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6zppn5 | why does water left on certain wooden surfaces turn the surfaces white? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zppn5/eli5_why_does_water_left_on_certain_wooden/ | {
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"The water may contain dissolved minerals or pull minerals out from the wood. Then when it evaporates, those minerals are left behind as a white deposit.",
"Water that is not distilled has minerals in it. When the water evaporates from the surface the minerals stay behind as solid particles. This is where the white dusty layer comes from."
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bn9597 | why light changes color depending on wavelength? | I learned that different color has different wavelength. But what is the reason for that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bn9597/eli5_why_light_changes_color_depending_on/ | {
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"Your question seems to assume that colour is a separate property that happens to change based on wavelength.\n\nOur eyes have the ability to sense the wavelength of light, and colour is simply the word we use to describe that sensation. So it isn't one thing changing in response to another - they are actually the same thing.",
"Well, what you're asking about, I'm guessing, is a matter of how waves work. The speed of a wave is determined by the product of its wavelength and frequency. On top of that, frequency is directly proportional to the energy that a wave carries. \n\nSo basically, higher frequencies have more energy, but they also have shorter wavelengths. This is true of electromagnetic radiation. It's why X-rays have low wavelengths and can damage you without shielding. It's why TV waves and radio waves aren't nearly as dangerous due to their long wavelengths. It's why infrared radiation is associated to heat and ultraviolet is associated with things like cancer. Red has a high wavelength compared to violet."
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2btif3 | as a canadian with only a peripheral awareness of us politics, why do so many americans hate obama so very much? | I mean, healthcare plan sounds good, brought troops home which is good, and he seems a fair guy. I know he's accused of being a socialist, and some of his programs probably are, but that doesn't justify the vitriol I see. Clearly I'm missing something. It's one thing to dislike a politician, it's another thing to hate one so intensely, particularly when it doesn't seem like he's actually done anything truly bad. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2btif3/eli5_as_a_canadian_with_only_a_peripheral/ | {
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"This question will be an easy target of bias. I hate politics and I try to be neutral so I will try to answer this without ragging on conservatives or disgruntled liberals. \n\nA conservative will have problems with his more liberal positions of course. Mainly is the idea of progressives that the federal government is well equipped and good at solving problems at all levels of government. While there are exceptions, they prefer the federal government to stay out of as many issues as possible. So the federal government requiring people to buy healthcare, and mandating interstate commerce is bad to them. They also see his foreign policy as weak. \n\nLiberals have a problem with his perceived hypocrisy. Things like extending the Patriot Act, NDAA, not closing gitmo, not doing a total withdrawal from the middle east. Some liberals support these things though. Also some people wanted single-payer universal healthcare. What we got is said to favor the insurances companies more. \n\nThere's plenty to read on both sides and their problems with Obama. Even third and fourth parties. ",
"Its the same reason so many people hated Bush and so many people hated Clinton. American politics have been extremely polarized for the last 20 years. This is not a new phenomenon.",
"People hate him because he is the President of the United States.",
"He made some amazing promises that any sane person would support. Unfortunately those weren't built around anything the President had within his power, and he has delivered on little. That which he has delivered on has been neutered or just terrible decision making.\n\nDon't agree with him? Racist.\n\nAgree with him? Communist/socialist.\n\nHe has also baldfaced lied, whether because he didn't understand the complexities of the situation(closing Guantanamo) or not seeing himself in that position(will not use executive orders to bypass congress). \n\nThis does not lead to confidence in the one person we should have confidence in.",
"**Conservative Standpoint:**\nConservatives view his foreign policy as weak. He pulled out of Iraq and it fell apart, American ambassador in Libya is killed and the White House gives conflicting information, China hacks our government computers and he does nothing, Russia invades Ukraine and he refused to uphold our treaty, etc. \nThey also believe he isn't serious about what's going on in the world. Thousands of Syrians are dying each week, Israel and Gaza and fighting, Iraq is imploding on itself, etc yet he spends large amounts of time playing golf and going to fund raisers on tax payer money to raise funds for democrat politicians. In addition, they view his domestic policies as violations of the constitution on many levels. Scandals such as Fast and Furious (selling weapons to drug cartels), Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), NSA/Patriot Act (you know what I'm talking about), the assassination of an American citizen (Anwar al Awlaki), and the IRS targeting (that has shady written all over it). And now a border crisis. These things make the president and his actions/motives seem very questionable at times. And if not questionable, at least unconcerned. \n\n**Liberal Standpoint** \nLiberals view him as being very hypocritical. He said he would end pointless wars yet our drones continue to fire on civilians. He claimed he would close GITMO and end the trade embargo with Cuba, which he did not do. He claimed he would put an end to George Bush's policies (NSA) but he expanded them. He claimed he did not support corporate lobbying, yet a large percentage of his appointed leaders were lobbyists at one time. They also see how there is a 13 percent wage gap between men and women in the White House, an issue that was very key to Obama's gaining female voters in 2008. \nThey also, similar to conservatives, see him as detached from reality with his many vacations, golf rounds, and fundraisers. \n\n**Libertarian Standpoint**\nLibertarians' standpoint is a mix of the two. They believe actions such as the Affordable Care Act force individuals to purchase a service, a violation of freedom. They believe that he is increasing the police state and expanding surveillance on American citizens. Yet they also, like the liberals, are unhappy that he has not come through on many of the social issues he campaigned on. Issues such as gay marriage (something he opposed until recently), GITMO, etc. Libertarians see him not as a weak like many conservatives do, but rather as someone who is trying to strip away American rights through executive orders and agencies such as the NSA. ",
"I get a bit sick of people throwing around the word \"socialist\" all the time when they obviously don't know its meaning. If you look it up in the dictionary, you'll find that it is defined as government control and ownership of the primary means of production and distribution. How does that resemble anything that's happened in the U.S.?",
"Reddit is giving you a skewed view. I don't know why, either. Anytime Obama does something good, Redditors say it was a publicity stunt. Anytime the Republicans in Congress block him, they say Obama isn't doing anything.\n\nAmerica will look back on Obama pretty fondly, and that he handled a major economic crisis, and didn't get us involved in more wars."
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45v4ki | how a car loan works and how payment options on them work | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45v4ki/eli5_how_a_car_loan_works_and_how_payment_options/ | {
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"The bank gives you enough cash to buy the car outright and then provides options (how much and how long) to give them their money back. Usually they charge you a little extra (interest) for using their money."
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6b5pw5 | if a person wins a car on a game show do they still pay taxes on that prize or does it fall under a different category because it isn't money? | So as the title says but I know with cash prizes it gets taxed because the prize is added to your yearly income. So how do non-cash prizes work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b5pw5/eli5_if_a_person_wins_a_car_on_a_game_show_do/ | {
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"Yes. It is called a windfall tax and you owe taxes on the monetary value of any prize that you win. ",
"It kind of depends on the tax jurisdiction, but the general rule is that if you win something, no matter what it is, that thing has a value.\n\nSomeone spent a lot of time building it. Some company somewhere is usually selling that thing through a regular channel.\n\nA car has a definite value. It's retail price.\n\nif you win one, it's the value that sets the tax. Because the value is very close to being real money."
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71r88v | how come the same prescription for eyeglasses produces thick "coke bottle" lenses can be used for paper thin contacts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/71r88v/eli5_how_come_the_same_prescription_for/ | {
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"The glasses are pretty far from your cornea (the lens on the front of the eye. Contact lenses are, or course, in contact with the cornea. A much thinner lens can bend the light the required number of degrees because the light hasn't spread out to an aviator's eyeglasses sized area before the lens has to capture it.",
"A lens for near vision has the shape of a slice taken off a sphere, like the blue part in [this](_URL_0_) image. The size of the sphere depends on how good your eyes are: The worse your sight, the smaller the sphere needs to be. But whether you wear eyeglasses or contacts, you need lenses made from the same sphere. The thickness of the slice however will increase if you need a larger lens.\n\nOf course, lenses aren't really made out of a whole glass sphere, even though their pricetag might suggest that. ",
"The real reason is that the \"Coke bottle\" lens are either thick on the edges for nearsightedness, or thick in the middle for those people who are farsighted is because of the size of the lens. Either way, its because an eyeglass lenses is much much larger than a contact that makes the eyeglass lens thick. The prescription strength comes from the difference between the front curve and the back curve of the lens, whether its a contact or eyeglass lens. In the center of the lenses you can make the lens as thin as you want, although Federal regulations say 2.2 mm for safety reasons. (or a minimum 1.8 mm on the edge for farsighted people.) For example, a nearsighted person has a much sharper curve on the back of the lens than the front. So the further away from the center you get, the thicker the lens becomes. Far sighted people the opposite occurs, but then the optician will try to get the minimum edge thickness to as close to 1.8 mm as possible. Any thinner and you risk the lens chipping.",
"Imagine you had a magnifying glass, to get the light condensed enough to start a fire you have to be pretty close to the object. If you had a magnifying glass twice as big you could be twice as far, however this only explains the reason glasses are wider than contacts, not thicker.\n\nGlasses technically can be as thin as contacts, but there are two reasons why they are commonly not. First of all, imagine if your glasses were almost as thin as a hair, and they were still as wide as your current glasses. They would be very fragile. Secondly, Thinner glass would absorb much less light. There are actually many types of glass used for glasses, sometimes even plastic. Higher quality glasses can be much thinner in the lens and manage to capture the same amount of light, while others are much more durable.\n\nIn short, the worst your vision, the more light you need focused into your eyes. The only two ways to increase the light your eyes receive is by making the glasses thicker, wider, or increasing the quality of the glass your glasses use.",
"Glasses lenses are farther from your eye and the prescription for them describe the strength of the lens needed to correct your vision while located away from your eyes. Contact lens prescriptions describe a corrective strength and also the size and shape of the lens. Because it doesnt sit in front of your eye, but on top of it, it doesnt need to be as thick. Lenses do get thicker as a prescription increases but not as noticibly as glasses.",
"It is an artifact of the index of refraction. With a contact lens, there is the air to lens interface and then into the eye. With glasses there is an air to lens interface and then a lens to air interface before the light gets to the eye. The one tends to undo the action of the other. So, the lens has to be crafted to compensate for that by exaggerating the shape."
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1nlrcd | is the universe a fractal? | I was looking at a Mandelbrot set and I couldn't help but wonder if the universe worked in a similar way. Considering that the universe expands outward indefinitely (which I might be wrong about), can it divide indefinitely inward as well? I'm sorry if this is a repetitive question in any way! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nlrcd/eli5_is_the_universe_a_fractal/ | {
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"I'd say no. It appears there is some limit to how much things can be divided. Our current understanding of physics is that quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and electrons are generally the bottom of the system, and they can't be divided further."
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bnhlwp | why can't phone screens be dimmed way more so that they are easier on our eyes when it's dark? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bnhlwp/eli5_why_cant_phone_screens_be_dimmed_way_more_so/ | {
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"Do you have an iPhone? I can dim mine to where it’s hardy viewable even in darkness. Also, I saw a video not too long ago about a trick you can do to dim it even further."
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ccr23k | what is a waterspout and what would happen if an object or even a person was to get caught in it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ccr23k/eli5_what_is_a_waterspout_and_what_would_happen/ | {
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"A waterspout is like a tornado, but over water. I've seen one before, and it's really freaking weird. \n\nFirst, you'll see a cloud getting a spike coming down out of it, which looks strange, because clouds are something you never think of as spikey. Then you'll start to see the water below have a spike coming up out of it, which is even weirder as water is something you never think of as \"spikey\" either. Eventually the two will touch, and you have a waterspout. \n\nThe one I saw was in about the year 2000 when crossing the Howard Franklin bridge in Tampa. It traveled across the bridge and that broke it up and it dissipated, but it was one of the strangest things I've ever seen."
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8ljfwa | why it is so difficult to pronounce a word in a foreing language even when we are trying to imitate other person? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ljfwa/eli5_why_it_is_so_difficult_to_pronounce_a_word/ | {
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"In my own experience learning to speak Korean was difficult because the Korean language has sounds English doesn't and vice versa. ",
"Foreign languages have sounds and syllables that an English speak person just doesn't use.\nGerman Dutch and other similar languages have guttural sounds, African languages like Zulu and Xhosa have clicks. So learning to make different sounds with our mouth and doing so without mentally concentrating on it takes time and practice.\n\nOften you get a word that is similar in English but is pronounced different and then you fall in to the trap of over thinking it.\n\nFrom the time you are a baby you are learning the sounds of languages so if you not native to a particlar language then your brain has not been wired to make these combinations of sounds.\n\n\n\n\n"
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2b4hhc | what exactly is a conductor doing? | In classical performances and stuff, besides keeping tempo in check. Is he really needed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b4hhc/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_conductor_doing/ | {
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"First, what you don't get to see while watching a performance is all the work a conductor has put into shaping the music. The conductor is much like the director in a movie: they decide how to interpret to music like a director interprets a script, and they select what sounds best. If a piece of music says to slow down, the conductor has to decide *how much* to slow down. They have to decide how certain sections should sound, how to use dynamics effectively, and how the pauses in the music are executed. The conductor also decides, or at least helps decide, who is fit to be in the orchestra, what the proper balance of instruments is, and who should be playing.\n\nCome the time of the performance, the director is in charge of keeping the tempo, yes, regardless of what environment they are playing in, and the ears cannot be totally trusted with keeping tempo. The director also is constantly providing reminders of what they have rehearsed, and is instrumental in keeping everyone together and focused, no pun intended."
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g03sm2 | how come we can see the moon, but not all the satellites orbiting earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g03sm2/eli5_how_come_we_can_see_the_moon_but_not_all_the/ | {
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"Size and light redaction. Moon is huge and reflects a lot of light but is far away. Satellites are small and closer to earth but can sometimes reflect light (depending on location of the satellite, moon and sun) and since its much closer to earth than the moon, that light can be seen from the surface.",
"1. they are really small, or many of them are.\n2. they are designed to _not_ reflect light, and many do a decent job of that (this to not further light pollution).\n3. closer to the earth, more likely to be in its shadow for larger portions of time.",
"Seeing a satalite in the sky would be like seeing a car on the moon. A satalite is so small compared to the moon, meanwhile the moon is bigger than some planets (like pluto). \n\nAdditionally, the moon reflects more light, making it not only huge, but very bright. \n\nSo its the difference between seeing an ant from far away in the dark and seeing a cars headlights at night."
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5aehk4 | how the chicago river's flow was reversed in 1900, in order to divert the pollution from the meat packing industry. | Today I learned that in 1900, the city of Chicago actually reversed the the flow of the Chicago river but no one could explain how one does that. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5aehk4/eli5how_the_chicago_rivers_flow_was_reversed_in/ | {
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"[These maps](_URL_0_) will give you a feel for how they diverted the water. Basically they dug canals so that \"downhill\" for the water, went the other direction. They could do that because that area of Illinois is very flat, so creating a different \"downhill\" doesn't actually require digging to great depths."
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1xqx2r | why do modern soldiers never have armor over their faces? | I realise it would hinder visibility, but seems strange there's no Ned Kelly-like protection at all | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xqx2r/why_do_modern_soldiers_never_have_armor_over/ | {
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"text": [
"Mobility and vision is more important. Armor reduces both."
