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56nbpn
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why does the universe have a speed limit? why is the speed limit what it is, rather than another value?
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I was just thinking about how the speed of light is basically the speed of causality in the universe and I was wondering why that was. Is there some physical reason that this value is the top speed, or does it just appear to be random/unknown?
EDIT:
There seems to be a great deal of confusion about what I'm asking so I am going to clarify it.
I don't want to know why the speed of light/causality has a particular number associated with it in a measuring system (i.e. ~300,000 km/s). I want to know why ~300,000 km/s, ~186,000 MPS, etc, etc is the fastest speed at which any sort of information can travel in the universe
Why can't information, for example, travel at 400,000 km/s? What stops it?
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explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/56nbpn/eli5_why_does_the_universe_have_a_speed_limit_why/
|
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"Light is not the only thing that travels at light speed, any object without mass (like radio) moves at light speed. \n \nAs for why the measured speed of light is the way it is, well, that's because that's what it is. A meter is currently defined as the distance traveled by light in 1/299792458^th of a second. That wasn't always the definition of course, the original definition was about 2x the length it currently is, so when they measured light speed, they though that their measurement tool should be slightly more accurate, so they halved it and made slight adjustments from there. They couldn't alter it too much, which is why light speed isn't a cool 300,000,000 m/s."
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1ytlh2
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why can't i use multiple connections simultaneously to speed up my internet access?
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e.g. If I'm connected to broadband/cable but am near a wifi hotspot at the same time.
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explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ytlh2/eli5_why_cant_i_use_multiple_connections/
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"I only can say that is because there is not a tool for do it, built in in the most popular OS, however there are apps like connectify for windows that offers that option.",
"You can, but you need some advanced gear to pull it off. This is called Internet Bonding - Or aggregation. You need a routing device that will pickup both signals and them bond them together. This type of device is fairly expensive, and you are not likely to get the results you are looking to achieve. It doesn't join them so you get a faster speed, say in the case of downloading a big file. What it would allow is for you to have a big file downloading, and then be able to play an online game at the same time.\n\nFor true bonding, it has to be bound on both ends. This is generally done with T1 lines, and is true bonding, where 1.5Mbps + 1.5Mbps becomes 3Mbps.\n\nIn the scenario you describe, you would end up with two connnections, one wireless, one wired, and your requests to the internet would take the path of least resistance, but it won't join them to increase the overall speed.",
"You can actually connect to multiple networks. Though it gets complicated for your computer to track the packages so more than 1 network can't usually be used for the same task.",
"Actually, the price has come down. A dual homed gigabit Ethernet router is around 200 on new -egg. 150 for a standard Ethernet dual homed router. You can also repurpose a old tower into one as well as long as you have three network cards (or two NIC and a wireless NIC)\n\nAs what has been said, top speed will not change. However you can have more streams going at the same time. So If you like to download torrents while watching Netflix you will see some improvement."
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22w4mo
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why do dogs seem to spin around in circles when they're excited?
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explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22w4mo/eli5_why_do_dogs_seem_to_spin_around_in_circles/
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"A lot of dogs were bred to be working animals so motion (spinning for example), to them, is a way of fulfilling their inner need for excitement and or joy. It can also be a way of solving problems. Doorbell rings, strange person wanting to enter home, better get working to try to solve the problem (in their brain anyway), time to start spinning. "
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7oy32z
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the effects of watts, amps and volts on charging speed
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Phone chargers and the like will state their voltage and amps on them somewhere like 9v/1.5a. What effect does increasing volts and decreasing amps have and how does wattage fit into it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7oy32z/eli5_the_effects_of_watts_amps_and_volts_on/
|
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"What you want is to send energy into your phone. Energy is measured in Joules. You've heard of 'kilojoules' when you hear about energy in food. But for our concern, a joule is a Watt-second. So, push 10 watts into your phone for 3600 seconds (an hour), and you'll have pushed 36 kJ into your phone. Most of that would end up in your battery, but some (10% or less) would end up heat.\n\nA watt is a volt-amp. So your 9v, 1.5a supply can deliver 9×1.5, or 13.5W.\n\nNow the difficulty and expense in producing a power supply - at least, if the voltage is below 50 volts or so - is providing the current. You need thicker wires and better switching transistors the higher the current. So you can get faster charging cheaper if you push the voltage higher - but your phone needs to be able to handle that higher voltage. That is what these fast charging standards are about - the phone communicates with the charger and works out what higher voltages the charger can send, so more wattage can be delivered.\n\nOne last thing - we don't see batteries rated in kilojoules. It is normal for batteries to be rated in 'amp-hours'. That's amps × hours. When you combine the formulas and fold in the voltage of the battery, you end up with a value in joules - energy in joules would be a volt-amp-second. But it's not as simple as that, because the voltage changes as the battery charges, but you can approximate things by using the rated voltage of the battery, usually 3.7 or 3.8. Using that, a 4Ah (or 4,000mAh) battery would store (4×3.7×3600) 53kJ of energy.",
"In the end, more watts means faster charging\n\nUnfortunately you're trying to charge through a long skinny cable, this cable is pretty limited on how much current it can handle. Try to push too much current through it and you'll lose your watts to heating the cable instead of filling the battery\n\nIncreasing the voltage allows us to decrease the current and maintain the same output wattage, hopefully increasing the power that makes it to the phone; but a lot of chargers have higher voltage and higher current to give you higher output wattage and higher delivered wattage. A 5V 2A charger is only outputting 10W of power, but a 9V 2A charger is outputting 18W and can charge about 80% faster\n\nUSB Power Delivery now supports up to 20V with 5A providing 100W of power(on special cables) which lets it charge 40x faster than a basic USB 2.0 charger at just 5V and 0.5A"
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1ua9ls
|
why do i have to pay for internet domain names?
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Where does the money go to? Why are "they" given the authority? Thx
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ua9ls/eli5_why_do_i_have_to_pay_for_internet_domain/
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"What you are paying for is the registration and injection of the domain into the gTLD servers on the internet. gTLD are \"generic top level domain\" servers. You know them as .com, .net, .org, etc.\n\nThere are many for profit organizations that are authorized to do this, one of which is godaddy. Godaddy and the ilk receive their authorization from IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which regulates and delegates authority for many other numbers on the Internet, such as IPs and ASN's. \n\n"
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1ursci
|
how south america is not as developed as north america, yet it was colonized earlier and with better results.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ursci/eli5_how_south_america_is_not_as_developed_as/
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"North America is considerably friendlier land for development. Brazil, for example, is like 70% covered by very hard-to-clear rainforest. In addition, the U.S. (which has been most of the story in North America for quite a while) has (a) had a powerful industrial sector instead of the agricultural sector of the rest of the Americas and (b) had an exceptionally stable government.",
"It might have something to do with the massive off-shoring of South America's wealth by the earlier colonists which the indigenous peoples did not reap the benefit of, disease brought by the colonists which led to massive depopulation of the indigenous peoples (similar to North America), the lack of environmental diversity or harsh environment (relative to North America) these are just a few ideas based on my very limited knowledge of the history of South America. Mostly I am talking out of my ass.",
"As others have mentioned, the land was much more friendly to European colonists, but that's not the only reason. Much of South America had considerable amounts of cheap indigenous labor, and reasonably significant mineral resources. Europeans, mainly Spain, spent over two hundred years reaping the benefits of raw products (sugar, tobacco, fruit, gold, silver, etc.) without building any significant infrastructure or social change.\n\nFast forward about hundred years to the the early 1800's: The US has been independent for over 50 years. Spain's power in the Americas is waning, and their colonial holdings are growing strong enough to declare independence. The vast majority of the people in the Caribbean, North, Central, and South America have been laborers for generations, working on Spanish plantations or in mines. After finally throwing off European rule, they have virtually no education system and very few educated professionals (who are mostly of the rich elite class). Most of the new nations in the Americas were tripped up before they even got out of the gate when it came to economies, education, and wealth distribution.",
"There are many very complex reasons, but the most important is the different ways each empire expanded economically. Spain was focused on getting as much cash as possible from their colonies (which they used to fund many obscure wars). This meant that Spain sunk most of their investment into silver mines and sugar plantations, which got fast, large returns and made Spain the richest nation in Europe. However, these mines and plantations were not sustainable over long periods of time, partly because the incredibly abusive Spanish labor practices killed many of the native workers. This left South America with relatively little infrastructure and weak governments.\n\nOn the other hand, when the British colonized North America, they found no gold or silver and land that was not suitable for sugar plantations, which were the main cash crop of South America and the Caribbean. Although these European settlers produced some export goods (such as furs and timber in French Canada and tobacco and later cotton in the South), they were more concerned with producing enough food for themselves to eat, particularly in the early days. This produced far less money for Britain and France, the main colonizers of North America, but made the colonies more independent and more able to develop their own economies.\n\nEdit:\n\nAfter reading some excellent comments, here are some clarifications and details that touch on other reasons:\n\n* Although the OP specifically mentioned S America, many similar forces were at work in Mexico and on various Caribbean islands.\n* The Spanish were not the only colonial empires to do this. Portugal colonized much of Brazil (why Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish), and France, Holland/The Netherlands, and other European powers colonized Caribbean islands.\n* The two areas developed very differently as colonies. N America had \"settlement\" colonies where Europeans settled the area, displacing or killing native peoples. S America had \"extractive\" colonies where the colonizers got as much value out of the land (and its people) as possible.\n* The two areas also had very different religious influences, with S America becoming predominantly Catholic and N America adopting many different types of Protestantism.\n* They had very different geographies. S America has the Amazon Rainforest in the middle and the Andes along its Western coast, meaning that there was relatively little arable land. In contrast, N America has very productive farmland extending across the middle of the US and southern Canada.\n* This is only a very brief summary. There are many suggested books in the comments for further reading, but for another slightly less-brief summary, check out Crash Course World History at _URL_0_, the Spanish Empire and Columbian Exchange episodes should cover many of the topics in this thread.",
"The founding fathers of the US did an excellent job creating a stable governmental system with a rule of law that allowed economic expansion.\n\nIn addition, the proximity to Europe and similarity in climate and terrain allowed many more immigrants to come to North America and be successful. A guy who could farm in Poland would be equipped with the ability to farm in Ohio. He would have had a tougher time in Brazil.",
"The Short Version: Pizarro and Cortes fucked up an entire continent.",
"South America has been exploited since the colony. I can talk more about the Andean region where I am from. Corruption was generalized during the colony, most of the conquistadors were bandits lured by the wealth of the new world. After being successful in conquering lands they were named nobles. They established a system of brutal slave labor for gold and silver mining as well for agricultural and wood production. Only Spain-born nobles were able to manage and govern the colonies. This fact was the main reason for the independence to occur, which was organized by descendants of Spaniards,wealthy and educated. After the revolution and establishment of the republic the slave labor systems were still in place. The revolution and independence were only a change of management around the beginning of the 19th century. During the early republic the rich agricultural lands provided year round production to export to Europe and the young United States. During the 20th century the Latin America status-quo of raw materials and food exporter was enforced in part with keeping the Latin American countries underdeveloped and the work of the CIA shutting down any progressive or socialist government. The US Army School of the Americas (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) was founded by the USA defense department to provide training to the Latin American armies against insurgents and guerrillas. Basically they were interested in keeping governments and dictators that pledge to Washington in the power as a countermeasure to the soviet influence during the Cold War. Corruption is generalized during this era (50's - 80's.), few influential families are still on charge of the government, torture and abusive police is common in many countries. Nowadays South America still is dealing with poverty, large inequality, lack of industrialization-technology. Influence of the Spaniard segregation is still evident, only in the last years the presidents started to look like the common citizen and not Caucasian/European. There is a large movement towards socialism in the whole region, demanding free education and health care. I would say that Latin America resources finally are starting to be utilized in its own development as nations, but the whole process is challenged by a legacy of corruption and segregation. I hope progressive governments will unify the region towards economic and social development in the next years.",
"Did anybody say industrialization? Cause I got that one if no one said it yet. ",
"Long story short (and very simplified), the Spanish empire was more conquest-based while the British treated colonizing the Americas as more of a business. While the Spanish became very wealthy from the silver and gold mines in South America, they used this wealth to consume and import goods into their nation. They became a consumer country primarily and did not develop an economy that was as good as that of the British. If the mother country had a poor economy, then it's no wonder that South America, which had a history of violent conquest, would also have a poor economy The British did not benefit from gold and silver from North American land to the extent that the Spanish did and did not become a consumerist economy. \n\nOH one other detail that hasn't been mentioned yet. The Spanish encouraged natives to assimilate into their society where as the British did not. They excluded natives in decision-making, so it was easier to become more organized. When less people have a say in things, it's faster and more efficient to establish an independent government and society. ",
"A great many of the south american countries have huge problems with corruption. There are vast resoucres that go un tapped. Big business cant thrive with no rule of law. A solid constitution with equal rule of law with little corruption goes a long way. Chile is doing pretty well, and they have a pretty strong free market economy that is in pretty large contrast to other SA nations.",
"The book Why Nations Fail does a really great job of exploring this. A big reason is that the colonial system in South America was exploitative, whereas the system in North America helped lay the foundations for democracy and inclusive economic institutions.",
"An important thing to also keep in mind is the way in which governments in North and South America built their countries. It also has to do with who came to SA vs NA.\n\nSouth American governments were put in place by their colonizers by simply integrating into an already-present feudal systems that were used by the Aztecs and other indigenous people. The people coming from Europe to SA wanted to continue a European-style feudal rein and this was their reason for coming to SA in the first place. Very little has changed since South America was colonized as far as corruption, feudal-like wealth inequality (see Brazilian cardboard slums next to World Cup stadiums), and nepotism within rigged \"elections.\" It's basically a continuation of lower-class oppression and feudal privilege from the 1500-1600's in new form.\n\nNorth America (the US) was colonized by a set of people seeking to escape the English feudal system. The United States violently divorced itself from a weakly held colony system and was originally colonized by individual people and communities as well as governments (England, Holland, France). Through the US revolution, the US was allowed to introduce individual liberty and a wild form of individual wealth generation through capitalism.",
"All this answers are great, I've thought about this myself and I think there is another tiny detail worth of noting. \n\nMany latin american countries where colonized by Roman Catholic nations whereas much of north america was colonized by Anglicans. \n\nThe catholic church had great power and influnce back then and at least in my country (Mexico) that influence was still very important until a few decades ago and it slowed down progress in many areas. \n\n¿Any thoughts on this?\n\n",
"Basically the colonial policies of each European power were entirely different. In the long term, England had the best policy, with both Great Britain and their North American colonies prospering past the golden ages of the others. Spain and Portugal both had great wealth in the earlier period but this didn't result in any long term development. This topic is very extensive and you'll encounter many different possible reasons studying it, so answering with specifics isn't really possible unless you want to take an entire class on colonialism. ",
"The people who arrived in North America were there to stay, the ones who arrived in South America were only there to steal.",
"Not to detract from all the great answers so far, but one other factor that we often overlook in the modern age also explains why France sold the Louisiana purchase to the U.S. for a relative pittance. Tropical diseases and Malaria specifically. It is hard for us to realize the arthropod situation and all the diseases they were vectors for in the pre-modern era. The humid tropics are a miserable place for humans in general - although as we can see as vector control has increased, South America has rapidly populated well beyond the density of the Northern hemisphere. Pre-modern colonizers were unprepared for the situation, and it was an actual hardship. Sub-saharan Africa, India, Southern China and South America have all had human populations for a very long time, more than many places in the Northern Hemisphere - but there has been very good reasons why the populations didn't explode the way they have since the incursions of vector-control and modern medicine, and not all of them (though many, as ITT) were sociopolitical.",
"Why are so many of you forgetting that Mexico is in North America? ",
"Spain sucks. Just look at the Philippines, and well Spain for that matter.",
"Protestants, that's why.\n\nEDIT: Here is more info: _URL_0_",
"^[edit] **[TL;DR here](_URL_0_)**\n\nit depends on how you define *\"developed\"*, if you mean industrialized, then yes north america is more industrialized, but on matters such as legislation at least some south american countries have been ahead of north america many times. \n\nbut i'll give a few pointers on why things might have turned out like they did, these probably have already been mentioned, and a some already have. \n(warning: this might get long and turn int a summarized history of south america off the top of my head)\n\n* during colonization, spanish colonists were focused on looting as much as possible and conquering the natives, to then bring back to the mainland, many of the settlements were established along expeditions, or to facilitate trade to the mainland so as to move as many goods out as possible. \nin contrast the northern colonies had the focus in settling the land and most went there seeking a new home instead of quick riches. granted some aimed to created a business gathering resources, but even these had a more long term focus compared to just looting. \nthe relations with the natives was different too, the spanish colonizers werent very gentle with them, and when they didnt kill, enslave or rob them, they instead focused on convert them. while the northern colonies did also treat the natives badly, increasing with time, at first they at least treated with them and attempted to cohabit the land - even though the natives didnt just settle in one area, instead they openly used different areas at different times. \n\n* when the south american independence wars took place, the initial ideas were to keep the colonies together and establish a big country in the model of the united states, which was to stand strong together, probably as the usa did. \nthe spanish were beaten out pretty quickly, but then the problem was with the loyalists vs the revolutionaries which while it also was solved somewhat shortly, kept the free colonies from solidifying as a whole. \none of the big disputes that kept happening was which of the colonies was gonna lead the others, and they argued on basis of historical viceroyalties' arrangements. \nit was probably around this time that the collection of free colonies started to break up due to the situations at the time, into a group in the north, and a group in the south (south of chile, bolivia and paraguay). \nthe ones in the north forming Grand Colombia, and the ones in the south forming the United Provinces. then the in-fighting was about which form of government, one side wanted a federalist model like the pre-civil-war usa, and the other wanted a unitarian state model like the post-civil-war usa. that resulted in the countries breaking up further more into smaller countries, and lasted for decades in one form or another, even after the new countries were formed. \n\n* this led to many many many deaths, destruction, and wasted time that could have been spent in growth, being focused on killing each other (one of the things the usa always feared would happen if they themselves were to not be one nation but many). the biggest example of this - and the worst - is paraguay, which at the time ^(1860s?) was the most developed country in south america due to its isolation from the wars, and practiced an interesting form of early socialism, was then attacked by a coalition of countries and completely destroyed, along with it's male population above 12 all killed. \nthis lasted until the early 20th century. a whole damn century killing eachother! - imagine if the United States civil war lasted from 80 years or so! \n\n* along with this, Brazil was always taking advantage of this, prior to the independence war, portugal and spain had a lose agreement on land divisions based on meridians and often mediated by the pope. \nduring the colonial era, portugal kept creeping into spanish territories, much like the usa did with mexico. \nthen, *after* and *while* the indepence wars, brazil was still \"part of\" portugal, so it didnt go through the same mess than the rest of south america did. and then it gained independance and became the kingdom of brazil, it did it without a bloody revolutionary war, which put it in a good position during the conflitcts. \nduring these wars, brazil was usually in one of the sides, or by itself but still involved, and managed to grab territories from its neighbors and really grew in size. \nremember that during this time (early to mid 19th century) brazil was a kingdom, so it was strongly consolidated aside from the slave revolts, and while there were many secessionist movements and revolutions, it managed to stomp them all, even one region which separated as an independent country for 10 years. \nand when brazil became a republic, it also did it without all the carnage. \n\n* when britain lost its northern colonies, it focused on the colonies in south america. during the early 19th century, right before the independence wars, britain tried to invade and capture a few colonies, but were deterred. then *during* the wars, it instead opted to influence them politically. many of the \"independence\" campaign were planned *in* britain, and many negotiations were handled by british, keeping their interests in mind (dividing countries, favored parties, etc). for example: one of the most well known heroes of the south american independance, San Martin, a national hero in argentina, was *in* britain before the war, prepared there, and once the war was over he left back for britain. \nafter the wars, and during the early 20th century, britain continued to be a big deal in south america, and most big business (ie: banks, railways, electrical plants and services, guns, farmlands and farming equipment) were all britsh owned and based in britain (of course you know what that means for top members and profits). so it was a way of subtle and smarter colonialism \n\n* during the 1900-1950 give or take, south america had sort of a golden age, it had come out (not completely) out of the inner warring, early socialist measures were helping sort things out, and to give workers were conditions, plus encouraging progress and production. as well as nationalizing many industries which were previously siphoning money outwards. also many lasting progressive legal actions took place during this time - many which preceded the united states, such as female vote for example. during this time many currencies were still backed in gold and could probably be worth as much or more as the dollar. \nsouth america also benefited from not directly participating in the two world wars. not by just not taking losses, but also by the trade resulted from nations needing supplies and goods and usually not being able to produce them, thus buying from south america, resulting in an economic boom, during both wars. \n\n* the post war & the cold war: this is where things get shitty again. \nafter WWII many war criminals, and many nazis and fascists and etc fled to south america with the aid of the vatican. the mossad hunted them, but most lived peacefully in incognito, or working active higher rank jobs, or \"aiding\" law enforcement. \nwhen the end of WWII turned into the cold war, the USA deemed it necessary to secure its influence over south america, and many of the beneficial and harmless socialist measures that had been taken were rolled back. many if not all governments were overthrown by groups either backed or trained by the cia. a real witch hunt took place along with the repression, and many police states were established. law enforcers were trained in torture and interrogation by both cia operatives, and those former german officers, etc. it got really tense given that guerrilla movements and police state forces would fight in intermittent civil wars during the time of these dictatorships. it got really ugly, and this lasted until the late 20th century - 1980s-1990s. there's not enough to be said about this. \n\n* now this phase has passed, and right after that ended there was a \"short\" era of neoliberal \"democracies\", marked by rampant corruption, and rigged elections to keep the reemerging socialists out, in favor of often one coservative neoliberal party, or two equivalent neoliberal parties in a pseudo-two party system similar to what the united states has experienced. that model ran the economies into the ground, and destroyed the governments' credibility. \n\n* it was during the aftermath of this chaos that the current socialist or less conservative parties were able to emerge and come to power. and since then south america in general has experienced a new boom and stability, with a new wave of progressive legislation after almost more than half a century. \nthere is still somewhat of a general interest in the countries joining together, and acting as a whole, although the corresponding nationalism*s* (put in place by those interested in keeping them separated) by now is too strong. government officials from various countries in south america often meet together in assemblies to coordinate actions, and they seem to think of the idea of a united south america, so things are looking good for the region. \n\n* late note: remember the difference in size of the first 13 colonies, versus the whole of south america when it became independent, when thinking of keeping it all together as one nation.\n\nsorry if it ran too long, it's late and i just retold the main points i could think as being important to the issue, off the top of my head. \n\n*clarification:* the socialism referred to here, is not to be compared to, and has nothing to do with what is usually meant by \"socialism\" in the USA when speaking of the soviet model in soviet russian or its totalitarianism; nor to the communist model in cuba. \nif anything, it could be more closely compared to socialist models found in northern europe.\n\n^[edit] **[TL;DR here](_URL_0_)**",
"Partially, it was. In the 1930's, Argentina had a larger GDP than Italy. After the war though, amongst other things, American foreign policy became more interventionist, and South American politics became more polarized and several right-wing dictators, with CIA support sometimes, took power -often through violent means. This basically fucked South American politics and political institutions.",
