that is predicted to have a high ozone concentration, based on weather and pollution previsions. During these days we can try and reduce pollution, for example by not using the car, and we can also avoid excessive breathing (from exercise) so as not to breathe as much ozone.\n",
"How do you know when it's an ozone day..?",
"Ozone is a gas that, under some specific weather and pollution conditions, can be found in the air we breathe. It's an irritating gas, so it's harmful.\n\nAn ozone action day is a day that is predicted to have a high ozone concentration, based on weather and pollution previsions. During these days we can try and reduce pollution, for example by not using the car, and we can also avoid excessive breathing (from exercise) so as not to breathe as much ozone.\n",
"How do you know when it's an ozone day..?"
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a5i8fr | why is mdma illegal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a5i8fr/eli5_why_is_mdma_illegal/ | {
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"Because there is a law against it.\n\nSorry, there aren't many satisfactory explanations of laws because justifications are not required of lawmakers. They make a judgement call that the harms outweigh the benefits and define the law accordingly. It might be based on some scientific study, or it might be \"it seemed like a good idea at the time\". There isn't something magic about 65 miles per hour as a freeway speed limit, it's just a number some guys on a committee picked."
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51afoy | how does the national grid keep power output constant to prevent minor blackouts at peak times but at the same time not overload the grid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/51afoy/eli5_how_does_the_national_grid_keep_power_output/ | {
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"Some types of power generation are very flexible. For example, gas power generation can be easily increased or decreased by controlling the flow of gas, or hydroelectric power by controlling the flow of water. (They are limited by the maximum capacity of the plant, of course.) These types of power generation provide a flexible buffer for less flexible methods like nuclear or wind, which might over- or underperform..",
"By turning power stations on and off to carefully match the supply to demand. This can even involve watching very popular TV shows to predict the spike in demand that happens when the ad break starts and half the country turns on their kettle.\n\nFor smaller minute-to-minute or second-to-second changes in demand, the turbines in all the power stations effectively act like flywheels to store excess energy or cover a shortfall. If supply exceeds demand slightly, the extra energy speeds up the turbines (and the frequency of the generated power increases slightly). If demand exceeds supply slightly, the turbines slow down slightly.",
"Let's think about a single generator first, like a portable diesel generator. How does it adjust to the load you put on it?\n\nSo a generator unit, like a power plant, contains an engine and a generator. The generator produces AC electricity and the frequency is related to the speed of the generator. A 50 Hz electricity (like in Europe) frequency means 3000 rpm, and a 60 Hz electricity frequency (like in America) means 3600 rpm.\n\nWhen you put load on a generator it becomes stiffer to turn. An idle generator will turn freely, but when loaded up it becomes stiff. If the engine power is too low for the generator load, then the engine/generator combo starts to slow down, just like a car slows down if you hold the accelerator constant while the car reaches a hill.\n\nSo to deal with this, the engine in a generator unit, has a controller that detects the engine speed and tries to bring it back to it's \"proper\" level. If the speed drops down to 2990 rpm, then it will give the engine a bit more gas; if the speed goes up to 3010 rpm, then it will back down a bit.\n\nWith a whole grid, all the generators become electrically locked together, because the frequency is the same across the whole grid. it's like a train with 3 locomotives, all the wheels turn at the same speed, even if the locomotives have different power outputs.\n\nSo, some automatic control is possible, the engine at each power plant can see the grid frequency and if the grid frequency is too low, it can increase power, and if the grid frequency is too high, it can reduce power. This works fine for minute-by-minute control, but it's not great for big changes. Not all power plants can respond quickly, and some plants need to run at high power for best fuel efficiency, so for big and long-time changes (like night/day changes) the power grid operator needs to intervene.\n\nFor big changes in power, the job of the grid operator is to predict how much power is needed, and to give the most appropriate instructions to individual power plants. Plants which take hours to increase or decrease power output (like coal) will be given different instructions to gas plants or hydro plants which can change power in minutes or seconds. For fast changes like TV shows cause a spike in demand, the grid operator will order very fast response power plants warmed up and in standby mode in advance, and signal them to start a few seconds before the demand spike - this way, the power plants will already be powering up to meet demand, before the frequency changes. ",
"What you are asking about is called production balancing. If you fail to balance properly the voltage will go down in a large part of the grid, and if you overproduce the voltage will go up. For this very reason, there are huge capacitor batteries (think like a school bus) that help to smooth things out so that the change happens slower.\n\nBut generally speaking, a producer must be prepared to immediately tune down or up their production to handle a shift in demand. A hydroplant will do this by letting more or less water on the turbines, a nuclear plant will try to divert some steam and then slowly (nuclear plants change their production really slow, because closing down is kickass expensive and generally avoided) lower the steam production. A wind mill can hit the brakes if need be.\n\nThe really worrying part is when a large producer fall out due to malfunction, because you will have less than needed production then for a while until everyone else is able to adapt and produce more.\n\nThere is someone sitting in an operating centre somewhere looking at graphs and checking meter readings, whose job it is to request more or less production from all the production units, and if need be fire up one of the emergency producers that can be operational within a minute or two.\n\nMost of the balancing job is about statistics. Most Wednesdays look pretty much the same during the winter, and most thursdays look pretty much the same during the summer. If you know what the temperature will be you can pretty much make educated guesses on a day-to-day basis. They are generally speaking good at guessing, and adapt quickly when they are wrong.\n\n",
"The National Grid in the UK utilises 4 strategies:\n\n- BM start up\n\n- STOR\n\n- Demand management\n\n- Fast reserve\n\nBM (Balancing mechanism) Start up is an agreement with generators to keep a certain amount in reserve that can be ready for synchronisation with the grid within 89 minutes. This therefore excludes technologies like nuclear, which have a long period of warming up/cooling down, and aren't flexible enough for this kind of usage, but something like a gas-fired power station would be appropriate.\n\nShort Term Operating Reserve (STOR) is a contract to provide a minimum of 3MW of power for up to 2 hours, which can be ready within 2 hours. This 3MW can either be provided by additional generation, or can be provided by reduced demand. BM Start up is preferred over this.\n\nDemand management is exactly what it sounds - an agreement to reduce the demand when necessary, or equally to reduce the generation when necessary. It requires 1MW of power to qualify.\n\nFast reserve is places like Dinorwig in Wales, where pumped storage allows a super-fast response to sudden surges in demand. To qualify, generators must be capable of supplying 50MW within 2 minutes, and then be able to deliver 25MW a minute for a minimum of 15 minutes.\n\nOther than that, it comes down to careful planning and experience in load-matching. A new development looks to be grid storage, which will make the grid a little more resilient and allow excess energy to be stored whilst at the same time having a reserve for when demand is high",
"[Here's an interesting video of this process in action.](_URL_0_) ELI5: People are working to take power on and offline to make sure that only as much is available as actually needs to be used. Too much on the grid and devices actually would start to misbehave or worst-case actually become damaged."
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9clx5k | how do paleontologists know which dinosaur bones belonged together (e.g. how did they not confuse the bones for one dinosaur for the bones of another)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9clx5k/eli5_how_do_paleontologists_know_which_dinosaur/ | {
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"This does happen on occasion, and I know of at least one case of fraud where a guy took a tail from one fossil and put it on a fossil skeleton so he could say he'd made an amazing discovery. \n\nPeople found out that it was the wrong tail because of the imprint of the fossil on the layer of rock was preserved. Paleontologists are very careful about not just destroying everything to get a fossil out, but trying to preserve as much as possible of the rock shapes, because imprint fossils can be very useful as well. \n\nUsually, people know a fossil bone belongs to a given species because they compare it to other fossils of that species and see that it is the same, or they see that it is a different size or shape than anything discovered so far, in which case they will say it probably belongs to a new species. These are all educated guesses, but they are *very* precise, involving a lot of careful measurement, and more recently, computer modeling. We can't know for sure, not having a time machine, so there are a lot of arguments over how to classify dinosaur species. ",
"Its happened with a very, very popular dino, the “brontosaurus”, who has been found to be a skull of a specimen put on the neck of another."
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43jsas | what happens between now and the presidential election. how do the current candidates get whittled down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43jsas/eli5_what_happens_between_now_and_the/ | {
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"Primaries are held to select the candidate for each party. Then it's just a candidate per party for the election, plus independents. \n \nCandidates can drop out between now and then too, so that could cut it down as well."
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1nwvju | what are the repercussions of the us credit default? how does it affect an individual? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nwvju/eli5_what_are_the_repercussions_of_the_us_credit/ | {
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"I'm not very qualified to answer this but I'll try to get the ball rolling.\n\nFirst, just like if you forget to pay your credit card bill, **our national debt goes up**. This happens because we've lost faith with our creditors and they feel less certain we'll be able to pay them back. To make themselves feel better about this, they demand to be paid more money over a longer period of time.\n\nSecond, we've not just lost faith to our creditors, but to everyone. It's possible our AA rating would go down to just an A — which is bad because the gov't generates a lot of money selling bonds, a way of getting people to invest in the US government so they have the money to do the things they want to do. With a lower rating, **it'll become harder for us to sell bonds**.\n\nWith the Gov't's debt higher and incomes damaged, **we may have to let go of more jobs** — the government being a huge (probably largest) employer in the country. For instance, because of the shutdown, our gov't is making less $300m a day. A 'furlough' is a temporary suspension of employment; those people are technically out of a job right now.\n\nMany retirement funds are also tied up in government bonds, which would lose value in the instance of a default. **Many people may find themselves unable to retire when they'd planned to** — which would further squeeze the job market and raise unemployment.\n\nThere's a lot more I'm sure; I'm just trying to speak only in specifics."
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3n8r08 | if oxygen and other gases are dissolved in water, is it correct to say that the water vapor in the air is also dissolved? | Is the air around us also considered a solution, even though it's in gas form instead of liquid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n8r08/eli5_if_oxygen_and_other_gases_are_dissolved_in/ | {
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"A solution is a name specifically used to indicate something that is not a liquid is now trapped in a liquid. For instance i can dissolve salt, sugar or gasses (all non liquids) in water and call it a solution.\n\nWhen i mix two liquids, say water and alcohol, i call it a mixture.\n\nSince vapor is simply gasseous water mixed with air, this is also considered a mixture."