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dn1o1d | why do different organ transplants have such wildly different success rates? | It seems like when someone gets a liver or kidney transplant, the organ keeps them going for years, sometimes decades. But with things like intestinal or lung transplants, the complication rates are super high and often the organ lasts a much shorter amount of time. Heart transplants seem to be somewhere in the middle. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dn1o1d/eli5_why_do_different_organ_transplants_have_such/ | {
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"Organ transplants from a living donor are a lot more successful than transplants from a dead donor. Kidney and liver transplants are much more likely to be from a living person.\n\nIn addition, livers are the only major organ that regenerates in adults (to the point where 25% of a liver can regenerate without losing function). Kidney transplants also have the \"benefit\" of being able to reach out to living donors in their family, who are less likely to donate a kidney that gets rejected.\n\nLungs are tricky because they're relatively fragile organs (they're made up of tiny sacs and hairs) and when a lung transplant happens they can become inflamed and damaged.\n\nThe important thing to note is that almost all organ transplants are susceptible to rejection because the body treats it like a foreign object, with the notable exception of corneas (because of a lack of blood flow to the corneas)."
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2p4vqb | is there a reason that only uranium and plutonium is used in nuclear weapons? could other radioactive elements be used just as easily? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p4vqb/eli5_is_there_a_reason_that_only_uranium_and/ | {
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"Those two substances have the necessary qualities of being stable over a wide range of temperatures, and over a wide range of time so they can be built into a weapon that is stored for immediate use. There are no other elements that match those criteria, and are capable of being put into a runaway fission chain reaction strong enough to make a meaningful explosion.",
"Nuclear engineer here. \n\nThese elements are chosen because they are fissile. \n\nFissile materials have the special property that they can have a self sustaining chain reaction on their own. \n\nThere are many elements which can fission, but only heavy elements release energy when they fission, and only a small number of these heavy elements can have a self sustaining chain reaction, and only 2 of these elements are accessible/available for use (uranium and plutonium). \n\n\nIt actually has nothing to do with radiation. Uranium and Plutonium are actually very weak radiation emitters and can be held in your hand with no deleterious effects (they are more toxic as a heavy metal than they are dangerous as a radioactive material). Radiation does not cause nuclear fission reactions, however nuclear fission reactions do cause radiation, and also generate radioactive waste which emits even more radiation. ",
"Uranium and plutonium are used because they're the easiest to make. A lot of other isotopes can be used to make nuclear weapons. One has a critical mass the size of a tennis ball. Here's a list of them.\n\n_URL_0_",
"While many of the other responses get at the gist of the question, they don't answer why these particular isotopes are \"fissile\" and others are not. E.g. U-235 is fissile but U-238 is not. Why?\n\nWhether a nucleus is prone to fission is dependent on its balance of protons and neutrons. So U-235 has 92 protons and 143 neutrons; U-238 has 92 protons and 146 neutrons. The stability of a nucleus has to do with the careful mix, so U-235 ends up having just a few more protons than it \"ought\" to have (or is missing a few neutrons that it \"ought\" to have), which makes it a lot less stable than U-238. (It also happens to be the fact that for reasons related to this \"balancing,\" odd-numbered isotopes are less stable than even-numbed ones.)\n\nThis lack of stability means that it _easily_ fissions when a neutron hits it. A neutron of _any_ speed, more or less. Neutrons of just about any speed will cause this big, heavy, not-totally-balanced nucleus to \"wobble,\" which eventually causes it to split, and release more neutrons. \n\nAnd here's the trick: the neutrons released (the \"secondary\" neutrons) by the fission reaction have a specific speed to them (their energy level is about 1 MeV). U-235 nuclei, again, fission from neutrons of any speed — so 1 MeV is fine by them. U-238 nuclei, however, won't fission unless they absorb a relatively fast neutron — e.g. one that is above 1 MeV. So Even if a U-238 atom happens to fission, the neutrons it produces can't continue a chain reaction in U-238. That's why U-235 is fissile and U-238 is just fissionable — they can both fission, but only U-235 can fission from the same neutrons that are released by fission reactions, and thus can sustain a chain reaction. \n\nAny heavy element of uranium or higher has a good chance of fissioning, in general. Not all fission from neutrons of all energies. And some are so unstable that they disintegrate too soon to be used. \n\nThe elements that get used for fuel are those that can be produced by people in quantity. Uranium-235 exists in nature and can be separated from natural uranium. Plutonium-239 is bred in reactors from U-238. Uranium-233 is bred in reactors from Thorium-232. Neptunium-237 is bred from U-235 and U-236 present in nuclear reactors. All of these isotopes can be used in bombs or reactors as fuel, though they have slightly different characteristics, and their method of productions can involved different types of difficulties (i.e. fuel impurities) that impact whether they are an \"ideal\" fuel or not. There are other elements that fit the bill in terms of their nuclear characteristics as well (e.g. Californium-243) but are really hard to produce and thus not really on the table as likely fuels.",
"It seems like even asking this question (without context) would land you on some sort of temporary watch list.\n\nAnother note: A kid once used the radioactive material used inside smoke detectors to build some sort of experimental reactor in his parents shed. This set off some kind of alarm and the feds came running with a bomb squad and a haz-mat team. The kid went to jail and the government had to destroy the shed and seized his papers/materials. I don't know if he did or could have build a bomb, but he sat his ass in jail for a bit. He also had sores from the radiation on his face.\n\nI don't know when this happened, and if anyone has the sauce, let me know. "
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1psum5 | why do wine glasses hum when rubbed. | I found this out yesterday and had no idea why it happened but when you move your finger round the rim wine glass with a wet finger it will hum. Why does this happen and is it similar to when you flick the edge and it makes a noise? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1psum5/eli5_why_do_wine_glasses_hum_when_rubbed/ | {
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"When you flick the wine glass vibrations are made and the sound resonates inside the glass. When you wet your finger and run it across the rim you make micro vibrations, kind of like when a violinist runs their bow across the string. If by similar you mean that they have the same pitch its because the glass hasn't changed size. You're merely changing the method in which the sound is produced.",
"I'm no physicist but I'll try my best to tell you what I know.\n\nWhen you flick a wine glass or rub the edge, the frequency you hear is the resonance frequency.\n\nThe resonance frequency, I believe, is the rate at which the molecules within something vibrate and bump into each other.\n\nWhat's even more interesting, is that if you were to expose something (in this case we'll say the wine glass) to it's resonance frequency, the molecules would start to vibrate uncontrollably and violently due to constructive interference, and the said item would fall apart, or in this case shatter. This is classically depicted in cartoons as an opera singer singing a high pitch and shattering wine glasses.\n\nHere's a real world example. _URL_0_\nThe wobble of that bridge was caused by the wind that blew past it. The wind made it vibrate just close enough to its resonance frequency to make it eventually collapse.",
"Because they dont know the lyrics?",
"When you move your hand across something, (i.e. creating friction), you also make a noise. That noise/sound energy travels through the glass (or air) through sound waves. If the sound wave is of the correct length (the length of the wave will vary based on the medium through which the wave is travelling, as well as the distance that the wave travels before rebounding), you will hear a 'resonant frequency'. A resonant frequency is when the sound wave rebounds off something, and doubles up onto itself (referred to as 'constructive interference', essentially making the noise louder to the point where it is quite audible. \n\n[This](_URL_0_) should give a visual representation of constructive interference (on the left), where the bottom waves represent the initial sound wave (the one being sent) and the one being rebound.",
"It's the same as making a noise by slipping in the bath, except that glass is more sonorous than plastic."
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393rkm | how did tumblr get its negative stereotype? | Just saw the tumblr cosplay girl post (holding the 'I'm offended' sign) and my immediate thought was 'lol of course - she's a tumblrina'...
But then I thought: how did this negative meme become defacto for a site I'm sure it's developers hadn't originally intended? Or did they actually want this nasty color painted? What gives, reddit?
Edit: cosplay girl [here](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/393rkm/eli5_how_did_tumblr_get_its_negative_stereotype/ | {
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"Tumble got all kinds of teen girls and guys into blogging. Popular blogs revolve around current issues. \n\nTo a teen that idea of important is transgender and gay community. (Not hating on them) so if any comment doesn't conform to EXACTLY what the blog believes SJW warriors attack",
"It seems like every major website that features user-generated content attracts a certain type of person while developing its own subculture. Reddit, for example attracts 18-35 year old men who are attending college/recent graduates, into video games, and are more liberal in their sociopolitical viewpoints. Obviously, there are tons of exceptions to this demographic, that type of person is prevalent enough in Reddit that the website's culture tends to evolve around them. \n\nTumblr, on the other hand has a strong movement within it that revolves around the [Third Wave Feminist Movement](_URL_1_), [the Social Justice Warrior Movement](_URL_2_) and other many other extremely liberal counter-cultures. Among a variety of other things, members of these groups claim that much of today's societal problems stem from a quasi-organization compromising of white men of Anglo-Saxon decent known as the [patriarchy](_URL_0_). \n\nTo summarize and without going into extensive detail, these groups on Tumblr's (I'm just going to call them SJW's from here on out) claim that men are taught from birth that men are of greater value and that women or anyone identifying as part of a [non-binary gender] (_URL_3_) are of lesser value and that any discrimination against them is justified. It is important to note that your typical Redditor very neatly personifies a member of this patriarchy. Reddit, in turn, does what Reddit does. It pokes fun at the SJW's claiming abuse and oppression and you have something of a feud between the websites.\n\nThere is considerably more to Tumblr's SJW's and Reddit's response to them, but that is a large source of the friction between the two websites. There are dozens of other issues brought up regarding SJW's that Redditors and many others disagree with, but I believe this is the source of friction between the two sites. I've tried to be as unbiased in this write up as possible, but I'll admit I find the SJW's on Tumblr and elsewhere silly at best and dangerous at worst. I could write a book on the reasons I disagree with SJW's, but I'll just point you to the /r/TumblrInAction subreddit.\n\nSorry for the wall of text.\n\ntl;dr Reddit comprises of men. Tumblr claims all men are evil. They don't get along very well."
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95ab25 | how do we get information about the distance and color of objects just from photons hitting our eyes? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95ab25/eli5_how_do_we_get_information_about_the_distance/ | {
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"Light is better considered as a wave when thinking about visual perception.\n\nWe have different types of receptors for light in the back of our eyes (in the retina). These are cued to send a signal to the brain by different wavelengths (i.e. different colours) of light. \n\nDistance is tricky and is mostly calculated by post-processing in the brain. There are a variety of cues for this. Some are inherent in our biology. For example, we alter the shape of the lens in the front of your eyeball for viewing near and far objects. This information is passed back to the brain. Also, the eyeballs themselves move towards each other to look at very near objects, and look directly forwards for very far objects.\n\nThere are also a lot of learned cues that we pick up as we develop in infancy. For example - the relative size of objects is processed to give a distance cue (which is how we can be fooled by some size based optical illusions). More reliably, we also draw cues from the convergence of parallel lines. For example, if you're on a straight road looking at something further down the road, you'll get an idea of distance from how much the sides of the road converge towards each other.\n\nI can expand on any of this if necessary."
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zt08g | what is sound? and why is it made? | Seriously, if i flicked a table it would make that quick "tap" sound. But why? Where does it originate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zt08g/what_is_sound_and_why_is_it_made/ | {
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"Sound is how our brains interpret vibrations in the air.\n\nWhen you tap the table, it causes the table, your finger, and the air around it, to briefly vibrate. Those vibrations ripple out through the air, much like a wave in water, and reach your ear, where your ear converts the vibrations into neural signals that your brain interprets as sound.\n\nSpeakers generate sound by vibrating fabrics, or other materials, based on electrical signals fed into it. In fact, if you have large speaker set to emit a low enough tone, you can actually see the speaker vibrating in an out.",
"Hi Matt,\nSound, simply put, is just a wave of pressure moving through something. \n\nWhen you tap on the table, your finger slams into the table, compressing the wood of the table very, very slightly, and also compressing your finger very slightly. Now, think about this in slow motion: As your finger approaches the table, it starts to push air out of the way. This creates a wave of air pressure. As your finger makes contact with the wood, vibrations start to bounce around through the wood. As the table vibrates, the table is touching the air around it, so the air around it vibrates as well. These vibrations also create waves of air pressure. And the \"type\" of air pressure wave this entire interaction between the finger, the table, and the air creates a very unique soundwave.\n\nWhen I say it's unique, that means that the type of air pressure waves created by this interaction are different than the types of pressure waves that get created if the table were made of metal. So tapping on a piece of wood sounds different than tapping on a piece of metal.\n\nNow, all of these complicated air pressure waves that get given off because your finger collided with the table... they move outward through the air, just like waves move outward through water if you drop a pebble into a pond. \n\nEventually, some of these waves of air pressure enter your ear canal and start to vibrate a very thin membrane of flesh called your eardrum. The pressure waves vibrate the eardrum, and on the other side of the drum the vibrations get passed through into your inner ear, where some very small bones and little hair-like things are floating in some fluid. When those hairs pick up these vibrations, they create electrical impulses that they send down a pathway to the brain.\n\nTLDR: When you tap something, it creates vibrations in all of the components that are interacting - your finger, the table, the air. These vibrations cause pressure waves to move through the air, where they enter your ear and some nifty bits of biology turn the air vibrations into electrical signals that go to your brain, where you \"recognize\" the sound of finger tapping on wooden table.\n\nQuestions?",
"Great answers in this thread. They explain that when a tree falls in a forest and nothing is around to hear it, then it does not, in fact, make any sound. It does make waves of vibrations that fly through the air, but sound is only made when those vibrations reach your ear drum, and your brain interprets it as sound. "
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3ps1tj | why did nes video games with battery saves need the reset button to be held, while turning off the console? | I was talking to one of my students who was wearing a Zelda t-shirt, about how the very first Zelda had a warning on the back of the cartridge that indicated that, without holding the reset button while turning off the NES, hurt the battery save feature.
As a teenager, I just did that without thinking, but now that I'm older, I can't but wonder why we did that.
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ps1tj/eli5_why_did_nes_video_games_with_battery_saves/ | {
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"it puts it into standby mode so that it has enough time to write all the data to the internal memory and avoids partial save files. ",
"I've looked into this before and found conflicting answers. The most common ones I'd found were:\n\n- powering off directly can surge and damage the battery. \nor \n- holding reset first ensured that any writes happening to the battery could finish before the power was turned off.",
"Best i can tell from a few sources [1](_URL_1_) [2](_URL_0_)\n\nIt seems that the reset button puts the NES CPU in a particular predictable state so that when you turn the power off the CPU doesn't do something funny to your data in the short time while it's loosing power. \n\nAdvances is controller chips in SNES systems made this extra step unnecessary. \n\nFor the record though i never did this and never experienced issues with my games. "
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626q32 | why did announcing brexit last summer lead to the devaluation of the pound sterling ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/626q32/eli5_why_did_announcing_brexit_last_summer_lead/ | {
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"Because people assumed demand for the pound would fall as British exports to the wider EU (by far its largest market) are constricted by the UK dropping out of the single market (and thus being forced to trade with the EU by some other objectively more restrictive arrangement, like WTO rules)."
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1f78qz | finite elements method | first explained to me as a way to break down a system into parts to better understand the whole, but it seems like there's much more to it than that. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f78qz/eli5_finite_elements_method/ | {
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"Ok I'll have a go..\n\nSo FEM is a numerical method used to solve boundary value problems..\n\nTo give you an example, imagine a system where a metal rod was placed with one end in an oven at constant temperature, and the other in a fridge at constant temperature. FEM could be used to approximate the temperature profile along the lenth of the rod, since at both ends of the rod you have a fixed boundary condition (temperature is fixed).\n\nPractically what you would do is discretize the system. This just means break the length of the metal rod up into *n* number of micro-rods, all joined up end to end. \n\nYou could then form an equation that describes the temperature profile (including any necessary heat transfer properties) for the the first section of rod. Since you know the temperature is fixed at one end, you've only got 1 unknown to solve for. Similarly, at the other end of the rod, you know the temperature it's being kept at.\n\nFor all of the interconnecting micro-rods, the answers from one feed into the equations for the next. But to start it off you can use the feed out from the first rod. \n\nPractically, this gives you three equations to solve. One for the first piece, one for the last piece, and one that describes what's happening in all the middle pieces.\n\nOnce you've worked out the equations that describe to first, last, and all interconnecting micro-systems, you can go about solving them...\n\nDoes that help at all?"