"In addition to what others have noted, the historical comparison of North America and South America over the last few centuries (and to this day) is a great example of how the simplest of decisions regarding individuals can have profound impacts on the economy at large. \n\nOne very important decision is land ownership. Land grants (as were in place in the United States and Canada) were a fantastic way of settling a nation and property rights (via common law) are an important aspect of maintaining a successful one. Latin America has ongoing problems with land reforms, many of which can be seen [here](_URL_1_). But to really bring it home, see table 4.4 [on page 4-15 here](_URL_0_), which compares the proportion of households who own land in Canada and the United States vs. Argentina and Mexico in the early 1900s.\n\nBut, keep in mind, this is one of many concerns and it's difficult to pull out *one* thing and say . . . this will lead you to prosperity. The last link also goes into governance, voting rights, and literacy rates - all important as well.",
"It might be controversial, but there is an old idea in sociology that the religious background of countries have determined the succes of capitalism ([Weber - The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism](_URL_1_)). \n\nIt is evident in modern Europe that a economic divide between catholic and prostetant countries persists. Many still argue that [religion is the cause](_URL_0_), and this could also very well help to explain some of the spatial inequalities between North- and South America.",
" > and with better results.\n\nFrom everything I know of Spanish colonization this would be inaccurate unless you are talking about total money pulled out of the colony by the founding state. ",
"I've seen many people focus on the exploitation of the region's resources, but the context is a little more complex.\n\nWhen european explorers found the Caribbean/South America, the climate of both regions allowed them to use such regions as areas of resource extraction through plantations. This on top of the rich natural resources found later.\n\nNorth America has a climate similar to Europe on the East, which is where they landed. They weren't as inclined to emulate South America's colonizing structure because plantations wouldn't survive the colder weather, when compared to the South.\n\nHowever, even inside North/South America there were what you could call regions that were explored differently. A great example in United States was the North/South Civil War. The South followed a structure much closer to South America's structure than the North. \n\nIt gets interesting when you see that South America had a much lesser known conflict known as the Ragamuffin War in Brazil. Basically, the South region wanted to separate from the rest of the country. Also important to note, Brazil's southern region followed a colonizing structure very similar to the \"North\" in North America, having a temperate climate which disallowed plantations (slave labor structure); cattle was the biggest economy driver, and wasn't as punishing.\n\ntl;dr - > Climate is the main reason. If the South won the USA's Civil War, and the Ragamuffin War ended in the defeat of the Brazillian Empire, things would be much more heterogenic (we would have regions in both Americas where colonization would have both better and worse results in long term).",
"The SA nations were colonized by many different nations that all hated each other. The borders were built on natural features whereas the tribes and peoples that had inhabited it before then had different boundaries. So when a nation is 3/4 one population and 1/4 another population that wasn't originally part of their populace the minority gets oppressed. The same shit happened in Africa and the middle east. Colonial leaders merged people who didn't like each other into a nation and expected fun times to happen.",
"This is the subject of much debate in development macroeconomics. I must say that currently there is two dominant schools. The first is driven by Acemoglu, Robinson , they have a famous paper that show that tropical countries with high mortality rates for early settler led to extractive institutions. It is the colonial origins of development\n_URL_1_\nThen one can explain why the type of settler and the institutions they built were different between North America and most of South America (excluding Argentina). In the institutions explanation they have also attributed the failure of South America to develop to the presence of mineral natural resources such as gold, silver and then Guano. Economics have identified what is called the \"Curse of Natural Resources\" or Dutch Disease. This Curse has at least two faces one is economical where the country affected initially has a boom that is based on the exportation of the mineral resource but this leads to changes in the relative prices and terms of trade that affect other economics sectors. Specially those with higher value added such as manufactures. This prevented industrialization. The political face of the curse is the presence of authoritarian governments that tried to secure the rents of the natural resource for the oligarchy and to do so they prevented the adoption of new technologies that may weaken the strategic position of the governing elites. \nThe second school of though, more recent, is Galor and Ashraf. They have been exploring the effect of genetic diversity on development outcomes. Their thesis is still controversial but very suggestive. They find that South America gene pool is not sufficiently diverse. For example Bolivia is one of the least gene diverse countries in the world and also one of the poorest. Migration to the US and Canada and other factors such as other factors give then a right mix of genetic diversity and homogeneity. It is not too much as in Africa nor too little as in South America. This is called the Out of Africa Hypothesis. _URL_0_. \nThe paper is pretty neat read it if you want to go deeper into this literature and try to understand. ",
"A lot of these Eli5 posts are seeming like people asking for reddit to do the their homework for them.\n\nedit:typo",
"Agree with most of what's been said. One area which hasn't been covered is related to the marked change is seasons experienced in North America but not in most of South America. Seasonal changes require much more planning, discipline, and focus in order to simply survive. You have to work tirelessly through the non winter months to ensure you last the season. The tropical climate in most of South America didn't require this concerted effort; food was readily available whenever and far less planning was required to live. The winter months in the north forced people indoors, slowed down the pace, and allowed them to focus on more intellectual pursuits. While indoors, more people spent significant time reading and learning, ultimately becoming more educated than their peers further south.",
"You ever played Civilization V? Clearing forests takes three turns and clearing jungles takes six turns. ",
"Read Eduardo Galeano's \"Open Veins of Latin America\" for more on this subject. ",
"The question is not so much about the colonization period but what came afterwards. \n\nI'm a latinamerican, and as such I'm quite familiar with the whole \"Spain/France/Portugal/USA screwed us over and left us poor argument\", and I feel it's quite pathetic that many, if not most, people still believe that crap here.\n\nFor the most part we screwed ourselves over with constant revolts, destroying democratic institutions every chance we got, and allowing a massive socialist influence get a hold of our mindset.\n\nLatinamerican countries are obsessed with equality and re-distribution of wealth, thinking that their massive holdings of natural resources make them de facto rich",
"Source: Latin American Studies minor and Latin American comparative political development major; dad is from Nicaragua. \n\nThere are a number of different ways to look at the development of Latin America. The three views I'm going to explain aren't the only options, but they're often used in academic literature, either overtly or implicitly. I'm also going to mention some of the differences within Latin America, because I think they're illustrative of broader differences between North and South America.\n\nFirst, you can view the underdevelopment of Latin America from a colonialist perspective- i.e., what happened during the colonial era in North vs. South America determined the difference between the two continents. According to this view, the culture, economic tendencies, and institutional organization that the Spanish (and Portuguese) created were inferior to that of the Puritans and other settlers of North America. \n\nThere's a lot to be said for this view, particularly because the Spanish conquest of the Americas was so vicious and openly repressive. Spain had just emerged from a prolonged and bloody war in which they took back their country from Moors (Muslims), and the people who sailed to Latin America had this experience freshly carved in their memory. When they arrived on the continent and saw non-Christians, the ways in which they utilized violence to subjugate the indigenous peoples were reflective of their experience in Spain. \n\nSpain was also economically incompetent. They were obsessed with resource extraction, but they squandered a lot of their gold and silver building massive cathedrals and fighting other European powers. The Jesuits had access to some of the most productivity-enhancing agricultural and industrial technology at the time, but the colonial government in most of Latin America had an uneasy political and economic relationship with them and in several cases expelled them, so the continent was extremely backwards in terms of technological development for much of the colonial era. Brazil is a special case, but it's worth noting that the country was prohibited from even having a printing press (!!) until the Portuguese Emperor showed up in the 19th century, since they were afraid it would spark a revolution. \n\nThe Spanish also created a host of awful bureaucratic structures that many people would argue produced the weak institutions (political parties, electoral certifying boards, police, etc.) now seen in many Latin American countries. Records were split between the state and the church; politics was often a Game of Thrones-esque power play between contesting elite groups; and democracy was nonexistent. The Spanish used pre-existing indigenous upper classes to subjugate the indigenous masses, which legitimized economic and social inequality. \n\nSome people also argue that Spanish Catholics had a \"God will provide, and if he doesn't, so be it\" view of religion and wealth, while the Protestants who founded North America were very industrious and believed that God would reward hard workers. This resulted in North America seeing lots of industrial barons, agricultural development, urbanization, highly productive workers, etc., while Latin American, Catholic-infused culture discouraged all these things, or at least reserved the spoils of capitalism for the wealthy political elite. This is a variation on the idea of the Protestant work ethic theory coined by Max Weber. It's somewhat controversial, but worth mentioning nonetheless.\n\nA second view you can take is that the formation of post-independence political systems caused the differences between Latin America and North America. Most countries in the region gained independence during the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century (Brazil came later, as did Cuba and some other countries). According to this view, some countries started off with a really solid, well-functioning political system that allowed for a robust economy, and this engendered higher rates of socioeconomic development and economic growth. Colombia is a good example; it had a much more progressive, forward-looking and highly functional democratic system than most of its neighbors, as did Chile. Argentina and Venezuela, by comparison, were basket cases. Right now, Chile is arguably the most developed country in Latin America, and Colombia (despite the drug violence, which is unfortunately just a result of geography) is also doing quite well given its circumstances. Argentina is not doing particularly well, and Venezuela remains a basket case. \n\nThe United States was like a Chile or Colombia. We started off with a pretty great political system, and Americans traditionally placed a high value on the quality and substance of their democracy (except for black people, of course). Many Latin American countries modeled their own post-independence democracies after our own system, but I would argue they were unable to simply transplant North American values, norms, and institutions to Latin America, which had a vastly different history. \n\nA third view, and the one that I tend to believe, is that the differences between North and South America were mainly created during the 20th century. There are a lot of factors here, but I would argue that the formation of strong and ideologically cohesive (i.e, they believe certain things, it's clear what they believe, and voters vote according to those beliefs) political parties, economic policy, and ethnic differences are the main factors. Think about Chile: it has strong and ideologically defined political parties, highly stable economic policy, and very little ethnic differentiation. By contrast, Bolivia recently had a collapse of its political system, has somewhat unstable economic policy, and is divided between a poor indigenous majority and a rich, white minority that controls the regions that host a lot of its natural resources. \n\nIn the United States, we consistently had distinct political cleavages, mostly stable economic policy, and we temporarily erased the problem of ethnic differentiation by enslaving black people and preventing them from voting until the 1960s. So like Chile, we wound up in a pretty good position in terms of political development. (Note that I'm not endorsing slavery, but simply saying that the wholesale exclusion of slaves from the political process made governing easier and simpler because there were fewer ethnic cleavages.) Latin America, on the whole, wound up more like Bolivia.\n\nOne way of thinking about this theory is that, when Argentina underwent a military coup d'etat in 1943, it was the wealthiest country to have ever suffered a coup. Juan Domingo Perón, a populist military guy, came to power shortly after, and began what I would argue was Argentina's continuous tilt toward destabilizing populism and bad economic policy. In other words, Argentina could have wound up like the U.S., but mid-20th century events caused it to go in the opposite direction. \n\nI hope this was somewhat helpful. A lot of people will say that all three views reflect reality, or that none of them do. But I thought it was necessary to outline these sort of basic theories about why things are the way they are, and to note that there are tremendous differences within Latin America as well that mirror the differences between North and South America. \n",
"I'm a little late to but I figured I'd give it a go:\n\nAs someone from Latin America, this subject has been interesting me as of lately!\n\nI believe it comes down to how the foundations of colonization by European powers were laid out during the early stages of conquest. We need to remember that the UK was less sophisticated and much poorer than it's neighbors.\n\nSpain for instance had enough wealth within it's factions (Spanish Crown, Merchants, Ladinos, etc) to fund the expeditions in full. The manner in which they set up their colonies meant the main point of control still rested on a central government back in Europe.\n\nThe British were poorer, and when a marginalized group of protestants and future colonists decided to venture off to the Indies, they did so under British guise BUT were allowed to create Charters! (pretty much their own agreements and rules).\n\nThe Spanish were brutally \"good\" at colonialism, while the British/French were not. Of course, by good, I mean they were able to maximize, in the short term, Spain's interest tremendously well (using barbaric and brutal methods). The Spanish mercantile policy was so efficient at stifling Latin America unity, most of the continents inhabitants would hear of news of other parts of the continent after it was relayed all the way from Spain!\n\nGoing back to Charters, historically speaking, it seems that when societies are \"free\" their inhabitants are able to carry out policies that prove sustainable and promote self interests over the long term. \n\nFor instance, by the manner in which the North American colonies set up their ruling bodies, THEY had to control over who payed the British governor! Hence the British official's livelihood was at the mercy of the inhabitants and the reluctance of the British to back them up/enforce their grip (eventually they knew it was too late to go that route).\n\nThe Spanish pulled some real Game of Thrones crap throughout their rule, and they would have played extremely rough from the onset.\n\nAlso! Keep in mind \"Native American\" populations in Central and South America were by and large MUCH MUCH bigger. To add to the long term chaos, the Spanish arrived during an Inca civil war!!! The European colonists still saw themselves as the rightful rulers, and didn't want to share positions in power with the original inhabitants nor anyone of mixed race. To such a degree that even criollos (late 17th/early18thth century), Americans of 100% European descent, were barred from holding some of the highest ranking positions (some given to the lowest class of Spaniards).\n\nIt is of course, a very difficult and complicated subject, but if I had to name one policy that explains the difference for we see today it is the British colonial \"blunder\" of allowing Charters to be written up by the colonists! \n\nThink about it, eventually this allowed the rich North American rules to twist the conversation to \"freedom and liberty\", rattle the less wealthy colonists, eventually allowing the meme to spread and gain such power that once the French Revolution and Enlightenment ignited the world even further it produced the anti colonialist ideals we see today! An ideal that really pushes capitalism and human efficiency to the max.\n\nIn the present though, it is the rich Latin Americans inability to move money around to further investment and philanthropy that creates the problems we see today. Charity doesn't produce a Middle Class, but the belief in good wages, long term investments, etc does! \n",
"Not exactly for a 5 year old but this _URL_0_ is a great book on the subject.",
"1. the War of the American Revolution; \n2. the Constitution of the United States. \n\nAll the other countries were still being bled dry by European colonial powers up to the middle of the 20th century, or by the juntas that displaced them.",
"Lots of reasons really, I'll try to be brief:\n\nLand ownership:\n\nThe mode in South America was totally different that from the North. The British Empire gave land to people willing to work there, so you have people signing a contract in England where they will work in America for a few years then they're free to pursue whatever they please and they get a little piece of land as well. This changed everything when combined with the right to vote. This made people living in the North more invested in their new found country. South America was focused of making as much money as possible for the Spanish, so the land and resources remained in the hands of Spanish elite which created a two tier society.",
"Late to this one, but here goes.... The English needed a place to put people and the Spanish simply wanted to take resources. The English brought their own labor and the Spanish exploited non-Spanish. You can still see the difference even just in the U.S. The American south chose the exploitative model and has a much smaller economy than the northern states.",
"Europeans who invaded North America nearly eradicated the native populations, and thus were free to exploit all of land and its natural resources. \n\nThose who invaded South America instead took a more feudal approach, allowing the bulk of native populations to exist as tribute-paying serfs. \n\nOver centuries, the former approach has proven to have been far more efficient as far as development goes.\n\nThe disparate approaches and outcomes are also represented in the colonial powers' modern nations. The UK (and France, to a lesser extent) were until recently renowned for their military might, science/tech capabilities, and industriousness. Spain and Portugal are renowned for beaches, siestas, and drug decriminalization. ",
"Is nobody honest enough to admit that race may play a factor?\n\nPlease tell me you do not think it is a mere coincidence.\n\nSorry if I offended anybody, it wasn't my intention. There are several other factors which explain why South America is different than North America, but I think a lot of people are ignoring the elephant in the room. \n\n\n\n\n",
"Two words: political culture. South America was founded by the Spanish and Portuguese who were motivated by the monarchs and the Catholic Church. North America's founding, except Mexico, was motivated by commerce and personal freedom. South America became an almost midevil missionary culture while North America provided a dynamic economy and unseen personal freedoms...for whites.",
"The short, unpopular, valid answer:\n\nSocialist and/or authoritarian regimes leading to generalized corruption, rent-seeking, economic inefficiencies and migration.",
"I want to add to this subjetc:\n\nAlso a big difference between North America and South america in the colonial times was institutions and the respect of the law.\n\nIn south america after the independence all the laws and institutions were made only to satisfy the needs of the politicals groups at the moment. So when a new political groups take the power \"recreate\" the country again with new laws and new institutions, again, to satisfy their present needs.\n\nThe laws only were applied to the common people and the \"enemys\" of the government, meanwhile, the friends, relative of the governments were treated with favoritism, meaning: nothing of taxes, no criminal persecution if they broken law. \n\nAlso in latinamerica always worship the strong political leader (Caudillos) over institutions and democracy. \n\nSo all the factors I describe it made south America a not reliable place to grown up and get development and weak governments easy to corrupt and easy to intervention by foreign powers.\n\n\nIn North America when they got the independence they builds institutions to rule democracy, not a strong political leader. The applied the laws equaly for all the people. The american laws were easy to understaind and easy to applied and never change only improve.\n\nAn example of this: US constitucion is the same since the day US born as country. Meanwhile in my country, Venezuela, has been during his history like 12 constitutions.\n\nThe big problem of south america never have solid political backgrounds. ",
"The Spanish and Portuguese effectively set up the core infrastructure of these places for exploitation that was mainly designed to benefit them and not the colonies they set up, when the Europeans left after the revolutions of the 19th century they stopped investing and the countries became poorer, there were also the issues with slavery in that region. It was an intrinsic part of the Latin American economy which made it work and when it was gone the economy sort of caved in on itself, the plantation owners were legally obliged to have paid workers so the owners themselves had less profit which led to less people becoming plantation owners, which led to less exported goods, which in turn worsened the economy even more.",
"For a really good answer on this, I recommend Las venas abiertas de America Latina - or the Open Veins of Latin America\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n\n",
"[Not ELI5, but a very good read.](_URL_0_)",
"It really depends on what you mean by 'developed'; a quote from Daniel Ortega comes to mind here:\n\n > A developed country is not a place where the poor drive cars. It’s where the rich use public transport.\n\nEDIT: spelling",
"I learned from the History Channel that North America was given alien technology while the South only got tacos.",
"I'm British so this might be a tad biased, but British colonization was better than Spanish colonization.",
"The heat makes people crazy. That's my theory.\n\nSource: My Fiancee is Brazilian and I've spent quite a lot of time in South America. ",
"I believe Daren Acemoglu (an MIT economics professor) wrote a paper a few years ago that largely attributes the difference in economic development across nations more to the robustness of the institutions rather than other factors (such as religion, geology, government type.) It was an interesting study where he compared countries across several centuries, and had a lot of those variables controlled for.\n\nIn a sense, there are a lot of things that held back Latin/South America, such as what has been stated in other parts of this discussion (extractive centric economies), things such as Latin America's over-dependence on sheep leading to the decimation of agriculture/the countryside. But largely, those were institutionalized practices, and when bad things happened (natural disasters, economic collapse, disease, etc.), it largely came down to how \"strong\" the institutions were capable of adapting to handle minimizing the risk caused by those factors.\n\nTL;DR: Institutions are like a ladder in terms of economic/social/cultural development. When the wind blows very strongly, it helps to prop yourself up with a stronger ladder while you're working on your house.",
"There's a saying, \"If America was born free, Latin America was born Feudal.\"\nIf you look at history, the power from the monarchy of England had been long since gone from political power in the UK. The Magna Carta established that. So the American Colonies that would become the US were all inhabited by the free people from England. But this was not the same thing for Spain and their colonies. Spain still had a monarchy, and while the UK and Spain both lost their colonies by war, the cultures of the original colonizing countries shaped the futures of their colonies. So, the US is much more free, and has a less important class system, and Latin America has the opposite problem.\n\nAnd as far as \"Developed\", I just got back from living in Chile, and Chile is not a 1st world country because the wealth distribution is too divided. But ironically, the US wealth distribution is worse.",
"southamerica was colonized by spain and portugal, north america by england and france... compare present cultures and economies and you'll get an idea of why..",
"I credit at least a good chunk of these results to this:\n\nA lot of people came to the \"new world\", the western hemisphere, to explore and to be independent and to stretch themselves out in the wilderness. A few were well-educated and came to the new world to escape what they perceived as political and religious persecution. The folk that immigrated to New England (the Northeast US) started raising universities and building communities and even cities in a very short time. Within a century or two, this area of the Americas was booming, well-educated, politically adept, and very shrewd in its business practices. Most of the rest of the western hemisphere was still exploring and enjoying their individual freedom.\n\nThat was the beginning of the USA, already an economic, pre-industrial, and political powerhouse -- having siphoned away many of the elite from Europe with the promise of a new country.",
"Basically America developed through the military industrial complex and off the back of a neo-colonial empire during the cold war. At this point during the 70s/80s America and the world at large were influenced heavily towards neo-liberalist economics under Thatcher and Reagan. Reagan and the wider political system in the US then encouraged South America countries to develop and industrialise using these neoliberalist policies. \n\nThe fallacy being however that the so-called 'developed nations' such as the US/UK etc didnt develop using neoliberalist policies rather they had only adopted them once industrialisation and modernisation had taken place. So when Latin American nations took out large loans from the US (both directly from the government and the private banking institutions) the growth didnt follow investment, thus leaving them with un-industrialised debt ridden economies. \n\nAt the same time you also had South American nations trading raw materials and commodities such as coffee beans to the US for production which once processed was then bought back by South American nations. It was really not until import substitution models were implemented under populist governments following the fall of military dictatorships that this practice ended.\n\nThere are many more reasons that impacted the situation but hopefully I've added to the knowledge already posted in this thread.",
"Everyone is very conciously avoiding the one glaring possibility.\n\nThe Spanish/Portugeese bred with and incorporated the natives they encountered into their nations in S. America. \n\nThe English/French/Dutch/etc either killed, relocated, or otherwise excluded the natives they encountered.\n\nI know there are exceptions, but in general, this was a huge difference. It had to have played some role in the very unequal developments of the 2 continents.\n",
"There are basically two different kinds of colonialism: **settler colonialism** and **exploitation colonialism**.\n\nNorth America was colonized according to **settler colonialism**. What this means is that people from the mother country come to the colony to live. There are many reasons people do this: because they think they'll have more resources, to escape a bad reputation, so nobody'll bother them for their religion, etc. One consequence is that they bring all they know with them. All sorts of technology and knowledge came to North America with the settlers. Also, since settlers just want a nice place to live, they have a vested interest in building the place up. They'll figure out how to grow better food, build nice cities to live in, and so on. They also, even after independence, maintain nice relations with the mother country since they come from the same culture. Look at the Special Relationship between the US and the UK or Canada's membership in the Commonwealth. Of course, the biggest downside to settler colonialism is genocide. Settlers have no interest in interacting with the natives, and they end up competing for land. After the settlers take over all the empty space, they start taking over the places where the natives live and either kill them or drive them away. Also see Australia and New Zealand for non-American examples of settler colonialism.\n\nLatin America, on the other hand, was colonized according to **exploitation colonialism**. What this means is that the mother country just wants to grab their resources and bring them home. The whole colonial endeavor is a massive looting party. The natives are enslaved *en masse*, the resources are depleted as quickly as possible, and the colonists don't see the place as home. When the colonists *do* go home, it's only after they've stripped the country bare or are forcibly driven off by an uprising. The natives are broke since all their resources were taken, they're demoralized because that's what ages of slavery does to you, they have bad relations with the colonizers' country, and there are massive ethnic tensions between the natives and the few colonists who decided to stay. Other examples besides Latin America include Africa and India.\n\n**tl;dr** North America was colonized by people who were looking for a place to live, while Latin America was colonized by people who just wanted to get rich and go back home.",
"Also, policies like the Monroe doctrine and manifest destiny didn't help either. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQPA5oNpfM4&list=PLBDA2E52FB1EF80C9"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007zq58/episodes/guide"
],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ursci/eli5_how_south_america_is_not_as_developed_as/cel7rb8"
],
[],
[
"http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/PERG.sokoloff.pdf",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reforms_by_country#Mexico"
],
[
"http://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/oct/31/economics-religion-research",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Papers/2010/2010-7_paper.pdf",
"http://economics.mit.edu/files/4123"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Open-Veins-Latin-America-Centuries/dp/0853459916"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.e-reading.co.uk/bookreader.php/149187/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf"
],
[
"http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-part-1-inevitable-empire"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine"
]
] |
||
27dk5e
|
what are the limitations that prevent us from making super-fast vehicles (e.g. 1,000mph cars)
|
As a non-mechanic/non-vehicle type person, what is it that prevents us from achieving this sort of thing?
Can we not "beef" up the engines high enough to get this?