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b1yo4i | what is the beliefs of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints? what do they believe and what are the rebuttals to theit beliefs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b1yo4i/eli5_what_is_the_beliefs_of_the_church_of_jesus/ | {
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"Look no further then South Park season 7 episode 12 “All About Mormons” it’s a surprisingly accurate account of the Mormon’s religious founding and set of beliefs. It’s also hilarious. \n\n But while I’m here, a known con artist named Joseph Smith, who was convicted of fraud before founding the religion, claimed to be visited by an angle named Gabriel (sometime around 1835). Smith claimed that Gabriel told him that every version of Christianity was wrong and he pointed Smith to the location of a set of gold plates that had the “real” story of god and Jesus on it. Smith then claimed to have found these plates and translated the story from it. He claims the plates said that Jesus lived in America. For whatever reason some people took the bait and here we are almost 200 years later and it’s a religion with a decent amount of followers. "
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cwjfd5 | what is it about flashing lights that potentially triggers seizures for people who have epilepsy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cwjfd5/eli5_what_is_it_about_flashing_lights_that/ | {
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"tl,dr: If you push a kid on a swing, gravity and air-resistance slow them down and they swing less further each time, eventually stopping at the bottom. If you push them at random times, you might speed them up one time then slow them down the next. But if you time it right, adding new energy in at just the right time, you can make them swing higher and higher. A seizure, in this analogy, would be like repeatedly adding so much energy that the kid goes around and around in a full circle, the chain wraps around the top pole, and everything comes to a tragic halt when the length of free chain becomes less than the thickness of the kid.\n\n---\n\nEvery time a signal comes in from our senses, a wave of activity sweeps through parts of our brains. Each neuron is connected to many other neurons, via connections that either excite or inhibit. *Those* neurons do the same to others, which do the same to the others, etc etc, and eventually the system converges on a pattern: the smell of an orange, or the color blue, or vice-versa. Then the neurons 'reset', with neurotransmitters and electric charges ready to do it all over again. When we are awake and alert, these waves of activity occur whenever and wherever they are needed - i.e. asynchronously - at 13-30 cycles per second.\n\nThe reset thing is necessary, because each neuron is part of many patterns and it takes some finite amount of time for the previous state to wear off, for neurotransmitters to be cleared out of receptors in the synapses. The inhibition thing is crucially important, providing negative feedback (which is a *good* thing, in electrical systems that we'd like to behave in reasonable ways), because without it every neuron would continue to excite every other neuron, in an out-of-control positive feedback loop. The asynchronous thing is important, because new waves can be started at any time. You can probably see where this is going.\n\nIf a large number of strong signals arrive in rapid succession, in most brains the reset time and the inhibition thing do their jobs and there is no out-of-control feedback loop. In the brains of people who have epilepsy, a rapidly repeating signal like a blinking light starts wave after wave of excitation, faster than previous waves die out, faster than the neurotransmitters for the inhibition signals get cleared out of the synapses. Instead of brain waves looking like a sine wave, rising and falling, they just keep rising.\n\nSince every neuron is involved in a huge number of patterns, things that are seemingly unrelated to vision get messed up too. Seen through an MRI or EEG, brain 'waves' that usually look something like sine waves look more like fireworks. Muscular control and the ability to remain conscious and aware are equally impossible, until we 'reboot' and return to usual brain behavior.\n\n(Source: I have seizures. A few of the things I have said about the way brains work might be imprecise and will likely irk someone, because there are a lot of things we don't really understand yet about brains, like... how they work. But we do know a lot about what happens when they don't work.)\n\nEdit: thank you, kind strangers. And everyone who decided not tear strips off me for inaccuracies in my analogies. And everyone pointing out that my descriptions of why flashing lights affect people with epilepsy only describe one aspect of epilepsy that affects a small percentage of people with epilepsy, who have a dismayingly large diversity of experiences and have come up with equally diverse ways of dealing with those experiences. And special thanks to everyone who shared their own experiences... I know all too well what a pain in the butt it can be to hash it all out again and again, but it *always* helps someone. For all the times that someone was me: thanks.",
"This does not answer your question, but one important thing to note is that only about 3% to 5% of people who have epilepsy have seizures that are triggered by flashing lights. Epilepsy is a very broad term encompassing anyone who has recurring seizures. There are a wide range of types of seizures and a wide range of causes of them. It is not a specific disease with everyone being affected in the same way. So the majority of people who have epilepsy are not affected in any way by flashing lights and it will not trigger seizures for them. Those that do get affected by flashing lights have what is called photosensitive epilepsy. Amongst those people there is again a variety of ways in which their seizures can be caused, with some being more sensitive to things than others. Patterns may even cause their seizures, such as stripes or squares. So it is not just lights. It is all about how the brain reacts to these stimuli.",
"it’s sensory overload. And your brain can’t keep up with all these stimulations, in this case bunch of lights flashing at you so it says going downnnnn",
"Related question. What about driving when the sun shines through trees and creates a strobing effect?\n\nThat bothers me more than strobes.",
"A while back one of the phases went out in the building, making all the lights = strobe lights. It felt oppressive, and when you exited the building the relief was noticeable. I wonder if that relates to that swing analogy, but it doesn't quite go around",
"Seizures are caused by neuronal overactivity/overactivity in the brain. Everytime a stimulus is received, it sends an electrical signal. By having repeatedly flashing lights, it continues to make these signals fire, and the brain can’t self-regulate like it should, so it sends an overcharged signal that causes more neurons to fire and you have a seizure.\n\nThere’s a procedure, a corpus coloscetomy, which involves removing the corpus colosum, which is essentially the bridge between the left and the right hemispheres of the brain. The left and right sides can’t communicate like normal, so one side might start shooting off, but since it can’t spread to the other side, the person doesn’t seize.\n\nAdditionally, when people have lowered seizure thresholds, be it medications like bupropion, recreational drug use like LSD, and GABAergic drug withdrawal (alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, etc.) seizures can be less common when there’s less stimuli. People withdrawing from those drugs can have heightened senses because of this.\n\nHere’s also a little intermediate addendum for the pathology of seizures. GABA is the main sedating neurotransmitter. When active, GABA decreases stimulatory neurotransmitters, hence making neurons fire less. Because of this, it actually makes you sleepy and lowers communication between neurons. This is why benzodiazepines (Xanax, Valium, Klonopin), and sometimes barbiturates (rarely used today, the most commonly used brand name is Firocet, barbiturates are also used for euthanasia and are what killed Marlyn Monroe; they were mostly used to “keep woman docile” until benzodiazepines became prevalent), are used to keep epilepsy at bay. To my most recent readings on this subject, it’s thought that because CBD blocks cannabinoid action, this increases GABA, which is why cannabis, specifically CBD, works for seizures (though THC is up in the air in regards to epilepsy)."
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1nt1tf | what does it mean when chemicals are "released" from the brain? | Are there a bunch of chemicals just sitting in my brain compartments waiting to be released? Like when people say that oxytocin is released to make you feel bonded to someone, what is actually happening? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nt1tf/eli5_what_does_it_mean_when_chemicals_are/ | {
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"Yes, basically the chemicals, called neurotransmitters, are just sitting in compartments, called vesicles. \n\nYour brain is made up of neurons (\"brain cells\"). All your thoughts and feelings come from neurons communicating with each other. One neuron (because it is stimulated by something) will release the neurotransmitters into the synapse, which is a little space between neurons. The chemicals hang out in there and some of them bond with receptors in nearby neurons. This causes some signal to be sent, which in combination with other signals might cause you to feel happy, see red, raise your arm, or any number of other things. After a little bit the chemicals are sucked back up into the vesicles where they can no longer bond with other neurons. This process is called re-uptake. \n\nSo, oxytocin isn't released \"into the brain\", it is released from one brain cell into the synapses so that it can communicate with other neurons. "
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3o41rx | how noise pollution is harmful | I know it can be annoying and what not, but is it really doing any harm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o41rx/eli5how_noise_pollution_is_harmful/ | {
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"For one, noise pollution can do harm to humans, psychologically. Studies have shown that people who live right next to a street or at the ocean shore for example are much more likely to become distressed and more vulnerable to psychological disorders. This is partly due to noises causing sleep irregularities, concentration & focus problems, disorientation and balance issues. Also the brains activity is influenced as its \"working more\" to interpret all the sounds around you. \nNoise pollution also does harm to the animal kingdom, most notably birds. They easily become disoriented and lost. Birdsong is used to attract mates, defend territory from rivals, and even warn for predators. Those abilities are negatively influenced by noise pollution. "
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acqlcz | why does sleep help relieve migraine pain when nothing else does? | Ice, heat, pressure points and pain medicine never really help with my migraines, only sleep. A few other friends of mine also suffer from migraines and agree that sleep is the best for them.
I had one today and I managed to fall asleep for maybe 15 minutes and most of the pain was gone.
How does sleep reduce migraine pain/symptoms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/acqlcz/eli5_why_does_sleep_help_relieve_migraine_pain/ | {
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"As a migraine sufferer, myself, it's my opinion that sleep may be a psychological relief more so than anything else. ",
"I’m more prone to migraines when I’m sleep deprived . Perhaps the simplest answer, is the best ons",
"Sleep was the only help for my painful migraines.\n\nI didn't know why, but after years of seeking help for various forms of migraine pain and auras... ER visits, docs and neuros and CTs and MRIs and epilepsy tests, etc, taking various meds / prescribed \"drug coctail\" and having the only relief from those meds to help make me sleep it off - I think not eating was what would kill off the migraine pain eventually for me, through reaching ketosis.\n\nI have since found vegan ketogenic diet wiped them out. I was following the diet for a while, but lost weight I didn't want to, so over time I have raised overall calories, and started adding some carbs back, and reduced protein.\n\nI am now inetmittently using lazy vegan low-carb-to-keto and intermittent fasting to keep the migraines away. \n\nMy fav foods were potatoes and breads. It is amazing though, once changing my diet, just how many other foods and recipies there are that are awesome, and having my taste change, and even keto, another hurdle, that I no longer crave fries or chips or biscuits or such. Never in a million years would I have imagined not at least having auras, or having so much control over the migraine pain. \n\nI was sooo relieved and angry when I found this, simply my diet could have saved me all those missed opportunities and suffering and misery. No doc ever mentioned it as an option. I just happened to put it together.",
"I find this odd, because I can't sleep with a migraine. If i do fall asleep, i just wake right back up due to the pain. I have to wait for my meds to kick in before i can sleep. ",
"Yeah I agree, sleep seems to help my migraines too. My theory is something to do with, when we relax our body goes into a different mode, one of relaxing and repair. Perhaps we are somewhat \"resetting\" ourself to a degree, enough to get whatever is causing the migraine to go away. ",
"Sleep is also my go-to migraine relief. The reasons why I think it's effective for me is the environment (cool dark room, reduces contributing factors like light and heat), the repairing qualities of sleep (as another user mentioned), and being able to wait-out the migraine without being aware of the pain."