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1zhrj8 | why do we mine for salt when it seems much easier to just evaporate sea water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zhrj8/eli5_why_do_we_mine_for_salt_when_it_seems_much/ | {
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"Finding the space on shorelines to evaporate all that water is the biggest issue. You need a a lot of sunlight and a lot of open area, and people tend to use that real estate for recreation and development. Cheaper to just dig a hole.",
"I lived next to a salt producing plant in Greece. It consisted of huge pans that filled with sea water that was then evaporated. Very tasty.",
"Evaporation is slow and very energy intensive. Mining is easy, especially since salt (unlike most others) likes to form in huge uniform nearly pure deposits. "
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8v4e05 | why is "imbd" considered more official (or truthful) than "wikipedia", even though both can be edited by anyone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v4e05/eli5_why_is_imbd_considered_more_official_or/ | {
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"do you mean IMDB? and IMDB isnt considered more official or truthful than wikipedia, theyre handling totally different things. Theyre bot databases, but one is strictly working with movies, while the other works with everything else. ",
"The information on IMDB can easily be verified from other sources. Sometimes Wikipedia source links are non-existent or dead.",
"First, you'd have to identify who thinks IMDB is \"more official or truthful than Wikipedia.\"",
"Wiki isn't a bad source, it is just not a direct source.\n\nThe only reason you can't use Wiki as a source is that Wiki is an accumulation of OTHER sources. Citing Wiki is essentially saying \"Ryan said Mechille said she wanted cake\" instead of skipping Ryan and just saying, \"Mechille said she wanted cake.\" \n\nYou can dodge this by going to the bottom and seeking the original source and quote it directly.\n\nWiki may also have pages that do not contain good sources. Some things don't have good sources, some things have not gotten them yet, and yet others are just opinions. There may be some inaccuracies and there may be some biases. \n\nBut as long as you are paying attention, it is a great source of information. "
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29tp3s | what makes depression and suicidal thoughts an illness? | I have been diagnosed with severe depression and I have been on medication for a few months. my psychiatrist keeps describing my depression as an illness. what makes it an illness and not just a way of thinking? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29tp3s/eli5_what_makes_depression_and_suicidal_thoughts/ | {
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"I had the same question a couple years ago when battling depression here's a simplified version of what I found. Depression is thought to be caused by a chemical imbalance. The depressed person's brain doesn't produce or does not have enough receptors for the chemical Serotonin which is thought to be a contributor of thoughts of well being and happiness. So I guess an even simpler way to put it is that your brain isn't making or not drinking enough happy juice. Hope that helped!",
"There is a very real argument to be made against viewing a mental illness as a disease. I took a course on it, and two topics come to mind:\n1) the arguments made by Thomas Szasz who saw mental illness as a different way of living, as you said _URL_1_\n\n2) describing \"happiness\" as \"major affective disorder\" which shows how stigma can power the acceptance of something as an \"illness\" _URL_0_",
"My understanding is that if the mental condition is enough to get in the way of your life, professional or personal, then it is an illness.",
"Most of the answers you're getting are missing the point. Mental health professionals diagnose mental illness vs. normal moods via a set list of criteria contained in what's known as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), now in the fifth edition. \n\nFor your moods to enter into \"mood disorder\" territory, they have to seriously impact your normal day-to-day functioning, relationships, and/or social/job obligations. You can easily look up the exact list.\n\nThere is definitely a lot of controversy in how these things are defined, since many times the symptoms fall into a grey area that isn't obviously full-blown mental disorder, but needs some sort of intervention."
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2nmfzr | why do countries like germany want to make the free trade agreement ttip with the us and ceta with canada, if they could be sued by companies for making laws that could damage the company? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nmfzr/eli5_why_do_countries_like_germany_want_to_make/ | {
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"They think the pros of having better access to the American marketplace outweigh the cons. IIRC, the EC put out a report saying that they estimate quite a large economic upturn from the deal. I'll see if I can find it in a minute.\n\nIt should also be pointed out that companies suing the government aren't inherently doing anything evil. There's lots of blatantly corrupt and protectionist legislation, which exists only to inconvenience foreign companies and give domestic ones an unfair advantage. Suing over that sort of thing is perfectly reasonable. \n\nEdit: Here's the report I was talking about (PDF warning). _URL_0_ It's like 100 pages long, so it might be quicker to just read the key findings on page VII. \n\nWhether they're *correct* in their assumption that it will be a boon for the economy is another matter altogether. That's not really a debate I want to get into though. ",
"Note that you're conflating free trade agreement with investment treaties. Free trade agreements are agreements to lower tariffs and trade barriers. You can't sue when these are breached, you can only impose countervailing tariffs.\n\nInvestment treaties are the ones that allow investors to sue states. They do it for mutual protection: the other country is unlikely to treat your citizens' property terribly if you treat their citzens' property respectfully. Or, in legal terms, according to the either (a) the minimum standard of customary international law or (b) fair and equitable treatment.\n\nIt's to guard against things like [Boris Yeltzhin stealing a German citizen's house and business](_URL_1_), or the [Sri Lankan army destroying a UK-owned Shrimp Farm](_URL_0_). \n\nFor less-developed countries they're useful to reduce the perceived risk of legal investment, but for developed countries they're more used to protect its citizens' property abroad.",
"I assume you're talking about the ISDS clauses?\n\nThe main function of an ISDS clause is to move the litigation from national courts to tribunals operated by the UN or World Bank, which are more likely to be unbiased. A company damaged by a German law, for example, would file suit in a court system that is not affiliated with the German government to ensure fairness. This only occurs when a law is passed that deliberately damages a particular company in order to promote domestic companies (so non-discriminatory laws won't be overturned).\n\nIt should also be noted that as a member of the EU, Germany is already subject to [1400 or so ISDS clauses](_URL_0_), so this particular ISDS clause isn't something new.\n\n\n > EU Member States have concluded over 1400 bilateral\ninvestment treaties (BITs) with a large number of third countries, including countries\nin the OECD (a group of 34 of the world's most advanced economies). Overall, the\nBITs concluded by Member States represent about half of all the BITs world-wide. All\ncontain largely similar provisions on investment protection and ISDS. EU\ninvestors are the largest users of ISDS globally.",
"Generally it is about being able to sue the government for laws that violate the *free* part of the free trade. What does this mean? For example:\n\nBMW opens up a BMW owned dealership in the US. The US doesn't like BMW competing with American car companies and dealerships. So it jerks BMW around to make life difficult for them by passing laws that say things like \"All car dealerships owned by the manufacture that are not headquartered in the US, start with the letter B and end with the letter W, must under go detailed quarterly audits.\" Technically such a law deals fairly with everyone, it isn't singling out BMW for special treatment right? \n\nBeing able to sue the government means that BMW can go to a court and sue the US government for breaking the letter/spirit of the trade agreement. Without it, BMW would have to go to the German government and get them to lodge a complaint through diplomatic channels which will drag out the whole process and it will likely get bundled up with other on going trade disputes. Now Germany may go to bat for a big company like BMW, but what about all the little guys?\n\nI haven't read much about CETA or TTIP but that is how it is supposed to work.",
"They don't want it actually. But lobbyists who get payed by private companies want it. And sadly those are the people who have the most influence on the treaty. ",
"I wrote [here](_URL_0_) about how people hugely overstate the power and scope of ISDS.",
"Just to make things clear: \"Germany\" does not want TTIP at all. There are protests and petitions up and down. Some (though influential) people in the government want it. And maybe one day we will see whether they were bribed or blackmailed, or just plain stupid.",
"Because the people that make the decisions get paid by the corporations that would profit from TTIP. Not on the spot, but they are promised top positions and/or stocks after the end of their political \"service\". Also everything about the treaty is secret to the public. Last but not least the media in germany is in somewhat infiltrated by US organisations (GMF and such). Bild i.e. germanys most read daily newspaper, has internal regulations to protect the transatlantic pact.",
" The TTIP is not a free trade agreement. This agreement would strengthen copyright and patent protections (which are restrictions on trade, regardless of whether you think they are necessary or not), as well as create a regulatory framework for a variety of industries that is country independent, and thus untouchable by the normal framework of democracy. There are virtually no trade barriers between the US and Europe already. [More reading here](_URL_0_).\n\n The countries involved support this because money talks, and the politicians involved have been supported financially by large corporations. The TTIP is a disaster for ordinary people and a huge gain for corporations. This kind of secret agreement is how corporations slowly take away our sovereignty, and become the true power in the world. I know that sounds extremist and crazy, but the evils of the TTIP cannot be understated."
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4xopk8 | does clutter increase room temperature? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xopk8/eli5does_clutter_increase_room_temperature/ | {
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"Not directly, but it will stifle air circulation which will make a room feel stuffy and increase the temperature. ",
"I thought this was going to be a question about the relationship between entropy and temperature.\n\nAnyway... if you've got air conditioning, check that nothing is blocking the floor vents or the air return (larger vertical vents on the walls).",
"I'm going to have to slightly disagree with the other guy, air circulation won't really change much, but the amount of air in your room is, consider all the clutter as insulation. You're decreasing the volume of air in your room, so your body temperature and electronics heat that smaller amount of air and making the room hotter much faster. \n\nBasically the equivalent of trying to boil a cup of water versus 10 cups of water. You are the heating element (and electronics), the air in your room is water. The heating element at max will get both amounts of water to boil, but the cup of water will boil much sooner.\n\nCirculation would play a role in this, but I'm assuming you're not blocking any vents.",
"It will take longer to cool a room with things in it (such as furniture) since things absorb heat. The force cooling the room will be absorbed by the things at the same rate as cooling the entire space, adding time it takes to bring the temp down of the space and all the things in that space.",
"Clutter acts as insulation. Fur, for example, is a very good insulator so closet loosely packed with it will will provide exceptional insulation if placed directly against the wall or stuff is packed around it to minimize airflow between the closet and the wall.\n\nSince the clutter doesn't increase temperature by itself, you have to look at where the heat is coming from (you, the TV, maybe the sun) and where you want it to go (presumably the AC intake). \n\nIf the room is too warm and it has an outside wall facing heat (either a warm climate or south facing), move the furs to that wall. Make sure that the AC has really clear flow both in and out of the room. Close or damp the AC ducts in rooms that aren't being used. Remember that with all the clutter removed from the rest of the house, the path of least resistance for airflow is going to be all those big empty rooms...",
"Clutter, or just having more things in a room, increases its \"thermal mass\".\n\nCars have mass. When you step on the gas pedal, it takes a longer time to speed up for a more massive car than with a light car, if the engines are the same power. But it also means that the light car slows more quickly at high speeds, if the wind resistance is the same between two cars.\n\nIn the same way that more mass slows acceleration for cars, more _thermal_ mass slows the acceleration of heating and cooling for rooms. \n\nYour air conditioner doesn't need to just chill the air in the house. It also needs to chill all the furniture and rugs and tables and objects in the house. That's the \"thermal mass\" of your house. If your couch is hotter than the air, it'll heat up the cooler air around it, until their temperatures become close.\n\nThere's _also_ the airflow issue that others have mentioned. Cool air touching your skin directly cools you down more than cool air touching a warmish dresser and then touching your skin. But I disagree with the others calling it \"insulation\". It isn't insulation. (More on this below).\n\nSo the answer to your question is: no, clutter doesn't _increase_ room temperature, it just makes it harder to _change_ room temperature, up or down.\n\n---\n\nInsulation forces heat to convert itself a few times before getting to you. For instance, a double-paned window requires convection to move heat from the outside air to the outside pane. Then conduction to move heat through the thickness of the outside pane. Then convection again to heat up the air between the two panes. Then convection _again_ for the insulated air to heat up the inside of the inside pane. Then conduction again for the heat to go through the thickness of the inside pane, then finally convection from the inside pane to the air inside your house. That's how insulation works, by forcing heat to switch transfer modes and face resistance at as many different junctions as possible."
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2hlvrq | why are towns, roads, and structures always named after someone? are there any names which were simply made up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hlvrq/eli5_why_are_towns_roads_and_structures_always/ | {
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"They're not always named after people. They could also be named after physical features, plants (i.e. Rose Street), animals (i.e. Beaver Road), other towns (i.e. New York), or any variety of other things from colors to shapes."