Thanks in advance.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27dk5e/eli5what_are_the_limitations_that_prevent_us_from/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chzqzio",
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3,
2,
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"text": [
"Wind resistance increases something like square of the velocity. And we only have the science to reduce drag by so much. You eventually hit a point, like with say the Bugatti Veyron or F1 cars where to go 1 mph faster would require 100 more horsepower, requiring 50 lbs more weight.... and the hp/weight starts bringing the speed down again. I just pulled numbers out of the air, but its something like that.",
"Air resistance. The faster you want to go. The more HP u need. Exponentionally.\nThat means bigger engine, more weight. More fuel consumption. \n\nPut wheels on a Saturn 5 rocket and lay it flat. It'll go 5000mph. But what's the point?",
"[They are working on one now](_URL_0_)",
"Wheels. Trains that go that fast (or extremely fast anyway) with conventional wheels and the wheels always failed extremely quickly. Magnetic trains are capable of much higher speeds because they don't contact the rails as such.\n\nYou have to remember that friction = heat. Traveling that fast on wheels would almost certainly burn through the rubber keeping you attached to the pavement, and not only would you lose control extremely quickly traveling at that speed on metal rims, you'd likely destroy the rims. Once the rims go, the undercarriage would too. Suddenly your personal vehicle is nothing but debris skidding across the road.",
"1) Wind resistance. The amount of force needed to accelerate goes up with the square of the speed you are going. Going 200 mph requires 4 times as much horsepower as going 100 mph.\n\n2) Heat. Putting out large amounts of horsepower requires you to dissipate all the waste heat. The Bugatti Veyron (fastest road going car) has 10 radiators for this reason.\n\n3) Downforce. Your car has to sit at least a little above the ground. Unless you take special steps, it will actually start generating lift if you are going fast enough, and eventually take off like an airplane. That's bad. Stopping this from happening is easy, just generate downforce to compensate for the lift. But downforce increases wind resistance, see 1)\n\n4) Weight. All the equipment to solve the above problems, larger engine, etc. weighs something. Every pound takes energy to accelerate. Which requires an even bigger engine, more cooling, etc. Very quickly you start to get diminishing returns.\n\n5) Stopping. Brakes operate by converting momentum into heat. It's very difficult to convert the momentum of a very heavy, very fast object into heat slowly enough to not destroy whatever material your brakes are made of. This is why super cars have brakes made of exotic materials like carbon ceramic.\n\n6) Safety. This is probably the biggest one. F1 designers have had the ability for years to make a faster car than the regulations will allow. But it would be nigh undriveable. Apparently the drivers would have required G-suits like fighter pilots just to stay conscious. And that was in the nineties, imagine what they can do now!\n\n\nWe're perfectly capable of making engines that can go very very fast. Some top fuel dragsters may put out 10,000 horsepower, we're not sure, it's hard to measure. When it comes to speed, it's everything but the engine that's the problem.",
"Well, if you check out the traffic on I-10, you'll find we already have 500-mph cars, so just be patient."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.bloodhoundssc.com/"
],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
346qgl
|
what is the process for nuclear disarmament and how do we know countries, i.e. russia, aren't lying?
|
Read about Russia reducing their nuclear arsenal today, however, with Russia being so shady I wonder how we can trust their word? Is their an outside source that confirms the nukes have been disarmed...etc?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/346qgl/eli5_what_is_the_process_for_nuclear_disarmament/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqrrinr",
"cqrsd7z"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"We send officials over to their bases at a predetermined time to witness the destruction of certain equipment and they do the same.",
"The SALT treaties included provisions allowing each side to inspect the sites and confirm for themselves. It even goes so far as certain hardware being left inoperable outside for a length of time so spy satellites can confirm it too."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2tnegz
|
why don't we drink mead anymore?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tnegz/eli5_why_dont_we_drink_mead_anymore/
|
{
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"co0k7nt",
"co0kj76",
"co0krer",
"co0lif3",
"co0lvzb",
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"co0uonp",
"co0uv8g",
"co0xt9w"
],
"score": [
16,
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4,
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3,
2,
13,
6,
3
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"text": [
"Some of us do, it isn't hard to make. I make my own rather than buying beer at the store. ",
"We do.. The ones sold in the stores in Norway is blah, so you have to make your own. I'm in a club for mead brewers - we help each other out because it can be tricky, but people do still drink mead.\nIn Poland and Denmark decent meads are sold in stores. ",
"We do! There are plenty of meaderies around the USA. However, with honey prices skyrocketing due to the dieoff of half of the bee population, from 5 million in the 40's to less than 2.5 million today, mead is goddamn expensive, compared to alcohol made from wheat or barley or corn. ",
"interesting timing. cause i just bottled my batch of mead like 30min ago",
"In short, beekeeping in the early middle ages was the center of a whole network of goods that were essential to everyday life. The byproducts were used for candlemaking, of course, but also for sealants, etc. Not just honey. It was expensive and produced a low yield, though, because the hives had to be destroyed every time they were harvested. As the population grew and trade expanded, other sources for these byproducts were found. Honey was still needed as a sweetener, but even that came under fire from cane sugar (expensive and not commonly used until well into the early modern era, but still a competitor). Meanwhile, beer became more popular, and could be produced on the larger scale needed for the larger population. Basically mead production collapsed and honey, over time, became a fringe sweetener.",
"I love mead. There is a few places in MN to buy it. It can be very expensive though.",
"Mead is still made and it's delicious. As others have said though the fact that it requires a lot of honey makes it prohibitively expensive.",
"Somehow all the mead home brewers in the world managed to find this thread. ",
"As an Amon Amarth fan, I never STOPPED drinking mead.",
"Seriously, nobody has pointed out that /r/mead is a thing that exists?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
45lmm2
|
how do smartwatch heart rate monitors work?
|
[Example](_URL_1_) I've noticed that a lot of them use green lights. Is the technology similar to [this?](_URL_0_)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45lmm2/eli5_how_do_smartwatch_heart_rate_monitors_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"czympkf",
"czyqjuf",
"czyyi70"
],
"score": [
116,
8,
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],
"text": [
"Green light is strongly absorbed by red (blood). Your pulse causes rhythmic changes in the amount of blood (and hence redness) in your skin. Using green light allows you to detect the changes from blood easily by looking for changes in the amount of light reflected. If you used red light it wouldn't fluctuate as much because the amount of redness in the skin wouldn't affect the reflection of red light so much. ",
"The second gif portrays a vein finder. It uses imaging technology (I believe infrared) to search for blood, and then uses a projector to highlight locations it found blood, to make IV placements and blood draws easier. The color it chooses is completely arbitrary.",
"At the start of this year Fitbit were hit with a [class action lawsuit](_URL_0_) regarding the accuracy of their heart monitoring feature.\n\nWould that be down to Fitbit's software or are all vendor's going to be similarly inaccurate if they use the green light method?"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://i.imgur.com/z53tCzJ.gifv",
"http://www.dcrainmaker.com/images/2015/11/TomTom-Spark-Lights_thumb.jpg"
] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10724270/fitbit-lawsuit-charge-hr-surge-incomplete-heart-rate-tracking"
]
] |
|
cjylg5
|
why does puking helps to relieve headaches?
|
I have had migraine since i can remember and before my parents helped me to get the right medicine, puking was the best solution to get rid of the migraine.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cjylg5/eli5_why_does_puking_helps_to_relieve_headaches/
|
{
"a_id": [
"evhadce",
"evhcaqm"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"From personal experience it seems to be something to do with pressure in the head being somehow equalised by the rush of blood/pressure from vomiting",
"Never heard if this before. But it reminds me of my issue, where I'll suddenly feel really sick for like 10 minutes followed by it stopping and ALWAYS a hard as hell sneeze. Then all back to normal. This happens nearly every day, and even other people point it out. \n\nI can't figure out why it happens in that order. But if my stomach turns sour suddenly, I can bet money down that I'll have a uncontrolled super sneeze in like 10 minutes. And the sneeze is super sudden normally, like I don't feel it build up or anything. \n\nMy body is a mystery."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
aeuc9t
|
how do artists make such realistic works, for instance movie poster artists involving real people.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aeuc9t/eli5_how_do_artists_make_such_realistic_works_for/
|
{
"a_id": [
"edsoaij"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"hours upon hours of daily practice is how it's done. some people are self taught and others go to art school but what they all have in common if thousands of hours dedicated to their art. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1o4101
|
what are the advantages of pearls to the animals that make them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1o4101/eli5_what_are_the_advantages_of_pearls_to_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccom6ks",
"ccom9hv",
"ccox92i"
],
"score": [
30,
12,
2
],
"text": [
"They're basically an immune response.\n\nOysters are filter feeders, meaning that they draw in water and eat whatevers floating in it. However, sometimes they'll catch a bit of rock or dirt too. If you ever see the inside of a oyster you'll see it's very soft and fleshy, which means that a sharp piece of rock could do real damage to it.\n\nSo, it coats the rock in the same material it uses to make it's shell. This smooths over the rock and makes it nice and round and less likely to damage the soft flesh of the oyster.\n\nThat we happen to find them pretty is entirely coincidental.",
"Pearls are made by shelled molluscs like clams or oysters. Every now and then, a bit of sand or debris may get through the opening of the shell and wedged into the fleshy mantle of the creature (let's say an oyster for the sake of discussion). This particle could cause irritation or infection, so the oyster needs to quarantine the particle. It does this by encasing it in calcium carbonate (which is what their shell is made of), which it does by precipitating the mineral in concentric layers around the particle. The result is a [pearl](_URL_0_).",
"At some point does it eject the pearl?"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearls#Natural_pearls"
],
[]
] |
||
2gh4g7
|
neutral and ground
|
Does the neutral and ground go to the same place? Is the ground literally the ground? If so would it be bad news bears to connect your fan with just the hot and ground wires and skip the neutral altogether? Finally, if the ground is literally the ground does that mean I can hammer a steak into the ground, wrap a wire around it, and connect the other end to the hot side (through a lightbulb)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gh4g7/eli5_neutral_and_ground/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ckj1csz",
"ckj26ps"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
" > Does the neutral and ground go to the same place?\n\nOftentimes, yes. And yes it can literally be the ground.\n\n > If so would it be bad news bears to connect your fan with just the hot and ground wires and skip the neutral altogether?\n\nMaybe, maybe not. You wouldn't want to do that if the exterior of the fan housing was connected to ground, as it could result in significant potential building up on the exterior of the fan.\n\n > Finally, if the ground is literally the ground does that mean I can hammer a steak into the ground, wrap a wire around it, and connect the other end to the hot side (through a lightbulb)?\n\nYes, you could do that. It would cook said steak though.",
"This applies to 220V main service in the US:\n > Does the neutral and ground go to the same place? \n\nIn the main service panel, yes. Both neutral (white) and ground (uninsulated) wires tie to the same busbar.\n\n > Is the ground literally the ground? \n\nYes. There's a grounding wire connected to the busbar that goes outside and is buried at least 6' (2 meters) into the ground.\n\n > If so would it be bad news bears to connect your fan with just the hot and ground wires and skip the neutral altogether? \n\nYes. Ground wires aren't meant to carry current. They are there for safety reasons. \n\n > Finally, if the ground is literally the ground does that mean I can hammer a steak into the ground, wrap a wire around it, and connect the other end to the hot side (through a lightbulb)?\n\nTheoretically yes. This is how electric fences work - the fence is \"hot\" and the circuit is completed through you and the ground that you're standing on. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2xaci2
|
how do we accurately measure the distance between galaxies/celestial bodies when...
|
Ok, the title doesn't let me explain adequately what I want to ask so let me rephrase. I understand the concept of measuring the distance and therefore, using the speed of light to determine its age.
However, given the size of the universe and how long it has been expanding, chances are, many of the 'objects' (from stars to galaxies must be moving in relatively parallel tracks to us therefore skewing our measurement of how old they are? I know due to acceleration that both extremes, things very young or things very old will be easily measurable compared to ourselves, but surely its a crapshoot for anything that is relatively the same age as us?
An example would be our galaxy and (a) and galaxy (b), born around the same time (or maybe (b) is younger and accelerating towards us, how do we properly determine its age? My guess is we can measure the extremes well, but not anything approaching the middle range (same direction and/or age) with any accuracy other than to say 'same as us'. Or am I just missing things completely?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xaci2/eli5_how_do_we_accurately_measure_the_distance/
|
{
"a_id": [
"coyech3"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"2 things to add or expand on what a few people have mentioned. \n1. The type 1-a supernova is a common astrological phenomena. It happens when a star system called a binary system dies. A binary system is when 2 stars are orbiting one another. As one star ages it will expand into a red giant and eventually begin to feed its partner some of its mass until it has died and becomes a white dwarf, an extremely dense core of what it once was. As its partner ages, it too becomes a red giant and begins to give gas back to the dwarf, but it's days are numbered. The white dwarf will explode with a brilliant flash when it reaches something like 1.4 times the mass of our sun. These flashes *always* occur at this mass and *always* produce the same amount of light. Astronomers can look at a galaxy across the universe and determine its distance when they find a type 1-a supernova, as they know how bright it is. This is the backbone of our extreme distance evidence.\n2. The Doppler effect is a wave effect that arises when we have something that creates waves moving relative to an observer. You hear it when the tone of a motorcycle shifts from high as it approaches you to low as it speeds away. The wavefronts were squished on top of one another, chased by the motorcycle, then became less frequent as their source moved away from you. Well, experiments have shown that light has wave properties too. Higher frequency waves are more energetic and the visible spectrum of light moves from red to blue (blue being higher energy and higher frequency). If we have a galaxy rapidly speeding away from us it will have a lower frequency, thus the light will look a bit redder. Similarly, a galaxy moving towards us will be bluer. We can use these so called red-shifts and blue-shifts to determine a galaxy's velocity relative to us and that can help us determine where it is spatially.\nI'd be glad to help further if any of this seemed unclear or incomplete."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
49uj6c
|
why do wifi signals have a certain range?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49uj6c/eli5why_do_wifi_signals_have_a_certain_range/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0uxjfh",
"d0uxm0e"
],
"score": [
6,
2
],
"text": [
"Because they are unlicensed signals and therefore prevented by law from extending past a certain range or transmitting higher than a certain power by the FCC.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Wifi works over radio waves, which, much like sound waves, dissipate very quickly at a distance. Just like how there are a lot of background noises on a busy street, there is a lot of background radiation bouncing around through space. If your friend was talking to you, and you started walking away from him, at a certain point, you wouldn't be able to hear him over the sound of whatever else might be going on around you (cars, wind, etc). Similarly, as the distance between two wifi devices increases, at a certain point, they will no longer be able to \"hear\" each other over the background radiation."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_47_CFR_Part_15"
],
[]
] |
||
7jkx5v
|
how does your mind choses random numbers when someone asks you to do it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jkx5v/eli5how_does_your_mind_choses_random_numbers_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dr7a2tq",
"dr7avu3",
"dr7bb9q",
"dr7ckcc",
"dr7d622",
"dr7dtv6",
"dr7ehv3"
],
"score": [
258,
252,
14,
2,
4,
5,
5
],
"text": [
"A simple way to put it is this. You are put into a panic so you try to think of the most random number.\n\nHere is an example, from 1 to 10.\n\n1 or 10 are the extremes and we’re just stated so that isn’t random enough.\n\nEven numbers are out because their even, and not Odd, needs to be odd to be random.\n\n3,5,7,9 are left.\n\n5 is in the middle, 3’s too low and 9 is too close to 10.\n\n7.",
"It doesn't really, it just chooses numbers it thinks are random, and it does a pretty poor job at it.\n\nIt usually starts by picking an unround number towards the middle of the range, with a bias away from numbers ending in 0 or 5 and towards odd numbers. Then it is a game of \"what haven't I done recently\", alternating between even and odd, high and low, cycling through digits you haven't used recently and picking numbers in the spaces between those you have already picked.\n\nThe result is going to be decidedly unrandom, to the point a forensic accountant can pretty easily tell when someone is just making up figures. ",
"You can test this by saying “random” numbers as fast as you can. After a few seconds they aren’t random anymore. ",
"5, that was random or was it?",
"whenwver i try to think of random numbers i start out fine and then end up counting down from 4 or 5",
"There is a concept known as [priming](_URL_0_) where observing something, consciously or subconsciously, brings it closer to the front of your mind.\n\nFor a little anecdotal evidence, the first number I thought of was 23. I noticed going back to the ELI5 front page, there was a post that had a score of 23 points. That subliminal number that I did not notice at first very well could have influenced me.\n\nIn rock-paper-scissors, there are certain \"tells\" that are based on priming. For instance, from watching a competition, one of these tells they mentioned was that short-haired women are more likely to pick scissors, having seen more than their fair share of them.",
"The human mind isn't capable of intentional randomness. The best it can accomplish is arbitrary decisions."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology\\)"
],
[]
] |
||
2iijyr
|
how did people know that certain combinations of certain ingredients would create drugs?
|
And I'm talking about meth and cocaine etc.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2iijyr/eli5how_did_people_know_that_certain_combinations/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cl2h1b8",
"cl2j2cu"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Well I can't say much about Meth, but Cocaine had a medicinal use for thousands if years. For the most part just chewing on the leaf will give you a bit of a buzz. I'm some regions its used to cope with altitude issues. \n\nIn the long run, it doesn't take much for someone to wonder exactly what it is that gets you high, and want to extract it. In both cases. It just boils down to chemistry.",
"Things like meth started out in government regulated or funded labs that would produce medicines or whatever related chemicals. A lab would make something like meth then it would hit the streets more so then it's intended purpose so the government would make it illegal to produce. Illegal drug producers will identify the process in the lab and recreate that with legal subsistences to make a worst version of the drug. For example a illegal drug producer might use battery acid or lighter fluid to replace a chemical in meth that he could not otherwise add without expensive lab equipment which only makes the drugs worst for the users.\n\nOverall, a chemist or some scientist will produce a drug. The drug will become illegal so some thug or black market chemist will mock him with different supplies. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
apalnw
|
what is pulse width modulation?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/apalnw/eli5_what_is_pulse_width_modulation/
|
{
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"eg6wgyl",
"eg6x2yv",
"eg6zm1t"
],
"score": [
6,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"\"Pulse width modulation\" is a way of simulating analog signal via a digital pin on some microcontrollers.\n\nBasically, it turns the pin on during a fraction of the time it would normally be on in a given time period to simulate a stronger or weaker signal. If you want an \"analog\" signal of 50% of full strength, for example, you'd have the PWM pin output full signal for half of one second instead of for a full second.\n\nIt's called \"pulse width modulation\" because it *modulates* the *width* of the digital *pulses* on the pin to simulate an analog signal.",
"Instead of representing something as a value of 0-100% of a voltage you represent between 0-100% of some length of time at a fixed voltage. \n\nThis is useful because digital circuits only operate at fixed voltages, a low (0) and high (1). ",
"The best example I can think of to explain this is a dimmer switch. Let's say you want to make the light in a room half as bright. This can be achieved by turning the light switch on for 50% of the time and off for 50% of the time. If you do this really slowly then it will be completely dark, then completely bright. But if you switch the light on and off 500 times per second, then you don't notice the full-bright and full-off modes, and it averages out to be half as bright. True PWM is often done at 20,000 times/second or faster so that it does not make humming noises that humans are capable of hearing. This same technique can be used to control electric motors."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3eeb7l
|
why do so many employers release schedules every week instead of having people work on the same days?
|
A lot of my friends work at chain stores/restaurants andare given new days and times to work every week. Why does this happen? You think it would make employees happier and be a lot simpler to have people scheduled for specific days and times.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eeb7l/eli5_why_do_so_many_employers_release_schedules/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cte4ai4",
"cte4eaz"
],
"score": [
8,
2
],
"text": [
"Some people don't want to be shafted with every Friday night shift. And with most stores, some days or times of day are objectively busier/worse/whatever than others, and sometimes it's not fair to have one person always get the easy, less-stressful Sunday night shift when another always gets the I-wanna-kill-myself Saturday morning shift. Or another possibility, if sales are a factor (or tips in a restaurant), it's not fair for some employees to always get shifts when there will be more customers when other employees always get stuck with slow shifts.\n\nAdditionally, when a place of employment's employee base is made up of mostly young part-timers, it doesn't really make sense to release a schedule a month ahead of time when a few people on the schedule will probably call in, no-show, trade shifts, or just quit. When I worked retail, it would be very rare for an entire week's schedule to go completely untouched. ",
"* Demands change. Businesses don't do the same amount of business every week.\n\n* People's schedules change. If John A takes a vacation, I need Patty B to cover his area, and I'd need Jamal C to cover for Patty but Jamal can't cover every day so I need Marissa D to come in a couple days. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3mu0wh
|
why are americans forced to purchase pharmaceutical prescription drugs from america?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mu0wh/eli5why_are_americans_forced_to_purchase/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvi2a91",
"cvi2cbz",
"cvi50zh"
],
"score": [
5,
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Drugs in the U.S. go through huge amounts of testing to ensure that they're safe and effective. Allowing the purchase of drugs from other places that might not have the same standards would defeat the purpose.",
"American's go to Canada all the time to buy drugs. It's technically illegal but the FDA generally turns a blind eye and I've never had a border guard ask me about prescription drugs. You generally need a Canadian Doctor to write the script for you but that is easy enough to get especially if you already have a script from a US doctor.\n\n_URL_0_",
"If you're getting the drug for personal use, and for treatment that was started outside the US you're allowed to bring small amounts into the country. The issue with bringing in large amounts of prescription drugs from other countries is that it's basically impossible to prove that they're for your own use (as opposed to resale). And the US has pretty tough laws about drug sales as a result of Europe screwing up in the 60's and the US reacting to that. \n\nLonger answer: In the early 60's there was a drug called thalidomide that was available in several European countries. Among other things this drug was used to treat pregnant women for morning sickness. It was later discovered that the drug would cause birth defects if given to pregnant women in the first 7 weeks or so of pregnancy. While this drug was never approved by the FDA there were large amounts of the drug provided to US physicians as part of clinical trials. When this all came to light in the mid 60's there was a strong reaction to strengthen the requirements and the \"Kefauver Harris Amendment\" was passed which has significant hurdles to clear if you want to sell a drug in the US. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194904.htm"
],
[]
] |
|
cirlav
|
how are seashells formed and how to they take their signature shapes? (e.g. conchs etc.)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cirlav/eli5_how_are_seashells_formed_and_how_to_they/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ev8wxrx",
"ev94gy7",
"ev97gbm"
],
"score": [
118,
23,
5
],
"text": [
"Seashells are formed by a variety of animals. They secrete the material of the shell, as far as I know it's always a calcium compound, from their bodies. A conch is a large snail, but clams, scallops, oysters, crabs, shrimp, and nautilus, among others, also make hard shells. Once the animal dies, the soft flesh is eaten or otherwise rots away, leaving just the shell.\n\nDifferent animals have different needs, which determine the shape of their shells.",
"I did my undergraduate thesis on hard clams, so I’ll talk about them specifically, but this applied to nearly all marine mollusks. They lay down a calcium carbonate shell from the inside and the exact composition of this shell varies based on some physical demands. What is cool is that in clam shells (and oysters and mussels), the shell being laid down during stressful periods (really hot temps like summer or really cold temps like winter) will be different than optimal conditions. This creates a branding pattern in the shell that resembles that of tree rings. This banding pattern in used to age the clams and can be used to identify growth rates as well. \n\nFor snails and such, I can’t really speak for.",
"The shape they take is a form of \"fractal\" geometry. Which is basically: repeating a simple rule over and over again. It's found alot in nature because organisms are coded with that simple rule, resulting in complex (emergent) geometry when aggregated. Tree limb growth is another example of this."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1pbrrz
|
why are all students required to take so many classes in highschool, if a lot of the things we are taught only applies to us if we go into a certain profession.
|
"For a wide variety of career choices." is not vaild
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pbrrz/eli5_why_are_all_students_required_to_take_so/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cd0qzqt",
"cd0rbg8",
"cd0rize",
"cd0yerk",
"cd14bhc"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Because the classes provide basic skills that everyone needs.",
"A wide variety of career choices is certainly valid, the majority of people don't know what they want to do and may change careers. Plus really in highschool its less about what you actually learn and more about learning to think. Different subjects teach you different ways to approach problems. Its good to have a broad base. Plus knowing some basic math or history etc is never bad. You become better informed. You can appreciate discoveries in different fields better since you have an understanding. In high school it feels pointless when you dont think you will ever use it but when you are done you rarely look back at it as a waste of time.",
"Because a rounded education is important to a functioning society. I will list how each subject is critical for a rounded education.\n\nHistory: A society with people that does not know about it's past will be doomed to make the same mistakes as well as not appreciating the effort it took for the society to get there.\n\nMath and science: These subjects develop a person's quantitative analytical skills. Even if you don't plan moon missions for a living, a basic amount of logical analytical skills allow you understand many of the things going around you and to deduce patterns in every day life. This can help you make better decisions in life.\n\nEnglish: CuZ U DuN wAnT a GeNuRaTiONz oF PeEpUl WrITiN LiKe DiS\n\nLanguage: Do you really want to be the only guy that doesn't speak mandarin when the Chinese become your new overlords? Also helps you to understand new cultures which is essential in an ever global world.\n\nArt/Drama/and other artistic subjects: As the world is significantly influenced by beauty, it is best to know a little about art can influence people and it's role in society.\n\nHome Ed: Learning how to load a dishwasher and cooking a basic meal or balance a checkbook is probably the most important class you will ever take.\n\nPE: _URL_0_ Need I say more.\n\nI admit learning calculus and quantum physics is excessive for high school especially if you are not going into that field in the future. However learning quantitative subjects allows you to exercise the part of your brain that deals with logic and I cannot stress how important this is for your future. Many jobs nowadays deal with numbers and being so unaware of how to use numbers to your advantage is just....",
"Look, everyone else is giving you the right answers, but I'm going to give you the practical answer. Every single ounce of knowledge that crosses your path helps push open a door that was previously shut. We don't live in a culture anymore where you go into a single career and follow it for life. The world changes way too fucking fast. Industry changes too fast. And when it's literally a fight for your own survival- i.e., when you really need a job that pays whatever level of bills you've accumulated- it doesn't matter if the job on the table is the one you planned for or not.\n\nI never thought I'd be an engineer. I actually fucking hate engineering. Yet here I am, because it turns out all those lessons on math and science that I hoped to apply to a totally different line of work are transferable to what I do now. I've gotten jobs on the basis of knowing something the other applicants didn't, even when I had no paper-based credentials (specifically in my case my self-taught programming). \n\nSTEM is a little overrated in that not every or even most good careers require it. But hey, if say a business is looking to hire someone to handle their social media AND it turns out you can graft the stream into their website? You just elevated yourself. \n\nJust because you can't draw a direct line between a particular skill and your planned destination doesn't mean that particular skill is useless. High school is the only time you'll ever have where your primary job is just to learn as much shit as humanly possible. Take full advantage.",
"Look, everyone here is trying to justify why it is *good* to have the way it is, but really that does not answer the question as to *WHY* it is so. And the real answer is pretty counter-intuitive. \n\n- So lets take a step back, who determines how long school runs and what do they want? Its not students. Its not some idealistic philosopher theorizing on what is *good* for students. Its largely parents who send the students to school, sit on school boards, and elect commissioners to administer them. And what is their primary concern? It is not what you think. The biggest thing parents demand of schools is that *they keep the students there for most of the day* so that the parents can go out and work. So what does that mean? Schools have pressure to have long school hours, and they are likely to keep increasing (to allow both parents to work and not pay childcare) than to decrease.\n\n- So the root cause is really that parents enmasse want school hours to be long. This sets every self-important partisan free to come up with reasons as to why X and Y are important and should be taught to kids, or for instance why P/Q/R subjects should be taught separately, or Z should be added next. Then school districts start advertising themselves with X and Y offerings and parents start competing for more prestigious schools and so forth, all the expense of the kids free hours.\n\nSo while there are many arguments as to whether or not the current system is good, let us not forget the real reason the system is so entrenched, it is because school serves as free child care for most parents and so they want to keep school hours long, and then one might well as well teach all sorts of marginally useful / useless stuff to kids during that time.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"http://meganandtimmy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/fat-american.jpg"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
auruje
|
how the hell does this picture work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/auruje/eli5_how_the_hell_does_this_picture_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eha55q8",
"eha587e"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"It's an animated image. If you open the image, or refresh the page, you can very briefly see the initial image, the one that appears when you embed a link to it. But after just a frame or two, it moves to the second, \"scary\" version of the image. Most software doesn't know how to embed animated images properly, so it just takes the initial appearance and uses that as the static image.",
"When you view a website, your device sends the name of whatever browser/etc you are using to the site so that it knows what to return. So in that case, they've probably just used conditional language to display a different image of it comes from a browser app vs. a non-browser app. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
1wayop
|
what does the phrase "legal tender for all debts public and private" on us currency actually mean if the dmv in my town can get away with refusing cash and only accepting checks and money orders?
|
I thought that meant that cash was an acceptable form of my payment by law. Why is it OK for them to refuse to take cash and only accept checks or money orders? It doesn't make sense to me especially since this is a government organization...