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6x4j4i | what is almond milk, like actually? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6x4j4i/eli5_what_is_almond_milk_like_actually/ | {
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"The basic method of modern domestic almond milk production is to grind almonds in a blender with water, then strain out the almond pulp (flesh) with a strainer or cheesecloth. Almond milk can also be made by adding water to almond butter.\n\nSource: _URL_0_\n\nI think they do this for Soy too.",
"Think of coffee, but instead of coffee beans, it's almonds. Of course they often add flavors, such as a sweetener, vanilla, etc. "
]
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3wfdxm | why in the us you aren't automatically registered to vote on the day of your 18th birthday with a valid driver's license. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wfdxm/eli5_why_in_the_us_you_arent_automatically/ | {
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"Well, you can't just be given a valid drivers license on your 18th birthday. There's testing and all of that.\n\nNow, if you're asking why the government doesn't offer voter registration to people when someone gets a driver's license, [they do](_URL_0_), and have for over 20 years."
]
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[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Voter_Registration_Act_of_1993"
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||
1tvdgu | why is it such a big deal if the japanese prime minister visits the yasukuni shrine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tvdgu/eli5_why_is_it_such_a_big_deal_if_the_japanese/ | {
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"Reason no. 1: The Yakushini Shrine houses many deceased notable and important figures, including soldiers, of Japan. The Shrine includes people designated as war criminals after the war. Many feel that the Prime Minister's visit is an insult to the victims of Japan's Imperial Era, particularly in China and Korea since the visit is perceived to not only honor the dead soldiers but also war criminals. \n\nThe issue comes up both inside and outside Japan. \n\nIt's important to remember that Yakushini houses more than just war criminals. In WW2, soldiers going to war would say to their families: please visit me in Yakushini if I do not return. \n\nReason no. 2: Inside Yakushini is a museum which has its own version of WW2. It's right-wing and heavily edited. However, as far as I know, the museum is privately funded and the Japanese government (freedom of speech and all that) cannot shut them down.\n\nReason no 3: This is mostly from within Japan. The State and the Church are separated. The Prime Minister is the head of the State and the Shrine is of Shinto origin. Some Japanese feel that the separation is not being honored. "
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3kc3ly | why haven't satellites been put in permanent orbit around other planets or moons? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kc3ly/eli5why_havent_satellites_been_put_in_permanent/ | {
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"We do have a few such missions but satellites are never in permanent orbit. They eventually get slowed down through atmospheric drag or subtle differences in gravity around the planet or other satellites messing up their orbit. The MESSENGER probe orbiting Mercury lost speed because the Sun was tugging on it. Around Earth, they're pretty regularly spending fuel to get them back in proper orbit and they eventually run out and deorbit, so we replace them.\n\nThere's also the issue of speed. You have to go really fast to get anywhere in a reasonable timeframe. A lot of times, we get going really fast with gravity assist maneuvers, not with rockets actually on the spacecraft. So when we get to the place, it's hard to slow down enough to get into orbit. \n\nAll that being said, we do have some. Mercury had one until fairly recently, there's a handful at Mars. Saturn has one or two, I believe. We just tend to call them orbiters or probes, not satellites.",
"They have. Mars has 2 man made satellites orbiting it. Jupiters moon Titan has 1. When we were sending astronauts to the moon, their mother ship would assume an orbit around the moon, the astronauts would leave and return to. ",
"basically everything in orbit is not in a stable orbit. Or, at least, not stable in the long run. small corrections need to be made to keep satellites in orbit and most of them have small thrusters with fuel included. The average lifetime of satellites is only a few years, and by the time their fuel runs out there's a next generation of satellite to take it's place.\n\nPermanent orbit is hard, especially if the thing you are trying to orbit has an atmosphere or other orbital bodies that could influence the satellite. Both of those things are not immediate threats to the satellite but over time they would eventually suck enough energy out of the orbit of the satellite due to friction or tidal forces and cause it to fail.\n\nWhen you're talking about other planets it's even worse, because including fuel to keep the satellite in orbit is taxing not only on the launch of the ship from earth but on the travel to it's destination(all that fuel has weight, and weight is a huge bitch in space), and it's really just not all that worth the cost when the thing is probably gonna be obsolete in 10 years and probably won't even last that long in orbit around something even with fuel\n",
"You very rarely want satellites in permanent orbit. Most satellites have an End-of-Life date after which the sensors will probably have broken down, been replaced by a new probe or the solar panels will have degraded to the point it has no power.\n\nWe have put satellites into long term orbits around several planets and moons, but in the end - when they die - we *want* them to spiral in and burn up, rather than leaving lumps of space junk presenting a hazard to future satellites.\n\nAs others have said, in a low orbit satellites experience some atmospheric drag from the thin, upper reaches of the atmosphere. If you put them into geostationary orbit over the equator at 36,000km, you would get pretty close to a permanent orbit - there is no atmosphere to speak of. But when the fuel ran out it would \"wobble\" on it's orbit and create a hazard to other spacecraft as it's impossible to get a satellite into a perfect orbit.\n\nAdditionally, geostationary is only really good for communications.\n\nFor most scientific survey tasks, you want a low-orbit (e.g. 2-300km altitude) satellite which can get a good look ta the planet - the resolution of data collected from 36,000km won't be very good.\n\nSo we send satellites with enough fuel to conduct their mission, let them fly low and collect high-quality datasets, and then let them burn up when their job is done."
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203zm7 | why does nasa want to deorbit the international space station in 2020 after spending so much time and money building it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/203zm7/eli5_why_does_nasa_want_to_deorbit_the/ | {
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"because it costs money to maintain it. and rather than leave it up there, it's better to do a controlled deorbit than to wonder \"where will it come down....and when does it happen\""
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5nhwp9 | its january in pennsylvania. why are there birds chirping? didn't they all fly south? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nhwp9/eli5_its_january_in_pennsylvania_why_are_there/ | {
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"No, only migratory birds fly south, and not all birds are migratory. \n\nSome stay over the winter. ",
"Who says they didn't? Pennsylvania is farther south than Nova Scotia - they may have migrated down from there, or some other northern state/province.",
"According to [National Wildlife](_URL_0_):\n\n > Among the first groups of birds to move north are waterfowl: ducks, geese, and swans may begin migrating as soon as frozen lakes and marshes start to thaw. Even in the northern states, flocks of waterfowl may arrive in late February. Also on the move this early are some species that migrate mostly within North America, spending the winter as far north as they can. They include killdeer and red-winged blackbirds.\n\nI wonder just how much the warming Arctic with its melting ice and lakes, and the recent arctic vortex cold snap, impact on early bird migration north?",
"At one point Canadian geese used to migrate in the southern pa area now more often than not they seem to stay longer than years ago "
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49gdy9 | what in the body makes someone horny and what goes away when the sexual tension is released to turn off the feeling for a period of time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49gdy9/eli5_what_in_the_body_makes_someone_horny_and/ | {
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"Hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen, among others, are the answer to both of your questions. What's interesting, however, is that females can continue to feel a sexual high and tension even after experiencing an orgasm unlike men. ",
"In men, a hormone called prolactin increases after orgasm. This will cause a lack of interest in sex, difficulty in achieving an erection and orgasming. It is primarily responsible for the 'refractory period'. \n\nThere is a prolactin lowering drug called cabergoline which can drastically reduce the refractory period and make some men multi-orgasmic.\n\nProlactin is also responsible for causing women to lactate.\n",
"Testosterone for the sexual tension, oxytocin for the orgasm, prolactin for the refractory period. It's a soup of hormones originating from the hypothalamus and pituitary gland in the brain which constantly fluctuate.\n\nOxytocin is also the hormone responsible for feelings of affection for another person. In females, oxytocin is responsible for uterine contractions during labour and helps milk express from the nipple during breastfeeding.",
"ELI5: why does the feeling of satisfaction last longer after being with a real women compared to jacking off? How does the body know the difference? ",
"Sometimes I search the internet for good porn videos and end up opening like 15 tabs of potentials only to cum and realize I wasted my time and now I feel so dirty.",
"Could high levels of prolactine be the reason of a diminished sex drive in woman too ? My SO changed her birth control pill a couple months ago and since then her sex drive is completely gone. She still loves me and want her hugs but none of the fun stuff. :(",
"Holy Jesus this post blew up. I never thought THIS of all my posts wouod make the front page...",
"So, prolactin puts on the breaks, what's stomping on the accelerator?",
"Is there some kind of drug or way to manipulate the body so that you don't feel the need for sexual gratification? So that you don't get horny? So that you don't have to worry about continuing to fail and can just focus on the things in life that you aren't terrible at?\n\nI've heard that the military used to put saltpeter into the food during bootcamp so guys wouldn't get erections, but is that a myth? Does it supress sexual urgres as well or does it just prevent stiffys?",
"Foreword: I'm a spinal cord biologist, but I work mostly with pain systems. Nonetheless, I've read a reasonable amount on sexual circuits in the spinal cord.\n\nA lot of people are going to talk about brain chemistry, and that's definitely a huge part of it. But it's still very poorly understood.\n\n**EDIT: Since this is hard to explain, let me try and be simpler. Not my greatest skill.**\n\nYour spinal cord is full of nerve cells which largely either A) control reflexes, B) execute movement or C) send mildly processed information to the brain. Some of them near your lower back (lumbar spine) respond specifically to genital stimulation, and will become intensely active during ejaculation. They send information simultaneously to the ejaculation muscles as well as the brain, and these cells are thought to be responsible for telling the brain to feel good!\n\nThese cells are similar to the cells that send pain information to the brain. Similarly to pain, they receive a serotonin input from higher brain regions which silences these cells. This is thought to be part of the reason why anti-depressants have a libido-lowering effect. Like pain, libido must be suppressed in emotionally intense situations presumably so that you can be compelled to remove yourself from danger.\n\nIt is also the reason I think that the spinal cord is highly responsible for what we know as libido, and that sexual thoughts will activate spinal cells, which will then send information back up to the brain that says \"hey, now you're aroused!\" To support this, there are distinct areas of the brain which only receives spinal input from these specialized lumbar cells. However, there's only a handful of studies done on this part of the brain and it really needs more attention.\n\nBecause of this, I think sexual dysfunction (if you want to use that term, since everyone has their own definition of sexually normal) research should examine spinal cord circuits and therapies which target them.",
"It's supposed to turn off??",
"I'm really enjoying everyone's thoughts here but um...Well I'll be back in fifteen minutes or so",
"Jesus reading all thesis shit about how women have multiple orgasms, that are full body makes me feel like I was born the wrong gender."