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ot0pn | rooting and modding an android phone, and all the steps in between. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ot0pn/eli5_rooting_and_modding_an_android_phone_and_all/ | {
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"well what phone? there is a different method for every phone. i would just google 'how to root [phone]'. \n\nusually it's putting a file in the root of your sd card or using command lines then putting a rom of your choice on it.",
"When you have root, it's like having administrator access on a windows computer.\n\nDevices have a bootloader. If the bootloader is locked, the OS build (or Rom) has to be signed with a key that works with the bootloader. Some phones can have their bootloaders unlocked. HTC has released a tool to unlock bootloaders. The nexus line - developer phones - can be unlocked by installing the SDK and phone drivers to your pc, then connecting the phone over USB and typing a couple of commands in a command window - adb fasboot oem, followed by adb bootloader unlock (or something similar).\n\nLike I said, if the bootloader is locked, the rom has to be signed. So phones with locked bootloaders have some customized roms built off of the stock image released by the manufacturer. Phones with unlocked bootloaders can pretty much run any rom built from Android's source, instead of being tweaked versions of stock.\n\nI'm not a developer - I've just been using android for about 2 years, so it's possible some of this is a little off. If anybody knows better, please correct me.\n\nIf you're looking for how to root/mod your phone, go to XDA or rootzwiki, and find the device specific subforum.",
"Think of it this way. Your Android smartphone is capable of doing things that would really help you in every day life, such as it turning into a Wi Fi Hotspot, so if you have your laptop but no internet, you can use your phones data plan and have internet on your laptop! Pretty neat huh?\n\nThe problem is, carriers such as Verizon lock these features before selling you the phone and make you pay an additional monthly fee if you want to have it. Also, it's not cheap. \n\nWhat rooting does, is it unlocks that feature. In fact, it unlocks every other feature, and gives you access to every single cool thing your phone can do. You can remove apps that were originally locked in your phone, you can make it run faster, and as mentioned, turn it into a Wi-Fi hotspot. \n\n"
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42psxh | the caucuses, and why only 3 states "matter", why exactly do those states matter do much? | Iowa, new Hampshire, etc | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42psxh/eli5the_caucuses_and_why_only_3_states_matter_why/ | {
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"Others certainly matter. In 2008, the race between Obama and Clinton went deep into primary season before Obama was a clear winner. In a normal race, things are pretty much decided after 'Super Tuesday' which is a day when several states coordinate their election events and others have already gone.\n\nIt mostly comes down to the fact that people don't like to support a loser. If you start losing primaries and caucuses, funders stop giving you money and voters don't vote for you just because they don't like 'throwing their vote away'. If you start winning, then people want to fund you and you get a bunch of press attention, so when voters show up to vote, they know your name.",
"Choosing a president is like a year-long race. If horses were racing, you would want to pick a horse you like, but only if it can win. If the horses start to race and you notice one is doing really well, you might change your mind about which one you like best.\n\nPrimaries are spread out over many weeks and months. So it's like a race where some people get to choose their favorite horse in the middle of the race.",
"There are two main reasons:\n\n- Those states are the first ones to vote for the primaries, they therefore set the tone of the entire election. If you win all the states that vote first, chances are that you'll win the rest of the country and get your party's nomination for the presidential election.\n\n- Those states are also low populated states, which means that individual votes are more important than votes in other states, the vote of an Iowan will count more than the vote of a Californian in the presidential election. It's a consequence of the system and the existence of the electoral college. Some find it anti-democratic, some find it fair. The debate is strong.",
"**Winning the first states is really valuable.** Volunteers don't want to waste their time. Donors don't want to waste their money. Parties don't want to waste both time and money promoting candidates who can't win. So whichever states go first serve as a filter: you don't have to win there if you're a candidate, but you need to either win or just barely lose; if you lose badly in the early states all your volunteers and all your donors go looking for winners to invest in.\n\n**Almost every state would love to go first.** American election campaigns used to be a lot shorter, and I mean a *lot* shorter, like half this length or less. But states kept moving up their nomination elections to get in front of each other. After all, whichever states go first get way, way more of that sweet, sweet campaign money. And they get way, way more national attention to their local issues. Finally both parties drew a \"line in the sand:\" move it any earlier than February and we won't count your votes when it comes time to pick a candidate. And they made it stick. Iowa and New Hampshire were who were at the front of the line when the competition stopped.\n\n**There is no *official* reason why we put up with Iowa and New Hampshire going first,** but there are unofficial reasons why the parties tolerate this and why they both pushed South Caroline into a very early third place. Each of those three contests tests something different:\n\n* **Iowa is a midwestern state and it holds a caucus.** Both parties want to know which candidates are completely unacceptable to midwesterners, because midwestern states, as small as they are, total up to a lot of votes and those states \"swing\" from party to party more often than coastal states do. Also, caucuses tell you something a primary doesn't. Who wins a caucus is determined almost entirely by which side has the more volunteers, and especially which side has the more volunteers who are super-excited. That really matters because there are a lot of jobs that have to be done in a national campaign that you just can't do with hired help; it costs too much and the work isn't as well done as the work done by enthusiastic amateurs.\n\n* **New Hampshire is a northern state and a primary.** Both parties want to know which candidates are completely unacceptable to people in the northeast, because it's a crowded and relatively wealthy part of the country; being a tiny little state in that area, New Hampshire is seen as an inexpensive way to test that. Also, primaries tell you something that a caucus can't: they tell you which candidates just plain don't know how to win a general election, one in which people who aren't full-time political hobbyists get to vote.\n\n* **South Carolina fills in two important gaps.** Ever since Nixon, Republicans have counted heavily on the Dixie vote, so they need to know which candidates are unacceptable to southerners. Ever since Johnson, Democrats have counted heavily on the black vote, so they need an early primary where that matters, since Iowa and New Hampshire are almost painfully white.\n\nYou'll notice that the west-coast vote is ignored? Some day the parties may do something about that. I suspect that much of the complacency about that, though, is the sense among the parties that the west coast is awfully predictable, that you don't need to hold a nominating contest there to know how people will vote, and they're huge, which means that running elections there is expensive."
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69isy7 | why do storm systems sometimes come from different directions? | We just had a storm come from the Southwest moving Northeast and now where have one coming from the Northwest moving Southeast. What dictates the direction a storm will move? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69isy7/eli5_why_do_storm_systems_sometimes_come_from/ | {
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"I can't really explain it very well and plus I am not even sure if I am right but I think that it is because there are different circulation cells that are spread throughout the earth. So air rises near the equator, flows up to the poles, comes down into the subtropics then goes back to the equator. This entire time the air is either rising or falling. "
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afii7a | how is data actually transferred through cables? how are the 1s and 0s moved from one end to the other? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/afii7a/eli5_how_is_data_actually_transferred_through/ | {
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"1 = on; 0 = off.\n\nLight pulses are sent through the reflective fiber optics cables, and the device reads the on/off as binary data.",
"As texasslapshot said, 1 = on and 0 = off.\n\nTo expand a little this is done with either light pulses (in the case of fiber optics) or electrical signals (in the case of copper core wires, like ethernet cables).\n\nAt the beginning of each frame (chunks of data) there is a series of alternating signals (10101010101010) to establish a tact of how fast the signals come, so that the receiving end can establish whether two identical signals following one another (11 or 00) are actually two separate signals, rather than the same signal for a longer period of time.",
"There's a few different algorithms to transfer data, there's Return to Zero Code, Non return to zero code, Manchester Code, Differential Manchsester,\n\nand in general current is sent through a wire and different currents equal ones or zeros, i.e. In ~~Differential~~ ( < - got those mixed up. My bad) Manchester Code a switch from low current to high current is a 0 and switch from Hugh to low a 1.\n\nIn a NRZ code there's a high current and a low current and a high equals 1 a low equals 0.\n\nIn Fibre optic the same is done with light pulses\n\n\nEdit: Thanks for the Silver kind Stranger. It's my first one ",
"There are numerous ways '1' and '0' can be physically represented in a cable. One of the most basic methods is by high and low voltages. E.g. to send '1' transmitter puts batterie's positive pole to the cable, but negative pole for '0'. Receiver has a voltmeter so he knows if voltage on the cable is high or low.",
"There are many approaches. Short cables that don't transmit very fast, often work on TTL Transistor-transistor logic (TTL), where by a 0 (low) is ground and 1 (high) is either 5v or 3.3v.\n \nThings change when distances are longer, or transmission speeds are faster. This is because there is an electrical \"noise\" present. This noise is a random signal that is induced on the wire from multiple things, including the environment and the AC power in your house.\n \nThe signal is only detectable if the \"average\" high/low signal voltage is reliably noticeable as different in the presence of the noise. This is why we \nasses the quality of a signal via a 'signal to noise ratio' (SNR).\n \nThere are a number of things we often do to address this problem:\n \n - Transmit with higher voltages (so the noise is smaller relative to the signal). eg: Com port's do this using 15v signals or phone lines at 48v.\n - Protect the cable from noise via shielding (USB cable) or twisted pair cables (network cable).\n - Include a bit of extra data to allow for 'error detection' and just resend any lost data. If your'e only loosing 0.1% of your data, it's better to resend it than slow down the signal. \n - Similar to using extra information for error detection, we can send extra info for 'error correction' letting us fix up small errors. Fixing errors on high speed transmission with extra data, allows more throughput than slowing down the signal to make it reliable. This is the basis is of a \"transmition Control Protocol\" TCP.\n - Transmit information slower so that we can better affect the high/low average in the presence of noise. eg: railways do this to send signals along the tracks for hundreds of kilometers.\n\n",
"No doubt there are a few inaccuracies in the below as physics has never been my strong point, but this is what I remember.\n\nA potential difference (e.g. voltage) is applied to the wire, e.g. one end has more electrons than the other. This creates an EM field *around* the wire that is detectable at the other end.\n\nData is communicated in this manner by alternating the voltage using systems such as Manchester encoding.\n\nMost people think of electrons flying through the wire but this is not the case, they actually move very slowly, e.g. centimetres per hour.",
"You know how when you touch a live wire you get shocked, but when there's no electricity running through the wire you don't get shocked?\n\nShocked=1. Not shocked=0.\n\nComputers just do that really fast. There's fancier ways of doing it using different voltages, light, etc, but that's the basic idea",
"A transistor can behave like a voltage controlled switch. Below a certain voltage level, let's say 2V and below is registered as a 0 or \"off\". Above a certain voltage threshold, like 3.3V and above is registered as a 1 or \"on\". 1s & 0s are just combinations of these varying voltage levels. ",
"Its basically like a telegraph. The dots and dashes or 1s and 0s are translated into coded pulses of energy like electricity or light that move through the cables to be decodeed by the recipient",
"Simple answer: Electricity of different voltages.\nLonger answer: we established that a voltages of 1=on and a voltage of 0=off. Some lines use different numbers but overall both sides have to agree. If you look at the physical voltages you will see what we call square waves. Where we actually say \"this was a 1\" can change. Sometimes we use the raising or falling of the wave. Others rely on where you are when I look. There is even a code that flips a bit so if you are sending all 0s I know you are alive and sending something.\nFiber optics does the same thing but we use light wavelength. Depending on how good the ends are, increased bandwidth is from how fast you make the changes or how many different colors you can send at once. The cool thing using light is we can use different frequencies of different colors at the same time. So say we have a range of 0-100. We separated it into chunks of 1-10 and so on. When reading the bits, I am reading 10 different conversations. There are other ways we can condense light too.\n\nTLDR: electric, we use voltages that we agree on with different codes as options. Fiber, uses the same concept but adds more \"conversations\" at the same time.\nSource: electronic and telecommunication degree\nMobile post so may not be the best thought out post.",
"Two pairs of wires are used for each signal.\n\nFor a 0 bit, one of the wires will hold a positive voltage, and the other a negative.\n\nFor a 1 bit, the polarity is inverted.\n\nThere is a clock pulse, and Everytime the clock pulses, the voltages are read or set. Each time period corresponds to one bit.\n\nThis is called low voltage differential signalling, and is a very basic version of how data is moved in a SATA cable.\n\nThe difference in the signal is also used to help reduce electrical noise interfering, and is much more reliable than just setting a single line to +5v or 0 v.\n\nWe also send analog signals using a different method. Instead of just 1/0, we can send any value from 0-65535( or more or less, depending on how your want to scale the data.\n\nThis method uses the current level instead of the voltage,\n\nThe transmitter reads a sensor, and the converts it to a value between 4 and 20 milliamps. \n\nA value of 4 =0, a value of 20= Max, and any variation in between scales to the range you decide on.\n\nSame as the digital signal, this signal is written and read at a steady time interval. (Depending on the hardware, 10,000 times a second is not uncommon)\nA value of 0 is a broken cable, which is why 4ma is used as the 0 level signal.\n\n",
"Data is sent as symbols within signals. \n\nSymbols are states of the signal that have values agreed between the transmitter (speaker) and the receiver (listener). Additional rules help the receiver make sense of the symbols.\n\nA simple example of a signal would be someone waving a flag. The rules of [flag semaphore](_URL_0_) give values to distinct flag positions (symbols),\n\nWhen sending data through cables the symbols are distinct variations of voltage and current amplitude, and when dealing with vibrating signals then frequency and phase (earliness or lateness of a signal change). \n\nA simple scheme would use two symbols to stand for 1 and 0. E.g. the two symbols could be a high and low voltage levels, or a current flowing one way or the other. \nA more complex scheme could be symbols that start with a sine wave (simple wobbly signal) and tweak the wobbles by small amounts to make the bigger or smaller (amplitude) or slightly earlier or later (phase) than expected. If the receiver can distinguish, say, 4 different amplitudes and 4 different phases then every wobble could be one of [16 different symbols \\(combinations phase and amplitude\\)](_URL_1_) which carry 4 bits (0000 to 1111) per symbol. \n\nAdditional rules are used to help the receiver to expect data. E.g. a symbols can be sent which just mean \"I'm starting\" or \"I'm stopping\" or \"This is the start of a new line on your TV.\" \n\nOther rules can make symbols represent the start or end of blocks of data or the type of data in the block. A special block of data can also be sent which lets the receiver spot if a previous block has been corrupted and sometimes lets the receiver correct errors.\n\nAcross the big scheme of sending data there are many additions, variants and extensions of these basic ideas.",
"Many ways. Think as you and your friend holding a rope at your waist level.\n\nYou can send literal 1 and 0s. We call this way digital:\n\n* One way is bending the rope higher than your waist level and creating a wave. Your friend sees that and undestands that as 1. Before sending a message you can send a 1. (We call that TTL)\n* Or you can use inverse bends for 0s.\n\nOr you can convert it another type of wave we call this operation \"modulation\" and the resulting wave is generally \"analog\":\n\n* If the distance increases you can lose eye contact so you want to know if anybody is holding the rope. So you always shake the rope. Creating continuous waves. Now you can change the frequency of your changes. For 1 you shake the rope more frequently than normal for 0 you shake less. \n* Or you can try grouping many numbers. So you just don't send 0 or 1 but a group of them. Like 0100, 1111, 1010 ... You can make bigger waves for bigger numbers (amplitude modulation) or shake the rope faster (frequency modulation) or stop shaking and continue after some known time (phase modulation).\n\n\nAlso the wind may disturb your waves so you use two ropes and send inverse waves. Wind always disturbs waves one way so you subtract them to get undisturbed wave.\n\nAlso sometimes there are many people holding both sides so you come up with complex ways of detecting who sends information to whom (e.g. QAM).",
"You know when you throw a rock in a pond and waves expand outward? Turns out electicity+magnetism behave somewhat similarly. If you hit them with energy, they'll wave, and the waves propagate outward.\n\nNow imagine a very long, very narrow canal of water with a wave machine at one end and a guy observing waves coming out the mouth of the canal at the other. As you can imagine, there are lot's of ways to change the wave machine, the the fellow at the far-away mouth of the canal would be able to observe. Bigger vs. smaller waves (this is AM radio), faster vs. slower waves (this is FM radio).\n\nIf you want to make it \"digital\" (i.e. represent just 1s and 0s), you pick two states and only vary between those. If decide to go with fast vs. slow waves (this is called frequency-shift-keying aka FSK), the guy at the end of the canal watches waves and if they're fast, he writes down a 1, if they're slow he writes down a 0.\n\nNow, what if he could faithfully differentiate between 4 different state rather than just 2 -- say, slow, medium-slow, medium-fast, and fast? This would allow the wave machine to send him more information in the same amount of time. We just assign 2 bits to each state now -- slow=00, medium-slow=01, medium-fast=10, fast=11. \n\nWhat's the limit on adding states? Well, if the wind is blowing, and it get's difficult to tell the difference between two speeds as they get closer together, we start getting read errors or \"bit errors\". There's also a physical upper limit on how fast the wave machine can move the water, and a lower limit on how slow it can go before the waves stop reaching the observer. So each state has to operate within this fixed window.\n\nThere's lot's of other tricks that come from complex (as in sqrt(-1)) math, to get more bits through the canal in a reliable way, but that's the gist of it.",