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wayop/eli5_what_does_the_phrase_legal_tender_for_all/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cf09v46",
"cf09zge"
],
"score": [
3,
5
],
"text": [
"It says \"payment for all debts\". Your DMV payment isn't a debt, so they can refuse it. It's a payment for a service or a product of some sort.",
"Legal tender for all *debts* does not imply that everyone must accept cash from you when no pre-existing debt exists.\n\nThat is reason that gas stations are allowed to refuse large denomination bills."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2g4ld3
|
if i am able to build an artificial island in the international waters of say 1000sqm, canbi declare it as a new country?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g4ld3/eli5_if_i_am_able_to_build_an_artificial_island/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ckfjzbn",
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6,
6,
3
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"text": [
"Yes. But you'd probably have problems getting it recognized by other countries, except for other micronations. You'd also have some practical problems defending yourself against pirates.\n\nHere's some interesting reading for you: _URL_0_",
"Entities are only a \"country\" if your particular government recognizes them as such, which isn't going to happen unless you have a valuable resource or some other kind of influence to convince other governments to recognize you. \n\nYou are free to go and build your island and declare it anything you want, but nobody is going to go along with it unless the US, or the UK, or some other major government says \"Yup, he's legit, and anyone who disagrees can lodge a complaint with the aircraft carrier we just sent to protect him.\"",
"What you're referring to is a \"micronation\". \n\nThere are dozens of them right now. Overwhelmingly, it's a joke. The country that actually owns the land rarely recognizes the micronation's sovereignty. The UN and other countries/political bodies rarely recognize them either. They may turn a blind eye to certain conflicting laws or practices, but they certainly step in if things get out of hand.\n\nIt's the political equivalent of your kid claiming the couch for a fort, and you go \"oh, ok, you're the king of the couch, have fun\". You might let them get away with staying up late or not doing their chores, but they're still in trouble if they do something wrong (like putting someone to death without due process).\n\nI think the micronation of \"Minerva\" is a textbook example of your question, artificial island and everything. _URL_0_ "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand"
],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerva_Reefs#Republic_of_Minerva"
]
] |
||
7j7dhh
|
why do our mouths still feel dry even after chugging a lot of water?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7j7dhh/eli5_why_do_our_mouths_still_feel_dry_even_after/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dr47jbb",
"dr48dgg"
],
"score": [
13,
2
],
"text": [
"If you are thirsty, it's because you are dehydrated.\n\nYour body needs a balance of electrolytes (mainly sodium) and water. When there isn't enough water in relation to sodium, your body makes you feel thirsty and also to conserve water in the kidneys.\n\nIt will take awhile for the water you drink to pass from your stomach into your intestines to get absorbed. The feeling of thirst won't go away until your brain knows that the electrolytes and water in your body are in balance again. \n",
"Sometimes it depends on the water.\n\nI can't drink Dasani - it makes me feel more thirsty than when I started drinking. But it's because Dasani is a Coca-Cola product.\n\nYou see, Coke doesn't bottle all their own liquids - they contract it out to other companies. But the bottlers want to make as much profit as they can, so they're tempted to increase their production and only tell Coke about what they're contracted for. So Coke had to develop a solution. Literally.\n\nSweet fizzy drinks were easy to tackle. Coke manufactures the syrup (or has it made by still *other* contractors) using their secret formula. Then they send a pre-set amount to their bottlers. The bottlers mix the syrup with the fizzy water, and the bottles are sold. But Coke measures the ratio of syrup to water meticulously for all their bottlers to make certain the bottlers aren't using too much - or worse, too little - of the syrup in each bottle. The bottlers are kept honest, Coke makes their profit, and we enjoy precisely the same taste in every single bottle.\n\nThen along came bottled water. Now Coke has a dilemma: how can they control the bottlers' production of the most common liquid on Earth? So they went to their scientists (and Coke employs loads of scientists) and had them develop a proprietary blend of salts, which are almost just like table salt, but with some different elements in them. (So just as table salt is Sodium and Chlorine, NaCl, another salt might be NaNO2, or Sodium Nitrite.) They figured out how to measure the blend when it's mixed with water, so they were back in business - just like they measure the amount of syrup in Coke, they can now measure the concentration (and make-up) of the salts in Dasani.\n\nThe only trouble is that salts, even in low concentrations, tend to act like, well... *salts*. And I personally find that the blend of salts that Coke uses in Dasani make my mouth feel dry and woefully un-satiated, no matter how much I drink.\n\nOther things can cause this same problem. Tap water, for instance, can include traces of things such as chlorine, fluoride, calcium, rust, or even limestone dissolved in the water. Even the foods you eat can affect how your mouth reacts to water. And when you drink, although you may or may not be able to taste them, they can still affect your body enough that you can *feel* them.\n\nSo try drinking a different type of water from whatever source you've been using, or after eating different foods. You might find that it's the water itself that's causing what you're feeling."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
20xokg
|
why is the process of evolution limited to occurring at the point of reproduction of an organism? why do the cells within an organism not "evolve" and undergo little "mini-evolutions" prior to the reproduction of the organism itself?
|
The title says it all, but we always hear about evolution occurring at the point at which an organism reproduces; an organism reproduces, certain mutations arise, and natural selection works its magic.
But wouldn't the same processes that guide evolution on this "macro" scale also cause the cells within an organism to "evolve" even as it is living, throughout its entire life? This is something I've never heard or read about, and I'm wondering if there's a reason this doesn't occur?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20xokg/eli5_why_is_the_process_of_evolution_limited_to/
|
{
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"cg7pu54",
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"text": [
"Mutations in genetic code are mostly random and do not happen uniformly across all cells in an organism at once. For a single multicelled individual to \"evolve\" in this way is so astronomically unlikely that it is safe to assume it will never happen. To to best of my knowledge (full disclosure, I'm a chemist, not an evolutionary biologist), a mutation only becomes a step in an evolution when it occurs in the reproductive cell that then goes on to produce offspring, because the fertilized cell then divides to produce all the new cells, and passes down the mutation in the process. For single-celled organisms like bacteria, though, a random mutation might actually constitute evolution of an individual.\n\nAnd a really short answer is that unless a cell is hit by errant radiation or some kind of toxin, the only time changes to the genetic code can be made is during replication.",
"Mutations occur in dividing cells, but this does not meaningfully impact the organism in a positive way. One cell among billions does not create a noticeable difference, unless the mutation causes cancer. When the mutations occur in the parents' reproductive cells, that allows the mutation to be expressed in the entire system from the start. \n\nAlso, \"evolution\" is impossible for individual cells unless the mutation directly affects the cell's ability to reproduce. Cells reproduce automatically at predetermined rates. Cells that have beneficial mutations are no more likely to leave behind \"offspring\" than normal cells. There is no natural selection process, so the beneficial mutation never spreads. \n\nConsider this: when humans left Africa, they were dark skinned. The humans who went north to colder climate with less sunlight suffered Vitamin D deficiencies, because our bodies use sunlight to produce Vitamin D. Humans with mutations for lighter skin survived better because they were able to make do with less sunlight, and so people in darker climates evolved paler skin. But this process only works if the mutation occurs in the parent's reproductive cells and then applies itself to the offspring's entire body. If one of those people had a single skin cell mutate to become paler, and therefore better at producing Vitamin D, the effect would be negligible because it's one cell out of billions. They would not receive any meaningful advantage from one cell being slightly better at producing vitamins. Nor would that cell be any more likely to reproduce: it would divide at the same rate as the dark cells that were providing less Vitamin D. The benefits of the mutation would go completely unnoticed, and even if there *were* benefits to speak of, they would not be passed down to the person's offspring because the mutation would not be present in the reproductive cells. \n\nThe only mutations that really matter in individual cells are those that impact cellular reproduction. These can either lead to cancer (non-stop reproduction) or cause the cell to fail at reproduction and leave behind no legacy."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
ak4rgn
|
the cons of taxing the wealthy more
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ak4rgn/eli5_the_cons_of_taxing_the_wealthy_more/
|
{
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"text": [
"The rich tend to have a few avenues to reduce there tax bill or move money away where it isn't taxed. Therefore raising their tax too much may reduce the money you take in. This actually happened in France when they tried a 75% tax rate.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTheirs some evidence that it may also lead to things like reduced growth and job losses as business owners who would have previously used their money to say open a new factory or store may no longer be able to afford to. I'm not aware of any conclusive evidence of this however.",
"You need to dramatically simplify tax rules to do it effectively, and ideally render offshoring wealth impossible.\n\nTheres some suggestion that higher rates of tax remove incentives to work, and at lower incomes this might be true, but the vast majority of the income of the truly wealthy is unearned, so this doesn't hold.\n\nIMHO.",
"There are a whole lot of reasons.\n\nFirst, when politicians talk about \"the rich\" they want you to think of the ultra-wealthy, like billionaires. But there just aren't that many of them and, relatively speaking, they don't actually have that much money. According to [wikipedia](_URL_0_), the total net worth of all billionaires in the *world* is about $9 trillion. About 25% of them are in the US, so let's say US billionaires have about $2.3 trillion. The US Federal government spends about $4 trillion a year. So if we completely confiscate *all* wealth from *all* billionaires in the US, you could fund the Federal government for only 7 months. Then that's it. No more billionaires to take money from.\n\nOf course, if you do less than confiscating all of their wealth, like taxing their income, then you make dramatically less than even this. (Think funding for weeks instead of months.)\n\nYou might try to start adding people with progressively less and less money, because there are more of them, but the numbers don't really work out. You just can't fund things by taxing only \"super rich\" people.\n\nAnd including state and local government taxes makes it even worse. This means that when politicians talk about funding their programs by taxing the rich, people you wouldn't consider rich end up paying more in taxes. \n\nBut it gets worse. Rich people ([and lots of non-rich people](_URL_1_)) have most of their money in investments, typically stocks. \n\nStocks work like this. Let's say you want to start a restaurant, but you don't have enough money to buy equipment, rent a space, pay for advertising, hire employees, etc. So you come to me and say \"hey /u/pilleum, can you help me out\", and I give you $100,000 in exchange for some fraction of your profits that we agree on. (Effectively, this is like a loan, but with ownership.)\n\nThis means my net worth didn't change--I exchanged $100,000 in cash for $100,000 worth of a company. But now you have a company that's got $100,000 worth of assets that can be used to buy equipment and, importantly, create new jobs.\n\nThis process is what fuckwits on the internet call \"trickle down economics,\" and what people who know economics call \"economics.\"\n\nBecause rich people have most of their money in investments, taxing the rich means taxing investments. But taxing investments is taking money away, not from *me*, the investor (after all, I went from $100,000 in cash to $100,000 in stocks), but it takes money away from *the business*, who wanted to spend that money on hiring new employees.\n\nSo taxing the rich ends up hurting poor people by discouraging job creation, discouraging the creation of new businesses, and making less money available to businesses to pay their expenses--including salaries--with.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire#Statistics",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance"
]
] |
||
1h3rt3
|
henry kissinger, why he was revered in his day but hated now.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h3rt3/eli5_henry_kissinger_why_he_was_revered_in_his/
|
{
"a_id": [
"caql8d0"
],
"score": [
10
],
"text": [
"Whenever Kissinger talks, you should listen, but you should also remember that he is the paragon of Realpolitik's virtues. To him, international politics is just a game, a game with winners and losers, and the only goal is to be the winner. Reading his books, you get a cold assessment of the world, but no mention of any strategic vision or desired end state.\n\nThe U.S. normalized relations with China thanks to secret talks Kissinger conducted through Pakistan. There was a lot of successful public diplomacy as a result of that (think exchange of pandas, ping-pong diplomacy, and even the popularization of Chinese food in America). It was long overdue, and there was no way the U.S. could ignore the largest country on earth any more.\n\nHe won the Nobel Peace Prize for the Paris Peace Accords, which looked like they could end the Vietnam War. It sounds ironic, given that no one would ever call Kissinger a pacifist, but the Peace Prize, unlike the Prizes in the science categories, is given for potential, rather than past actions. Giving Vietnam a chance at peace, when they'd been at war with the Japanese, the French, the U.S. (plus Australia, Korea and others), is a great goal, whatever the motivations behind it.\n\nKissinger is also credited with being behind the U.S. bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War (even though Cambodia was a neutral country). I don't know the level of collateral damage, but they likely included scores if not hundreds of civilian deaths.\n\nKissinger was also behind a military coup in Chile that deposed their democratically elected government.\n\nBy 1989, his only contribution to public life was as a pundit, but he did write a notorious editorial defending the Tian'anmen Square crackdown. This editorial may have been one of the reasons our response to the massacre was so tepid--we offered a lot of Chinese citizens asylum, and stopped selling some equipment to Chinese security forces (equipment that could only be used by security forces for torture, which was already forbidden under existing laws).\n\nTL,DR In a scary Cold War world where there's a constant threat of nuclear war, cold calculations are attractive, because all you want is an alternative to Armageddon. But when you look back, you have to ask if the actions you took were necessary or appropriate. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1t36lc
|
what is happening when you dye something? whether it be fabric, clothing, etc. what makes a good dye and what makes a cheap dye?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t36lc/eli5_what_is_happening_when_you_dye_something/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ce42ae5"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"This depends on what type of fiber you're dying. Cotton fibers dye differently than animal fibers (like hair or wool), which dye differently than synthetic fibers, which dye differently than leathers. Essentially what makes a good dye is the chemical reaction that takes place to make sure the dye lasts without fading (due to exposure to sunlight) or washing off - this is called colorfastness. The cheapest dyes are probably more like surface treatments than a true dye in that it is not developed to chemically bond to the fiber and will wash off very easily. Different methods are used based on the chemical composition of the fiber you're trying to use, so what might be a great dye for a cotton textile could be a terrible dye for a silk textile."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
1oy8ac
|
why recycle glass? isn't it made from sand?
|
I did a search and didn't get a straight answer. Hopefully, someone here can scratch this itch I've had for years. I suppose one would melt the glass so that it can be repurposed. Considering all that goes into taking used glass from the consumer and delivering it to the recycling plant, couldn't we just skip that and make new glass? I'd love to know the reason for this. Thanks you, ELI5 answerers!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oy8ac/eli5_why_recycle_glass_isnt_it_made_from_sand/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ccwtvd6",
"ccwtybx",
"ccwvw83"
],
"score": [
8,
3,
7
],
"text": [
"It's largely a matter of the expenditure of energy involved in making new glass rather than the actual materials. \n\nBut yes, a lot of things we 'recycle' aren't efficient its more that the government subsidies make them worth it for people. ",
"Well, it's about reducing our landfills more than the cost-benefit of recycled glass versus new glass (and plastic). Neither glass nor plastic biodegrades and it becomes (by volume) a huge chunk of what's in the landfills.\n\nSo recycling in NYC, Chicago, and many major metro's is about keeping the cost of recycling on par with trash collection and landfills -- with the benefit of reducing what's going into the landfills.",
"Recycling glass uses 65% of the energy it takes to create new glass"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
5lpyjc
|
when game developers release patches that "optimize" code, what exactly are they changing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lpyjc/eli5_when_game_developers_release_patches_that/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dbxl3ge",
"dbxl9bh",
"dbxlz5u"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
8
],
"text": [
"In programming, it's possible to make computations to a certain end result take less time. This can be achieved by creating more efficient algorithms, removing and streamlining redundant code, or simply removing excess lines that cause your computer to have to work harder to reach an end result.\n\nEspecially in game development, this can be an *extremely* complicated process, which is why I find it kind of rude to aggressively complain that a game is poorly optimized. Rendering and real-time detection algorithms can be extremely complex, and it's not simply a walk in the park to optimize them.",
"Could be any number of things such as:\n\n* increase performance through memory savings; they could have found an instance where they were storing and moving much more information than was necessary for a particular function\n\n* they found an area where an algorithm was not optimized (they were looping over a data set multiple times to accomplish a task that could be done with just one iteration)\n\n* they are actually tackling some technical debt that may not show any noticeable improvements to the user but will definitely improve maintainability of the code and improve future ability to add features and functionality ",
"This is a very general question that is hard to explain, but I'll give it a try. This analogy is relevant to all development, not just games.\n\nLet's say you are a computer and I ask you to find the name John Smith in a phone book. There a numerous ways to go about this process:\n\n1. You could start on page one and search every page until you find smith. (This is a quick easy way to program it, but it will take a long time if you are at the end of the phone book)\n\n2. You could start on the last page and search from the back, but this will take a long time if the name is John Allen.\n\n3. You could continuously cut the phone book in half ignoring the portion that doesn't contain your desired letter. Ex: start in the middle at \"L\". Since \"S\" is greater than \"L\" you can ignore the first half of the book. Go half-way between L-Z and continue cutting in halves until you reach John Smith.\n\nAt first, because it was fast and easy to program, the programmer may have implemented the search in example 1. But this is not consistently fast and could take a really long time to search. The best method for most cases is 3. It is significantly faster the majority of the time, but a bit harder to implement. They may \"optimize\" the code by searching with method 3 instead of 1, which will significantly speed up the search time.\n\nNow let's say the developers notice that John smith is being searched VERY frequently. Let's fix that so we don't have to search all the time. Now I'll program in a bookmark to that page so that I can immediately open it up to John Smith and retrieve the information I need without having to even search the name at all!\n\n\"Optimizing the code\" is usually just improving upon the logic used to solve a problem but not always, there are many many ways to \"optimize code\".\n\nThis is my best ELI5 analogy. Hopefully it somewhat shows the process of optimization. With an easily understandable example."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
12w1s7
|
if bananas are $0.50/lb at my supermarket how can a profit be made with all the shipping and farming costs?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12w1s7/eli5_if_bananas_are_050lb_at_my_supermarket_how/
|
{
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"c6yl1u6",
"c6yl9vz",
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],
"score": [
2,
8,
3
],
"text": [
"Those bananas have probably been there for a while. If they don't sell them today, they may have to throw them out.",
"Some things in a supermarket are sold at a really cheap price to make you want to go buy them. These are called loss leaders. This is done on the idea that you will buy more things at the supermarket than just the bananas, and profit can be made on these items to make up for the short fall. Supermarkets are also really tight with their costs and will squeeze the farming costs as low as they can.",
"Bananas are relatively easy to farm and ship. They grow in huge clusters, which can be harvested all at once, and they ripen best off the tree, so you can pick them when they're green, and they'll be ripe when they arrive at their destination (or, ideally, a few days after). And on top of that, they're often sold as loss leaders, like TomHellier said."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
1z3om1
|
why do stock markets fall during panics (i.e. 9/11, presidential assassination)? is every industry affected equally?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1z3om1/eli5_why_do_stock_markets_fall_during_panics_ie/
|
{
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"cfq7kv5",
"cfq884y",
"cfq9tw3",
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],
"score": [
2,
4,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"No that's what defensive (as in \"this sector is defensive\") means in investing lingo. ",
"Investors do NOT like uncertainty. Investors are well aware of--and profit from--standard risk-taking, which is (in general) a good thing.\n\nHowever, when there is a panic, it insinuates that it's something so out of the ordinary that no rational decisions can be made. That makes it difficult to predict market patterns, and as such people pull back on their investments and tend towards bonds and safe securities.\n\nWhile it probably affects the market as a whole, the negatives are distributed unevenly. Something like 9/11 caused defense contractors to rise. Oil shocks might cause transportation-dependent industries to plummet but other industies to rise. It all depends.",
"Imagine you go to the race track and you bet on a horse. This horse is awesome! It runs very fast. You grab the information paper and read all the info on the horse. Now, look here, It says this horse doesnt run so well in the mud. In fact he runs pretty damned bad. You just bet a bunch of money, and its about to rain. \"Man....what if I can sell my bets?\" you think. Guess what. Youre not the only one thinking it. Youd rather bet on a day when it isnt going to rain. \n\n\nDoes this help? The market HATES uncertainty. We have developed all sorts of strategies and financial tools to help us reduce uncertainty such as hedging and derivatives, but when something REALLY unusual happens it inevitably shocks the system a bit. ",
"Uncertainty is the driving factor, however one must not overlook the fact that the market tends to compound scares.\n\nLook at it like this, in 1930 when people started hearing that banks were insolvent (not having enough funds to meet obligations to clients who wish to with drawl their funds) the news spreading increased the amount of people attempt to with drawl their cash. This in turn caused more widespread fear about the banking industry and more people attempted to with drawl their funds.\n\nSimilarly, when people know that other investors are scared about the future of the market, the market will begin to pull funds into safer investments. The law of supply and demand then dictates that many securities must be over valued because they are not being bought at the offered price. This turns into a cyclical pattern of further divestment into safe securities.\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
6fq2ab
|
the reason why a television show has an opening on every single episode after the first initial episode of a new season... when it could be replaced with a short title introduction.
|
I've always wondered this since I was a kid, sorry if this has been asked before.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fq2ab/eli5_the_reason_why_a_television_show_has_an/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dik3n2t",
"dik5dth",
"dik7bo7"
],
"score": [
12,
2,
4
],
"text": [
"A lot of people are not progressing through the season, like on Netflix, but are glancing it during programmed television. It's important to brand identity and recognition by outsiders of glance-watchers.\n\nQuick, attach a category filter, before mod-bot arrives!",
"The longer time eaten up by intros, title screens, and credits, the less time actually needed for produced content. Production costs a lot of money so shaving off a couple minutes can really add up over the course of a season or multiple seasons. ",
"In no particular order:\n\n1) Tradition. Back in the days of silent movies, it was normal to display some cards with the title and credits at the beginning, along with some music to help signal to the audience that a new show was about to begin. Long introductions could indicate that something epic was about to be shown. Eventually, title sequences became normal and even expected. \n\n2) They can help people new to the show to figure out what's going on. Listen to the first minute of [this intro to Gilligan's Island,](_URL_2_) for example. Even if you've never seen the show before, it's pretty clear what the show is about and why it takes place in such an unusual environment. It also introduces new viewers to the characters. Even if the song isn't so direct with the song lyrics, the intro can indicate to the viewer things like that [The Simpsons](_URL_0_) features yellow people, including a family of a bratty boy, a nuclear plant employee, a housewife, a baby, and a more well-behaved girl. If you've never seen the show before, that's useful information. And if you have seen the show, the song is more pleasant than having these ideas re-explained every episode. \n\n3) It can set the mood or the theme of the episode. If an opening is [creepy,](_URL_4_) it can get you in the mood for something scary or mysterious. Likewise, if a show is packed with fights, explosions, and other exciting things, it can signal to viewers what they're in for even if the episode doesn't start out with that action from the first scene.\n\n4) It can provide the show with a distinctive or iconic element that people like about the show, making viewers more likely to enjoy the show. I don't know about you, but I know songs like [this](_URL_5_) and [this](_URL_1_) more than I know the shows themselves, and even after the series ended, people still remember the words to intros like [this.](_URL_3_)\n\n5) Highlighting the actors. Maybe someone isn't sure if they want to watch an episode, but then they may decide to stay once they see someone who looks quirky or famous."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR8WWFzrZAg",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmm3KTa601s",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8jhb5NnADM",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBe0VCso0qs",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qTrgCWpLlM",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb4C7vSByMM"
]
] |
|
4pwhco
|
why is iron so plentiful at the surface of the planet even though it sinks to the core during planetary formation?
|
From what I understand, differentiation should have sucked most of the iron into the core of the earth. Wouldn't this make iron somewhat rare for humans to access?