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8v0psi | what causes shockwaves when an item breaks/snaps? | Was watching the "hydraulic press" channel on youtube and saw a compilation where non-explosive items like stacks of paper are crushed and typically once they reach a certain point will break/snap, releasing a shockwave of sorts. What causes this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v0psi/eli5_what_causes_shockwaves_when_an_item/ | {
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"If you look at the [Crushing 1500 sheets of Paper with Hydraulic Press](_URL_2_) the paper finally break you see part of it is ejected to the right and at the same time the piston jumps down and hit the paper below.\n\nSo the first thing is when the is compressed is it deformed and will spring back when the pressure is no longer applied. That will cause vibration in the paper. \nSo when the paper break apart the compressed part on the side are no longer under pressure and will spring back and vibrate.\n\nFor the paper like if you fix a paper at one side and bend it. When you release it or cut it apart it will spring back.\n\nAnother part is the sudden movement of the piston is like a punch and it might hit paper below. If it did it will create waves in the object.\n\n\nI suspect that calling it a shock wave is incorrect because the are by definition supersonic. Regular vibration occur at object at speed below the speed of sound as sound is a vibration. The speed of sound in higher in solids then in air.\n\n\nSo look at a punch in the face _URL_0_ or a vibrating guitar string _URL_1_ You will notice that vibration waves are common but most of the time invisible to a human eye\n\nThe reson that we think of it as a thing in explosion is that is one of few situation they are visible to a naked human eye. Most vibration is small in magnitude and the distance propagate it quite low so it look like a instant chage of a fussy object. The only common is waves in water but the are not exactly the same.\n\n\nHumans don't detect individual frames in a movie at 24 frames per second so thing that occur 1/50 of a second or 25 ms apart will look like one thing. A sound wave can travel 7 meter at that time. At half the frame rate or 1/12 of a movie we would see a jerky motion so changes when the sound travel 4 time the distance = 28m is separate to us\n\nSo a punch in the face is a wave that travel less then a meter at high speed. For the wave to travel slow then a meter at 1/50s it has to have a speed of less the 50 m/s but the vibration in a face is faster then that. So we will not see it as a wave because the change is simultaneous in the whole fave for human eyes.\n\n\nThe pressure wave from a black powder explosion is sub sonic and not a shock wave. But lets say it travel at the speed of sound in air. So the first 7 meter might look like a instant but when it trave 28 m we will see that is it don't happen at the same thing. So the waves have to travel quite a distance for it to be visible for a naked human eye. So it will be the one in explosions we can see because the might influence the surrounding for many hundreds of meters.\n\nSo vibrations like that happen all the time but we can see them but most of them like vibration in a guitar string or a punch to the face just look bury to our eyes. But can be captured by a camera.\n\n\n"
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33n089 | how does hydroplaning work? how can a dirtbike ride on a lake? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33n089/eli5_how_does_hydroplaning_work_how_can_a/ | {
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"Liquids acts like a solid the first millisecond you touch it. That's why you can slap the surface of a container of water."
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6imo6n | why do we only breathe through one nostril at a time when we have two, and how do they switch active roles without me realising - is there a primal function of this feature i haven't openly questioned until now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6imo6n/eli5_why_do_we_only_breathe_through_one_nostril/ | {
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"Having them switch off gives the less active nostril time to recover. The constant air passing through can dry it out, so in the down time, it can regain lost moisture and replace dried out mucus.",
"It allows them to split the work load. You also have a nasal cycle where they switch every 4 hours or so. Also, some smells are detected better in faster air and some in slower air to stick to the receptors. There's a Sci Show YouTube video about it. ",
"On top of whats been covered about maintaining the nose, the molecules that make up smells decay at different rates, it's easier to smell something that decays slowly if you breath in slowly and visa versa. So breathing in at different speeds in each nostril allows our noses to pick up a wider variety of smells.",
"I breathe through both most of the time. First time I learned this I checked 12 times a day for a whole week. Found no clear incident of one-nostril-over-the-other unless I got explicitly plugged up, like when first waking up or when dealing with anything (dust, eating horseradish or garlic, etc.) that generated excessive snot. Granted, I typically have a *dominant* nostril at any one time, but air flows through both at no more an extreme than a 40/60 ratio.",
"What is the physical mechanism that causes them to switch?",
"Your nostrils don't actually 'shut off', one part just swells up a little. You generally don't notice this, except for cases where additional swelling is present. (Think flu, a cold, etc.) The purpose of this is maintenance, although I never really found out why it needs maintenance...",
"Interesting side note: there are pranayamas in yoga that exaggerate alternate nostril breathing. There is some science to back up the benefits. [Pal, G.K. Velkumary, S. and Madanmohan. (2004). Effect of short-term practice of breathing exercises on autonomic functions in normal human volunteers. Indian Journal of Medical Research]",
"Seriously? I just thought my nose was messed up because I can only through one hole at a time.",
"How does this work if I have a deviated septum? I notice I breathe out of the clear side a lot more and it usually feels drier.",
"This is normal? All this time I thought there was something wrong with my nose!",
"You only use one nostril? I normally use two and can't imagine how I could use just one at a time (except if I have a cold etc).",
"I'm really sorry but I've NEVER known that I only use one nostril. Does that make me weird? I can only breathe through one nostril if I put my finger over the other, I'll check on it every once in a while now because I'll be thinking about it, but I've never noticed this. ",
"There is something wrong with your nose bro. You are supposed to be breathing through both nostrils."
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366wld | what would happen if the united states left the united nations? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/366wld/eli5_what_would_happen_if_the_united_states_left/ | {
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"The UN would lose all legitimacy in any security issues if the US or any other of the five permanent members left.",
"The US would be the one to lose legitimacy. Any military action undertaken by the US without UN sanction would potentially be an act of war. A number of international treaties and agreements would be voided. The US would have no official means of input on international peace keeping, aid or embargoes. It would legitimize Islamic criticism of the US as being prone to unilateral action and they would no longer have a veto which would leave Israel very exposed. It would be very bad for the US and the UN.",
"For starters, you could look at the League of Nations, formed after the First World War. The U.S. never joined and because of that, as well as numerous other factors, the LoNs never worked.\n\nNothing necessarily happens if a country leaves the United Nations system. Participation is voluntary but for the past 70 years membership has been very much desired. As the UN is the bedrock of the international order that has emerged from the Second World War, the question perhaps shouldn't be \"what would happen if the U.S. left the United Nations?\" but: \"what could cause the U.S. to leave the United Nations?\"."
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5zz9hj | is the iss tidally locked to earth? | By tidally locked I mean is there a "bottom" that always points toward Earth or does it change orientation as it orbits? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zz9hj/eli5_is_the_iss_tidally_locked_to_earth/ | {
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"Usually the same side faces the Earth, but not always, and it's not tidally locked but rather controlled by gyroscopes on-board the station. The orientation is altered as required for different missions.",
"Not tidally locked.\n\nRather, they intentionally set its rotation to match it's orbital period so that the same side always faces the earth.\n\nISS orbits the earth once every 92.65 minutes, so if it also rotates (spins) once every 92.65 minutes, that ends up making the same side face the earth at all times.\n\nOn the ISS you wouldn't notice the spin, but the same window would always point toward the earth. If they didn't spin the ISS at all, it would look like the earth was orbiting the ISS once every 92.65 minutes if you were on the ISS."
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fhlr5o | how exactly does the fed's money enter/effect the market? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fhlr5o/eli5_how_exactly_does_the_feds_money_entereffect/ | {
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"To the best of my knowledge,\n\nBanks create money through the lending process. Someone has the desire for more money, so they make an agreement with a bank to borrow money. The bank creates the money in exchange for the debt instrument. How much money they can lend is limited to a ratio of how much “reserves” they have. So if your bank is operating in a country with a 10:1 ratio, they can lend out 10x the amount of money they must keep in reserve.\n\nSo if the federal reserve decides they need to increase monetary supply, they increase the amount of reserves in lower banks and this allows them to lend more money to the public. They do this by converting the banks debt instruments into money. They can “lend” the bank money which creates money via the above process with the debt instrument as collateral or they can buy the debt instrument with money they already have.",
"The usual way they inject money is by buying government bonds. \n\nToday a big part of what the Fed announced was that they were essentially going to inject money into the repurchase (repo) market. Basically the repo market is way for financial institutions to fund themselves on a short-term basis. Generally what happens is that bank A sells bunch of securities (usually US government bonds) to bank B in exchange for a promise to repurchase them in the near term at a slightly higher price - that higher repurchase price effectively acts as the interest rate.\n\nWhat the Fed is doing is basically offering to take the role of bank B in the example above."