"Lots of people are saying light on, light off, but this is not what actually happens now. This is correct for extremely old systems, but it is so out of date as to be misleading. \n\nSimplest way \n\nLight goes on, light turns off. Light on means a 1, light off means a zero, now you just write them down. The problem with this is how long do you wait if the light is on to count it as two 1s in a row? You have to share a clock and only count when the clock ticks, so you both know when the 1 or 0 has been counted so you can move on to the next number. This adds a problem, suppose your clock is a little slow, maybe a low battery. At first you won't notice but after a while you'll get out of sync with your friend, so they sent 1 digit but you read 2. Now you have a double of one of the numbers in your list, so you can have some issues. \n\n\n\nSimple+\n\nNow we add a few other things. We can break the numbers into groups, let's call them bytes. A byte is 8 bits, 8 1s or 0s. So 00000000 is one byte, 11111111 is another byte, and any mix of those is a byte, like 10010110. After we send a byte through we can do something to get in sync with our friend on the other end, so we may send a specific signal, or maybe do something else to confirm we are done with that set and on to another. One trick is to add up all the numbers we just sent and check if there are an even or odd number of 1s. If it is odd, send a 1. If it is even, send a 0. Now we can pretty often check if we have misread something, though this still has issues. Maybe we need something more complex. \n\n\n\nA little complex\n\nLet's talk about carrier waves. You know how if you are dancing it is much easier with a beat? We can do the same thing here, but we do it with something else very regular and predictable, a sine wave. This is a sound that is very simple and only has one frequency in it, just up and down like a clock. So we don't turn the light on or off now, we turn it up and down. What we should see on the other end is a light going up and down in brightness evenly at a constant rate. This means we have a base tone to hear and we can then add stuff on top. Say we agree we are going to use a middle C sound, the centre key on the piano, as the base sound. We can then add anything we like on top of it and we can then use the base sound as a shared clock and the higher notes as the extra sound. With a little bit of extra thinking we can subtract out that base sound and hear just the top sounds. Now if our clocks are different we don't need to worry, the signal itself is making our clocks the same. \n\n\n\nThings like this are really complex, but the details are fascinating and if you can understand how these things work you get an idea of the kinds of problems that can occur. "
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1fjs8z | how do shows like masterchef conduct so many interviews of the cooks before something is about to happen? | Do they pull people aside every few minutes to find out what is going through their heads or is it all staged afterwards? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1fjs8z/eli5_how_do_shows_like_masterchef_conduct_so_many/ | {
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"Just from watching, it definitely seems that the interviews are conducted afterwards. Possibly long after, when the producers develop a storyline from the footage they shot. \n\nYou can watch closely for hair, makeup, & clothing changes to see that it is definitely not \"in the moment\".\n\nOf course, that means they already know the outcome and are just acting. Maybe that ruins the magic? Sorry. "
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f4xjm5 | why do elastic material on clothes get crunchy when it gets old? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4xjm5/eli5_why_do_elastic_material_on_clothes_get/ | {
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"Rubber and stuff has chemicals and compounds it it that help make it stretchy. These can either evaporate over time, or solidify if not streched. As an example, the moon Rover the astronauts used has wire mesh wheels because in hard vaccum rubber would just turn hard and brittle immediately.\n\n\n\n_URL_0_"
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2d1l6a | what is an aneurysm? can epilepsy cause an aneurysm? | My dad was epileptic, had an aneurysm, and passed away. Can epilepsy cause an aneurysm to occur? Or are they unrelated? Is there a way to prevent or stop an already occurring aneurysm? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d1l6a/eli5_what_is_an_aneurysm_can_epilepsy_cause_an/ | {
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"An aneurysm is when there is a blood-filled bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Epilepsy is a long term history of seizures; the seizures aren't going to cause an aneurysm, but they may be related by an underlying cause. Stopping an aneurysm would require brain surgery.",
"While I'm curious to hear the well thought out responses that I hope will come, I primarily want to give my condolences for the death of your father. Internet hug, fellow redditor. ",
"Firstly, I'm sorry to hear about your dad. My mom had a cerebral aneurysm about 5 years ago so i looked it up and had my doctor/dad explain the basics to me. (I'm not a professional tho so feel free to take my words with a grain of salt)\n\nAn aneurysm is essentially when a blood balloon forms somewhere on a blood vessel, like a vein or artery. Imagine your blood vessels are like those long balloons that people fold into balloon animals. Ideally, the balloon would be long and have a uniform diameter along its length, but an aneurysm would be like having a gigantic bubble somewhere along the balloon. As one might imagine, the area where the balloon is misshapen has a much higher chance of popping. The same goes with your blood vessels.\n\nTreatment for these aneurysms can vary due to the locations where they occur. Some treatments use clipping, where they expose the aneurysm (preferably before it pops) and clips the aneurysm shut and isolates it from the rest of the blood vessel. Another technique called coiling causes the aneurysm to clot, effectively preventing a rupture. Also, sometimes surgeons will use bypass grafts to basically insert a tube on the inside of the blood vessel to bypass the part of the vessel with the aneurysm (think of a balloon inside a balloon)\n\nNow as for the epilepsy part, i can't really imagine the aneurysm and the epilepsy being correlated. Epilepsy is usually a result of nervous system and brain signalling issues, whereas aneurysms are the result of weak blood vessel walls.\n\nI'm deeply sorry for your loss, and I hope I helped answer any questions you might have. \n",
"An aneurysm is a weakening in the wall of a blood vessel causing that section to bulge out and become more likely to burst. They can theoretically occur in any vessel in the body, but are more commonly found in arteries rather than veins. Cerebral aneurysms are often found in an area of the brain called the Circle of Willis where a lot of blood vessels come together. It is tough to detect them, and many people do not know they have an aneurysm until it ruptures and causes a stroke.\n\nEpilepsy and aneurysms are not necessarily related, but I did find an article where 2 patients with cerebral aneurysms presented with seizures (link below). It is unlikely that the seizures caused the aneurysm, though.\n\nI am sorry to hear about your dad. I hope this helps answer your questions a bit. :)\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"I am sorry about your dad. My mom has had a brain aneurysm. She survived with surgery. But, the recovery was bad and 10 years later she has side effects still. I wish I could give you a hug. ",
"An aneurysm is where a vein or artery develop an weak spot that balloons out and eventually bursts. Epilepsy so far as I know does not increase the likelihood of you developing an aneurysm but because it involves violent shaking it does increase the likelihood of it bursting, just like any activity can cause them to rupture. \n\nThese weak spots can be due to injury, high blood pressure, a blockages (clot, plaque build up, etc), or it could be congenital and it was just weaker from birth. They are very hard to detect before they balloon, and still difficult to detect before they burst because they have virtually no symptoms before they burst and they generally result in rapid death when they burst. My father had on on his aorta that was discovered because he had an ulcer pop. \n\nI am sorry for your loss. "
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3mkmgz | does learning a new language cause you to have a different accent on your first language? | As I said in the title, Does learning a new language cause you to have a different accent on your first language? Are there different parts of your memory/language area in your brain that keeps them separate? Any help with this question is much appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mkmgz/eli5_does_learning_a_new_language_cause_you_to/ | {
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"Short answer is no. Learning a new language does not *necessarily* give you an accent while speaking your original language. \n\nAccents are believed to be a result of two factors. The first is one's \"articulatory settings\", or the default position, etc. of the muscles used to create speech in one's native language. When you learned English as a child, you learned how to create the sounds you heard around you and where to place your muscles at rest so that creating these sounds required as little effort and preparation as possible. \n\n The second factor comes when attempting to mimic the sounds you hear and associate with that language. As a child, these sounds program your articulatory settings. As an adult, your settings must be compensated for in order to mimic the intended sounds. Doing so makes you sound \"off\" to a native speaker, and because you share the articulatory settings of the region in which you were raised your place of origin can generally be identified.\n\nYou can change your settings consciously while speaking, of course. That's how people mimic foreign accents, even if they don't know the term for it. And your settings can evolve over time as you become immersed in a new culture and a new language. If you were to move to Germany today and over the next 45 years become fluent in German, you might find when you return to your county of origin that you now speak English with a slight German accent. Or, you might *never* integrate the German articulatory settings, and will thus always speak German with an English accent. Or you may even learn to use either collection of settings in any given conversation, and have no foreign accent in either language. It varies from person to person.\n\nI'm on my phone right now, but when I get to a computer I'll link to a *great* TEDTalk video on articulatory settings. I think the speaker is named Christopher Aruffo, but I'm only about 65% sure of that. \n\nEDIT: Yup, that's his name. [Here's the video.](_URL_0_)"
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2sguwb | how do investigative journalism publications successfully conduct investigations when they don't have police powers? | For instance, in the UK there's a publication called Private Eye (probably closest Britain has to Charlie Hebdo) that is famous for uncovering scandals. Even now they have an article about how they've found out the Attorney General has loads of offshore offices to avoid tax. My question is how do they find out all of this when they don't have special authority (e.g. They can't hack emails or anything if that sort)?
And more broadly, how do they conduct investigations in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sguwb/eli5_how_do_investigative_journalism_publications/ | {
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"plenty of legal ways of obtaining information\n\n1) ask people\n\n2) ask pissed off former employees\n\n3) dumpster diving\n\n4) look thru published records, look for inconsistencies"
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f279w9 | how does plastic window wrap do such a good job at insulating windows? it's just a thin layer of tight plastic | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f279w9/eli5_how_does_plastic_window_wrap_do_such_a_good/ | {
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"Air is very good at convection and very bad at conduction.\n\nBut what does that mean? \n\nBasically, when air can move freely it can easily give up its energy, so warm air touches the cool glass, loses its heat and drops to the floor causing a current that pulls more warm air to the windows. This is partially why you can feel a draft around single pane windows in cold weather. You can think of it like an excited kid carrying a block from one area to another.\n\nBut when air can’t move. It has a very difficult time moving energy through it, so once it’s cooled, it can’t move the hot air from the plastic side to the glass side very efficiently.(conduction is when energy moves through an object, like how the handle of a pan gets hot when you heat the bottom.) This is more similar to trying to convince a bunch of excited kids in a room to pass the block to one another to get it across the room.\n\nThis is essentially the idea behind all insulation, the microfibres of Fibreglass creates tiny air pockets that make convection virtually impossible.",
"Air is a good insulator. The air trapped between the glass and the film adds a layer of insulation between the cold glass and the interior of the home. It's the reason we use double and triple pane glass with a layer of air (usually filled with an inert gas though) between the panes.",
"Insulation usually works but trapping air between the two things you are insulating against each other. Air doesn’t transfer heat very well compared to more solid things. \n\nSo, the plastic wrap works because it traps a layer of air.",
"It’s not really the wrap that is insulating. The plastic holds a pocket of air between your window and the outside. If your house is slightly positive pressure this pocket of air is a similar temperature to the inside conditions and prevents the cold air from infiltrating. Essentially the plastic holds a pocket of air that acts as a buffer and that is what prevents the cold/hot from getting in the house.",
"Every answer I've seen so far says something along the lines of 'there is air and it is a good insulator'. While this is correct, it's more about the small gap between the film and the glass than the choice of air. Whilst the use of air effectively prevents conductive heat transfer, the small enclosed gap is important as it greatly reduces the effects of convection, which is the dominant mode of heat transfer through air. Air can hardly be called a good insulator on it's own, ideally we would put a vacuum in the small gap so that convection and conduction are zero.",
"* the plastic blocks the draft from leaks in your window, preventing the air outside form directly mixing with the air inside\n* the plastic traps a layer of air between it and the window, and that is what provides the insulation, not the plastic",
"Aside from draft prevention and trapping an air pocket for insulation, there is a third effect not mentioned yet. Plastic film blocks infrared radiation, particularly the long wave infrared associated with heat while letting visible light through.",
"It's all about convection. The movement of air. That's why fluffy insulation works so well. It traps air. With heat in a house you are basically making a peice of metal hot, a radiator, then that heats the air as the air passes over it.. Cold air leaking in mixes with the warm air. That thin plastic sheet stops convection and adds another layer of still air avoiding the different temperature air from meeting and mixing."
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45t9ip | how can gas giants exist if the average temperature of space falls below the boiling point of both helium and hydrogen (i.e. what for the most part makes up the gas planets we know)? | *Reeeeeally* eli5, please; am not a scientist, much less an astrophysicist.
Does it have to do with the atmospheric pressure of these individual planets rendering the boiling point lower than normal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45t9ip/eli5_how_can_gas_giants_exist_if_the_average/ | {
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"The temperature of empty space may be low, but the temperature of the gas giants isn't the same thing. Just like the temperature of the Earth is not the same as the space around it. Gas giants get energy from the sun, and huge frictional forces at their dense centers. The \"surface\" temperature of Jupiter (where the pressure is still 10 bars) is 67 °C = 152 °F.",
"not 100% sure but... there's sooo much gas that it forms its own gravitational field which gives it an atmosphere. and an atmosphere can sustain pressures and temperatures different from space.",
"These are 2 different questions. Gas giants have nothing to do temperature of space.\n\nPart 1: It is possible to have gas floating around in space. (Temperature: Low, Pressure: Low). For this look at the **Phase Rule**. _URL_0_\n\nPart 2: Gas Giant are planets that are mostly gas and very large. Jupiter is sometimes, and incorrectly referred to a failed star. The temperature at Jupiter's core is 35,700 °C (64,300 °F) and pressure is roughly 4,500 GPa (4.5 billion times the pressure of earth).\nThe surface of Jupiter is 67 °C (152 °F), which would allow hydrogen to exist as a gas. As you go move towards the center both pressure and temperature increases, it goes from gas to liquid hydrogen to metallic hydrogen (electrically conductive hydrogen)."
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bwhvc3 | how come your car's aircon needs topped up and recharged, but your fridge in your kitchen does not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwhvc3/eli5_how_come_your_cars_aircon_needs_topped_up/ | {
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"Your fridge is a pretty well closed off system where all the joints can be firmly sealed, and then it never moves for 10-20 years. \n\nYour car has a lot more flexible hoses and seals because it has to move the refrigerant from a compressor somewhere in the engine bay to your AC unit and back, and it does this while the whole thing is bumping and vibrating all the time. Those flexible bits tend to wear out over time and stop doing a great job of keeping the system sealed, so some refrigerant leaks out.",
"Two main reasons:\n\nA) Because of the vibration of the engine and also to facilitate repairs and installation at the factory some segments use rubber hoses and threaded connections. This are not as impermeable as the solid pipe and welded connections in a stationary unit. \n\nB) The compressor for the A/C in the car is driven by the engine, then the axe has to go trough a seal to allow the rotational movement and keep the gas inside the compressor. In a home unit the electric motor and the compressor are in a single sealed unit and only the electrical connection penetrate the compressor hull and this is very easy to seal.\n\nIn general the under-the-hood environment is very harsh, with very high temperatures, vibration and humidity. Deep respect to the people that design for this applications, things routinely perform with good reliability over 20 years in that environment."
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j4p0p | li5: mlb trading, after the trade deadline has passed. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4p0p/li5_mlb_trading_after_the_trade_deadline_has/ | {
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"The Major League Baseball Trade Dealing is July 31st. After this, players can still be traded, but with limitations.\n\nAugust 31st is called the \"waiver\" trade deadline. Any player can be traded before August 31st, but first they have to \"clear waivers\". Basically, this means that their team has to tell all the other teams that they don't want him anymore. For three days after they make that announcement, any other team in the league can come and take that player away from his team *without giving anything back*. If they decide to do this, the player's old team gets a takeback - they can pull him off waivers and keep him on their team, but he can't be traded if that happens. If no team decides to take the player for free (maybe he's making a lot of money and no teams can afford him), then the player can be traded.\n\n"
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1xzo5v | will the ice in my driveway melt faster if i break it up? | We usually chip the ice in my driveway after a snow/ice storm. I'm not convinced it helps the driveway melt faster, but it sure does wreck my shoulders.
Anyone care to tell me if there is any benefit to this practice? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xzo5v/will_the_ice_in_my_driveway_melt_faster_if_i/ | {
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"well, yes, but probably only slightly. More surface area means more of the ice chunk is exposed to warmer air. ",
"Yes, breaking up the ice will make it melt faster. Warm air and the warm ground melts the surface of ice. A chunk of ice will eventually melt, but only one layer at a time, which can take a while. However, if you break up the ice, you expose more of it's surface. All the surfaces of all the pieces of the ice will melt at the same time, instead of one layer at a time. This a general thing. Matter with larger surface areas will change state/react faster than areas of the same volume but less surface area.",
"will small ice cubes melt away faster than big ice cubes?"
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3g7rns | why does the government prioritize subsidizing meat/dairy and not healthier foods like veggies and starches? | I would like to know how this benefits the economy, since we are also paying the cost for peoples unhealthy eating in health care expenses. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3g7rns/eli5why_does_the_government_prioritize/ | {
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"What makes you think starches are healthier than dairy?"
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9mqmxw | why do posts get archived? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mqmxw/eli5_why_do_posts_get_archived/ | {
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"The focus on this site is on relevance and recency. Things that are newer will be prioritized over things that are older. By archiving discussions, you ensure that the conversation must be focused on things that have recently been posted."