Does the answer have anything to do with the collision between Earth and the Mars-sized body that ended up creating the moon?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4pwhco/eli5why_is_iron_so_plentiful_at_the_surface_of/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d4od80s"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"The earth has a liquid core which allows trace amounts- relative to how much other junk there is on the planet that is not iron- to end up reaching the surface via plate tectonics and a few other factors. \n\n\n\nAnd now that I think about it, the viscosity of the core could be low enough- remember, the core might be called liquid but it's more like.... jello?- that physical forces, even if they're acting at geological time, end up working faster. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6djj8a
|
how is moisturizing cream different for men and women? why is every cream not unisex?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6djj8a/eli5how_is_moisturizing_cream_different_for_men/
|
{
"a_id": [
"di34ta9",
"di35yb1"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text": [
"Generally it's the same base. Often times they just change the scent and color of the packaging of men's creams to make it seem more \"manly\" and attract a crowd that may not normally buy the products they view as feminine. ",
"For the most part, marketing. The essential chemicals in, say, Old Spice and Dove are basically the same, but one is a product they think men will buy and the other is a product they think women will buy. Economics have shown that tends to work.\n\nThere are a lot of products that most women will not buy simply because it's \"for guys\", and vice versa. Certain of these products may feature different scents (men tend not to want to smell like flowerbeds, and women probably don't want to touch whatever the hell is in Axe with a 10-foot pole), but the moisturizing effects are probably all the same.\n\nEdit: words"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
avde1f
|
the sunflower plant is sterile and has no male or female organs, how does it reproduce?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/avde1f/eli5_the_sunflower_plant_is_sterile_and_has_no/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ehe5vdq",
"ehe60cn"
],
"score": [
8,
6
],
"text": [
"They aren't sterile. Each plant produces pollen, basically plant sperm, and also has a stigma where eggs are produced. Bees and other bugs transfer the pollen to the stigma on the same plant or pollen from one plant to stigma of another.",
"I think you may have just gotten some misinformation? The single head of a sunflower actually contains many tiny flowers. Some of those flowers (ray flowers) are sterile and the others (disc flowers) have both male and female organs. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3mpt6f
|
underground cities - the science behind their possibility
|
Are they possible? If so how how would they be possible. I know there are currently underground communities, but i mean a large scale city. We've explored underwater cities, I figured this is the next rational step.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mpt6f/eli5underground_cities_the_science_behind_their/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvh10ip"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I don't see any reason why it would be impossible. You'd have to deal with airflow, to make sure enough oxygen can get to the entire population, and enough less desirable gasses get removed. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2ywzn9
|
the shortage of organs for people who need them?
|
People die like every few seconds. I'm wondering with all of this happening, how are there people who cannot get Kidneys, Livers, and other organs. They seem to have to wait years, and some never get them. Shouldn't there be plenty?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ywzn9/eli5_the_shortage_of_organs_for_people_who_need/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cpdpbg9",
"cpdpch3",
"cpdpigq"
],
"score": [
9,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Not everyone is a donor. Even if they're a donor, depending on the circumstances of their death, not every organ is in a good enough condition to transplant into a waiting patient. Also, if they're a donor and their family says no, it means no. ",
"A lot of the people who die are not organ donors, and of those who are, not all of their organs can be donated.\n\nFinally, more importantly, the standards for a viable match are *extremely* strict. It doesn't matter if you're first on the list and fifty donors die all at once, if you don't match a single one of them.",
"The minute you die, your organs start to die so even if you want to be an organ donor, you have to die in a specific way, being brain dead, on life support and have your organs harvested while you are technically still alive. That doesn't happen very often. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
2gxmsk
|
why is it safe for dogs and cats to eat rice?
|
Shouldn't they lack the enzymes needed to digest these kind of foods since they are both carnivorous species?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gxmsk/eli5_why_is_it_safe_for_dogs_and_cats_to_eat_rice/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cknggz2",
"ckngi8n",
"ckngiax"
],
"score": [
2,
5,
5
],
"text": [
"dogs arent hypercarnivores. cats are, but its just means they digest them poorly.",
"dogs are omnivores. \n\nThis means that they can digest anything. And when I say anything, I mean ***anything*.**\n\n*source: My dwindling sock drawer.*",
"Well, no animal is a strict carnivore. Even dogs and cats sometimes eat herbs to aid digestion. And simple carbohydrates like rice or bread can be broken down by pretty much any organism. Even if they lacked the enzymes, the baceteria in their intestine would still do them a favour and break them down for them (resulting in a fartfest)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
btozln
|
why don’t the rest of the world recycle like in sweden?
|
[deleted]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/btozln/eli5_why_dont_the_rest_of_the_world_recycle_like/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ep0slpm",
"ep0t8rv"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Not actually recycling like most countries... Incinerating and using heat for heating homes.",
"Link is broken, but, regardless of the details of Sweden's program: recycling is expensive. It is usually cheaper to just produce new materials. Recycling has a carbon output as well. When you add up all the inputs and outputs, recycling comes out ahead in only one area: landfills - it reduces the need for landfill space. \n\nIf a country has plenty of space for landfills, it's hard to justify an extensive recycling program."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2udko2
|
why do police use sirens and lights when doing a raid?
|
Shouldn't they turn their lights and sirens off? I mean, wouldn't those together (or separately) alert the people of the raid know that they were coming? And by raid, I mean like a bust on an underage drinking party or something, not like a murder or terrorist organization. You'd think they would would want to be as stealthy as possible. The only reason I can think of is that they would want people on the street to move out of the way, but for a party, the party wouldn't end before they got there, right? So there would be no reason to hurry.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2udko2/eli5_why_do_police_use_sirens_and_lights_when/
|
{
"a_id": [
"co7fbjh",
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],
"text": [
"Someone in the hood called and complained about the noise, so now they _have_ to come. But cops really don't want to bust 200 drunk teenagers. For one, the paperwork would be terrible. Then you have to stay until 4 AM waiting for all the irate parents to be phoned and come and pick them up. Real pain in the ass.\n\nPlus, the cops remember what its like to be a teenager too. Im sure they dont like being the bad guys either. So long as its just a bunch of drunk kids making too much noise and there's no serious shit going on.\n\nNo, you roll up with the rack blaring, take your time getting out of the car, give everyone as much time as possible to run out the back door, hop the back fence and make tracks for home. Then all you have to deal with are the 3 really drunk kids passed out or puking in the bathroom.\n\nMuch less paperwork.",
"When it comes down to it, for underage drinking party, sometimes sirens are on. Most of the time they aren't. Back in the day we didn't know the cops came until they knocked on the door. Usually, they would say end it now, if we come back people are going to jail.\n\nIt's a lot of paper work to bring down and entire party. Usually they know kids are kids and breaking it up is enough. Again in my experience lights and sirens aren't on unless there was a report of a fight or something."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
j5z1s
|
the current state of the world economy. explain like i'm 5!
|
What's this all about? Seems bad!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j5z1s/the_current_state_of_the_world_economy_explain/
|
{
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"c29fcrf",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"We're fucked. Sorry about the strong language - was never good with children.",
"Well, there's enough blame to share, but the market crashed in 2008. People are still unsure of what exactly it was, but mostly people believe it was the trading of bad mortgages and futures. The American market dropped, and so did all the world's markets, as the world is increasingly dependent on each other, and the United States is by far the largest economy, and the center of the world's economic system.\n\nFast forward to now. Most nations, as a result of the recession, have lower tax revenue (income from taxes) because the economy has had negative or stagnant growth. Taxes apply to those things that are bought, invested, etc, and if that is not happening, revenue drops.\n\nSo in the United States, this resulted in a debt scare as spending went up (more unemployment, food stamp, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. payments) while revenue went down, resulting in a widening deficit, which is the amount of money per year a nation will owe, measured in income minus expenditures.\n\nThis weekend, Congress passed a bill to both raise the debt ceiling (allowing the US to increase it's debt) and cutting trillions in spending (which will lower the debt nominally).\n\nIn other nations, particularly Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the governments have had to issue 'Austerity Measures', which means cuts in spending and services, to make up for their deficits. This is obviously unpopular.\n\nArguably, these measures may lead to what is called a 'double-dip recession'. Governments are big customers to a lot of business, that own contracts to provide material goods (aircraft, vehicles, weapons, infrastructure) or otherwise provide services on their behalf (intelligence/military contractors). When spending is cut, these people may be out of the job - something that adds to our economic woes.\n\nSo yes, it is bad. And things may not be improving anytime soon - anywhere from a couple years to a decade or more.",
"We're fucked. Sorry about the strong language - was never good with children.",
"Well, there's enough blame to share, but the market crashed in 2008. People are still unsure of what exactly it was, but mostly people believe it was the trading of bad mortgages and futures. The American market dropped, and so did all the world's markets, as the world is increasingly dependent on each other, and the United States is by far the largest economy, and the center of the world's economic system.\n\nFast forward to now. Most nations, as a result of the recession, have lower tax revenue (income from taxes) because the economy has had negative or stagnant growth. Taxes apply to those things that are bought, invested, etc, and if that is not happening, revenue drops.\n\nSo in the United States, this resulted in a debt scare as spending went up (more unemployment, food stamp, social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. payments) while revenue went down, resulting in a widening deficit, which is the amount of money per year a nation will owe, measured in income minus expenditures.\n\nThis weekend, Congress passed a bill to both raise the debt ceiling (allowing the US to increase it's debt) and cutting trillions in spending (which will lower the debt nominally).\n\nIn other nations, particularly Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the governments have had to issue 'Austerity Measures', which means cuts in spending and services, to make up for their deficits. This is obviously unpopular.\n\nArguably, these measures may lead to what is called a 'double-dip recession'. Governments are big customers to a lot of business, that own contracts to provide material goods (aircraft, vehicles, weapons, infrastructure) or otherwise provide services on their behalf (intelligence/military contractors). When spending is cut, these people may be out of the job - something that adds to our economic woes.\n\nSo yes, it is bad. And things may not be improving anytime soon - anywhere from a couple years to a decade or more."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
4rxjl9
|
why do smartphones have an option to set the date to the 80's?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rxjl9/eli5why_do_smartphones_have_an_option_to_set_the/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d54xkcy"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"it may have something to do with [UNIX time](_URL_0_). Certainly Apple would tend to go that way."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time"
]
] |
||
7cgkar
|
if a hermaphrodite had full working sexual systems from both sides, would they be able to get themselfs pregnant? if so would it be classed as cloning? if not. why?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cgkar/eli5_if_a_hermaphrodite_had_full_working_sexual/
|
{
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"text": [
"_URL_0_\n\nIn theory, yes. In practice there have been no documented cases of a hermaphrodite with both reproductive systems working.",
"Although the phenotype is fixed at conception, we start out as sexless embryos whose structures later differentiate. \n\nThat is, the same gonadal structure differentiates into an ovaries or testicles. A penis and clitoris come from the same structure. The structure which becomes the uterus in a female becomes the vestigial [prostatic uricle](_URL_0_) in the male. So that's why you can't have both, the structure can go one way or another or, in rare cases, stay intersexed, but you don't get a second set of gonads.\n\nIn rare cases you could have mutiplied organs, like having a third arm. The interpretation of this is is that it's from an undeveloped twin, which may be a division into an identical twin that didn't finish, or a fraternal twin- which makes you a *chimera* (two organisms fused together). \n\nA person could be a chimera with a different-sexed twin and have a second set of gonads. However, it's not possible to develop as two genders with the same blood supply. The hormones that guide development are shared, and incompatible. One or both sets would be undeveloped and dysfunctional.\n\nIF, somehow, both sets DID develop and become functional, they would be gonads from fraternal twins, which is siblings. If they got themselves pregnant, somehow, the offspring would be the same as sibling incest, which comes with huge risk of birth defects. This has never happened with humans, or AFAIK any mammal in the lab.\n\nIF you had an identical-twin set of duplicate gonads, they would develop as the same gender (four testicles, lucky you! I guess...) IF you were literally a mad scientist and used two of them from the male embryo to replace another female embryo's ovaries with them via transplant, they retain the male phenotype and probably could not develop into ovaries. They would make testosterone and virilize the embryo into an intersexed individual incapable of reproduction. Also, you've committed a gross crime against humanity, but this is about the science. ",
"Generally a hermaphrodite doesn't have any fertile genitalia. Rarely they will have one set that is fertile, but the other set is not. I have never heard of a case where both sets are fertile, so I'm not sure if it's possible. \n\nIf it theoretically did happen, then no it would not be cloning. You see cloning is when you copy both sets of something's dna. In this example you would have two different gametes that are each randomly mixing and matching genes from both sets, plus adding in random mutations. The result is more like super inbreeding.",
"Meiosis, the generation of haploid gametes (eggs and sperm), guarantees some amount of genetic variation through genetic recombination for every single egg and sperm produced. You could have an offspring that might look and behave nearly identical to its parent, but to qualify as a clone, which means genetically identical, is next to impossible through self-fertilization.",
"OOH okay as a hermaphrodite I feel this is my time to shine!! It really isn’t the most documented condition in the world so it’s hard to say, I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t had a specialist examine me, just a dozen or so very helpful nurses and doctors from sexual health clinics and the like. A bit of science I don’t understand from several blood tests and tissue samples and it was discovered I have a 3rd sex chromosome, Likely a XXY so I have the double X to make all the girly bits and a Y for all the rest. The only problem is eggs and sperm take half of your dna randomly and they can’t have a half chromosome so you get some with single sex hormones, some with double, it’s a real clusterfluff. This means there’s a large number of possibilities on the sperm/ egg combos you can make from my dna just in terms of Xs and Ys and of course many of them will not produce a sustainable embryo. So to answer your question it’s a game of chance, you could theoretically have a child with the same DNA, it’s hard to say if it’s a clone as it blurs the line between sexual and asexual, and sadly there’s a large proportion of possibilities that will never survive. All the other not identical but survivable combinations would produce a child that has similar deformities to a child conceived by two siblings. Little end note for you I am pretty dyslexic so if that is worded terribly do ask what I mean and I can try break it down more:)\n\nThis is just added in an edit, I should probably say that it’s not exactly a perfect set off both down there, I’m talking very theoretical here, if you could easily extract an egg and a sperm and neither have any super genome fucked side effects, that’d be the case, I don’t actually know if I am fertile in either sexes case. The practicality of this is sorta nil 😕 ",
"Imagine a bowl of m & m's with a specific combination of colours. A clone of that bowl has the same number and colour combination of m & m's. The child of the above scenario is made by taking two handfuls from two bowls of the original bowl of m & m's. They come from the same pool, but may have different m & m colours.",
"No the child would not be a clone. Genetically it would be the same as if two siblings mated.\nAs far as I understand it, you can't create a clone through the germ DNA (sperm or egg) because that's always recombinant. Meiosis scrambles the genes during meiosis 1 so the combination of alleles is always different",
"I want the OP to go back and think about the question. Then take a look at brothers and sisters and ask why they don't look the same. That should be your question.",
"First off: hermaphroditism (having both functional male and female reproductive systems, either simultaneously or at different points in one’s life) does not exist in humans. Everyone in this thread seems to have confused it with intersex conditions, in which the reproductive system forms in a way that is not clearly male nor female. Intersex people have often been called hermaphrodites, but this is misleading and scientifically inaccurate. They do not have two separate reproductive systems; they have one which is neither male nor female and they are typically infertile.\n\nAs for actual hermaphroditic organisms, self-fertilization is pretty common, especially in plants. It does not result in clones, because genes recombine during fertilization. Imagine shuffling a deck of cards; you’ll wind up with all the same cards, but getting them in exactly the same configuration again after shuffling would be astronomically unlikely. The child would be extremely genetically similar to their parent, but would not be a clone.",
"Simplified: \n\nHumans have two versions of each chromosome. Every sperm or egg only has one of the two each, selected randomly from the parent's pairs. So if a hermaphrodite had a child with theirself, some of the child's chromosome pairs would have both variants the parent has, but others would only have one of the variants but double. \n\nIn theory it is possible that by chance all chromosome pairs get both different variants, you could consider it a clone then. But that's extremely unlikely to happen. \n\nIn most cases, the child would be a more incestuous version of their parent, not an identical clone. ",
"Perhaps I'm misreading the question, but I don't think it would be possible for a hermaphrodite to impregnate he selves even if they had illy functional male and female reproductive systems. Something tells me that the hormone imbalance would cause the pregnancy to fail almost immediately. As others have said though, if it were possible it would be statistically impossible for the offspring to be a clone, but not technically impossible. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism#Human_prevalence"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostatic_utricle"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
a8ovc3
|
in simple terms please. how does the rabies virus make you behave in an aggressive way?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8ovc3/eli5_in_simple_terms_please_how_does_the_rabies/
|
{
"a_id": [
"eccfxua"
],
"score": [
6
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"text": [
"The virus infects your brain, mainly Hippocampus and Nucleus caudatus, the first is responsible for memories, the second one for behavior.\nSo the virus basically short circuits your brain and does most of it's damage at the parts, that are mostly important to make you you."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
26ze9n
|
why do birds shit while flying?
|
I don't understand it. I like sitting when I poop, I couldn't imagine actually running or any physical activity whilst going boom boom.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26ze9n/eli5_why_do_birds_shit_while_flying/
|
{
"a_id": [
"chvwobv",
"chvx21g"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"Because they can.",
"They don't have any control of their sphincter, so they jus poop when they have to. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
28y3fg
|
will people who speak different languages always have accents when speaking english?
|
Sometimes when I hear someone speak English, it sounds a lot like they are speaking their native language again because they tend to speak too fast and don't pronounce some words fully. For example, Flight become "fly" and That becomes "dot".
is it almost unavoidable to have traces of foreign accents when you speak a different language at home? There are native born children who are fluent in English but still get asked "oh where are you from?"
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28y3fg/eli5_will_people_who_speak_different_languages/
|
{
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"text": [
"\nI have a friend who was born in Vietnam, but grew up speaking Cantonese. She now lives in California and studied Mandarin and English growing up. \n\nShe does not speak a word of Vietnamese but the three languages she does know are all spoken with a Vietnamese accent.\n\nI can't even fathom how that works.",
"I was born and raised in Paris, France. I came to the US 30 years ago and I still speak English with a French accent....which does not help on the phone. I could have worked on my accent, somewhat easy task but you have to be dedicated and spend a week or two, 8 hours a day, practicing listening to some American accent and repeating.",
"I speak Chinese and English. According to Americans and Chinese I do not possess an accent in either language.\n\nMy English is \"American\" and my Chinese is \"Shanghai-nese\" at worst.",
"My partner was born in Egypt, and raised in Kuwait... Has no accent to his English. \n\nHowever, after speaking Arabic for a bit, or talking to someone else with an accent, he starts to get one!",
"Literally everyone has an accent, regardless of their native language. (I live in Arkansas, for instance, and have a different accent than someone who lives in Nevada, or someone who lives in London, Sydney, or Ontario). Basically, yes, everyone who speaks English as a foreign language will have an accent, because that is relative- if a foreign speaker adopted a Southern US accent, for instance, it would sound distinct to other English speakers in the world- even those just a state away. ",
"As a relatively accent-less Englishman, I've noticed a large number of Scandinavians I know or have met speak with remarkably neutral English accents. In many cases you'd be hard-pressed to tell they weren't from somewhere in the UK or be very hard to pinpoint based on accent alone.",
"ACTUALLY (glasses pressed squarely to nose), there are accents of English (native speakers) that have what is virtually no dialectical accent. Specifically, it is called General American, which is in a region in the Midwest, but the Pacific Northwest is also very closely behind it. The way its measured is basically against the rules and conventions of written English (its not as if the British don't know what an 'R' is, they just happen to drop it in a lot of their spoken dialects).\n\nExtrapolate to people with another native language, and basically what makes their accents different is an acclimation to pronouncing certain \"phonemes\" (which is basically a single unit of language sound, similar to a syllable) differently than in English. For example, we dopn't really differentiate 's' from 'ts' in tsunami, but in Japanese, there is a distinction between 's' and 'ts', and it is apparent if you were just to say \"sunami\". \n\nPeople have mentioned Scandinavian speakers with very little dialectical difference, they are part of the Germanic languages, same as English, and as such share more similarities in pronunciation. I've also heard Swedish speakers with remarkable English, but that could be a biproduct of their Education system more than their accent, I can't really speak to HOW they got there.\n\nIt is always possible to simply \"impersonate\" a General American accent, here's Dave Chappelle doing it: _URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvg-ug9CvE"
]
] |
|
5tif7a
|
why do female kangeroos have 3 vaginas?
|
What's the biological or evolutionary advantage for female kangeroos to have 3 vaginas?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5tif7a/eli5_why_do_female_kangeroos_have_3_vaginas/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ddmq7d4"
],
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"text": [
"They don't, and it's not an advantage, it's an accident.\n\nThey have one real vagina on the outside which is a lot like other mammals. Further in it branches in three, one in the middle and two side routes. These are doing two different jobs; the central canal is where the baby joey exits, and the two side tubes are where sperm travels up to the uterus.\n\n_URL_0_ Article has a diagram which may help\n\nThe reason it's arranged this way is because the ureters (urine tubes from the kidney) pass in between the central canal and the two side canals, so there is no way developmentally for the three vaginal tubes to merge into one tube.\n\nThis weird arrangement of tubes also gives us male kangaroos with a scrotum *in front* of the penis.\n\nIn other mammals the ureters go in a different direction, no longer obstruct the formation of a single merged vaginal canal, and those mammals can go on to evolve larger babies.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/04/17/kangaroos-have-three-vaginas/#.WJ-mnVUrLIU"
]
] |
|
1qjmgg
|
nsa, fbi, dea, atf, cia, homeland security. why do we have so many different departments that seem like they do very similiar things? do other countries have this alphabet soup?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qjmgg/eli5nsa_fbi_dea_atf_cia_homeland_security_why_do/
|
{
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"text": [
"The UK has the Met, NCA, MI5, MI6, GCHQ, UKBA and all of the other local constabularies...\n\nSo yes, other countries also have this law enforcement acronym fetish, but here they do different things.\n\nThe Met and local constabularies are for day to day crime and policing, NCA is serious crime, GCHQ is national security, MI5 is military intel (within borders), MI6 is military intel (outside UK), UKBA is the Border Agency.",
"In the UK we have GCHQ(NSA), MI5(FBI/Homeland) and MI6(CIA).\n\nWe dont have a federal system so there are nationally enforced policies regarding drugs, alchohol and firearms that all police forces and judges have to abide by - so we dont need seperate agencies for those things\n\nEDIT: I may as well expand on what the initials mean:\n\nGCHQ - Government Communication HeadQuarters\n\nMI5 - Actually called The Security Service\n\nMI6 - Actually called The Secret Service\n\nMI stands for Military Intelligence and was based on thier WW2 designations, although it doesnt apply anymore they are still used as semi-official nicknames\n\n",
"Canada here, so basically the most similar country to yours on the planet. \n\nOur alphabet soup is a bit mushy too, but I'd say not as bad as yours. We don't really have a separate ATF or DEA for example, they fall into the hands of the regular police forces as expected. Intelligence is handled internationally largely by CSIS and domestically largely by the RCMP and other police forces, but we do have CSEC, basically the NSA analogue that deals with cryptography both for securing Canadian signals and presumably breaking other's.\n\nThere's also a lot less of a sense of competition or encroachment between agencies here; there's no big scandals or worry about CSIS working inside Canada, but the trust seems reasonably well places CSIS does as it's meant to and reports domestically based threats to the RCMP for them to handle, and similarly all other agencies are meant to and are generally not in scandal for ever failing to pass off what's not their concern to the appropriate agency. \n\nMeanwhile, as you say, it seems like a lot of the agencies in the USA are inherently overlapping in duty so it's easy to ask exactly when the local police should handle a drug dealer or the DEA, or what to do if there's a big crime ring with both a gun running business - ATF - drug dealing business - DEA - and they work across state borders - FBI.",
"Because they actually do very different things. \n\nNSA deals with collecting/analyzing information, as well as surveillance of targets. The NSA falls under the Department of Defense though, which is different then the other organizations you listed. \n\nThe FBI are INVESTIGATORS, they are basically Federal \"cops,\" in that they will investigate any crimes on US soil that are Federal in nature. And as such, they fall under the Dept of Justice. \n\nDEA also falls under the DOJ, and is in charge of Drug Enforcement, whether thats interdiction, or taking down Heisenberg. \n\nATF also falls under the DOJ, and is similar to the DEA, but they deal with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. \n\nCIA is an intelligence agency, and the only independent one, and reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Whereas the FBI handles domestic investigations, the CIA handles intelligence and spying abroad, and usually works out of Embassies across the globe. \n\nHomeland Security is actually a Cabinet Post, much like the Deptartment of defense. While the DoD handles military abroad, the DoHS handles similar issues domestically, (i.e. terrorism)",
"Originally, There were the cabinets. They were subsets of the presidents authority. So you had Dept of War (later Defense), Interior, Transportation, State, etc. There's about a dozen of them. As the government got bigger, each Dept needed smaller departments to do things for them. One of the first things they each needed, was \"cops\" or law enforcement. The ATF was the Tax cops (Dept of Revenue). The FBI was the Dept of Justice. The CIA was the Dept of State. The NSA was the Dept of Defense. Homeland Security was a merger of Customs & Border Protection, Immigration, Coast Guard, Secret Service (which used to be under IRS).\n\nIt's actually logical when you look at how they were created. They are all \"cops\" for the Major Department they fall under.",
"FBI is mostly domestic, the DEA deals with drugs only (and I remember reading that there are very few agents... Maybe 200 or so), ATF is exactly what it says--mostly deals with crime related to smuggling those things, CIA are the spies. NSA and Homeland Security seem the same to me, though. I think HS was put in place to specifically fight terrorism after 9/11, so it's introduction was to show that the government was doing something. We do have overlap, but I think there are subtle and important differences"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
3eb3ab
|
how hackers can hack a car?
|
I just a video from [WIRED](_URL_0_) where 2 hackers hack a car and make it do what they want.
how is it possible that out of the blue they target a car and just hack it with anything? or this video is fake and they did put a chip or something in the car that enable them to do those stuff?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eb3ab/eli5_how_hackers_can_hack_a_car/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctd81am"
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12
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"text": [
"In order to guarantee the reliability of the numerous electronic systems on a car, they are all connected with a system called the CAN Bus. In a modern car, everything from the spark plug to the oxygen sensor is connected to the car's computer via this bus. \n\nThis bus isn't like the internet, where the end users are protected with firewalls and data can take numerous different routes if something goes wrong - everything runs on the same wire. On the one hand this is great, since you can guarantee the transmission of crucial data (e.g. firing a spark plug) without any significant delay. But it also allows all devices connected to that cable to manipulate the car's systems. For example you could simply prevent the spark plugs from firing, or deactivate the fuel pump. Or you could send misleading sensor data that causes the car to shut down.\n\nSo what usually happens when someone hacks a car, is that he compromises a device connected to the CAN bus. There was one case where a BMW had a wireless pressure sensor in the wheels, and it was possible to hijack the communication between these sensors and the transmitter to stop the engine of the car from the outside.\n\nBut the most vulnerable part is a car's infotainment system, if that has access to the internet *and* can write messages on the CAN bus. These systems can potentially be hacked just like a regular computer with internet access can, and then be used to communicate with the CAN bus from the outside of the car. "
]
}
|
[] |
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs"
] |
[
[]
] |
|
21up3z
|
why does my "safe" stainless water bottle smell like its trying to kill me.
|
40 oz 18/8 stainless Klean Kanteen
Why does my expensive and "safe" 18/8 food grade stainless bottle smell like it is trying to poison me (strong metallic smell) if I leave water in it for a while.