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21kzf3 | why don't cars need a choke? | Edit: From the answers I've received, I suppose what I'm wondering is, how does the automatic choke work? Especially in older cars that didn't have computers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21kzf3/eli5_why_dont_cars_need_a_choke/ | {
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"Mine does. It won't start without it.",
"Modern motors have computer control with temperature sensors so the fuel and air mixture is automatically enriched to suit cold starts. ",
"You have a choke on older cars/motorcycles that have carburetors. These are devices that control the mixture of air and fuel for combustion.\n\nWhen you open the choke, you're essentially restricting the air and allowing more fuel. You do this because the the cold, fuel will condense which makes more fuel needed to get the ball rolling. \n\nNewer cars, and by newer I want to say like post 1995-2000 are all fuel injected engines. There is a computer like device which will control at all times how much fuel/air is gonna be used for combustion.\n\nPersonally, I buy motorcycles that have carbs. Reason being is they're usually bullet machines, meaning they can pretty much last through everything. A carb'ed engine can theoretically run on zero electricity, which I would need in a apocalyptic type scenario (no bullshit, this is why I have a Carb'ed bike, I can ride on nothing but fuel, no battery if I wanted)\n\nHope this helps. "
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2nm1uc | why don't we publish a book from the best posts of this subreddit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nm1uc/eli5_why_dont_we_publish_a_book_from_the_best/ | {
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"I think that's a brilliant idea. If someone runs with it and wants a professional editor on board, count me in!",
"There was an attempt to do just that a while ago, but it never took off. See /r/eli5project",
"Eternal glory for the chosen posts...\nSeriously though, that's a fantastic idea. ",
"I would love to see a book! Let's do a KickStarter!",
"ELI5: Why have you not bought this book already?",
"Who would get the money? Because if this was done, someone would definitely be looking to profit.",
"Because books cost money to make, edit, and publish. It is pretty ineffective compared to just posting here and being able to look up what you want. \n\nI suppose if someone really wanted to, they could take the posts from this sub and make it a book, but it would be more up to that person then anyone else.",
"Wouldnt you have to get permission from every poster quoted in the book, and then cut them a % of the profits?",
"You could make a Wikipedia like page for free(or ebook or pdf file) instead of a book which gets outdated quiet fast. Also there are almost no source to answers and some explanations may be wrong.",
"These are the types of books that make great stocking fillers for non-Reddit folk.",
"I hope this happens, I'm sure a lot of people would purchase it.",
"This would be useful to have when I'm somewhere with no signal like a train... ",
"I can honestly say that I wholeheartedly support this idea and I would very much buy the book! So if you need a buyer of around 1 boo, let me know!",
"If this becomes a thing, we should definitely send a PM to /u/justcallmezach. He was on the old team and seemed very sad it was dead in the water.",
"It's been done.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nOn the bright side, it was pretty good...",
"We'd be happy to help with this using redditmade! Pm me. ",
"askreddit+random reddit storys+AMA's+ELI5+other stuff would make a awesome book. With funny storys and stuff like that",
"Publishing student here! Would love to be involved, edit, write any additional content, whatever. Count me in! ",
"We've removed this thread because it's against the rules. I know, it's not a nice move because it invoked a positive discussion regarding this subreddit.\n\n\nWe're going to internally debate what to do in the next few days about this. Maybe we'll make an official thread, maybe we will tell people who are interested to post in /r/kickstarter. No promises, but we'll discuss it within the modteam then we'll see what we do. If we don't post anything within the next few days, then it's likely that we consider this project a no-go.\n\n\n**In the mean time, remember that there's the /r/ideasforELI5 subreddit. Feel free to post there and discuss as much as you wish.**\n\n\nThanks for the positive initiative, guys.\n\nEDIT: I grammar'd"
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8fi7gr | how does each pixel inside an lcd or similar display know what color to display, and when to change colors so that the entire screen updates at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8fi7gr/eli5_how_does_each_pixel_inside_an_lcd_or_similar/ | {
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"The entire screen does not update at the same time. It does so very quickly; it is too fast for your brain to notice the time difference. \n\nYou can imagine each pixel as a sophisticated light bulb, Instead of a mechanical switch where a person needs to flip it up or down to turn the light bulb on or of, these sophisticated switches are controlled by electronic ones. \n\nThese fancy switches are \"on\", if there is some electrical voltage applied across its terminals \\(and let's call this state \"1\"\\). The switch is off, if no voltage is applied \\(call it state\"0\"\\). Now, you can draw anything on a black and white LCD. Here is a line: 00011111111111111000 on a 1x20 LCD.\n\nNow, your questions is reduced to \"how do I calculate the value of every switch on my LCD, so it displays what I need it to\". For that, search for \"ELI5: How do computers work?\".",
"I can't give you a proper ELI5 answer (hopefully that comes along, because I'm curious as well) but to get a good idea of what's happening on the screen I recommend you watch [this video](_URL_0_) of both a CRT and an LCD, close up and in slow motion. \n\nOne thing to keep in mind is that the entire screen doesn't update at the same time. Each pixel is updated individually, one at a time, in lines from left to right, top to bottom. (That's for a progressive scan TV in landscape orientation.)\n\nThis happens incredibly fast. In a 1080p, 60Hz TV there are 2,073,600 pixels drawn each 1/60th of a second.\n\nBut how a TV manages to do that is beyond me. ",
"We usually represent any colour by numbers, in computer systems.\n\nThis unique number consists of 3 separate numbers, each having information about how much of Red, Green, Blue is in that colour (any colour can be made up by adding the 3 primary colours). As an example, Red will be 255,0,0 and Green will be 0,255,0.\n\nNow, each pixel has a value associated to it. A frame of, say 1920 by 1080 pixels will be 2073600 of these. Which is close to 6KB.\n\nNow this data is sent to the screen.\n\nThe screen does not change all the colours at once. It goes one pixel at a time. The speed of doing this is faster than we can perceive. There is a very nice video by the slow Mo guys, on YouTube. That video can explain how the screen is updated.\n\nHope I answered your question about how do they know the colours.\n\nEdit: to update a screen 1920*1080 pixels, in 1/60th of a second. You need to update 124,416,000 pixels everytime. Modern hardware does have speeds required for this.",
"Each pixel doesn't \"know\" anything - they're just dumb pixels. There is a controller chip in the display that receives the signal from the computer and *tells* each pixel which color it needs to be. If you're using a 30 Hz refresh, basically the controller checks ever 1/30 of a second, determines what all the pixels should look like, and then sends out its orders.",
"Behind each pixel is a transistor. The transistor has connection to a specific row and column electrode. For a 1920x1080 display, there are 1920 columns and 1080 rows. Actually, there are 3 times that because each pixel is made of three sub-pixels, one each for red, green, blue. Each sub-pixel has a color filter over it. At any given instant, only one combination of row and column is selected and the transistor for that pixel turns on. When that happens, the analog value on the column is stored in a capacitor. That capacitor is the pixel itself. That voltage is stored in this \"memory\" capacitor until the next refresh. It does not all update at once. The voltage alters the degree of polarization of the back light which passes through the pixel. That would be invisible by itself. On both sides of the panel is a polarizer, like polarized sunglasses use. They are crossed so that no light will pass unless the liquid crystal changes the polarization. \n\nAll the circuits are transparent or so small you can't see them. ",
"Check this awesome video out that explains it all by the Slow Mo guys _URL_0_"
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27dwgy | how does a company "reverse engineer" a drug? | I hear it frequently and I have no clue about it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27dwgy/eli5_how_does_a_company_reverse_engineer_a_drug/ | {
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"chemistry, if there is no patent. If there is a patent they just look at that, it's required that a new chemical composition lists methods of manufacturing, etc.",
"Pharmaceutical agents are simple to analyze, because the formulation is usually quite pure with few additives (compared to, say, many foods you can prepare).\n\nWhen dealing with relatively pure substances, there are many methods of analyzing the chemical composition. Nowadays, a combination of mass spectrometry, IR, and NMR will usually yield complete structural information.\n\n[Mass spectrometry](_URL_1_) works by breaking up your molecule into pieces and analyzing those pieces - like smashing a vase and looking at the pieces to figure out the original shape.\n\n[IR spectroscopy](_URL_2_) works by shining infrared light onto the molecule. Different [functional groups](_URL_0_) will absorb different wavelengths of infrared light.\n\n[NMR spectroscopy](_URL_3_) is harder to explain. Basically each nucleus act like a magnet, and how they behave in a magnetic field will depend on what type of atom it is and the chemical environment it has.\n\nOnce you know the chemical composition, it's a matter of devising a reaction scheme to synthesize it. As with most other manufacturing businesses, knowing _what_ the product is isn't the whole story - someone might be able to make it cheaper. Some drugs are like that - its composition may be known, but the company might know a cheaper way of making it. The drug itself might be off-patent, but the manufacturing process can be patented."
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a66fpr | why do pc and monitors/tv still have a vga port? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a66fpr/eli5_why_do_pc_and_monitorstv_still_have_a_vga/ | {
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"VGA is pretty common with legacy equipment, especially in the business space. It's less common in the consumer space, however.",
"Same reason a lot of TVs still even have RCAs and a co-ax cable connection. First the electronics required to handle even the older signals have been miniaturized and maybe even put onto single chips; they're by nature of having been in market for 20 yrs very inexpensive, and they're not going to take up a lot of your board space. The D-subs or connectors are dirt cheap, so at this point keeping the old connectors and processing doesn't really cost the screen manufacturer very much. And while you may not use the old features very much if at all, the one time you needed it, go to use it and discover its _missing_, well thats when you angrily phone tech support. \n\nIt would be like if you had a car stereo that was missing the AM radio stations. Yeah, everyone listens to satellite commercial free radio, podcsts or Spotify from their bluetooth phone, ipods on AUX or USB, and certainly noone ever listens to AM anymore. \n\nBut imagine if you really needed to listen to the news and your Sirius subscription just ended, you go to switch on the AM talk/news channel and < gasp > no AM!? You'd fucking riot in the streets.",
"Because sometimes people need to dig out old computers, and it doesn't cost much to include the extra port.\n\nFor manufacturers, having extra options for connection means a wider adoption among the populous, so a large screen TV, with a lot of real estate on the back panels, can afford to include more than just the standard HDMI inputs.\n\nComponent and Composite RCA connections mean that you can connect retro game systems to the TV, and not just the newer systems.\n\nCoaxial cable connections allow for antennas and cable connections without the need of a cable box (where supported).\n\nAnd VGA connections allow for all but the oldest computers to be connected.",
"Because there is a demand for support for legacy components. There are still quite a few VGA monitors and cables out there, and people want to be able to continue to use those components from time to time.",
"Newer ones are starting to drop it. My 1080 Ti doesn't have a VGA port, nor does the DVI port support analog in order to convert it to VGA. My latest TV also doesn't have a VGA port, nor does it have any other analog inputs like composite or component."