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4qoybq | axiom of choice | Trying to wrap my head around this concept. If someone could kindly duh it down for me I would be grateful.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qoybq/eli5axiom_of_choice/ | {
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"Imagine you have a laundry basket filled with an infinite number of white socks. The axiom of choice says that you can pick out all the left ones. ",
"Axioms are used in formal logical reasoning like math. Logical reasoning can not create new facts but can combine facts into new ones. Axioms are the facts we take for granted and does not have to be proven. It is similar to a definition.\n\nSo the axiom of choice is that you can make a selection from the values in a set. This may seam trivial but there is no way to prove that it is possible. And if you think of how many times a mathematical proof have you pick any number from a list it is obvious that it is a very important axiom.",
"Let's build up to what it says. Let X_1 be a nonempty set.\n\nThis means there exists an element x_1 in X_1.\n.\n.\n.\nLet X_i be a nonempty set. Then there exists an element x_i in X_i.\n\nAs you can see, if we have say n nonempty sets, we can find find elements x_1,...,x_n coming from sets X_1,...,X_n respectively. The axiom of choice is simply saying that the n-tuple (x_1,x_2,...,x_n) exists as an element in the set X_1 x X_2 x ... x X_n (where x here means cartesian product.)\n\nThis is true even if the collection of sets is infinite. In my example above, I only had n sets. You can have an infinite (even uncountable) number of sets and the same principle applies.\n\nBy the way, I want to emphasize that this is an axiom, not a theorem. Meaning it's not something you prove. It's a common sense assumption that you make within standard set theory.",
"Ok, I've read a bunch of stuff on the axiom of choice, and I understand what it means, technically. But what I don't understand is why.\n\nThe axiom of choice allows you to say that for any finite or infinite set of sets, there is at least one way to select one element from each set. So, this obviously works easily for small, finite sets, always choose the left sock, or the lowest number in each set. And I vaguely understand how the axiom of choice is required to be able to do the same thing in infinite sets.\n\nCan someone give an example of what assuming the axiom of choice allows you to do? Is there a well known problem that it solves, and if so, can you explain how it's necessary to solve it?",
"A \"choice function\" is a function which takes as input any one of a collection of sets, and returns some element of that set. So if we have all of the nonempty sets of positive integers, we can define the function \"f(S) = the smallest integer in S\". For example, f({11,12,13}) = 11, while f({2, 4, 6, 8, ...}) = 2. This is a simple example of a choice function. On the other hand, \"f(S) = the largest integer in S\" is *not* a valid choice function, since the set of all even positive integers {2,4,6,8, ...} has no largest element, and so f({2,4,6,8...}) would be undefined.\n\nBut what if, instead of nonempty sets of positive integers, we're working with nonempty sets of real numbers? If we try to just copy over the same choice function, we'll find \"the smallest real number in S\" is undefined for a great many sets of real numbers, such as the set of all negative real numbers. Other basic attempts at defining a choice function will similarly run into problems with sufficiently weird sets of real numbers. It's far from clear whether a choice function should exist that is defined on all possible nonempty sets of real numbers.\n\nThe axiom of choice states that for *any* collection of nonempty sets (whether nonempty sets of positive integers, nonempty sets of real numbers, or anything else) there always exists at least one choice function. It doesn't say anything about what the function is or how it works - it just says that there *must* be some such function. Surprisingly, this axiom is necessary to resolve several basic-seeming conjectures in set theory (and occasionally other areas). Some of them even feel \"obvious\", like the statement: given two sets A and B, either they are the same size or one is smaller than the other. Others are deeply counterintuitive, like the Banach-Tarski paradox, which shows that (assuming the axiom of choice) it is possible to cut a sphere into five pieces, move and rotate the pieces, and end up with two spheres identical to the original. Regardless of this latter category, the axiom of choice is generally accepted by mathematicians - though there are still some who reject the axiom of choice or who work with alternate axioms which negate the axiom of choice (the most prominent being the axiom of determinacy).",
"You have infinite number of boxes, each with some items in them.\n\nIf axiom of choice is true, you can take a new box, and go through existing boxes and take a single item from each and place it in a new box. If you have some way of deliberately choosing an item, you don't need axiom of choice, basically axiom of choice guarantees you can just pick \"whatever\".\n\nThis assumption was first introduced in a \"well, duh\" sorta way. It seemed so obvious and so harmless it didn't feel proper it needed to even be an axiom. Then weird results started to pour in. Also, very important and non-weird results started to pour in.\n\nOne of the cornerstones of weird results caused by Axiom of Choice is the existence of non-measureable sets. Those sets can't be proven to exist without AC, that is, Axiom of Choice. Non-measurable set on real numbers is a set of real numbers onto which you cannot consistently assign size.\n\nLike, there is a very natural way of assigning sizes to sets of real numbers. Set of numbers from 0 to 1 has length of 1. Set of numbers from 50 to 100 has length of 50. You can extend this intuition seemingly endlessly, like, a single point has length 0. Set of natural numbers has length 0. For a bit mathematicians thought every set could be assigned a size. But if you can use axiom of choice, you can construct a set which refuses any concept of size you assign to it. It's not 0, it's not 1, it's not anything above or anything inbetween. There are collections of bizarre results that can be proven once you get your hands on a non-measureable set, each weirder than the previous.\n\nBut axiom of choice is also required for a bunch of very important results which we think are true and that should be true. You cannot prove those important things unless you assume axiom of choice. So what mathematicians do is that they assume AC, but they then usually take extra measures to ban non-measureable sets from parties they host to keep the weirdness levels down. It's a bit ugly but it works, you get all the nice results from AC and you mostly don't need to face those bizarre side effects it has.\n\nLast, my own personal favorite of bizarre results from AC. Comment section has Terence Tao explain this and how this paradox resembles Banach-Tarski paradox. Blog post itself is layman accessible, Terry Taos comment is not: _URL_0_\n\nFor the most part, when people say \"AC is wrong\", that doesn't really mean they believe it shouldn't be used, but finding proper stance in the face of the bizarre things that follow from it can be quite frustrating if you're up close and personal with them."
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2o74bl | why is nasa's space/launch center based in florida? | As compared to any other state. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o74bl/eli5why_is_nasas_spacelaunch_center_based_in/ | {
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"- Spacecraft launch eastward, so that the Earth's rotation helps them get into orbit. Any space launch center will want a giant empty area to the East, so that nobody will get hurt if a rocket explodes or crashes on launch. For the Soviets, that giant empty area was the Kazach steppe and Siberia; for the Americans it was the Atlantic Ocean. \n\n- It's warm enough that they can launch almost 365 days a year.\n\n- It's relatively close to NASA's supply contractors, and accessible by barge. This was important because the gigantic Saturn V first stage was only transportable by barge.",
"Florida was chosen for several major reasons. One was, it's close to the equator. [The linear velocity of Earth's surface is greatest at the equator, much as a ceiling fan blade slices through the air faster at its tip than at its center hub, conferring a fuel-saving boost to spacecraft attempting to escape Earth's gravity.—Editor's Note]\n\nThe second reason was it had to be on the east coast, over the ocean, so you wouldn't fly over people that might get killed as stuff dropped off or blew up.\n\nAnd the location that they chose in Florida had a lot to do with the fact that there wasn't anything there. You go there today and you don't see it, but Brevard County in the 1940s was a bunch of orchards and hardly anything else. And this island that they're on [Merritt Island] had good logistics, because there was a navy base and an army base not too far away. But there was no population density whatsoever. It was just a beach, essentially.\n\nSo you could build what you wanted, but it had decent roads because of the military, and that was important. This is one of the problems that [the Soviet Union] had with Baikonur [Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan], their launch site. I mean, it is in the middle of nowhere. They had to build a whole infrastructure to run rail out there, to build highways, to bring in all of the water and power and everything else that was necessary to make that place habitable.\n\n\n[source](_URL_0_)",
"2 main reasons, both because of the Earth's rotation on its axis:\n1. The earth moves faster at the equator, so by using this velocity it is easier to get into orbit.\n2. To use the rotational velocity, the rocket must launch moving eastwards. Often, rockets drop components, and it is better to have them land in the Atlantic than in, say, Texas."
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6jf6zm | how do you determine the quality of a classical music performance? if two musicians play a piece perfectly according to the sheet music, what makes one person a glen gould and another just really good? | I have a neighbor that is really good at piano and his wife is really good at violin. Like really really really good. Playing Rachmoninov good. Can sight read most things, play around with time signatures and all that. When I suggest that they should play pro or something they just laugh.
They play me the piece by a pro and I can't hear the difference but they say its there and that they aren't even close to the guy on Spotifys level.
I struggle with the cycle of fifths so I am not gonna argue but could someone explain to me what I am not hearing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jf6zm/eli5_how_do_you_determine_the_quality_of_a/ | {
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"If a musician plays a piece perfectly according to the sheet music he is good technically but not musically. A good musician play slight variations upon what the sheet music say to better fit the rhythm and emotions of the piece. It is hard to explain but there is just certain sounds and timings that resonate specially withing the human brain and can create strong emotions.",
"In the classical idiom, most of what you hear instrumentalists doing is interpretive rather than purely creative. The process of translating visual markings into sound is complex because the musician must stay true to the composer's intention (which is inherently vague, especially in music from composers who were long dead before the advent of sound recording) while also imbuing their own personality and musicality into the performance. It's a delicate balance. There are plenty of musicians capable of physically executing the notes on the page, but the best musicians are capable of 'upselling' pieces of music to bring out the most interesting or emotional aspects of the composition by the way they perform - energy level, virtuosity, interpretation, pacing, sound color, etc. ",
"Musical phrasing has a lot to do with it. There's a good TED talk that explains this.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you search YouTube for \"musical phrasing\" you will find lots more examples.",
"It's actually really difficult to explain because the difference between a good and great performance can be quite subtle. You can hit all the notes, and play all the dynamics, but the performance could still end up dull. \n\nWhat you should do is watch some master class videos. Watching one of the greats teach someone can give you an idea of what goes into a performance. And you can hear an amateur(although really good ones sometimes) play the same thing as a professional and try to pick out the differences. \n\nHere's one featuring one of my favorite trumpet soloists, Hakan Hardenberger. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Other people on here have mentioned it, but primarily, it's the way a musician plays the composition. Take for example the way a person gives a speech. Anyone can read aloud a few paragraphs of something that is \"meaningful\". A masterful orator will know how to invoke what he or she wants the audience to extrapolate from the words. There are deliberate inflections, hesitations, and other methods for articulating and capturing the emotions you want to resonate with everyone. \n\nA seasoned musician who plays classical pieces professionally will be well-versed on the original composer, the general playing and composition style of the person, the contextual dynamics of the piece of music itself, and then be able to transcribe that as well as add his or her personal inflections on the piece. The result is the original piece that captures the intended feeling as well as the musician's personal interpretation of navigating through some of compositional harmony. ",
"There is something else going on here, too. Some classically-trained musicians believe that if they can't stand out like a virtuoso, it is an insult to the profession for them to play professionally as a soloist. That simply isn't true, but a husband and wife who both believe that is going to set the belief more firmly because each wants to please the other. If they can play at a level to impress general audiences, performing generates an interest for the music in popular culture and encourages others to learn to play it, so the music they love endures as a result. You can be a professional without being an internationally-touring soloist. The intrinsic value of making music goes beyond skill level, and sometimes an inability to understand that is actually the thing that prevents a good musician from being great. Some of those great musicians can be identified before they become technically proficient because they know how to put feeling in their music. They play from the soul rather than from their brains. Don't try to explain it to your neighbors because they won't understand you if they don't understand other musicians and might be insulted if you try, but hopefully that helps you understand them and why trying to push them to play professionally is futile. "
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2s5iu9 | how do movies afford to destroy expensive cars in films? | Like the Fast Furious series and the Need for Speed movie. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s5iu9/eli5how_do_movies_afford_to_destroy_expensive/ | {
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"Movies have pretty high budgets and a lot of the cars destroyed are replicas. They wouldn't actually blow up a half million dollar Ferrari, but they could make a kit car that looks like one out of fiberglass and sheet metal fairly cheaply. ",
"Most of the time, the cars that are destroyed are junkers anyway. They may look pretty, but they're trash under the hood. Heck, they may not even look pretty, if not for the ol' photoshop paintjob.",
"EDIT: This answer is specifically related to your question concerning *expensive* cars. \n\nAlmost none of the answers given are correct. Ferrari is not going to let a movie company just blow up their cars. They don't need that level of advertising. \n\nSimple answer: they aren't the real cars.\n\n For the Need for Speed movie you're quoting, Jeremy Clarkson asked Aaron Paul about the cars and Paul told him they were \"kit cars\". These are normal car \"frameworks\" that are then overlaid with hyper-detailed external body work. Granted, they're still expensive (The Koenisegg that he flips in that movie, for instance) is still $300,000. Imagine your mom's Toyota Camry, but with the body of a Ferrari placed on top of it.\n\nThat's what gets flipped and wrecked. It's not \"cheap\", but with the budgets that movies have, they're nothing. ",
"Possibly the most famous of destroyed cars is the Ferrari 250 GT California in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. This would be worth $10 million + today if it was real (only $300k at the time of the film). However it was one of 3 replicas that they paid $25k for. The car they destroyed was just a body and was worth even less. "
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273vct | how did we decide there are 365 days in a year, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/273vct/eli5_how_did_we_decide_there_are_365_days_in_a/ | {
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"Days in a year is fairly obvious; a day and a year are natural phenomena, so they were observed. Seconds per minute and minutes per hour came from the Babylonians, who used a base-60 counting system.\n\nI'm not sure where 24 hours per day came from.",
"A year is an orbit around the sun and a day is a rotation of the earth. So clearly 365 (really 365.24.....) is something we measured. A month is also approximately the length of the lunar cycle, though it has been warped from the approximately 28 days to 30ish to fill the 365 day year. \r\r\r24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour are purely arbitrary. ",