(Noticeable smell after 4 hours or so, terrible after 24)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21up3z/eli5_why_does_my_safe_stainless_water_bottle/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cggoioe",
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2,
9
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"text": [
"Don't you regularly clean your bottle? just because it's made of metal doesn't mean that it can't harbor germs/bacteria if you don't wash it out every now and then",
"Either algae or bacteria.\n\nStep 1: wash thoroughly with brush + very hot water.\n\nStep 2: Fill with vinegar/water mix, let soak.\n\nStep 3: Rinse.\n\nStep 4: Fill with bleach/water mix, let soak.\n\nStep 5: Repeat step 1. \n\nStep 6: Enjoy."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
6iijsf
|
what happens when you withdraw 1 million (or more) dollars in cash?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6iijsf/eli5_what_happens_when_you_withdraw_1_million_or/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dj6io1l",
"dj6k1q5"
],
"score": [
12,
3
],
"text": [
"Your bank tells you to get lost.\n\nBanks don't generally have a million bucks of cash on hand. If you want to make that kind of withdrawal you must arrange it ahead of time. The bank will then organize transport, security and a time and place for the handover. Once that's done it works like any other withdrawal.",
"[The Oatmeal](_URL_0_) withdrew $200k+ once and [talked about the process](_URL_2_) (so he could [take this picture](_URL_1_))"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk_letter",
"http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/blog/charity_money/fu.jpg",
"http://boingboing.net/2012/07/09/oatmeal.html"
]
] |
||
2wbf4r
|
why are cereals imported from america to uk so expensive?
|
I'm wondering this after I saw a box of Cap'n Crunch at our local Tesco for £7 a box. Just wondering why this price is so extortionate?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wbf4r/eli5_why_are_cereals_imported_from_america_to_uk/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cop92f4"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"**1. Import duty.** (Almost) anything brought in from outside the EU has an import tax applied. This is to encourage people to buy things from withing the EEA. \n**2. Transport costs.** It's from the USA. Most of the cereal isle is from Europe. It costs more money to get it across the Atlantic."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
32rx5v
|
why do some oxygen masks have small plastic bags on them?
|
Sometimes they inflate and sometimes they don't, so what's their purpose?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32rx5v/eli5_why_do_some_oxygen_masks_have_small_plastic/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cqe2kub",
"cqe2mud"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text": [
"Those are called nonrebreather masks. The bag is there to allow you to take a deep breath while still pulling 100% oxygen, even if you are inhaling faster than the O2 is coming out of the tank. On airplanes, they may not inflate because it's slightly less important to do there when everyone is still healthy than in the back of an ambulance when trying to bring someone back from the dead.",
"So a non rebreather mask has a reservoir that is not inflated until its in use. The purpose of it is once its connected to a o2 tank, the reservoir fills allowing the patient to breath in the air. The mask does not supply suffecient oxygen unless the bag is filled. Each breath the reservoir will deplete and upon exhalation the oxygen from the o2 tank will replenish the bag."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
450ika
|
what purpose do the primaries serve?
|
As a Brit, I don't have much understanding of how the American election system works
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/450ika/eli5_what_purpose_do_the_primaries_serve/
|
{
"a_id": [
"czuavdd"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Each political party has a number of members who each want to be the party's chosen candidate in our general elections. The primaries are mini-elections held where only members of the respective party can vote (only Democrats can vote in the Democratic Primary, only Republicans in the Republican Primary), and they vote to choose their candidate for the general election. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
5090fn
|
why are illicit drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroin etc. illegal?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5090fn/eli5_why_are_illicit_drugs_like_cocaine_meth_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d725mwb",
"d725rf6",
"d7262xf",
"d726biy",
"d728457",
"d729ogr",
"d729yuk"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
3,
4,
5,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"They're addictive, and more dangerous for the population vs, say, alcohol. They make people do really shitty things. They aren't something people do socially or casually. Heroin is addictive from the beginning. It's an attempt to keep our society from harming itself. ",
"The same reason alcohol is legal: a lucrative status quo managed to take hold for varied reasons in each respective case and now there's an established and very entrenched economy in place. Oh, and, drugs are bad. Mkay? ",
"Their potential medicinal benefits are overshadowed by their potential for harm which puts them in schedule 1. Though marijuana should not be categorized in this schedule, every other drug should remain there. The pathways these drugs work on are useful for therapy at proper doses and in proper dosage forms accompanied with monitoring, but in general the public will not benefit on an individual level if these drugs are legal. Society may benefit from legalizing drugs, but the individual still suffers. ",
"The whole philosophy underpinning American drug law is that **all drug use** outside of a medical context is \"abuse\". Abuse is immoral & should thus be illegal.\n\nFor historical reasons, tobacco, alcohol & caffeine aren't treated as \"drugs\" by these laws.\n\nTechnically - cocaine & meth aren't completely illegal, just restricted. They have some medical uses.",
"The answer to any \"Why is it illegal ...?\" question is \"Because the legislators in question agreed that a law should be written that says that.\" Legislators don't have to have good reasons, though they often have good-ish if not completely thought out reasons.\n\nIf you'd like to argue that some of these substances ought or ought not be illegal, this is not the sub. Perhaps /r/ChangeMyView would be more to your liking.",
"A lot of people are saying its because its considered immoral. While that may be the motivation for some, the rationale is that the harm drugs do to society outweighs people's personal freedoms. Its similar to the rational used to make school mandatory, just flipped around. We are willing to encroach on your freedoms and make you attend school because the benefit of having an educated population is worth more to us than your right to do what you will with your time/children.",
"Legality and morality aren't always 1:1- In this case it was simply a legislative decision. I'm sure it was a combination of \"This is better than the alternative\" and \"We can't regulate and tax this industry\" frankly. Big pharma has equally addictive drugs that are legal and regulated, so it's an ongoing debate.\n\nHowever, there are statistically documented repercussions to having addictive substances be legal. The proclivity of substance abuse in cities has correlations with...\n\n- Higher crime rate\n- Higher unemployment rate\n- Higher displaced population\n\nThese sorts of problems have obvious downstream economical impact on cost of living, for example. \n\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
klpf5
|
why does standard & poor have so much power in determining a country's credit rating?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/klpf5/eli5_why_does_standard_poor_have_so_much_power_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"c2langc",
"c2langc"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Stand & Poor have power to determine a country credit rating because people in the past have said their right.\n\nStand & Poor is still just a company, and it's just their opinion if a country has good or bad credit rating. The problem is that some investments like say pensions really want to make sure that their investments don't go bad. They have rules that they can only invest in thing that will give them some money (The amount of money that is returned is less important then the fact that some money will be give to them.) So these pensions go to companies and are like hey what is something we invest in that no matter what will pay out. A company like Stand & Poor does some research and says this is what you should invest in. It's AAA it's totally going to pay out.\n\nBut it's still their opinion, the problem becomes that if your a business man running a pensions or your company has pensions and you used Stand & Poor to choose what to invest in you can't say \"Stand & Poor is wrong about America's credit rating.\" and then say \"But they are right about the other investment I made.\" Stand & Poor are only important because people in the past have said their right. They've invested and used Stand & Poor to make other people invest with them. If they were to say \"Stand & Poor aren't right now.\" Then people would start to think Stand & Poor weren't right about other things.",
"Stand & Poor have power to determine a country credit rating because people in the past have said their right.\n\nStand & Poor is still just a company, and it's just their opinion if a country has good or bad credit rating. The problem is that some investments like say pensions really want to make sure that their investments don't go bad. They have rules that they can only invest in thing that will give them some money (The amount of money that is returned is less important then the fact that some money will be give to them.) So these pensions go to companies and are like hey what is something we invest in that no matter what will pay out. A company like Stand & Poor does some research and says this is what you should invest in. It's AAA it's totally going to pay out.\n\nBut it's still their opinion, the problem becomes that if your a business man running a pensions or your company has pensions and you used Stand & Poor to choose what to invest in you can't say \"Stand & Poor is wrong about America's credit rating.\" and then say \"But they are right about the other investment I made.\" Stand & Poor are only important because people in the past have said their right. They've invested and used Stand & Poor to make other people invest with them. If they were to say \"Stand & Poor aren't right now.\" Then people would start to think Stand & Poor weren't right about other things."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
3h9wkk
|
how do guns have and change multiple firing modes?
|
I just suddenly thought about it today and I find it kind of strange, especially for burst fire weapons. How come all you need to do is turn a little lever to have it not fire, fire once, 3 times or fully automatic? How does the gun always only fire a set amount of bullets in burst?
Anybody have any ideas?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h9wkk/eli5_how_do_guns_have_and_change_multiple_firing/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cu5jo99"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Check out this video, it shows how the M16 does 3-round burst. It may not apply to other weapons.\n\n_URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxwPEL8winI"
]
] |
|
7cahvw
|
in pre-calc we’ve been dealing with sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant waves. what are the actually telling me, what is the purpose of putting numbers in front of them (2sinx or sin2x) and what would i use them for?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7cahvw/eli5_in_precalc_weve_been_dealing_with_sine/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dpodbhy",
"dpodjrd",
"dpoet8t",
"dpoex1l"
],
"score": [
7,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"2 sin x is the same as 2 * sin(x).\n\nsin 2x is the same as sin(2 * x).\n\nThe items I show in parentheses here are the inputs to the *sin* function. The other random 2 at the beginning, outside those parentheses, is multiplying the *output* of that function.",
"Well trigonometric functions are used for all sorts of things. An easy example is in physics, if you want to model the motion of *waves* (e.g. light), then as I'm sure you can imagine, it's very natural to use the sine or cosine function. Unfortunately, not all waves are exactly 1 unit in height, and sine and cosine waves all have an amplitude of 1. So, we throw other numbers in there to 'modify' the function. For example, 2*sin(x) modifies the sine function by changing the amplitude (or height of the wave) to 2. Similarly, sin(2x) makes the wavelength (or period) or the wave shorter by half.\n\nEDIT: Sorry, missed part of the question. One way to view functions (in general) as a sort of black box: you give some input, and it gives you an output. In the case of trigonometric functions, the input you give is one of the acute angles of a right angle triangle, and the output you get is the ratio between the lengths of sides. The sine tells you the ratio between the opposite side length and the hypotenuse, etc. This is what SOHCAHTOA is a mnemonic for. (Of course, you can feed *any* (more or less) number into trig functions, but this is just the generalization you get when you view a right triangle as [any point on the unit circle](_URL_0_), connected to the origin (by the hypotenuse) and with a perpendicular dropped down to the x-axis.)",
"Right now you are learning how to manipulate trig functions, by manipulating paramaters of thd function. This is teaching you the foundations of mathmatics that you could use for a lot of things later, because the trig functions center on a ratio as a function with an input as theta. \n\nMultiplying outsids of everything, like 2sinx, just increases the amplitude, but the mechanics of the sign wave stay the same. Multiplying 2 by x, like sin2x, changes the input, and so the functions mechanics change, and in this case the period will change instead of the amplitude.\n\nTo learn this stuff just think \"it will be super important later\", then grab some flashcards and write out some functions and do some practice problems until you got it down. \n\nOnce you actually get into calculus the real fun begins with the trig functions, especially when you.. integrate using them.. -shudder-",
"[This](_URL_0_) is a useful visualisation of sine and cosine, particularly if the definitions as ratios of sides of a right-angled triangle leave you wondering how they end up with negative values. The other functions can also be linked to the lengths of lines on that diagram, but it gets cluttered if you mark them all.\n\nOthers have covered 2sin(x) and sin(2x), but it's worth mentioning sin^(2)x too. It means (sin x)^(2), which is unusual notation. For a general function f(x), we use f^(2)(x) to mean f(f(x)), not (f(x))^(2)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://superintendentemily.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/5/1/23512632/5027961_orig.gif"
],
[],
[
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Circle_cos_sin.gif"
]
] |
||
3fyx8c
|
why will a liquid "climb" a fabric if you dip the lower portion in?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fyx8c/eli5_why_will_a_liquid_climb_a_fabric_if_you_dip/
|
{
"a_id": [
"ctt9u4y"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Wicking AKA Capillary Action\n\n\n\nCapillary action occurs because water is sticky, thanks to the forces of cohesion (water molecules like to stay close together) and adhesion (water molecules are attracted and stick to other substances). Adhesion of water to the walls of a vessel will cause an upward force on the liquid at the edges and result in a meniscus which turns upward. The surface tension acts to hold the surface intact. Capillary action occurs when the adhesion to the walls is stronger than the cohesive forces between the liquid molecules. The height to which capillary action will take water in a uniform circular tube is limited by surface tension and, of course, gravity.\n\nNot only does water tend to stick together in a drop, it sticks to glass, cloth, organic tissues, soil, and, luckily, to the fibers in a paper towel. Dip a paper towel into a glass of water and the water will \"climb\" onto the paper towel. In fact, it will keep going up the towel until the pull of gravity is too much for it to overcome.\n\nSource: _URL_0_"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"http://water.usgs.gov/edu/capillaryaction.html"
]
] |
||
fq8sue
|
what’s the difference between bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder?
|
Asking for a friend.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fq8sue/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_bipolar/
|
{
"a_id": [
"flp99l8",
"flp9wos",
"flpc4bd",
"flpqbby",
"flpqi3l"
],
"score": [
16,
3,
6,
14,
11
],
"text": [
"I am not a doctor but my personal experience is that bipolar disorder sufferers swing between \"highs\" and \"lows\". Highs aren't necessarily happy but they are very active, manic. Lows aren't necessarily sad or depressed, but they are lethargic and slow.\n\nBorderline personality is a like a person who is walking into the ocean. They keep walking as though their intention is to drown themselves. They fling themselves violently into the ocean all while screaming at you and everyone else to help them, to save them. You try to pull them back but they physically fight you to keep walking into the ocean, even while the wail and cry that you aren't doing enough to help them. They curse you and hate you for not helping them, all while clawing at you to let them go and kill themselves. You finally do let them go because you are bleeding and exhausted and then they either drown or write a book about how much stronger they are alone.",
"I'm not a professional and self-diagnosis doesn't help. however I'm bipolar and can tell you it's like a roller-coaster, some days it feels like everything and everyone is out to get you. Then you have days where you can do everything, you have all these Ideas that is going to get you rich, you make very rash decisions without worrying about the outcome. My SO often walks on egg shells not knowing what mood I'm in because anything can piss me off. And that's with me on meds. I've been on medication for over 25 years, some work for awhile, some make it worse. The medication never stopped the roller-coaster just makes the swings better. The highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low. Just remember, there's help out there. Seek help and a good support system helps out. Tell your friend never be scared to ask for help.",
"This is a trusted source about mental health issues comparing the two: _URL_0_",
"Bipolar disorder is an emotional-regulation disorder. Patients experience long periods of regular-old depression, but they are occasionally punctuated by brief periods of euphoria and high energy.\n\nBorderline personality disorder is a controversial diagnosis, some psychiatrists have questioned its usefulness. But generally it's considered a disorder of interpersonal *attachment*. Patients do not do well at forming healthy, stable attachments to other people. They experience extreme emotional dependence on people, but these attachments are volatile and often erupt into conflict where a patient severs attachment and hates the person they were attached to. Sometimes alternating back and forth.\n\nIt might be easy to think of it as bipolar is about emotions, and borderline is about relationships.",
"I had a gf for years and eventually started hating her. I am 99% certain she had Borderline Personality Disorder. One day I realized I hated her and had to get rid of her.\n\nLet me back up. Her problems arose because her parents were more focused on their own problems, when she was a kid, and she eventually had to go live with a cousin when she was a teenager. So she basically had problems with abandonment. She was always afraid I would abandon her, too. Ironically, that's what she forced me to do.\n\nEverything was cool until I moved in with her. She would say she loved me, then act like she hated me. She was verbally abusive, and sometimes even physically so. Suddenly I wasn't allowed to have anyone else in my life.\n\nMy best friend moved far away, and I was excited when he came to visit my area. I was allowed 10 minutes with him, and that was it! I put my foot down, and she took a piece of meat out of my arm with her teeth. I still remember her picking the hairs out of her teeth. The weirdest part? I looked at the other arm and realized it also had a scar in the same place. She had done it before and I *repressed it*."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[
"https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/June-2017/Borderline-Personality-Disorder-and-Bipolar-Disord"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
1qjrd0
|
why, unlike other nineteenth century accessories like stocks and monocles, are neckties not yet obsolete when they have no particular purpose?
|
UPDATE: Or, why are they still in fashion for that matter?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qjrd0/eli5why_unlike_other_nineteenth_century/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cddgydm",
"cddjcsu"
],
"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"They have always been decoration / fashion items not functional items.\n\nMonocles are replaced by glasses, contacts and laser eye correction as vision aides.\n\nYou don't need to keep your pants up with suspenders any more since elastic waistbands and belts generally replace them.\n\nyou don't need to keep your socks up with straps anymore also due to elastic in them.\n\nThe difference is things you have to where for function vs things people where for fashion. This doesn't stop some people from putting on old function items for fun and fashion however.",
"It might have something to do with subtly pointing to and symbolizing our genitals. Sock garters don't do that. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
4a1wi1
|
how does amoxicillin work within the body to fight infection?
|
I'm sick with a sinus and throat infection and I was given a 500mg dose of amoxicillin. Once I take the pill, how does it interact in my bloodstream to fight infection?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a1wi1/eli5_how_does_amoxicillin_work_within_the_body_to/
|
{
"a_id": [
"d0wpwvk"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Bacteria are surrounded by cell walls. \nThese cell walls get built by special proteins in the bacteria, they are needed to put the pieces of the cell wall together. \nAmoxicillin( or really any pencicillin derivative) gets stuck in these proteins, so they stop working.\nSince these proteins don't work, the bacteria can't make more cell walls, so they can't reproduce. \n \nThat being said bacteria have evolved some means of resistance. Some can change the amoxicillin molecules so they can't get stuck anymore, others build cell walls using proteins that amoxicillin can't get stuck in."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
2nammn
|
"triggers"
|
I have read that word very often by now, and i think i understand what they are. They are words, objects or actions which make some people uncomfortable. (Correct me if i'm wrong). But how do people get triggers, and why does it seem like there are thousands of people who have them, but i've never seen such a person in real life?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nammn/eli5_triggers/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cmbwa3w",
"cmbxx3o"
],
"score": [
2,
2
],
"text": [
"You probably have seen someone who has a trigger in real life. Often times an unhealthy mental state can still be covered up and unobtrusive. \n\nRandom things could be triggers. If a person was beaten horribly throughout their childhood with a soccer trophy and resorted to self-harm or dissociation to cope, then the sight of a soccer trophy could defintely trigger that dissociation or unhealthy state. However, these things can be subtle and you won't notice if someone is triggered usually. No one screams \"I'M TRIGGERED AND NOW I'M DISSOCIATING\", as much as people believe.",
"I think they are a little more than words, objects, or actions that make people uncomfortable. I have PTSD as a result of being sexually assaulted at knife point. When you have a trauma like that your brain treats it differently from other memories. The nerve center of the brain, the amygdala, constantly monitors your sensory input for similar things. When it triggers, it opens all the pathways and takes you to the emotional state when it happened. Which is to say, very, very afraid. My PTSD triggered last year when I turned around and saw a man near me holding what looked like a knife in his hand. I was like a deer in the headlights. I couldn't move or speak. Finally he says hello to me and I manage to choke out a very rough hello. I look at him a little longer and then walk away. It was only after I had walked away that I realized what my brain saw as a knife was really one of those pruning saws at the end of a stick. Halfway into the original event I got so scared I blacked out. Sometimes when it triggers, I blackout. That day I got lucky. Oh yeah, the guy was black and probably thought the whole thing was about race. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
6w9tkw
|
is there a difference between sleeping late and waking up late vs sleeping early and waking up early?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6w9tkw/eli5_is_there_a_difference_between_sleeping_late/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dm6flyu",
"dm6g9bl",
"dm6hp80",
"dm6j80e",
"dm6jehl",
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"dm6w1rz",
"dm6wkcz",
"dm6xb2q",
"dm6xhrd"
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"score": [
10,
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1496,
169,
116,
5,
3,
7,
2
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"text": [
"It shouldn't, as long as that's an appropriate amount of time for you to be sleeping. \n\nI think there's some kind of stigma associated with sleeping later into the morning, maybe stemming from when we were all farmers and had to rise with the sun, or with the advent of the 9-5 shift. It makes a person who \"sleeps in\" seem unproductive, irresponsible, lazy, etc... \n\nBut these are just outside observers who are used to their own schedules. You're not hurting yourself or anyone else by having a sleep schedule like that. It's just a societal thing. Besides, plenty of people do just fine working late shifts, maybe not even getting home until 1 or 2 AM and sleeping later into the day. It's just how they live. ",
"As long as you're consistent, no. Shift work disorder is a thing, and something to be avoided, but if you have a consistent schedule it's not inherently bad for you.",
"I think, perhaps slightly contradicting what others have said, if you get more sun exposure due to being awake more during daylight hours it could have an impact on your health.",
"Actually, there's quite a bit of a difference. Our bodies are trained to sleep at night and stay awake during the day. If you're sleeping in the daytime instead of the nighttime your body is exposed to more UV light while you're sleeping through the sun & while you're awake through artificial light. This leads to more problems such as increased risk of cancer, harder/longer time falling asleep, harder/longer time waking up, waking up more tired, diabetes, and other health problems. In fact, night shift workers have a 4x higher chance of getting cancer compared to their daytime colleagues.\n\nSource: I wrote my college thesis on the effect of artificial light exposure on sleep & overall health.\n\nEdit: Woah this blew up a lot more than I expected it to. In my attempt to simplify things and 'ELI5' I seemed to have raised more questions than I have answered. Here's a list of sources I've used in my thesis which should rectify the points I've listed above. I don't really feel comfortable linking my own thesis, so hopefully, this will do. As /u/ILikeNeurons stated **this is a relatively new field of research and in certain areas, we don't know enough information to make a proper conclusion.**\n\n* [Effect of Light on Human Circadian Physiology](_URL_1_)\n* [Circadian rhythms in liver metabolism and disease](_URL_7_)\n* [Role of Melatonin in Cancer Treatment](_URL_3_)\n* [Sleep Deficiency and Deprivation Leading to Cardiovascular Disease](_URL_5_)\n* [Adolescents’ Electronic Media Use at Night, Sleep Disturbance, and Depressive Symptoms in the Smartphone Age](_URL_2_)\n* [Melatonin is an efficient antioxidant](_URL_0_)\n* [Cardiovascular diseases: protective effects of melatonin](_URL_4_)\n* [Effects of melatonin on cardiovascular diseases: progress in the past year](_URL_6_)\n\nOne thing I want to point out is that yes using blackout curtains, sleeping in a room without windows, etc. can help counteract most of what these studies are stating. BUT any light/artificial light exposure in the hours leading up to bed and while you are sleeping shifts your circadian rhythm, suppresses melatonin production, and disrupts sleep. This leads to an increase in the detrimental health effects such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension, etc. \n\n**It is the sleep deprivation, deficiency, and suppression of melatonin, that mainly causes these problems**\n\nFeel free to message me any questions you guys might have (as many of you have done already), I'll be happy to answer them.",
"There are two hormones at work that regulate your sleep pattern. Serotonin and melatonin.\nSerotonin is associated with sun-light and helps you wake up, giving you focus.\nMelatonin is produced at night and makes you feel drowsy, ready for bed.\nIf you don't follow the sun-cycle for waking up and going to bed you risk disturbing the Serotonin/Melatonin balance.\nLow levels of serotonin are associated with a depression called SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).",
"I worked 6p to 2a, the exact opposite of what some consider a normal shift. I stayed up until about 8a, slept until 3:30p. I had blackout curtains to help me sleep and the office had those fake sunlight lamps. I was more productive after work because there was less distraction from others. Once I switched to now working 6a to 2p, I haven't noticed a difference. Only thing that sucked was all the bars were closed when I was leaving work. ",
"If you're consistently going to bed, say, 3am and waking up at 11am, it wouldn't be TOO much different (other than the afore mentioned light's role on your circadian rhythm situation), but if you wake up at 8am one day and don't go to sleep until 3am and wake up at 11am the next day, you're going to mess something's up. For one, your circadian rhythm, which in turn can cause heart problems, metabolism changes (ones that cause weight gain by increasing cortisol levels), and mood.\n",
"Solar exposure would change depending on where you live and what time of year. People forget that we are not nocturnal and derive many vitamins from the sun such as melatonin and vitamin D. Assuming sun exposure would change with the different sleep times, you would feel significantly shittier going to sleep late and waking up late.",
"Absolutely. I'm not an expert in this field but I am someone with a *terrible* sleep schedule.\n\nMost days I'm awake for ~14hrs, the earlier I go to sleep, the less sleep I need, the later (from the norm) I need WAY more sleep.\n\nUsing 10PM as a base, every hour I stay up *past* that, I need one more hour of sleep. I'm fine with waking up at 6AM if I go to sleep at 10PM but if I go to sleep at 5AM (which is the norm), I need 14-15hrs worth of sleep.\n\nSomething I've realized with experience, your body KNOWS when it's day time and when it's night time, if you're not following the 10AM-12M to 6AM-8AM sleeping pattern, you will suffer. I've spent a day or two without any sunlight, clocks or human interaction and my body still knows, it somehow keeps track.\n\nThe effects of sleeping late include digestion problems, intolerance to ANY food for a good 4hrs after waking up, *severely* reduced REM, fog-brain, heavy limbs, lethargicness, lack of reality, productivity, increase in creativity, and most strangely, your empathy and sympathy for others goes to virtually zero.\n\n",
"I feel a lot better now going to sleep at 12-1 and waking up at like 8 than I do going to sleep at like 4 abs waking up at 12 "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/016749439400593V",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2717723/",
"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10964-014-0176-x",
"http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/32/7/2747.long",
"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-079X.2007.00518.x/abstract;jsessionid=D07B505CC0EFBE8EC819425633BFD63C.f02t01",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4606167/",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947538/",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211383515000052"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
15uknp
|
why do i feel more nervous performing in front of a small group of coworkers than a crowd of hundreds?