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1ggcrk | what are hydraulic systems made out of? | What are hydraulic systems made out of and are there different types? What kind of materials are they made from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ggcrk/eli5_what_are_hydraulic_systems_made_out_of/ | {
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"The pistons and cylinders are steel: cheap, durable and tough. The fluid is a kind of oil, to prevent rust and keep the parts lubricated. The hoses will usually be rubber with a steel wire braid to contain the pressure.",
"Subquestion: How can a tiny compressor, or whatever generates the pressure inside the hydralics, create enough force to, for instance, move an arm that lifts twenty tonnes? That has always boggled my mind. I get the transfer of power through the oil and pistons, but... how do we generate the immense pressure needed to push the piston in an arm that lifts twenty tonnes?",
"Your basic hydraulic system is:\n1 - Pump\n\n2 - Valve Bank\n\n3 - Cylinder / Motor ( cylinder for push/pull, motor for spin )\n\n4 - Hoses\n\nThe pump creates flow, that flow is sent to the Valve bank where it is restricted (to create pressure) and directed to either a Cylinder, or Motor to do physical work. Hoses connect all these systems together.\n\nThis is ELI5, so im not sure how technical we should get, but inside the valve bank are things called \"Releifs\". These can come as adjustable (set what ever pressure you desire) or non-adjustable (fixed pressure). This is what causes the restriction of flow from the hydraulic pump and makes your pressure to do the heavy lifting.\n\nImagine a garden hose, turn the hose on and water comes out in a large volume, place your thumb over that hose to partially block its flow, youve just created pressure, and you can feel it trying to lift your thumb off the hose. This is what hydraulic pressure is.\n\nWhat are they made of?\n\nPump - cast iron housing (can also be aluminum) steel / brass interal components.\n\nMotor - same as Pump\n\nCylinder - Case iron / steel barrel and rod, Rubber and plastic for seals\n\nHoses - Metall fittings on each end, braided wire and rubber fabric for the hose body\n\nValve Bank - Cast housings, steel, rubber/plastic seals on the releifs.\n\nHopefully this helped.\n"
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5oih7r | how does internet banking works? is there real money for every digital one? how did they start adding numbers to 'the system' or how do they manage to trade it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5oih7r/eli5_how_does_internet_banking_works_is_there/ | {
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"Well I can't answer the question in the appropriate eli5 fashion, but what I do know is no, there is not a real dollar for every digital. From my understanding, most current currency is digital and we do not have anywhere near the physical currency to back it up.",
"No there is not a \"real\" as in physical dollar for everyone you bank online.\n\nHowever that has little to do with the internet and stated long before we had online banking.\n\nMoney existed in theory only and without any physical coins or banknotes to back it up for long before computer banking came along.\n\nThis is how banks can lend more money to different people than they actually have in deposits.\n\nThe system breaks down when everyone who has money in the bank on paper (or digitally) wants their physical money at the same time, because there is not enough physical money for that.\n\nIn practice it is actually very hard to keep track of what \"real money\" is anyway.\n\nThe US and other government keeps track of \"the money\" called the money supply in various forms of things that can be counted as money and the physical currency is only the tiniest fraction of it.",
"Here is my favorite example. Buy a house. You really do not do that. You obtain a mortgage. You promise to pay for the house by the month for years. The mortgage loaner provided to money to pay the builder. They provided less than what they expect to get paid back. \n\nNow they can bundle mortgages together and sell the bundle. Someone is paying money for future money. They gave real cash today for future money which really does not exist yet. The real cash paid today is less than what will be paid to them eventually. But some of the mortgages will not be paid. the buyer will go into default. The mortgage bundle holder can buy insurance against his bundle going bad. It is a credit default swap. Someone took money to guarantee that the bundled mortgages would perform as they should. The money they got was real. It was for their guarantee. That money was pure profit if everything went like it should. But if things went South they were on the hook for a lot of money. The 2008 meltdown was over future money which did not appear as predicted."
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2c0h96 | why does adding an 's' to 'http://' suddenly make it more secure? | To access my work email that has private and secured information from home, 'http://' doesn't work because it isn't "secure." But if you change it to 'https://' it is suddenly secure? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c0h96/eli5_why_does_adding_an_s_to_http_suddenly_make/ | {
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"HTTP is transmitted plain text, readable by anyone sniffing the traffic.\n\nHTTPS is encrypted. By adding that 's' you're telling your browser to use HTTPS instead of HTTP, so all communication is encrypted and secured.",
"Adding the 's' makes your browser connect to the server in a totally different way, verifying that they server is the one it says it is, and scrambling all information sent to or from the server.",
"Adding the s makes the connection secure. You are telling your browser that this is how you want to connect to their server.\n\nImagine you wanted to have a private conversation with your Spanish speaking friend in a room of Americans. HTTP is English, writing HTTPS is taking your friend to switch to Spanish so no one else can understand you."
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xiv2e | why can i still hear sounds if i put my fingers in my ears? | If I put my fingers in my ears really tight (dont make a joke) Why can I still hear sounds? Im blocking my ear drum from sound waves, do they penetrate my fingers? or nose?
EDIT; Thanks for answering :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xiv2e/eli5_why_can_i_still_hear_sounds_if_i_put_my/ | {
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"When your fingers are in your ears, you are blocking the sound waves that travel through air to your ears. However, sound waves can travel through bone, muscle, blood and skin. The sound gets scattered as it travels through your other parts, and your eardrums are tuned to specifically work with sound traveling through air, so it doesn't sound clear when you do it. Also, much of the energy is lost traveling between air and flesh, so sounds are quieter when you plug your ears. ",
"Who else put their fingers in their ears to listen to sound after reading this??"
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9u0p3p | why didn't the us govt release the picture of dead osama bin laden despite releasing dead pictures of his other members? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9u0p3p/eli5_why_didnt_the_us_govt_release_the_picture_of/ | {
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"They didn't want to make him more of a martyr than he already was. No grave. No memorial site. No pictures of him dead.\n\nAlso, if I recall correctly, he *got shot in the face.*\n\nThe pictures might be too much for standard publication.",
"The others make good points. But what also came to my mind is that even in extreme cases we give the deceased certain rights of bodily autonomy. According to the government honored Islamic burial traditions and buried him at sea within 24 hours of his death. Releasing mass photos might violate those protections somehow ",
"There isn't really a right answer to this because there was a lot of debate as to wether they should have been released or not. On the one hand you release them and you are showing real evidence that he is actually dead and you are not bsing. On the other hand you don't release the pictures and possibly avoid bringing more supporters to his cause. Also like has been said he had his head split open so do you want to release grisley pics like that to the public?",
"Throwing your enemies bodies in a body of water to try to erase them from history is a super traditional diss in western society. The Roman's were a big fan. "
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1yfrj9 | why does artificial light hurt my eyes? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yfrj9/eli5why_does_artificial_light_hurt_my_eyes/ | {
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"Do you mean fluorescent lights? The light from a fluorescent bulb pulses at 60 flashes per second with alternating current. Your iris sometimes tries to dilate and constrict quickly to compensate, and it tires the muscles in your eye. It is not dangerous, but it can be irritating to some who are sensitive."
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44r5fc | why is firing someone from a government job so hard | Why, in general, is it so difficult to fire someone from a government job?
Some jobs are outsourced due to numerous factors (apparently) including the differences in HR practices of private firms over government departments.
So why is it the case that government employees can slack off, not meet targets efficiently yet still keep their job?
Edit:
Like if there are worker protections in the private sector where someone can't be fired except for a valid documented reason - ie fair dismissal, why is that inadequate for a government job. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44r5fc/eli5_why_is_firing_someone_from_a_government_job/ | {
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"A few reasons:\n\n* Government agencies are not run for profit and tend to have much longer term contracts and tend to reward seniority (both of which makes it hard to let people go) and, in general, pay less attention to the employment costs than a private enterprise. This is really the biggest one: Government agencies and private organizations just have different goals.\n\n* Government agencies tend to try to develop talent from within rather than hiring new people or relying on outsourcing (which they often can't for compliance reasons).\n\n* Public sector unions have much more clout than their private sector counterparts as the politicians in charge of their bosses depend on those unions for votes\n",
"Government jobs are typically governed by specific laws/statutes. In order to fire someone, you have to make sure these laws are followed and all the hoops have been jumped through and all conditions for termination have been met, etc. This can be quite a lengthy and time consuming process and it may be easier to just not bother with it at all. ",
"I don't know if this is the standard for all government jobs, but for my agency this is what's necessary for firing someone:\n\n- You have to write up a person for the same problem no less than three times. \n- The first two times it happens you have to work with the union and employee to come up with a corrective plan for the employee. \n- The union can contest a write up and make it invalid.\n- You cannot write someone up for two different problems and have it count as two write ups. If the employee fixes one problem and commits another one, you start over from write up #1 \n- Certain offenses can lead to immediate firing, like committing a felony, abusing government vehicles or credit cards, etc (the latter two depend on the extent of the abuse but will always lead to at least some time off without pay, and firing after the third offense no matter how minor).\n- Even if you have an employee that you can fire it's a lot of paperwork. I had one coworker who had been driving around doing government work without a driver's license, was wanted for felony possession of drugs, and had been written up multiple times for not doing his job and it still took about a month for my boss to get the paperwork through to fire him. \n\nGiven all that, most managers find it easier to just put problem employees where they'll do the least bit of harm or try to pawn them off on someone else.\n\nNow theoretically, people can get fired in their first year for any reason since that's a probation period, but even that's very rare.",
"If it was easy to fire someone from a government job, then the next time a Republican was elected, he could fire all the people that his Democrat predecessor had hired. A few elections later when a Democrat was elected, he could fire all the people that the Republican had hired. So, we made it harder and harder for the people being *elected* to fire the people being *hired* and somewhere along the way crossed a line and made it hard to fire people who obviously can no longer do their jobs."
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e1rtzi | how auto shutoff pumps at the gas station work | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1rtzi/eli5_how_auto_shutoff_pumps_at_the_gas_station/ | {
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"They use a diaphragm that is pressure balanced to hold a pin that keeps the flow valve open.they need constant atmospheric pressure to stay on. A small pipe called a venturi runs alongside the gas nozzle down to the outlet. When the end of the venturi pipe becomes submerged in the rising gas, it chokes off the air pressure that holds the nozzle handle open and shuts down the flow of gas.\nOr to put it simple, as long as the mechanism has acsess to open air the thingy stays on and when it gets blocked it loses it's balance and trips the nozzle shut off."
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3xlj4w | how do physics , palm - readers and people who claim to be able to tell you your future work? | Had a friend , recently insisting that he went to one of these people before. He said exactly what they told him came true, been getting on my case too go. Personally, don't see what they know that I already don't. All seems a little weird too me.
Is there a certain system they follow? Is this stuff any real? Am I going crazy trying to think of ways that they can actually predict these things they tell people? Thanks.