"OK kid, have a seat. Auntie is going to try her best to answer your question!\n\nNow, what's a day? A day is when the sun comes up, and then it goes down and turns to night, that's sort of what a day is right? Sure we have clocks and stuff now, but people from a long time ago just used the sun and the moon to know when the day is finished.\n\nNow what people also would've realised, is that after many many days, the weather changes. There would be some days when it's really hot, and some days when it's really cold, and there is a loooonnng time in between.\n\nSo they started counting how many days between these weather changes! And over time, they realised that hey, there's a pattern! There's a certain number of days that pass between these weather changes, so that became a year. Roughly 365 days.\n\nHours, minutes, and seconds were thought up by people to break down a day easier. If you want to go feed the cows and sheep you have, maybe collect some apples and berries, you don't want to talk about how many days it would take, that would be silly!\n\nSo the Ancient Egyptians - yep, the same ones who built pyramids - had a clever idea. They will break the day down into two segments of 12 hours. Why 12 you may ask? Well we're not 100% sure, but there's a number of possibilities!\n\nWe know that they used the base 12 counting system for the hour, it's a bit hard to explain but try to imagine that we had 12 fingers - OK, two thumbs and 10 fingers mr. smartypants - and so we counted to 12 before we repeated number.\n\nI know! It's pretty crazy to think about! You seem to be doing fine though :) I'll buy you an ice cream later. Anyways, so some people think that imagining we has 12 fingers is pretty cool and that's how we should count, well maybe the ancient people knew this and made the hours like that!\n\nOr maybe it's because of the moon! You know how the moon spins around the Earth? Yep, it spins around the Earth 12 times every year, and the Egyptians, who loved looking at stars and the moon and the sun and all manner of things in the sky, might have thought, huh, the moon spazzes around us 12 times a year, maybe we could use that to break down our days for us!\n\nI'll talk about one more maybe, there's a few more but I can teach you them when you're older. You know how I said they watched the stars as well? Well you see, the ancient Egyptians also had 36 groups of stars, (yup, constellations), which they followed, and 12 of those were especially good for telling time during summer nights. So that could *very well* have been why we have 12 hour nights and they made daytime the same as well.\n\nAnyways, I'll let someone smarter than me talk about the minutes and seconds because you can get veeeeeerrry mathematical with them, and it's a bit hard for me.\n\nBut there you go! People counted about 365 days in a year because that's when the weather change repeated, or seasons as we them to be today! And later on, those smartypants Egyptians made 12 hours of daytime and 12 hours of night, so we have the 24 hour full day.\n\nLater on though, people realised that how long an hour was changed for different times of the year, since you had more daylight in summer, and less in winter. So they fixed how long an hour was so that every hour was the same the entire year! And then they did other fancy stuff like make leap years and divided the days into months and then divided months and days in all sorts of ways by looking at the sky. But I'll let you look up those things yourself, there's just too much to talk about!\n\nPretty cool huh? Did you get all that? Don't worry, I can tell it to you as a bedtime story if you forget. Let's go get that ice cream now? Awesome! *But don't tell mummy I paid for it, OK?*\n\n--------------\n\nSources:\n\n1. _URL_2_\n\n2. _URL_3_\n\n3. _URL_1_\n\n4. _URL_0_\n\nEDITS: coherence, grammar, making the language more 5 year old friendly, ice cream"
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"http://www.ubr.com/clocks/frequently-asked-questions-faq/clocks-and-time-faq-origin-of-hours-and-minutes.aspx",
"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-time-division-days-hours-minutes/"
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3nyouy | what is the reason behind the qwerty and azerty keyboards? | Why can't keyboards be ABCDE... instead of QWERTY or AZERTY? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nyouy/eli5_what_is_the_reason_behind_the_qwerty_and/ | {
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"With old typewriters, if two adjacent letters were pressed in quick succession, there was a very good chance that the lever arms which stamp the ink on the page would jam. As such, they developed a keyboard (the QWERTY) that spread out the most used letters to prevent such jamming. When computer keyboards were first becoming a thing, they kept the layout because it was what all the typists were familiar with.\n\nAZERTY was pretty much the same thing, but just for other countries (and was in fact modeled off the QWERTY layout). ",
"[The Engineer Guy](_URL_0_) has an excellent video pertaining to the Dvorak keyboard and why it didn't take over the qwerty keyboard.\n",
" > Why can't keyboards be ABCDE\n\nThey can be. You could reprogram your keyboard to any combo you'd like, given the right software. The computer keyboard simply sends a code that the computer interprets.\n\n > instead of QWERTY or AZERTY?\n\nAs discussed elsewhere, QWERTY became the standard for computers because it was the standard for typewriters, and that was the obvious input analog. QWERTY was the standard for typewriters because somebody invented it to be less likely to physically jam and it caught on in businesses. No other layout gained enough momentum to overturn it and people adopted it as the standard, so more people learned it to get jobs, so it became less likely to get replaced.",
"Previous answers have covered \"Why QWERTY or AZERTY?\", so I'll just quickly address \"Why not ABCDE?\".\nTry and imagine the entire alphabet right now. There's a good chance you'll visualise it as one long line, from A to Z. Between the way we learn it (as a sequential list, ie A, then B, then C...) and the aids we use to support that learning (I bet we've all been in a classroom with one of those long banners with the entire alphabet written across it), most people imagine the alphabet that way. Turning that long line of letters into a two-dimensional keyboard turns out to be really counter-intuitive, potentially because of our visualisation of the alphabet as a list. Anecdotal evidence: text entry in video games, like when you have to nickname your Pokemon. It seems to take quite a while to find the letters you need, even though they're listed sequentially.",
"for a history of QWERTY, See below:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR\nIt most likely stems not from mechanical failure, but from telegraph operators wanting an efficient layout for transcribing morse code.",
"I am an LSAT instructor, and there is actually an LSAT question on this exact concept if anyone is interested. \n\n21. Historian: The standard \"QWERTY\" configuration of the keys on typewriters and computer keyboards was originally designed to be awkward and limit typing speed. This was because early typewriters would jam frequently if adjacent keys were stuck in quick succession. Experiments have shown that keyboard configurations more efficient than QWERTY can double typing speed while tremendously reducing typing effort. However, the expense and inconvenience of switching to a new keyboard configuration prevent any configuration other than QWERTY from attaining widespread use. \n\nWhich one of the following is most strongly supported by the historian's statements?\n",
"Then there are these keyboards. _URL_0_\n\nThey were used as input to the Quotron Stock Quotation system. It allowed brokers and trading floor workers to quickly look up stock symbols. Like \"MMM\" or \"AA\". \n",
"When they first came out it was so the salesman could type typewriter all in same row..making it look faster.."
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2busbr | when i'm not sick and i cough, it's no big deal. when i am sick and i cough, it feels like a coarse steel wool pad scratching at my throat. what exactly is happening to inflict that intense pain? | Is there physical contact of something inside my throat, are muscles ripping, or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2busbr/eli5_when_im_not_sick_and_i_cough_its_no_big_deal/ | {
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"It depends on the sort of sickness. If you mean something like a sinus infection, it's due to the type of moisture. Any time you have a sickness that causes a stuffy nose, all that phlegm and snot and nastiness eventually drips down your throat. This isn't the protective enzyme moisture of your saliva; it's bacteria that your body is trying to get rid of. This constant trickle of grossness makes the back of the throat \"raw\" or inflamed and tender. Swelling and inflammation can also be caused by infection settling in the throat, usually the tonsils. Thus, when you cough, you agitate that sensitive area even further. A good metaphor might be scratching your arm. That doesn't hurt, of course, but imagine how much it would hurt if you had an open rash or something similar on your skin.",
"The streptococcus bacteria is one of those that can eat human blood. It produces digestive enzymes that break down human tissue to get at our blood. Even when it's not a strep infection the pain and soreness in your throat is caused by physical abrasion to your throat tissues. It's horrifying, and kind of gross, but that's what's happening in your body."
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13hpv1 | - the odd little sparks of colored dots i sometimes see | I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but when I was young and laying in bed my field of vision would occasionally be clouded by subtle white dots kind of like a very spread out white noise from a television. usually at the center of this would be a tiny moving, blinking mass of colored dots. They would still appear when I close my eyes, usually with more intensity.
Now I don't see them 99% of the time, however when I think about it, they reappear and I can't stop seeing them until I stop paying attention to them and forget or devote my attention to something else (which is as easy to do as writing a sentence in this post) so I assume it's somewhat psychological, however I never have heard of anyone else experiencing this or it having a name so I was just wondering if anyone here knows what this is and why it happens. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13hpv1/eli5_the_odd_little_sparks_of_colored_dots_i/ | {
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"I don't know, but I've had similar things happen to me. It's much more mild though. I occasionally see a single, small, randomly colored dot appear and disappear in the corner of my vision. No clouds or anything. When I was going to sleep a few years ago, I did see a bunch of television static once, but if only lasted a few moments.",
"Think they are called phosphenes..."
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3ionvu | why are there different sockets on motherboard for cpus? why isn't there a universal socket to fit all cpus? | e.g. LGA 1150, LGA 1155 etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ionvu/eli5_why_are_there_different_sockets_on/ | {
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"Part of it forces you to upgrade your entire computer at a certain points and part of it is due to compatibility.\n\nAs for the compatibility part, when a socket is designed it has certain features they are trying to support, DDR2, PCI-E 2.0, Sata 2.0, ect. In the future this same design may not work for newer features such as PCI-E 3.0, DDR3, Sata 3.0 ect. If you look at the AMD side where they have used the same AM3 socket for their high end chips, it's due to them not supporting all of the latest features.",
"Different sockets have different numbers and arrangements of pins. The pins are the little gold prongs on the bottom of the CPU, they're what makes the electrical connection to the rest of the computer. There are usually around a thousand pins on a CPU: LGA1150 has 1150, and LGA1155 has 1155.\n\nHow many pins you need and where they should be laid out depends on how the internal circuitry of the CPU is laid out. Each pin serves a specific purpose, so it needs to go to the right part of the CPU. That means the pin should be close to the part of the CPU it's connected with. It also means that you might need more or less pins to run your processor depending on how many internal blocks it has and how much power they need.\n\nWhen you want to design a new CPU, you don't want to be constrained to a specific pin count or circuit layout just to conform to an old motherboard socket standard. It's better to just say \"hey, motherboard people, this is how we're gonna arrange our pins for this processor line\" and let them deal with it. The motherboard people have a lot more space to work with, so they can handle pretty much any pin layout the CPU people throw at them."
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6y3i14 | how do humans retain the skill of riding a bicycle even with long periods of unuse? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y3i14/eli5_how_do_humans_retain_the_skill_of_riding_a/ | {
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"Bike riding is 95% confidence. You get on a bike, it's unstable it tips over, no way you're going to pick your feet up an barrel forward on that precarious contraption.\n\nAfter much cajoling from your parents or whoever, you learn that once the wheels start turning, the angular momentum keeps you stable. The faster you go, the more the bike wants to stay up. It's not a skill you learn, it's a secret you discover.\n\nThe other 5% is steering, and that's just too easy to unlearn.\n\n(I'm of course talking about the skill of riding a bike at all, not suggesting that becoming Lance Armstrong is 95% confidence)\n\n",
"I went over ten years without riding a bike. I had nearly lost the skill altogether. When I finally climbed back on a bike, I was quite wobbly and had poor control. It only took me a few minutes to get my confidence back, but it took about an hour for the skill to come back fully. \n\nWithin that hour, I went ripping along a mountain trail, lost control around a corner, and tumbled down the mountainside tangled in the bike. After that I took it easy and the skill eventually caught up to my confidence. "
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90j39f | if i fall asleep at 12:30am and naturally wake up at 6:30am, will i be better or worse off then getting 2 more hours of sleep, but waking up to an alarm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/90j39f/eli5_if_i_fall_asleep_at_1230am_and_naturally/ | {
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"I heard it's best if you get up the first time you wake up naturally. It's your natural cycle. Majority of people need around 8 hours but there are people who just need 6. some might need 10, it depends. I've noticed myself that I'm less tired if I get up the first time I wake! You should try it :)"
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1szhhc | why do deaf people's voices sound different? | Deaf people seem to have a very distinctive sound to their voice. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1szhhc/eli5_why_do_deaf_peoples_voices_sound_different/ | {
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"They can't hear what they're saying. ",
"When you speak, you constantly adjust the tone/pitch/etc of your voice. A deaf person can't do this, because they can't hear it.",
"Born deaf and deaf later in life will (most likely) offer a significant difference (for reasons already stated) in perceived *quality* of speech:\n\n/u/Chel_of_the_sea:\n > When you speak, you constantly adjust the tone/pitch/etc of your voice. A deaf person can't do this, because they can't hear it.\n\n/u/DuncanJJewell:\n > They can't hear what they're saying. \n\n"
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3m2vyh | why are my hands "stickier" to things like plastic after i wash and dry my hands? | To clarify, I mean that feeling you have after you finish washing your hands, when your hands aren't exactly 100% dry and feel just a tad *moist*. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3m2vyh/eli5_why_are_my_hands_stickier_to_things_like/ | {
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"Because you've washed off all the natural oils on the surface of the skin? Just a guess..."
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1mwtts | why is iphone 5s's processor faster than other top-of-the-line android phones when they have more cores and ghz? | The question is in the title.
Example:
iPhone 5s: Dual core, 1.3ghz.
Samsung Galaxy S4: Quad core, 1.9ghz.
However, iPhone 5s dominates in benchmarks. How is this possible? Where does the speed come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mwtts/eli5_why_is_iphone_5ss_processor_faster_than/ | {
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"I'm no expert, but I think it comes down to optimization. \n\niOS runs on, at most, 20 different hardware specs. You've got the Iphone, Ipod, Ipad - With its various flavors. \nThat means that the developers of iOS know exactly what each device is capable of, and can tweak the performance of the OS for that device. \n\nAndroid, however, has to sacrifice some of that performance in order to support the hundreds of android phones on the market. Sure, each company can tailor the android OS for their needs, but its still not 100% created for THAT phone. \n\nIts not all that dissimilar to Windows/OsX - Apple know exactly what hardware osX will be on, so they write the code for that. Windows has to encompass compatability for the millions of possible PC configurations. ",
"Let's say there's two workers (Billy and Bobby) and they both work an 8 hour shift. Billy likes to goof off and talk to girls (ewww, they have cooties), while Bobby works hard the entire time. Everyone would agree that they worked the same amount of time, but Bobby got more actual work done.\n\nProcessors are very similar to this: clock speed is related to the amount of time they are working, and the number of cores are the amount of workers they have. Is it possible for two people to get more done in less time than 4 people in more time? Absolutely.\n\nThere's plenty of other theoretical reasons about software optimizations, but in general, clock speed is a horrible way to evaluate performance (it is, however, a great marketing technique)."
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2b8zft | why dota 2 is such a big deal | I know that the International tournament is going on in Seattle right now and that the prize money is over 10 million, but what why are so many people enthralled with the game? What makes it so interesting that so many people are watching it on Twitch and what about the game made so many people raise money for the International? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b8zft/eli5why_dota_2_is_such_a_big_deal/ | {
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"1. It's replayable. Every game is unique because of HUGE amount of heroes and ways they can be combined and played.\n\n2. It's pretty balanced (fair). It's not only balanced is sides and heroes, but also in time, means that there is no clear winner at any specific point of time. \n\n3. It's more skill based than luck based.\n\n4. It's deep. It has pretty complicated metagame, picks/counter-picks, strategies/counter-strategies, you're required to adapt your strategy during the game.\n\n5. It requires long-time planning, teamplay and individual skill.\n\nEDIT: It's also completely free. You can play and watch tournaments free.\n\n",
"As a person who has logged about 1,300+ hours onto DotA 2 (which actually isn't that much in comparison to others)\n\nBut simply, DotA 2 is a heavily strategic team based game that relies on communication heavily in addition to being very dependent on individual gameplay skill. The fact that the prize pool is over 10million makes it the largest prize pool in any tournament ever. However, in The International 3, which was held in 2013, the prize pool was 1.6 million, and this already broke the record. So a prize pool that is x7 more is pretty much saying that an 'esport' is a real thing, and not some kind of delusion like some people are attempting to argue.\n\nValve, the creators of DotA 2 put in an initial capital prize pool, which from memory was 1.6million. The rest of the 9million came from an ingame purchase made by the users called the Compendium. Which was $10. The compendium gave the purchasers extra functions and benefits. They also allowed you to make bets and guesses on The International games, like Most Deaths, Most assists, etc. and the winners receive compendium points which allow the player to level up their compendium and get better items as a result.\n\nIn short, the company put in an initial 1.6million capital, and the rest came from users purchasing a compendium.",
"This [Youtube](_URL_0_) video is great at explaining what Dota 2 is, designed for people who have no idea, I'd recommend watching it.\n\n"
]
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5o9lcj | neo-conservatism vs conservatism & neo-liberal vs liberal | i am studying sociology and i cannot for the life of me understand it properly.
if someone can explain it as simply as possible i would be able to understand it :/
if it helps im from Singapore and some people describe it as conservative and i kind of understand that.