|
I recently participated in a talent competition and won the honors of best act with my vocal percussion performance. This is something I should be proud of, and yet when my coworkers all want to see this and go "beatbox for us!" I immediately feel shy when called out and really don't want to do it. They're expecting me to do a little performance at my goodbye party on Friday (I'm changing departments)- why do I feel nervous and embarrassed when thinking about performing for this small group of coworkers, and would rather perform in front of the 800-1000 people I did at the performance again than do this small thing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15uknp/eli5_why_do_i_feel_more_nervous_performing_in/
|
{
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"Odds are, when you were performing in front of the large crowd, you weren't imagining them all individually, and thinking \"I wonder how Jeff will like my performance\" about each individual. This makes the crowd seem impersonal, they are just people, not necessarily people you care about or people you feel self-conscious around. When a small group of people come around and ask you to beatbox, it is more personal of an experience since you can literally **see** their reactions and more exactly see how they feel. Basically, if you can see someone reacting to your performance, it makes it more personal, which you can't really do with a large crowd.",
"It's easier to think of 1,000 people as an abstract group. But, when it's only a few people you recognize them as individual people who are all staring at you."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
5rt7d3
|
why and how do youtube ads work for the respective companies, since everyone seems to hate them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rt7d3/eli5_why_and_how_do_youtube_ads_work_for_the/
|
{
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"text": [
"It's about seeing them. You don't have to have an opinion on them. What companies are trying to do is getting you \"familiar\" with the brand or product. The more you see it the greater possibility you will choose their brand or product on the off-chance you need or want something like that. It's a physiology thing. If you see a bunch of papa John's adds (even if you genuinely loath them), the next time you think about getting pizza papa John's will pop into your head regardless of whether or not you like their pizza or adds or either of them. It's a way to capture market share by forcing people's brains to associate pizza with papa John's by that familiarity. ",
"It's all about \"frequency illusion,” somewhat better known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.",
"1) Even though I hate ads I've seen a few effective ones that have made me click on it to see what they're trying to sell me.\n\n\n2) In today's day and age most marketing is done online because you've got a huge audience and all you need to do is get it into their head some association with the service you're providing. If I'm coke and I pay money to have all my ads posted on youtube I can gain two things: Firstly I get analytics from who clicks on the ads, how long people watch them for, what videos they were watching when they saw the ads, and breakdowns like that. It helps to research your consumer base and learning about them more intimately than just which Coca-Cola brand drinks they buy. Secondly, it lets me put out my cute little polar bears and feel-good ads that make people feel a certain way about my product. It's very subconscious but what was the last thing you bought, even a pack of gum, where you didn't skip over at least one other brand to buy one you prefer? When you skip over Dentyne Ice to grab 5Gum you've got got by their marketing. Even the 5 seconds of a YouTube ad can be extremely effective and if it's that good they might get you to watch just a few seconds more. \n\n\nSame with movies and stuff. Sure you don't watch the whole ad but as soon as you see \"oh X movie is coming out\" they did their job because you're no aware that that movie exists and they'll slowly ensnare you into their marketing clutches one bit of an ad at a time.\n\n\nDoes this answer your question? If not I'd be glad to elaborate on anything that doesn't make sense :) "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2nxbr0
|
how come when a song is used in a tv episode, it often has its pitch raised?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nxbr0/eli5_how_come_when_a_song_is_used_in_a_tv_episode/
|
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"probably because the show has to be sped up to meet the air time that is shorter than the actual show. it's like the show (and the music) are fast forward a bit, thus makes the sound vibrate more frequently and resulting in the music being higher-pitched.\n\n* that's my guessing.",
"1. Speeding up an entire episode to fit within the allotted air time.\n\n2. Creative preference\n\nSome music supervisors and/or editors like to have the song fit specifically within a scene, and achieve this by altering the length/speed. For example, they may want a few lines of the lyrics that fit really well within a scene, but the scene only calls for 10 seconds of music and those lyrics are 13 seconds so they shorten to get all the lyrical content in there.\n\nI have licensed a lot of music and rarely see this to be the case but it's not unheard of, however it is certainly not to avoid paying royalty fees. Regardless of how you manipulate the audio you cannot avoid clearing the song with whomever owns the master.",
"If you life in a country that uses the PAL standard, one cause could be \"PAL speed-up\". \n\nUsually motion pictures are shot with 24 frames per second. PAL-Standard is 25 frames per second. There are some ways to convert the film and add the missing frame, the simplest would be a speed up. This speed up also affects audio, which results in a slightly higher pitch.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2vwu8a
|
why are graphing calculators so big and bulky when they don't have anywhere near the computing power of a much thinner smart phone?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vwu8a/eli5_why_are_graphing_calculators_so_big_and/
|
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"Cheaper. $600 vs $120. \nProduction of ti calculator predates smartphone. So, they are in that tech era. \nI mean if u wanna pay $600-700 for a calculator there are cooler calculators out there. ",
"There are a few models that are approved for the SAT or GRE so the companies that make those models have little competition and charge exorbitant prices. Smartphones on the other hand have a very competitive market and have to remain low-cost (relatively speaking for how much processing power they have) to stay competitive. Graphing calculators are also a much smaller market in general. This is a neat little economic example of how regulations can often hurt the consumer. ",
"Graphing calculators aren't really bigger than they need to be. You can only make it so small while still having enough surface area to fit all the buttons. They probably *could* make them smaller, to a degree, without much change in cost of production, but people would likely find them too cramped to work with. The smaller and closer together things are, the harder they are find. There needs to be adequate spacing between the buttons to \"feel right\" both tactilely and visually.",
"* Standardization. Many math textbooks are written with the assumption that the reader is going to have a calculator in the TI-xx family. Which brings me to my next point:\n* Texas Instruments has a virtual monopoly on graphing calculators, and they've used that to keep prices high. There's no way that a TI-83 costs anywhere near $100 to make...probably more like $5. I had a cheap Chinese MP4 player that included a Gameboy Advance emulator; I was able to download a GBA rom that emulated a TI-83 (can anyone find this? I spent a bunch of time googling and couldn't turn up a thing) well enough to use it for college homework. That player cost me $50, and it did a hell of a lot more than just calculating. \n* The bigger and bulkier they are, the easier they are to use. If I'm doing a timed test, I want to be able to enter stuff as quickly and precisely as possible. The larger the buttons are, the less likely you are to hit another by mistake.",
"They are built to last a long time in a school environment. Schools like ti because they can fall off a three foot desk many times without breaking into pieces.",
"The reason why we see [this](_URL_0_) type of innovation is because manufacturers want to gain a competitive edge of their competitors.\n\nTexas Instruments has held a near monopoly in the graphing calculator business since... well, for a long time. Teachers are more than happy to recommend them. But If you’re asking someone else to buy something, you may not be overly focused on whether they’re getting a great deal. Once the exam boards have approved their calculators for use in exams, the ~~students~~ parents have to buy them. \n\nThat's why they haven't changed the design for so many years - not just on the outside, they are practically clockwork on the inside. The processor is a Zilog Z80 - that's the same architecture that was used in the Sinclair ZX-81! \n\n",
"It depends on the manufacturer. The new HP Prime is pretty thin, and has a touchscreen. ",
"Graphing Calculators are basically a monopoly held by Texas Instruments, they charge as much as they want because people will pay it, you feel like you are getting more when they are bigger / bulkier instead of smaller and thinner. Its got nothing to do with technology, its got everything to do with schools and students still paying the same price for a piece of tech that was outdated 20 years ago",
"[On a related note, you can emulate any TI calculator on Android.](_URL_0_)",
"The primary reason graphing calculators are big and bulky is that the cheap ones use AAA batteries to keep costs down (no li-ions). The calculator then needs to be as thick as the batteries. The number of keys on the front also makes the face area the size it is.",
"I think the real question is: Why have they not gotten any cheaper over the last 10-15 years?",
"Why do they cost a hundred dollars?",
"My [Ti-nspire](_URL_0_) is the same thickness as a smartphone. It is much longer because there are many buttons that need to fit. \n\nIt also has a backlit led screen. \n\nThe older models of graphing calculators (such as the TI-83/TI-84) are exactly that. Older models.",
"A better question is why does a Ti-83 cost as much now as it did 20+ yrs ago when I went to school?"
]
}
|
[] |
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"http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/files/2014/09/update-gif-ti84.gif"
],
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[],
[
"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Revsoft.Wabbitemu&hl=en"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://media.techeblog.com/images/tinspire.jpg"
],
[]
] |
||
89mv7o
|
how scents are derived from different woods and used in fragrances
|
Such as sandalwood and cedar, for instance.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89mv7o/eli5_how_scents_are_derived_from_different_woods/
|
{
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"text": [
"In general you put wood in some kind of carrier for fragrances. It may be oil or another liquid which suits you. “Fragrance” flows from wood to your oil. \nOil (another liquid) smells. Thats it. You can later purify it, extract certain chemicals from your oil etc."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
3rkfpr
|
why do we raise/lower our voice at the end of a question?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rkfpr/eli5why_do_we_raiselower_our_voice_at_the_end_of/
|
{
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"cwouhd4",
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],
"text": [
"To signify that we're asking a question.\n\nHave you ever talked to someone who speaks with a completely flat tone? It's damn near impossible to tell when they're ending a sentence, asking a question, popping a joke, etc. \n\nRaising and lowering our voice is a pseudo-verbal cue that we learn as a part of communicating with other human beings, since \"?\" is a hard grammatical point when you're doing everything with sound",
"We do that in English. There are other languages that do things differently. Some languages are pretty flat, and do the voice raise at the beginning of the question. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
24qzf0
|
why are the cooling vents on a laptop located where they'll get covered by your lap?
|
Couldn't there be more vents on the sides? My laptop is constantly overheating.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24qzf0/eli5_why_are_the_cooling_vents_on_a_laptop/
|
{
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"ch9taxs"
],
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],
"text": [
"The sides are at a premium as any sort of device connection or media needs to be inserted at the edges. Also, to vent something near the center through a vent in the side would require an air channel to run between the two. Now some of the valuable space inside your laptop is taken up by empty ductwork."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6wiiml
|
what does having a mental illness or personality disorder mean?
|
I'm 21 later this year and have had my share of mental illnesses. It gets tough explaining to people what it is and how it affects me and the people around me. I feel you guys can help 😊
*Edit: spelling
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wiiml/eli5_what_does_having_a_mental_illness_or/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dm8b3fc"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"I explain it scientifically as a chemical imbalance in the brain. Causes problems with mood, interferes with how you feel or just give you nasty headaches.\n\nMost of the time OK, but sometimes don't do so well.\n\nExactly like diabetes. \n\nI find people understand this very quickly, and separate the stigma from the illness. YMMV"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
46xiud
|
just how different are smartphones?
|
So, Im curious about something. I get that Android, Windows and Appel all offer different apps.
But my question is this, when Im reading about "Flagship models", "completely over hauled" and some costing £300+ and others costing £80.
Is there ever any major difference. I mean, 100% noticable. Sure, battery life may be better, it may run faster or get a better signal.
But with what, hundreds of thousands of models out there, what was the last super major gamechanger?
And if that isnt clear enough for you? Reword it and make it an answerable question > _ > .
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46xiud/eli5_just_how_different_are_smartphones/
|
{
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"text": [
"The one thing that most Android flagship models have over other smartphone flagships and lesser Android phones is that the voice to text functionality is extremely useful and accurate. That means you can talk to your phone and it types what you write, you can ask it questions and it answers you, and the answers are relevant and correct. You can direct it to do something such as navigate or send an email and it just knows what you're saying and does that, whatever that may be, within limits. Siri, which works on Apple phones, can occasionally seem like a genius but often misunderstands your intent. Windows Phones are basically done as a platform. And yes, I wrote every letter of this by voice on my android phone.",
"* The CPU/GPU \n* Build quality & design \n* Camera quality \n* 2^nd party alterations to software & apps (Android only) \n* Display \netc."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
29bi3j
|
how did the ancient greeks and romans cast sculptures in bronze?
|
I've read a dozen explanations through the years and it's never sunk in. If someone could go step by step without any artist jargon, I'd greatly appreciate it.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29bi3j/eli5_how_did_the_ancient_greeks_and_romans_cast/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cija773"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"make statue out of wax\n\nmake a mold around the wax\n\nwait for mold to harden\n\ndrill small hole at the bottom of the mold\n\nheat mold and let wax melt\n\npour molten bronze into mold\n\nlet bronze harden\n\nchip mold away"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
pyydy
|
gravity
|
How does it work? How fast does it work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pyydy/eli5_gravity/
|
{
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],
"text": [
"According to our best model to date, the general theory of relativity, gravity is the curvature of spacetime. In the presence of energy, momentum, mass, or related things, space and time curve in a certain way (given by something called the Einstein Field Equations, which can be written in the deceptively simple form: G = 8πT). One of the consequences of this is that when you have two objects initially at rest relative to one another, their paths through spacetime end up curving toward each other in such a way that an observer naïvely watching them will conclude that they're accelerating toward one another.\n\nAs for the speed, the general theory of relativity predicts that changes in the gravitational field are transmitted at the speed of light.",
"Answered, like you're five, [here](_URL_0_)."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/p4nul/eli5_what_exactly_is_gravity/"
]
] |
|
4juucf
|
why have gifs now started to play like videos? ( they even have a videoplayer interface )
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4juucf/eli5_why_have_gifs_now_started_to_play_like/
|
{
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"text": [
"Because those aren't gifs. They're a ~~gifv~~ webm file. The internet is starting to use an updated version of code called HTML5 which allows for such things.",
"webm or mp4s typically built into HTML 5 spec. Each browser can set up their own basic interface or you can customize it. Since it's natively supported by the browsers, you don't need flash or something. Youtube also has HTMl 5 and you should use it if you are not already.",
"I remember when a gif was just a picture before jpg was around. Now whenever I see a file was .gif I expect it to move "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
2me5af
|
what happens when someone drinks too much and goes into a coma?
|
Recently, a student at WVU was found unconscious from drinking too much, possibly involving Xanax as well. I am wondering what actually happens when one drinks too much and they slip into a coma. Also, how could doctors keep him alive for his family to say their last goodbyes? Why could doctors not do anything after the fact?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2me5af/eli5_what_happens_when_someone_drinks_too_much/
|
{
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"text": [
"I'll try my best. \n\nComa is actually a brain selfinduced state, which is activated in case of extreme head/body damage (think of a car accident). Most of the vital functions are still active, just no celebral activity (so, for example, somebody in a comatose state can be kept alive with the use of specific machines).\n\nComa is a sort of standby mode for the brain. In this case it was the alchool damaging the brain, who decided to 'hybernate' itself. \n\nThe doctors can't do anything because there is no actual way of restoring celebral activity that we know of. ",
"Yeah, I just wanted to add that alcohol is a depressant. Depressants sedate the central nervous system. This sedation has many levels ranging from impaired motor skills, to coma, and full respiratory failure. If someone goes into respiratory failure but is revived, they could be in a comatose state or completely brain dead from oxygen deprivation. At this point, artificial life support is implemented. Keeping the patients body functioning technically, but only because of said life support. This is usually done for exactly the reasons you mentioned, so families can say goodbye, and perhaps obtain a fuller degree of closure. The chances of alcohol poisoning that could lead to a coma is further increased when you add another depressant to the mix, ie xanax. That is also a central nervous depressant, and as alcohol, disables the brain from executing vital functions such as circulation and breathing.\nedit for typo*",
"Alcohol can potentially impar your entire brain. Thing of it as tiers or levels...Theres things that you have concious controll over like jumping, yellin. Then subconcious, like breathing, heartbeat.\n\nFor example, judgement is the first to go. you do and say domb shit... if you drink too much it will affect breathing, heartbeat, etc... so much so that you stop.\n\n"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
903b3z
|
how come a wet towel heats up way faster than a dry towel?
|
I understand this title may be confusing, so let me explain. I work in a kitchen and every night we close we have to dump the fryer oil into a large metal pan so we can transfer it to the dumpster outside. I learned on my first day that if you use a wet towel, rather than a dry one, your hand burns very quickly when holding onto the handle of the pan. Yet, when we use dry towels we feel almost no heat at all coming through and we can carry the pan with ease. Why is this the case?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/903b3z/eli5_how_come_a_wet_towel_heats_up_way_faster/
|
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"text": [
"The water absorbs and then transfers heat much better than the air within the towel. It also holds onto that heat much longer. This is why hot water on a towel stays hotter than a towel fresh out of the dryer.",
"A dry towel can only transfer the heat through the fibers and the air between the towel, neither are great in transfering heat.\n\nIn a wet towel the air is replaced by water, which conducts heat very well.\n\n",
"When the towel is dry, there is a lot of air between your hands and the pan handles. Air conducts heat poorly, and thus does not conduct much heat to your hands. When the towel is wet, water replaces the air that once occupied the towel. Water conducts heat much more efficiently, so the end result is more heat being transferred to your hands. And considering you might be moving while doing this, I'm sure a dry towel's internal air is being replaced by cool surrounding air as you move through the air, effectively exhausting the air away from your hands. Also note that water has a pretty high specific heat, so a wet towel will still feel less hot than using no towel. Specific heat is essentially how much heat something can absorb before raising its temperature, which means the water can take a lot of heat before it feels hot to touch.",
"How hot (or cold) something feels is really just how quickly *it* can make *you* hot. If it doesn't have the ability to pass on (or transfer) heat very well, it's less likely to burn you.\n\nIf you just stick your hand in a hot oven, the hot air doesn't burn you. Hot oil on the other hand, does - this is because the oil can move heat from it to you very easily, whereas air doesn't do that very well.\n\nWater is a good conductor of heat, but also, the steam generated from its contact with the hot pan also carries heat with it and thus can burn.",
"I feel like this is similar (yet opposite) to how standing outside in 45 degree Fahrenheit weather for 2 hours won’t kill you but falling into 45 degree water for mere minutes can. The water vs air can conduct and transfer heat energy much faster. ",
"Water atoms are closer together that towel atoms, or air atoms, so they transmit the increased energy state (heat) from one atom to the next faster because there is less travel time. \n \nImagine a game where kids are playing on a playground, and the objective is to poke the next person in a line. If they are spaced far apart (like towel and air atoms) it will take them longer to poke the next kid, but if they are standing shoulder to shoulder (like water atoms) he poking can progress much faster "
]
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|
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[],
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|
blufgs
|
if we're able to genetically modify fruits or vegetables, shutting off the genes that cause them to spoil, why can't we do the same with humans?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/blufgs/eli5_if_were_able_to_genetically_modify_fruits_or/
|
{
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"text": [
"It's risky and gene editing is very difficult (relatively speaking). With fruit and plants and such we can take thousands of seeds and attempt to modify their genes but only a couple hundred might actually take for a number of reasons.\n\nTo make things worse, sometimes with gene editing you might only intend to modify specific genes but in turn you accidentally modify a plethora of genes which can risk things from the production of toxic proteins to cancers.\n\n\nFinally, we can and have shut genes off, there are ways to do it without altering the DNA, this is the field of epigenetics and has been used to successfully turn certain genes off however it too is very difficult. [here](_URL_0_) is a relatively simplistic method of thinking about how your cells turn genes on and off."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/howgeneswork/geneonoff"
]
] |
||
5xnl2o
|
why is the sex humans have so different from other species?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xnl2o/eli5_why_is_the_sex_humans_have_so_different_from/
|
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"text": [
"IIRC, it has to do with the fact that humans are hyper-social animals. We have massive portions of our brains dedicated to social interaction, communication, and relationships. Having long, intimate rounds of intimacy helps us form long-lasting social bonds, bonds which are critical to the survival of our species. Humans are very weak compared to other species in almost every regard excluding physical endurance and intelligence. Good sex thus sensibly includes aspects that show our evolutionary fitness in other areas as well.\n\nFor other animals, there's no reason to expend the extra energy for long-duration mating if they can avoid, as they can't gain from it in the ways we can. That said, humans aren't the only animals that have foreplay; it's just that to us, animal foreplay looks a lot like dancing/strutting around. Their dances/behaviors/etc. show that they're fit in other ways.",
"Because it's a recreational thing for us, not solely reproductive. \n\nYou'll also note that pretty much *everything we do* is more complex than other animals. Take eating. Most animals just kill/eat. We (at the very *least*) go to the store, choose/buy things, take them home and prepare them, and often eat with family/SOs or at least some videos. \n\nHardly anything we do is done as \"simply\" as other animals. ",
"the evolution of mating traditions.....the sensation and feelings of sex have changed to suit the best ways to continue our species reproducing. Also since we have become a primarily monogamous species it is all the more that we find our suitors based on our sex during our prime baby making years. Although not always true for everyone but definitely for the majority.",
"False premise. You really haven't been exposed to much animal sex I'm guessing. The first time you hear two galapagos tortoises banging their shells together while the male groans so loud you can hear it on the other side of the zoo for 15+ minutes straight. Well... you get the idea.",
"Most animals don't want to get eaten, so telling the whole jungle about being in a somewhat vulnerable position isn't the greatest idea for survival. \n\nBonobos have the art of using sex as a social/bonding experience down better than humans do. Even more sex just for fun, a good deal of it homosexual. Not terribly noisy either, though, they communicate mostly non-verbal.",
"I mean, you must not have ever watched me and my ex. She was quiet as a mouse and a bit of a prude, so she wanted it done and over with quick.\n",
"One thing no one else (that I don't noticed)has touched on is sexual competition. Different animals compete sexually in different ways.\n\n Bonobos for example produce a lot more fperm than humans do. This is because they flush out the semen of the competition. It's fast. Stick it in, blast a big load that's larger than the last one. \n\nHumans on the other hand have a different trick. If you look at the tip of the penis, it has an odd shape compared to most of the rest of the animal kingdom. The reason for the shape of the penis is the same for the duration of sex in humans. The penis shape will cause, with repeated thrusting, the semen of the competition to be expelled from the vaginal canal. This takes multiple thrusts, though. \n\nMind you, this is just a duration thing. Not trying to touch on the other points.\n\n\nEdit - well, that's what I get for typing on mobile. No sense in editing it now. \n\nLong live fperm!",
"Well, we're ~~the only~~ one of the few animals who kiss. We (presumably) do this because we can be face to face, and even make eye contact while being affectionate (and during sex). This contributes to intimacy (aka the foundation for relationships).\n\nSince human children require an incredible amount of investment to raise to adulthood, the parents' having a solid relationship is preferable. \n\n(IANA-Anthropologist)",
"\nWhat is sex for humans is 90% regarded, called and considered as \"making love\" (a made up concept that explains the influx of bonding -loving-caring juices in our brain).\n\nWhat is sex for animals is mostly rape. Quick silent and efficient. Animals dont have the luxury of safety or a steady meal. It's quite risky and energy inefficient to be all cuddly after sex.\n\nThat being said one could speculate that there could be animals in the past (species or even types) that their genetics gave them the \"human sex style\" trait. They probably got phased out quite quickly since they were incapable of dominating the whole fucking planet.",
"A professor from my first degree in biology theorized that at some point humanity first figured out the act of sex leads to children as we became more aware and then we figured out childbirth quite often lead to death. He figured that the humans that got pleasure from sex would be more likely to take that risk. Give it thousands of years and you end up with a whole species that can get pleasure from sex as that's more likely to get passed on more frequently. \n\nEverything else stemmed from that. Forming attachment to what makes you happy, relationships got stronger, stress relieved, etc.\n\nI don't think he published anything on it, he was more concerned with sustainable hydroponic fish farms he'd build in Africa. ",
"\"Youtube\" video watching spree. \n\nYour family always wondered how someone who doesn't play tennis could get a tennis elbow. ",
"It has been theorised that as humans and Bonobos are the only primates without bones in their penises we have been able to practice sex in more positions than just doggy style which increases the variety/pleasure/want for multiple occurrences. My philosophy teacher explained that this is one of the first occurrences in which humans used creativity —during sex— and that the human brain then developed into more complexe creativity uses (tools and interactions).\n\nWe are also one of the only species in which females have orgasms which then makes women also be willing to have sex, hence it is a mutually beneficial situation which brings dialogue, compromises and everything else.\n\nWe also have the culture of taboo associated with it which kind of enhances the pleasure and the fact it is only (generally) between two people. It's something you share with one other person making it an activity.",
"Human anatomy and sex behavior suggests that we're built for sperm competition and group sex.\n\n1. A male and female begin to have sex.\n2. The female makes a lot of noise, advertising that sex is happening.\n3. Male #1 finishes and enters the refractory period and completely loses interest.\n4. The female is not \"done\", but more males have heard her call and take turns with her until she is.\n5. The penis is shaped in such a way that thrusting will draw out some of the previously deposited semen.\n6. The likelihood of any of these males getting the woman pregnant is improved by their:\n-going last and pumping a lot\n-technique and attractiveness (bringing the female to orgasm)\n-size of penis and balls\n-sperm count and sperm \"virility\" \n\nMost animals do not mate this way. This is not to say this is how humans are supposed to have sex or even that it's what's normal for our species. It is to say that's what we're built for. Please consider the popularity of gangbang and cuckold porn and the well publicized difference between how long it takes men and women to reach orgasm.",
"Don't chimpanzees also have sex for pleasure? OP question really is pretty vague and worded badly. Human mating is different from the other organisms, not just because of the movement, sound and communication.\n\nI don't know what kind of crazy sex you are thinking of OP but there are other animals that move way faster, are way louder, and have way more complex communication and have way kinkier sex than we do. Not everyone communicates, is loud, and has sporadic \"movement\" during sex.\n\n One of the reasons why ours is different is because of the fact the we have sex because of our instinctual emotions, not out of survival instinct.",
"Some animals have barbed penises and some kill their mates as part of the mating process.\n\nWe have ropes and feather dusters.",
"Humans are not meant for monogamous relationships., but orgies and living within a larger social circle. This is under the theory of dr. Christopher Ryan, Sex at dawn, check it out later. \n\nBasically, we have the idea of alpha male, and harems, and monogamy all wrong, those concepts only exist when agriculture and commerce appeared. \n\nBecause the female body is only 20% smaller than the male body, our genitals are outside our body to have sex at any time, the uterus is like a maze for battle of the sperm, or battle of the fittest, does not always conceive a child on the first ejaculation, has multiple orgasms, is very audible when they have sex, the fact that we are aroused when just viewing sex, and in general women have higher sex drives than men, especially with new experiences (don't deny it ladies) indicates that a woman is meant to have multiple partners. \n\nSo what happens to the child? Who is the father? Humans and small primates naturally develop a social circle of socialism essentially, everyone sharing, each male and female helping raise a child. \n\nThat's just a brief summary, if you're interested in the idea read the book mentioned above. ",
"There's a huge diversity in sexual behavior. There's a good book called [Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation](_URL_0_) that covers the array of different ways that animals have sex. You might not have seen much, but many animals are louder, have more movement, and last longer than humans. Of course, many are also quieter, have less movement (couldn't possibly have much less movement than my ex, though), and are quicker.",
"Each species has some mating ritual which helps avoid sex with somebody you can't have a child with. My guess is that most videos you've seen were just of the final act and not of the preceding ritual.\n\nOne thing that is quite different in us humans is nonreproductive sex. It's a female strategy for keeping the male around.\n\nFrom a biological perspective, sperm production is an expensive process, and most species can't afford to waste precious resources without conceiving a child. That's why in most species female ovulation is visible, and the animals only mate when the female is fertile.\n\nWe humans can afford quite a bit of luxury - including our huge brains. But brains are not all. Another special feature in humans is hidden female ovulation. Because the male doesn't know when the female is fertile, he has to keep trying to impregnate her throughout the whole cycle - and stay around in order to do this.\n\nThis is a feature human females could evolve because of our access to resources which other animals don't have.",
"Read the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality. It's amazing!! It touches upon all sorts of things relating to biology and culture. \n \nDefinitely read it, but I can tell you that they talk about women generally being noisy during sex to attract other males ;) ;) ;) \n \nSpoiler: We're not meant to be monogamous",
"Due to the presence of various neurotransmitters, particularly serotonin, we view sex differently than most animals. Serotonin is the main NT that allows us to have the deep connections and feelings that are usually associated in sexual relationships. It is also the main thing in our brains that give us the drive to have sex whenever instead of being bound to reproductive cycles like most animals.",
"(Animal behavior and psychology degrees) Something related that few people are mentioning: Humans have significant incentives to induce **orgasm** in females while mating. Besides strengthening social bonds (not only in mating pairs, since there's evidence that early humans were promiscuous instead of solidly monogamous), female orgasm actually increases the likelihood of conception by repositioning the uterus and cervix for optimal sperm uptake. So there was enough evolutionary advantage to this that it affected our mating behavior long-term. Spending extra time and effort to please the female (a) strengthened important social bonds, and (b) gave the male's sperm a better chance at reaching the egg, which was important in a promiscuous species. A few other species of mammals have female orgasm as well, for basically the same reasons.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nEdit: Adding a bonus fact. Female humans' concealed ovulation also plays into this. You can't tell when we're in heat, and we are (for the most part) sexually available and active at all times, even during menstruation and pregnancy. This is different from most female mammals, some of whom are only sexually available for one day out of the year. Concealed ovulation had a ton of consequences that made humans how we are today, or so many scientists think. But in relation to this question, it meant males had to mate with females constantly to ensure pregnancy (not just a one-off), and this may have also led to the advantage given to males who spend the effort to induce orgasm in females.",
"It's different from some other species, but not all. Pigs and dolphins are two examples which mate for quite a while. Pigs from \"3-20 minutes\" and dolphins engage in foreplay, then have sex quickly but may do it repeatedly in a short space of time. Of course there are more examples. Humans would also not spend nearly as much time having sex if we didn't have as much free time.\n\nWe can't be sure how much other animals communicate without knowing for sure exactly how they do communicate, but our current understanding is that humans communicate far more than almost all other animals anyway, so it shouldn't be surprising that we communicate more during sex, too.",
"What makes you think it is? This is a strange question to ask and I'm having trouble understanding your perspective",
"U and me baby ain't nothing but mammals so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel. ",
"It's not. At all.\n\nVarious animals have unique aspects to their anatomy and sexual behavior.\n\nIf you want to talk about short duration, human mating tends to last a few minutes, and canine ties can last upwards of half an hour. Pigs, likewise, will have sex for quite a long duration - with the male ejaculating for around 8 minutes straight or so.\n\nHumans are winning no prizes in that contest.\n\nOkay, so what about being vocal during sex? First off, anyone who lives around feral cats can tell you that's not unique to humans - their yowling during sex is fairly well known. But beyond that, there are other vocal species as well. What about [turtles](_URL_0_)? I'd definitely call that vocal.\n\nSo to answer your question directly: it's not.\n\nFurthermore! The very act of asking this question shows your bias. Why not ask \"why is the sex dogs have so different from other species\", because they have knots and tie with each other? Why not ask \"why is the sex slugs have so different from other species\", because they fire calcium love-darts into each other prior to mating? Why not ask \"why is the sex ducks have so different from other species\", because they have explosively everting corkscrew penises? Why not ask \"why is the sex stoats have so different from other species\", because stoat females become sexually mature at 2-3 weeks old, while still blind and furless (and are mated at that age), while males become sexually mature at 10 or so months old?\n\nThat's nowhere near an exhaustive list. I can think of a few more off the top of my head - some even weirder than those. Look up Anglerfish reproduction, or Flatworm penis fencing."