Edit : I understand the placebo effect, but I still couldn't answer how they knew the exact name of certain relatives of his although he said he booked quite some time in advance, definitely time too snoop I guess. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xlj4w/eli5_how_do_physics_palm_readers_and_people_who/ | {
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"Those kind of fortune telling/horoscope thingys are usually formulated in a very inaccurate way.\n\nThings such as \"You will meet an important person tomorrow\" can be twisted to fit in just about any situation you find yourself in, if you believe in that sort of stuff, you will interpert it as a phropecy coming true.\n\nHave you ever heard about the placebo effect? It's a lot like that I guess. :)\n\nHope this helped. :)",
"None of it is \"real\", other than what any other scam artist could do. \n \nThey rely a lot on [cold reading](_URL_0_)...that is, making educated guesses about you based on what they can observe. \n \nThere are also a variety of tricks they can use. For example, they'll discuss some relative whose name begins with \"N\". If you don't bite on that, they'll move on to another letter. As they do so, they'll be observing you closely for clues as to what to guess next. \n \nThat trick and several others relies a bit on \"confirmation bias\", the tendency of people to forget things that don't \"fit\" and focus on things that do. I'll bet your friend has conveniently forgotten the things he was told that haven't come true. ",
"Physicists can run simulations with enough data. Think of it like a billiards table. If you know how much force you hit the cue ball and in what direction it goes, you can predict what balls will end up where. The higher the degree of accuracy of your inputs, the higher the accuracy of your outputs. ",
"I actually learned how to do this with tarot cards. It is a lot of cold reading, like u/afcagroo said, and when you actually do it you are surprised to amount of bullshit people believe. Basically, they believe what they want. If it's a single young woman, talk about men in her life. She's got a father, depending on her age, he might be dead. Did you feel that? I'm feeling a strong male presence. Oh, your father was absent? Well I'm feeling a strong male presence thanks to your resentment, leashing you to his energy. Maybe it's an old boyfriend who was one of your life's true loves, that you've been missing.\n\nOlder people in particular want to hear about dead parents, they seek approval, they want resolution to unresolved feelings. I never made any money doing this, just got a lot of flirting done in my 20s. When you start selling bullshit, you want to push it bigger and bigger. When the ambitious person starts a large psychic show, a la Jon Edwards, they will use earpieces, research data scrubbed from audience forms, and seating charts, to help guide him. With your friend, depending on the size of the show, it's pretty easy to research. I imagine easier the more social media you have nowadays, but I did this before all that.\n\nAfter a while, I stopped needing tarot cards. People are all pretty much the same. I can extrapolate a lot from your post about you, your friend, your friends stubborn belief in psychics, your persistence convincing him otherwise, and use all these things. From your username I figure you are a male. I can do long distance psychic healing on you over the phone if you believe enough, and it's all in your head.\n\nPeople who are skeptical are impossible to convince. If you goto a psychic with a skeptical attitude, or try to trick them, they will dismiss you at best and at worst fall for it. Try going in dressed as a frenchman with a woman and act touchy. The psychic will take this free information and use it to form an opinion on exactly what you want to hear. You might even be able to get them talking about back home in the old country. For couples, it's pretty easy to serve as a sort of mental foreplay for them, and that's what they come to you for. You have to know your target audience.\n\ntl;dr- people who believe in psychics want to believe in psychics, it helps them deal with their issues, whether its relationship issues, financial issues, or whatever else. You only need to be right once to start establishing your authority as a psychic and from there, it's all a con.\n\nedit: don't get me wrong, I think some psychics actually do good work to help people, a lot like psychologists or friends, they are able to dig out some deep feelings from people. It can be very slimy though. Once you identify how vulnerable someone is, you can either help them or take advantage."
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jotv1 | how bond yield works | Hi guys!
I have some experience with the stock market but bonds confuse me a bit.
1: What does the yield on bonds actually means?
2: Who sets the yield and who causes it to change?
3: What causes it to change and what type of change is considered "good" ?
Thanks a lot! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jotv1/eli5_how_bond_yield_works/ | {
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"1. Basically the return you get on a bond.\n2. Yield is figured out by the price you paid and the coupon price. If you buy a bond at par with a 10% coupon and it's a $1000 bond, your yield is 10% or $100.\n3. The bond price is figured out by the interest rate at the time, so it changes with that rate. If the bond goes down to $800, your yield goes up to 12.5% (\"good\") because you're still guaranteed that $100 from when you bought it. But if the bond goes up to $1200, that's \"bad\" because your yield goes down to 8.33% (still 100 out of 1200).\n\nThis is, of course, only if you're 5, as this is ELI5. The real deal is tied in to \"YTM\" or \"yield to maturity\", which is what most people mean when they say \"yield\" and has to do with the return you get if you hold on to the bond until it matures. \n\nA lot of people buy bonds at either a discount or a premium, so you figure that in along with all the interest you make the whole time and how you plow that interest back into investment, and at what rate.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_) ",
"1. Basically the return you get on a bond.\n2. Yield is figured out by the price you paid and the coupon price. If you buy a bond at par with a 10% coupon and it's a $1000 bond, your yield is 10% or $100.\n3. The bond price is figured out by the interest rate at the time, so it changes with that rate. If the bond goes down to $800, your yield goes up to 12.5% (\"good\") because you're still guaranteed that $100 from when you bought it. But if the bond goes up to $1200, that's \"bad\" because your yield goes down to 8.33% (still 100 out of 1200).\n\nThis is, of course, only if you're 5, as this is ELI5. The real deal is tied in to \"YTM\" or \"yield to maturity\", which is what most people mean when they say \"yield\" and has to do with the return you get if you hold on to the bond until it matures. \n\nA lot of people buy bonds at either a discount or a premium, so you figure that in along with all the interest you make the whole time and how you plow that interest back into investment, and at what rate.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_) "
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4qz7ir | why were there so many jokes about polish people being stupid in the us in the 80s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qz7ir/eli5_why_were_there_so_many_jokes_about_polish/ | {
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"In the 30s and 40s there was a lot of issues in poland (culminating in the nazis invading) and so there was a lot of people immigrating around. Unsurprisingly the same stereotypes that happen to every type of immigrant grew up around the polish immigrant communities. That they were dirty and stupid criminals. \n\nAt some point that became weird and historical and people lost connection to it so it also shifted as a weird \"I want to tell this sweet racist joke I know but people will yell at me if I say it about black people!\" so people subbed in polack instead of some other word. ",
"There was a very popular TV show called \"All in the Family\" with a spin-off called \"Archie Bunker's Place,\" on the air from 1971-1983. The main character, [Archie Bunker]( _URL_1_), was famous for his gruff, bigoted persona—blacks, Hispanics, \"Commies\", gays, hippies, Jews, Catholics, \"women's libbers\", and Polish-Americans (whom he called \"Polacks\") were frequent targets of his barbs. In my social circles, any jokes about Polish people probably originated from having heard them on TV from this character. We were raising [pollock chickens](_URL_0_) at the time. We were required to call them \"polish chickens\" because my mother wasn't sure that \"pollock\" wasn't a slur against Polish people."
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67ppk6 | how does money i donate to politicians and political causes actually make an impact on the outcomes the politicians say they're fighting for on my behalf? where does the money really go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67ppk6/eli5_how_does_money_i_donate_to_politicians_and/ | {
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"Usually in either lobbying or reelection.\n\nLet's say Politician A wants to give you farm subsidies. You're a farmer, so that's good. Politician B does not. You donate to A, he uses that (and other) money to run commercials and place ads to get (re)elected. Once in, or back in, power he can give you what you want.\n\nAs for causes. Groups lobby politicians, and lobbying costs money.\n\nNo, not with brides and shit. But in paying people's salaries, paying rent on offices to have an HQ to operate out of, pay for cell phones and other bills. Or hell, buy a pen.\n\nThose lobbyists then fight for causes you may feel strongly about.\n\nNurses have a lobby, Teachers, Animal Rights Activists, Big Oil, Small Solar, Medium Nuclear, Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Baptists, Mormons, Farmers, Bankers..... everyone has lobbyists.\n\nYour donations keep them in front of Politicians. Which means their (and by extension, your) concerns get heard. "
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kltg6 | how i can blow my nose for 8 straight hours, and still have mucous in there. my head is only so big! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kltg6/eli5_how_i_can_blow_my_nose_for_8_straight_hours/ | {
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"I can only imagine that as you are drinking and eating through the day, the liquid you ingest is converted to mucous.\n\nMy second guess is that your brain is melting and coming out of your nose.",
"Trying to hark back to my biology classes here:\n\nThere are cells called 'goblet cells' that produce mucus constantly. The mucus is designed to trap microbes and other contaminants and allow them to be ejected through coughing/sneezing or the mucus being swallowed. This is part of the reason why you produce more mucus when you have a cold (actually it's more because the lining in your nose/throat swell up but lets not split hairs).\n\nAlso keeps the sensitive membranes in your nose and throat lubricated and moist ( < great word!).\n\nSomeone please correct me if i'm wrong.",
"Because you keep making more. ",
"***BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY!!!***\n\nI cannot speak for much of the biological stuff involved here, but I can speak for respiration:\n\nC6H12O6 + 6 O2 == > 6 CO2 *(g)*+ 6 H2O *(g)*\n\nMost people overlook how much water we create when we breathe. While this is certainly not the only contributor to mucous, it surely adds to it. I am sure the changing equilibria in the nose creates a situation where the water can get trapped and utilized in the mucous membranes to aid expulsion of such microbe-laden nose piss.",
"It's days like these that a neti pot feels like the most amazing human invention to date. After all the agony of too much fruitful nose blowing, watching what seems like a cup of snot pour out of your nose in a warm mucousy flow is orgasmic. Yeah. Neti pot porn. ",
"Blowing your nose can actually be very counter productive. When you blow your nose you create an enormous build up of pressure in the nasal cavity and when u have a cold it can shoot bacteria into the sinuses. The best thing to do is lightly blow one nostril at a time and take nasal decongestants. ",
"Isn't the more important question *why doesn't it come out easily?*\n\nMy nose gets blocked in the first 5 seconds and spends the next week building up to a gigapascal of pressure for no apparent gain.",
"So, why does our nose run more when it's cold out?",
"I can only imagine that as you are drinking and eating through the day, the liquid you ingest is converted to mucous.\n\nMy second guess is that your brain is melting and coming out of your nose.",
"Trying to hark back to my biology classes here:\n\nThere are cells called 'goblet cells' that produce mucus constantly. The mucus is designed to trap microbes and other contaminants and allow them to be ejected through coughing/sneezing or the mucus being swallowed. This is part of the reason why you produce more mucus when you have a cold (actually it's more because the lining in your nose/throat swell up but lets not split hairs).\n\nAlso keeps the sensitive membranes in your nose and throat lubricated and moist ( < great word!).\n\nSomeone please correct me if i'm wrong.",
"Because you keep making more. ",
"***BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY!!!***\n\nI cannot speak for much of the biological stuff involved here, but I can speak for respiration:\n\nC6H12O6 + 6 O2 == > 6 CO2 *(g)*+ 6 H2O *(g)*\n\nMost people overlook how much water we create when we breathe. While this is certainly not the only contributor to mucous, it surely adds to it. I am sure the changing equilibria in the nose creates a situation where the water can get trapped and utilized in the mucous membranes to aid expulsion of such microbe-laden nose piss.",
"It's days like these that a neti pot feels like the most amazing human invention to date. After all the agony of too much fruitful nose blowing, watching what seems like a cup of snot pour out of your nose in a warm mucousy flow is orgasmic. Yeah. Neti pot porn. ",
"Blowing your nose can actually be very counter productive. When you blow your nose you create an enormous build up of pressure in the nasal cavity and when u have a cold it can shoot bacteria into the sinuses. The best thing to do is lightly blow one nostril at a time and take nasal decongestants. ",
"Isn't the more important question *why doesn't it come out easily?*\n\nMy nose gets blocked in the first 5 seconds and spends the next week building up to a gigapascal of pressure for no apparent gain.",
"So, why does our nose run more when it's cold out?"
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1v0w8e | why are so few fully featured, aaa caliber games (like pokemon) released on smartphones when they are often more powerful than handheld systems? | Why aren't full length titles like Pokemon or Castlevania present on phones?
The only fully fledged "this is a real game" titles on mobile I can think of are the GTA games, and the Final Fantasy ports.
Everything else is a gimmick or a play while you shit game, or some sort of "build a city/themepark/hotel" type thing.
I would be fine with paying 20+ dollars for a REAL game on the appstore or google play store.
Is the market for shitty, free, "pay to play" model games really that good that it stops all other developers from trying to make quality titles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v0w8e/eli5_why_are_so_few_fully_featured_aaa_caliber/ | {
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"Nintendo has never released a game they make on any platform other than Nintendo. To my knowledge.",
"There are some, and I would expect to see more. X-Com and Star wars: Knights of the Old republic are full ports. Sonic the Hedgehog, Simcity Deluxe, Pirates! Gold and Monkey Island are some older ones. I just kind of assume most apps to be casual at heart though. ",
"They want you to buy their handheld as well. "
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5yzk9n | why do some asian people wear mouth protection, both at home and in other countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yzk9n/eli5_why_do_some_asian_people_wear_mouth/ | {
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"Over the years, particularly in larger cities in China and areas stricken with smog, it's become a very well known issue to have deep, thick smog in the air. The Facemasks are to help keep your body from breathing in thick, toxic fumes that accumulate due to the over abundance of Fossil Fuel burning in these areas.\n\nPlenty of cities in China are the same size as American cities but 3-5x as dense. This means thousands of more citizens, cars and ultimately, more pollution.\n\nIt also stems from breakouts over the years of diseases like Avian Flu and SARS. Airborne diseases spread rapidly due to the poor health conditions, particularly in China.\n\nI refrence china alot in this, because they are really the focal point for the phenomenon you bring up, and they are also the country most associated with the issues from above. While it is also a problem in other high density asian countries, China is really the one on the frontend of everything.",
"It's a politeness thing. In many Asian cultures, particularly Japan, it's considered polite to wear a mask when you are feeling sick so you reduce the risk of infecting anyone around you. ",
"From my experience in China, most Chinese people wearing mask in public places are sick, they wear a mask to protect from air pollution mostly if they are riding a bike or on very polluted days. The mask is supposed to reduce the possibility of spreading the disease to other people.\nAs a lot of Eastern Asian country have a very high density of population it makes sense to wear a mask when you are sick to protect others.",
"I know that in Japan, it's frowned upon to take sick days, but it's also frowned upon to hamper workplace productivity by getting sick. So people don the face masks when *they* are ill, to prevent the germs that are coming out from sneezing and coughing from entering the air. They are also effective for hay fever in the spring.\n\nA younger generation in Japan started wearing the masks as a fashion statement and means of achieving some privacy in public as well, though. This trend was called da-te masuku. Some girls wear the masks so they don't have to put makeup on or if they have a blemish they don't want others to see. Some do it as a protection of their introversion, as it adds a physical barrier between themselves and others.\n\n",
"Many people in Japan wear them to protect against pollen during allergy season. My seasonal allergies were so bad there I started wearing masks outdoors and it really helped. ",
"First, think of why people wear sunglasses. The masks serve the same purpose except you're blocking germs (and preventing them from spreading to others) instead of blocking harmful sun rays. They're used a lot in places like China, Japan, and Korea because they place a heavy emphasis on not being sick/keeping in good health and because of things like smog and pollen in said countries. \nThey also provide exactly the same fashion and privacy functions of sunglasses and honestly, it can look pretty [amusing](_URL_1_)\nor [cool](_URL_0_)\nwith a good outfit.\n\n In conclusion, face masks + sunglasses = socially acceptable and fashionably conscious incognito mode.",
"\nJapan is a funny one in that regard because it is pretty much entirely a politeness thing. So a sick coworker will show up wearing a mask...but, get a phone call? Mask off. Eating lunch? Mask off. Speaking to a high-ranking superior? Mask off.\n\nThere are so many little customs-within-customs that wearing a mask doesn't really do anything. \n\nIt's the thought that counts, I suppose.",
"I wish it was common place to do it here in North America. I'm a nurse so wear one at work when I'm sick or when people are sick around me. I work in homes in the community so it's acceptable by my employers/clients. I really dislike seeing sick people out in public without a mask on... ",
"I'm aware that there are many other factors at play,but a possible reason could relate to fashion. More recently it has become a sort of fashion trend, especially in South Korea to wear these masks even without needing to.Here's an article on it: _URL_0_ It doesn't talk about it in great detail, but I hope it helps :) ",
"The truth is we should all wear those masks when having even a hint of a cold or flu or cough. It would cut down on the darn viruses spreading by a significant amount. I think countries with very dense populations do this because it's a health necessity, and it's become a social necessity. ",
"Mouth protection? You mean surgical masks? ",
"Some? I saw almost everyone on a motorcycle in Ho chi minh city wearing those. I originally thought it was related to being sick, but in this case I would say it's pollution. It probably varies from place to place.",
"Just FYI, disposable face masks don't do a terribly good job in preventing common illnesses. The effectiveness of the masks decreases as water vapor from your breath accumulates on the mask and the seal on such a mask will often not be tight. In addition, many diseases spread through multiple methods, such as via touch. I'm not saying the masks are useless, it's just that sick people wearing them and then going to work and into crowded areas is really unwise. "
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6kwwe5 | how do collegiate sporting divisions work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kwwe5/eli5_how_do_collegiate_sporting_divisions_work/ | {
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"NCAA has 3 Divisions. In football Division 1 is subdivided into two Seperate divisions, Football Bowl Subdivision(Big Schools), and Football Championship Subdivision(much smaller schools). What division a school participates in is generally voluntary, but there are some requirements at each level. Division 1 NCAA has over 300 schools, about 65 or so which could be classified as \"major\" schools, and another 65-100 ish that could be classified as \"mid major\" and semi regularly compete against the major schools."
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69m74w | how is argon a noble gas? | Noble gases have full outer shells.
Argon has 3 shells, the 3rd shell is capable of holding 18 electrons, Argon only has 8 in this shell, with 3p6 being it's last electron. So how is Argon a noble gas? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69m74w/eli5_how_is_argon_a_noble_gas/ | {
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],
"text": [
"\"Subshells\" go 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d, ...\n\nAn s-subshell holds 2 electrons. A p-subshell holds 6 electrons. Argon has 3 s-subshells (6 total) and 2 p-subshells (12 total), meaning it has 18 electrons and all its shells are filled.\n\nEdit: \"s-subshells\" and \"p-subshells\" are not necessarily common terms. Shells hold 2, 8, 8, 18, etc. electrons, orbitals hold 2 apiece. A \"p-subshell\" has 3 p-orbitals."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1mx74q | does spreading shampoo on our hair actually give it nutrition? | If it does how? And if it doesn't why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mx74q/eli5does_spreading_shampoo_on_our_hair_actually/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccdg6ne"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Hair is not alive. Therefore it cannot have any nutritional needs, it's dead already.\n\nWhat the shampoo does is to clean it. Rid it of any contaminants... oils, skin cells, dust, etc. It's formulated to try to do so without damaging the structure of the hair, unlike regular bath soaps.\n\nConditioners are then used to help keep the hair from being damaged, or to sometimes 'repair' the damage, sort of a regluing process, or maybe reweaving, to keep the hair from falling apart, and so keep the hair looking good and 'healthy'.\n\nNow there may be shampoos, conditioners, or other product that can help the hair follicle produce better hair over time, (Rogaine comes to mind) but it's more your diet and genetic makeup that determines how 'healthy' your hair is."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
a487jy | when we rotate ourselves for some time, why it feels like the whole world is rotating? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a487jy/eli5_when_we_rotate_ourselves_for_some_time_why/ | {
"a_id": [
"ebc9oe5",
"ebc9qco",
"ebc9s2m"
],
"score": [
5,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"There is fluid in your ears that help you keep your balance.\n\nYou know how when you spin a glass of water around the water doesn't move? After a while it starts to rotate because of the friction of the glass.\n\nThe same thing happens with your ears. A few quick turns usually does to much, but with continued movement it can disorient you.",
"There's liquid in your ear that helps you work out which way is up. When you move like that the liquid moves too. Until it settles back down your feelings are crooked.",
"Because you have messed up with your vestibular system. It is a system in your ears that is made up of small hairs in a fluid and it helps you body orient itself in space. \n\nWhen you spin, you jostle that fluid and you feel dizzy. \n\nvestibular not vestibule. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
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