]
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[],
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"http://www.drtatiana.com/"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R5QueuvKQ4"
]
] |
||
1oye4u
|
why do people 'jolt' when being woken up from a dream?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1oye4u/why_do_people_jolt_when_being_woken_up_from_a/
|
{
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"ccwvz4w",
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],
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2
],
"text": [
"its known as 'hypnic jerk' - it occurs after your muscles go into a restful state just as you are falling asleep. Your brain then misinterprets these signals as you wake up and sends other signals to your arms and legs in an attempt to, physiologically, get your body upright. \nThink about the 'kick' in Inception!\n",
"The most proven explanation is that it is a hereditary trait from earlier hominids, your ancestors, that used to live in trees. The 'jolt' sensation is your body reacting to the fear that you may be falling from the tree. It is called a Hypnic jerk, and other theories suggest that it may be more closely linked to fatigue. If you experience them commonly, you start to fear them, and thusly the sensation of falling more often, and they may become more frequent."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
6kzgdr
|
how "reality" tv can openly deceive an audience with fake tricks and scripts and still keep an audience?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kzgdr/eli5_how_reality_tv_can_openly_deceive_an/
|
{
"a_id": [
"djpx92f"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text": [
"Because it really doesn't matter. If people like the characters and situations they tune in. Whether it's 100% real and unscripted doesn't play a part. You don't like the characters and situations, so you don't watch it."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
67a604
|
what is rh in blood, and why does it matter?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67a604/eli5_what_is_rh_in_blood_and_why_does_it_matter/
|
{
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"dgotliw",
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],
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5
],
"text": [
"Rh is a flag planted on your territory. If soldiers see an enemy flag it makes them unhappy.\n\nIf a blood donation has an Rh flag and my soldiers dont have one. They will see it as the enemy. If my soldiers also have the flag they will not see it as the enemy.\n\nIf a blood donation doesnt not have a flag. Then my soldiers will not see it as the enemy regardless if they have a flag ir not.\n\n\nImmune cells mostly recognize foreign particles. Anything that is present that shouldnt be there is enemy.\n\nEdit: this is the same with A and B blood. Both are flags. O is the absence of a flag. So AB blood has two flags.\n\nSo if you have AB+ blood, you have three flags and cannot donate to anyone unless they also have all 3 flags.\n\nIf you have O- you have no flags, and can give to anyone",
"A, B, and O are types of blood. Rh factor represents a protein that's present in blood. Either you have it (+) or you don't (-). It's important because, if you have a negative Rh factor, your blood will perceive (+) blood as a foreign body and try to fight it off (like an immune response to infection). If you have Rh + blood, however, you can generally accept Rh - blood. In all blood transfusions, the patient must be monitored for any adverse reaction."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
||
7wr40a
|
how does each hand on a clock work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7wr40a/eli5_how_does_each_hand_on_a_clock_work/
|
{
"a_id": [
"du2qnkn"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Gears: _URL_1_\n\nGears are at the same time very simple and yet very complex. My favorite is the harmonic drive, _URL_0_, which can achieve an enormous ratio (about 300:1?) with only three major components. The Apollo lunar rover had one at each wheel, and they are still popular in aerospace applications, where they are literally gold-plated to ensure long life."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_drive",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear"
]
] |
||
58y6xm
|
why is 8% capsaicin patch painful on skin but ghost pepper juice isn't?
|
This doesn't make sense. There is this 8% capsaicin rx grade patch (Qutenza) that requires anesthesia because it's painful on skin. But people tell me ghost pepper juice is not painful on skin. Capsaicin scoville scale is 16 million. So an 8% patch is supposed to be only 8% x 16 million hot. Ghost pepper scoville is about 2 million. So in theory ghost pepper should be more painful than the patch.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58y6xm/eli5_why_is_8_capsaicin_patch_painful_on_skin_but/
|
{
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"d945jot",
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],
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29,
6
],
"text": [
"The majority of capsaicin in the pepper is not in the juice. The juice is mainly water. All the strong stuff is in the seeds and membrane.",
"First off, ghost chilis are only ~330,000-1,000,000, you're thinking of the Carolina Reaper or Moruga Naga Scorpion for the 2m+ peppers. 8% capsaicin could be hotter on the Scoville scale than a weak ghost chili.\nSecondly, rubbing an open ghost chili on your skin and then holding it there WILL cause mild pain and irritation, just like a capsaicin patch will. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
83gcqr
|
why does toothpaste stick to the sink so well but easily falls off my toothbrush?
|
😡
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/83gcqr/eli5_why_does_toothpaste_stick_to_the_sink_so/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dvhlh5w",
"dvi88ac"
],
"score": [
7,
2
],
"text": [
"When you first put it on your toothbrush, you are putting on slow, and there isn't enough force to push it down. \n\nWhen it hits the sink, it most likely happened because it dropped out of the tube from a height of a foot or so. That means that it hits with a good bit of force, and that forces squishes it into the porcelain surface. If you were to gentle squeeze it directly on the sink, you'd find that you could gently pick it up from there.\n\nThink about a human gently laying on a bed of nails versus a human landing on a solid concrete surface from a high fall. In the first case, the cohesive forces of the body are able to hold it together because not a lot of force is being applied and even though every individual every is small, it is spread out a lot. In the second, the cohesive forces are overcome instantly by an impact, and it doesn't matter if the surface is relatively smooth.",
"Another factor could be that of the contact surface. When you put the paste onto your toothbrush, it’s only sitting on a bed of bristles; but when it falls from the brush and hits the sink, it’s in full contact with the relative smooth surface, and thus there’s adhesion. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
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|
ezdjca
|
what are relays and why are they used in every cars' systems such as headlights/fuel pumps, etc.?
|
I do not understand their purpose. I cannot, for the life of me, find an easy and understandable explanation online for me to grasp. Why you cannot get power directly from the battery for example?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ezdjca/eli5_what_are_relays_and_why_are_they_used_in/
|
{
"a_id": [
"fgmk1tq",
"fgmk2wc",
"fgmk9lb"
],
"score": [
9,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"As in your example, headlights draw a lot of power. You don't want that power running through the switch on the dashboard, the switch would require extra heavy design, there's an increased risk of fire, etc. So instead, your dashboard switch operates a relay. A relay is a switch that is operated by a small electromagnet, or a solid state equivalent. The relay is built to handle the power requirements of the headlights; all the switches on your dashboard can be designed to a single standard low power. \n\nOr, in modern cars, the computer can operate the relays also.",
"A relay is just a switch where the switching action is controlled by an electric circuit (as opposed to mechanically opening or closing the switch). In your car, the relay exists to interrupt or allow the flow of power from the battery/alternator to the other systems, which is what allows you (or the ECU) to be able to turn them on or off at any given moment.\n\nIf you didn't have the relays, then the circuits would be permanently completed, so everything connected to the battery would be permanently on. This obviously would kill the battery.",
"A relay is a device that allows a switch and a small wire carrying a small amount of current to control a device needing a large amount of current. What happens is that the wire comes from the battery positive side to the switch, then back to the relay. This allows you to switch the relay on and off with a very small amount of current, requiring just that small switch and thin wire. The relay then controls a larger current, allowing it to run say the headlights or the starter motor or some other large electrical device. Those devices draw way too much current to be switched by the small switches in the cabin of the vehicle, and would require large, thick wires to run behind the dashboard if they were to power the devices directly. Instead, the small wires run to the relay, which then controls the larger electrical devices under the hood. Relays are either electromagnetic or solid state, with the former being a switch that is magnetically activated by the current through the small control switch and the larger being an electronic switch that is activated by the small current through the control switch. Their function is identical in most cases."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8obw9v
|
dyatlov pass incident
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8obw9v/eli5_dyatlov_pass_incident/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e02683u"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"If you want thorough information about this you should check out the podcast series Astonishing Legends' episodes on the Dyatlov Pass. It will give you all the (known) facts explained in a very intriguing way."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
2tutjx
|
is california really at risk of separating and falling into the ocean due to the san andreas fault?
|
What is likely to actually happen?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2tutjx/eli5_is_california_really_at_risk_of_separating/
|
{
"a_id": [
"co2ht15",
"co2l32x"
],
"score": [
18,
19
],
"text": [
"No, California is not going to fall into the sea - not even the portion west of the fault.\n\nWhat will happen, over millions of years, is that the portion west of the fault will move north relative to the portion east of the fault. There will be lots of earthquakes along the way.",
"- Any fucking time Any fucking day, Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona Bay."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
3i75v0
|
what is going on in syria? why are people crossing from greece to macedonia? why is macedonia in a state of emergency? how did this all start?
|
Hi, I am totally clueless about what is going on in Macedonia, Greece and Syria. All news sites report on the ongoing situation but not the how it started(I may have been late on catching on). I would like someone to explain to me what is going on. Thank you.
Links I have come across:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
_URL_2_
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i75v0/eli5what_is_going_on_in_syria_why_are_people/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cudutdo",
"cudvcr0"
],
"score": [
6,
50
],
"text": [
"Because of the ISIS-Terror many people had to leave their home country. This mainly affects the Syria, Afghanistan, Irak/Iran regions. \n\nthey try to come to Europe and enter the EU because they think they have a brighter future here. Greece - > Macedonia - > Serbia - > Hungary - > Austria/Germany is a popular route among people smugglers. \n\nMacedonia was overrun by refugees and couldnt handle, so they closed their borders. the refugees started a riot, claiming they only want to travel through Macedonia, not stay there. One day late, Macedonia opened the borders again. ",
"There has been a civil war in Syria since 2011 which is being fought between the Government (which is under the leadership of a dictator) and allied militias, a range of opposition groups and Islamic extremist groups (such as ISIS). Fighting has largely been in urban areas and many of the fighters are targeting civilians. To date up to 300,000 people have died. \n\nMore than 4 million Syrians (close to a quarter of the population) have fled the country because of the fighting or because they (mainly due to religion) are being targeted by one or more of the factions fighting. Most of these refugees are in neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon but many are trying to seek protection in Europe.\n\nMany European countries are struggling to deal with hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants who are seeking refuge and economic security there from intensifying conflicts in the Middle East, North Africa and other regions of the world. There is little agreement between European countries on what to do, so the countries that are the first port of call for many irregular migrants, such as Italy and Greece, are largely shouldering the burden. \n\nBecause conditions in Greece are difficult some Syrians are trying to make their way in to western Europe by going through the Balkans (Macedonia and then Serbia). Macedonia is not part of the EU and thus doesn't have access to the little assistance that is available from them. Over the last week it declared a State of Emergency in order to mobilise it's army to assist in checking people at the border. Although the majority of these asylum seekers are using Macedonia as a transit country it's struggling to deal with the flows of people in at the south and out at the north.\n\nDoes that more or less answer your question?"
]
}
|
[] |
[
"http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/event/syria-war.html",
"http://www.channel4.com/news/macedonia-migrant-emergency-hundreds-stuck-in-no-mans-land",
"http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/22/europe/europe-macedonia-migrant-crisis/"
] |
[
[],
[]
] |
|
2lk7ci
|
the 1960's: what really happened?
|
As I get older (I'm now mid 40's) and have a little more perspective it seems as though the 60's were indeed a kind of magical decade in which a staggering amount of social and political change occurred.
Though I grew up steeped in Boomer culture I've never arrived at a deeper understanding of what the real forces at play were, how these dynamics influenced each other and to what degree the trajectory of our culture through the last four decades has been shaped (or not) specifically and significantly by events of that decade.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lk7ci/eli5the_1960s_what_really_happened/
|
{
"a_id": [
"clvkkfc"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"A whole lot of factors come into play in anything as complicated as what you're asking about, but two big factors were TV media and the ongoing Cold War. Even people in high school now are still shown the use of attack dogs and fire-hoses on Civil Rights protests. At the time it was for the first time brought to televisions across the country, bringing nationwide acknowledgement of the situation for many minorities. \nIn relation to the Cold War, the United States presented itself to the world as the nation of liberty while claiming the Soviet Union represented oppression and inequality. The treatment of minorities was a huge stain on that claim for both their allies and those they were attempting to convince that democracy was so much better than communism.\nIn regards to a magical decade of political change, it certainly depends upon which party you favor. That being said a lot of which was \"accomplished\" by Johnson has been scaled back considerably, or removed entirely, by Reagan and Bush 1 and 2. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
|
6163wp
|
how much better is awd with snow tires vs. fwd with snow tires?
|
In terms of handling snowy climates, here's what is common knowledge:
* FWD with snow tires are MUCH better than RWD with snow tires
* FWD with snow tires are MUCH better than AWD with all-season tires
Everywhere on the internet I see comparisons that prove FWD with snow tires are better than AWD with all-season tires.
What I can't seem to find anywhere is a comparison of AWD vs. FWD if they both have snow tires because it's apparently 'obvious' that AWD with snow tires are MUCH better. But if the difference maker is mostly the tires, how much better could it be??
In terms of starting from a dead stop, handling turns, and braking - would love for someone who actually knows their shit to ELI5.
Thanks!
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6163wp/eli5_how_much_better_is_awd_with_snow_tires_vs/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dfc0y6y",
"dfc1ypa",
"dfcgaqh"
],
"score": [
3,
5,
3
],
"text": [
"AWD vehicles are only better with acceleration with snow tires in slippery conditions than a FWD. Handling would be a bit different but not necessarily better at maintaining control for the average driver. ",
"AWD is mainly better for not getting stuck or going up a slippery hill. I always have an AWD car so that I can go up the hills everyone else can't or so that I can park in my friends slippery yard without worrying about getting stuck. And they are waaaay more fun",
"All-season tires are generally pretty bad at handling snow. You need completely different rubber compounds for snow, as opposed to a nice warm summer day. \n\nGenerally speaking you get 3 types of compounds: hard, intermediate and soft. Tire manufacturers mix and combine these 3 types to create the type of tire they want. A hard compound tire with some intermediate compounds will last very long, and thanks to summer heat will provide more than enough grip in the dry, and adequate grip in the wet. Winter tires are the opposite, they use plenty of softer compounds to get grip in the cold, but they don't last very long. \n\nAll season tires sacrifice both ends of the spectrum to provide a tire that will be OK in the summer and OK in the winter. But they are not designed to deal with snow. Snow is cold and slippery. You want very soft compounds, maybe snow chains or studs, depending on the situation. \n\n\nNow to the second part of your question. Many people think fwd cars have an advantage in the snow because the engine is right over the wheels, this is a lot of weight on two tires right? They must have a lot of grip right? However, if you do a bit of research you'll find that it's a lot easier for a fwd car to lose tire grip. FWD cars generally have much smaller and compact engines in comparison to rwd or awd cars. Fwd cars are the only set up where the transmission and engine both have to fit under the hood. In awd and rwd cars, the transmission is often pushed to the rear of the car. Meaning a far bigger and heavier engine can go in the front. Of course there are exceptions, but this generally holds true.\n\nSo to answer your question, fwd cars will do better in the snow with winter tires than an awd car with all seasons. The fwd has a lot less weight to generate friction with, but the tires are so soft and often have studs that it doesn't really matter. Your best bet in the snow is an awd car with a big engine at the front, preferably as low to the ground as possible, and a transmission in the back aiding the rear tires. This is why Subaru's tend to do so well in the show. Their awd system is an awesome piece of engineering and their boxer engines very low to the ground.\n\nEdit: grammar and words"
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
8p5wq8
|
why are frozen pizzas packaged with cardboard under them if its not used to cook the pizza?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8p5wq8/eli5_why_are_frozen_pizzas_packaged_with/
|
{
"a_id": [
"e08okms"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"Because before it is frozen, it needs support. So, when it gets frozen with the cardboard underneath it. Well, that’s what I assume, anyway."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
||
8dz48d
|
if two people have the same parents, is it possible for one to have recessive traits and the other to have all dominant traits?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dz48d/eli5_if_two_people_have_the_same_parents_is_it/
|
{
"a_id": [
"dxr32wq",
"dxr3bc7",
"dxr3caq",
"dxr3pov"
],
"score": [
2,
2,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Well, humans have *thousands* of different traits, so statistically this will never happen. But in a theoretical sense, something like this could happen, yes.",
"Yes \nSay both the mum and dad have D and d (one dominant trait and one recessive)\nThen you can draw out a two by two grid and put each parent on a side \n\n D. d\nD. DD. Dd\n\n\nd. Dd. dd \n\nSo yeah it is possible theres a 75% chance they’ll have dominated traits and a 25% chance recessive \n\n",
"Yes it's possible. Punnett squares illustrate this quite nicely. Let's say one trait is defined by two letters. There are two possibilities for each of those letters. Either A, a dominant trait, or a, a recessive one. So you can have either AA, aa, or Aa (aA would be exactly the same). One A ensures that person has the dominant trait, while you need aa to have a recessive trait. If two parents decide to have a kid, both of their two letters get randomly combined. If they both have Aa, then take one from each and look at all the combinations. You can end up with AA, Aa, or aa. At that point it's just probability.\n\nIn rare cases, genes can mutate and you can get a recessive trait when normally you couldn't.\n\nIt would be rare but theoretically possible.",
"Real life example is me and my brother. My mother is English/Irish and my father is Sicilian. My brother got all dark features and I got all light features. People used to ask if we were adopted or half siblings when we were kids because we look SO different. \n\nAnother example: [Black and white twins. ](_URL_0_) "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-twins-black-white-biggs/"
]
] |
||
dil8nv
|
how does the body shift weight from one leg to the other when walking?
|
I'm very curious.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dil8nv/eli5_how_does_the_body_shift_weight_from_one_leg/
|
{
"a_id": [
"f3wl6x4",
"f3wl82b",
"f3wlbir"
],
"score": [
4,
2,
3
],
"text": [
"Your muscles. As a high concept, not complicated at all. Our bodies are marvelous machines. You can subtly move your torso and legs in a way that balances you perfectly for walking.",
"Probably with the extension of the leg they want weight on and retraction of the leg they want less weight on. It's not like we can push mass around inside of our body and make parts of our body heavier, so we must use our muscle force, gravity, momentum, and other physics to propel ourselves.",
"I consider it to be a permanent state of imbalance and recovery, done in a refined and graceful manner."
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
3oaoar
|
why is there a distinction between magma and lava?
|
I know there are different types of lava, but if it's the same thing inside and out, why are there two different names for it?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oaoar/eli5_why_is_there_a_distinction_between_magma_and/
|
{
"a_id": [
"cvvi0ev"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text": [
"From what I can tell, the only reason for the difference is to differentiate whether you're talking about magma inside of the Earth, or you're talking about magma that has broken the surface and begun to flow. "
]
}
|
[] |
[] |
[
[]
] |
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