P.S.: i dont know if someone can use singapore as a base in order for me to understand it much easier due to context. its not mandatory but just a suggestion :)
thanks in advance | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5o9lcj/eli5_neoconservatism_vs_conservatism_neoliberal/ | {
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"No one can properly explain it.\n\nEverything is changing very fast and more than just these poorly-defined categories. Sometimes people claim a situation belongs to one of them when it does not at all.\n\nStrictly speaking conservatives are least-liking of rapid/adaptive change and liberals are most-liking of rapid/adaptive change.\n\nThat's it. The rest is all made up with no solid definition, meaning it will change constantly even if somehow people did agree but as it happens most people do not agree at all on the definitions.",
"The terms liberalism and conservatism are too broad a term to be taken literally. Their meaning depends on whether they are applied to politics or economics and have no association with policies most of us associate with the two party system.\n\nFor example, according to Wikipedia:\n\n > Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.[1][2][3] Whereas classical liberalism emphasises the role of liberty, social liberalism stresses the importance of equality.[4] Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas and programmes such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality, and international cooperation.\n\nIdeas shared by most registered conservatives and liberals.\n\n > Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in organizing the economy on individualist and voluntarist lines, meaning that the greatest possible number of economic decisions are made by individuals and not by collective institutions or organizations.\n\nIts the ideology and political program for individual freedom Ludwig von Mises wrapped around the private-property order called capitalism. Which is nothing like what most Americans consider liberal. There is a liberal application of butter on your conservative eaten toast.\n\n > Conservatism as a political and social philosophy promotes retaining traditional social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. Conservatives seek to preserve institutions like the Church, monarchy and the social hierarchy, as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others, called reactionaries, oppose modernism and seek a return to \"the way things were\".\n\n > Fiscal conservatism is a political-economic philosophy regarding fiscal policy and fiscal responsibility advocating low taxes, reduced government spending and minimal government debt.[1] Free trade, deregulation of the economy, lower taxes, and privatization are defining qualities of fiscal conservatism. Fiscal conservatism follows the same philosophical outlook of classical liberalism and economic liberalism regarding fiscal matters.\n\n"
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3s8egc | why is there controversy over the seasonal starbucks cup? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3s8egc/eli5_why_is_there_controversy_over_the_seasonal/ | {
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"Because there are no snowflakes on it and it is plain and christians think they are denouncing christmas..... Im not joking",
"Some more conservative-leaning people (particularly in the United States) feel that there's been a tendency for government, media, advertising, etc in recent decades to kind of kind of try to minimise Christmas as part of a progressive/politically correct/multiculturally sensitive agenda. \n\nThey object to the word 'Christmas' being replaced by the word 'Holidays'. They object to 'Merry Christmas' being replaced by the phrase \"Happy Holidays\". They object to the more religious aspects of Christmas (the baby Jesus, the nativity story, etc) being downplayed in favour of the more secular aspects of Christmas (the Christmas tree, Santa Claus/Father Christmas, etc).\n\nThese people feel that the Starbucks cup is just another example of this trend.\n\nTo be fair, though, I think the controversy is being overblown. Sites like Gawker and Buzzfeed will often notice a couple of tweets or an article from some blog somewhere, and then try to turn it into a whole \"Conservatives are angry about / launching a campaign against X!\" type of story.",
"A Fucking self proclaimed evangelist named Joshua Feuerstein made a video that went viral to try steer the religious sheep in protest against Starbucks, accusing them of waging war on Christmas. He's a Fucking bigot. ",
"[People are obviously selectively \"offended\".... they don't even bother to look around the store and see the other products they're selling.](_URL_0_)",
"Ah i see, thanks all",
"It seems like any kind of media outlet (NBC/CNN/FOX, etc.) just reports ~~news~~ opinions that they want their viewers to adopt; they are just making impressionable people *believe* what they're saying to be factual and that they need to be just as offended on *this* side or *that* side. For most people, they find unity only once they have found an enemy."
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4dchr6 | why does birth control and/or the morning after pill only suitable for women under 176 lbs? | From what I've read and been told the Morning After Pill (as well as some forms of BC), are only to be used with women under 176 lbs (IIRC). Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dchr6/eli5_why_does_birth_control_andor_the_morning/ | {
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"I'm guessing because the medication is only potent enough for so much body mass. Think of it like alcohol. Someone who is 300lbs vs 120lbs can drink a whole hell of a lot more because the alcohol interacts with far more 'body'. Make sense?",
"Body mass. These are hormones, a larger mass needs more dose. And as for the BC there are plenty that affect women who are over that. "
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k0occ | a priori and a posteriori knowledge. | I know that A priori knowledge is knowledge that is gained "before experience" and A posteriori is knowledge "based on experience." But, when I try to think of hypothetical "knowledge situations" I am unable to categorize them. Can you help expand my understanding, please? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k0occ/eli5_a_priori_and_a_posteriori_knowledge/ | {
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"Anything I tell you is a posteriori knowledge. The theory of knowledge goes that there are certain things that are known internally. You just have knowledge of these things independent of experience. This is a very small minority of knowledge. An example of proposed a priori knowledge would be the existence of god. Some scholars propose that this isn't something that could be learned, it's just known. The other way to view this subject is that a priori knowledge is knowledge independent of experience, that is, true whether experienced or not. A posteriori knowledge could hypothetically be different than it is. What color is your hair? That is dependent on a lot of factors and could change. Similarly, how many planets are there in our solar system? That answer changed over time. As opposed to a characteristic of an object that is necessary to the definition of the object.",
"Mathematics is often given as an example of A priori knowledge.\n\nA priori is knowledge that is internally consistent, without the need for any outside measurements. In maths we know 1+1=2, because we explicitly define 2 to be twice that of one. Other a priori knowledge are facts of definition, such as \"redditors browse _URL_0_\".\n\nA posteriori is knowledge that requires external verification or experience, an example could be \"redditors are smart\", there's nothing about being a redditor that means you have to be smart, but we could do an IQ survey to show that to be true or false.",
"Anything I tell you is a posteriori knowledge. The theory of knowledge goes that there are certain things that are known internally. You just have knowledge of these things independent of experience. This is a very small minority of knowledge. An example of proposed a priori knowledge would be the existence of god. Some scholars propose that this isn't something that could be learned, it's just known. The other way to view this subject is that a priori knowledge is knowledge independent of experience, that is, true whether experienced or not. A posteriori knowledge could hypothetically be different than it is. What color is your hair? That is dependent on a lot of factors and could change. Similarly, how many planets are there in our solar system? That answer changed over time. As opposed to a characteristic of an object that is necessary to the definition of the object.",
"Mathematics is often given as an example of A priori knowledge.\n\nA priori is knowledge that is internally consistent, without the need for any outside measurements. In maths we know 1+1=2, because we explicitly define 2 to be twice that of one. Other a priori knowledge are facts of definition, such as \"redditors browse _URL_0_\".\n\nA posteriori is knowledge that requires external verification or experience, an example could be \"redditors are smart\", there's nothing about being a redditor that means you have to be smart, but we could do an IQ survey to show that to be true or false."
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201ra6 | on an international flight, what would the drinking/purchase age be? | I'm 18 and let's say I'm flying from Canada (age to drink/purchase is 19) to Luxembourg (age to drink/purchase is 16).
What country would set it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/201ra6/eli5_on_an_international_flight_what_would_the/ | {
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"Airlines tend to use the legal drinking age based on their registration location. Thus, an American airline based out of New York state would use 21 as a drinking age, an Ontario based airline/origin flight will use 19. \n\nThere are some notable exemptions. I believe a rule is still in existence that if you fly into Saudi Arabia or Iran's air space to land (or coming from those places), regardless of the carrier, the airline will not serve alcohol until they are out of the air space. Many carriers based in Muslim nations will also not serve alcohol at all or will only serve if explicitly asked for (by non-Muslim people)."
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3ht6hd | why does video compression make red so pixelated? | I was watching a show on my computer and noticed that [bright red colors normally look super pixelated](_URL_0_) compared to everything else.
It happens on the Wii U when you're streaming to the gamepad too, it's especially noticeable on the red text in Super Mario 3D World and on all red loading screens.
Is there any special reason certain compression algorithms mess up the edges of red objects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ht6hd/eli5_why_does_video_compression_make_red_so/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"This can be an effect of \"Chroma subsampling\": _URL_0_\n\nIn ELI5, more compression is done to the color parts of images/video than to the black-and-white parts of it. This saves a lot of space but is not _that_ noticable to us usually."
]
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| [
"http://i.imgur.com/Bsazkwm.png"
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling"
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4zxdi5 | there is a recurring joke about "thank god for mississippi" - how did mississippi end up being the worst off of the states in so many categories? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zxdi5/eli5_there_is_a_recurring_joke_about_thank_god/ | {
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"Because it generally is (worst in practically everything, that is). For example:\n\n1) [Highest obesity rate in the nation](_URL_2_).\n\n2) [Most high school drop outs](_URL_1_).\n\n3) [Highest unemployment rate in the U.S.](_URL_3_)\n\n4) [Highest number of residents living under the poverty level](_URL_0_)\n\n5) [Lowest life expectancy in the U.S.](_URL_0_)\n\n6) [Highest rate of depression in the U.S. due to dismal conditions overall](_URL_0_).\n\nThe list truly goes on and on. *However*, as someone that has lived in the Deep South most of their life and has visited Mississippi numerous times, I can tell you that it's not all that bad. There are, of course, wonderful people in Mississippi and cities like Tupelo are really beautiful, etc.\n\nSo, much like New Jersey - Mississippi just gets a rep for being one of the armpits of the United States. It's the butt of a lot of jokes. \n\nAs to how the state got so bad, the general consensus is that it is and has been for years run by idiots. Look to politics and a number of poor decisions over the years.\n",
"Mississippi, like the rest of the South, always had an economy based on agriculture rather than the manufacturing of Northern states. This worked for a while: Mississippi was actually one of the wealthiest states in the country before the Civil War, due to cotton production. But the war took a toll, cotton prices fell worldwide, and the Industrial Revolution meant that agricultural economies would never again be as strong as industrial ones. That lead to Mississippi being what it is today.\n\nTo find out more, read about the [Mississippi Delta](_URL_0_) where some of the most abject poverty in the country can be found. This region is what brings down the state's averages.\n\nEDIT: Forgot to mention Jim Crow. If you looked at white Mississippians, you'd find that their standard of living isn't too far off the national average. However, white Mississippians also spent decades fighting to keep black Mississippians (today over 1/3 of the population, historically much more) poor and uneducated. When 1/3 of your population isn't being allowed to fully participate in the economy, that also brings down the averages."
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"http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_per_of_peo_who_hav_com_hig_sch_inc_equ-completed-high-school-including-equivalency",
"http://calorielab.com/news/2015/10/31/fattest-states-2015/",
"http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm"
],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_Delta"
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||
2398cc | why is food for astronauts transported in dehydrated form? | Is it solely so that it takes up less space, or are there other factors at play?
(bonus question: is space-tea served on flying saucers?) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2398cc/eli5_why_is_food_for_astronauts_transported_in/ | {
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"there are 3 reasons:\n\n- it's lighter\n\n- it take less space\n\n- it's method of preservation",
"Space and preservation are factors but the biggest factor is mass.\n\nIt's expensive to bring things up in to space. And water weighs a lot comparatively. So it's a lot cheaper to bring up dehydrated products and hydrate them using water that's recycled in the space station."
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4q9mdi | why is snorting a substance an efficient method of getting high? what is happening between your nostril and euphoria? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4q9mdi/eli5_why_is_snorting_a_substance_an_efficient/ | {
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"Lots of wet mucous membranes inside your nasal cavity, very high surface area. The extremely fine powder can get all over these ruffled, folded surfaces and **quickly dissolve into your bloodstream**. This is not too dissimilar to dissolving in your *oral* mucosa, like with chewing tobacco, but there are other adverse effects of using something like cocaine on your mouth (numbness and oral lesions).\n\n",
"Snorting (and sublingual as u/redshift2k5 addressed) are two ways for a chemical/substance/medication to get in to your bloodstream while bypassing the liver's 'first pass effect'. \nAll other substances that are eaten/swallowed are subject to your body's first pass effect. \nThe first pass effect: once a substance is digested and absorbed by your small intestine, it crosses into the blood stream and heads to the liver via the portal vein. The liver then gets its first chance at metabolizing (breaking down) the chemical before the blood will leave the liver and actually get distributed to your body (blood exits the hepatic vein - > inferior vena cava - > heart - > back out to body where the substance/medication will first start to produce its affect). "
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agitcv | how do apparel companies such as getonfleek sell stuff with obviously copyrighted or otherwise branded material (spongebob references, memes, etc) without amassing lawsuits/ being shutdown? | If you visit their website, or other apparel brands that sell third-party designed shirts, there's tons of designs that blatantly use or reference things that are copyrighted. There's a bold and brash t shirt which is directly from spongebob, there's a shirt with the 'y tho' meme which should be considered intellectual property?, and there's a shirt with the Ramen Noodle logo.
I'm just confused as to how they're able to sell stuff like this and not get sued or shut down. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/agitcv/eli5_how_do_apparel_companies_such_as_getonfleek/ | {
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"How do you know they are not licensed? \n\nIn the UK primark is a well know cheap as chips company knocking cotton tees out for £2 or less. \n\nThey sell genuine licensed Harry Potter, Marvel, Adventure Time, Disney etc and still manage to know em out cheap. Its because they mass produce and shift bucket loads of the gear. "
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3j4vzn | on a plane, why do they tell people to put their own oxygen mask on before helping others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3j4vzn/eli5_on_a_plane_why_do_they_tell_people_to_put/ | {
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"If you pass out.. how are you suppose to help? lolol",
"If you pass out on a plane you are no good to anyone. If you put the mask on you first you can still help others. Hoped this helped this is my first serious comment. Let me know if it helped",
"Without oxygen, you pass out, and then you die. There's a short period where you are still alive, but unconscious.\n\nPutting on your own oxygen mask gives you oxygen and prevents you from passing out, and then you can put on your child's mask. In the time it takes you to put on your own mask, your child may pass out, but they probably won't die. You and your child both end up surviving.\n\nBut if you help your child with their mask before putting on your own, you will probably pass out. If your child is too young or scared to know what's going on, they may not think to put your mask on you after you pass out. Your child will survive, but you will die."
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4dmm3c | why people get so much more fascinated by bad news on tv rather than focusing on good news? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dmm3c/eli5_why_people_get_so_much_more_fascinated_by/ | {
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"Easiest answer... Bad news is more prominent, and sells... Not to mention we tend to get hooked when bad news is happening...",
"Good news is typically the absence of news - Things are working as intended. All the planes that took off landed safely, all the kids that left for school came home, the forest didn't catch fire, etc.\n\nBad news is typically the deviation from that, and new and novel information is more interesting. When good news is novel (\"We found a cure for X disease\", \"Longtime sad sack team wins championship\") then it gets attention.",
"People are instinctive attracted to information about threats or dangers, as our brain is adapted to maximize our chances of survival.",
"if it bleeds it leads?\n\nimagine watching a G rated action movie, I can't either. Thats why ill go watch the R rated movie."
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2bufgk | why are ants attracted to the extension cord ends out in my yard? | I pick up the cord and there is a frenzy where the male and female ends meet. Happens all the time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bufgk/eli5why_are_ants_attracted_to_the_extension_cord/ | {
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"Some ants are attracted to electrical current. I don't know that there is a consensus as to why this is. \n\nOne idea is that, once at the electrical source, the ants are shocked and release signals to other ants thus causing them to swarm. "
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5z0kzm | when writing a really big piece of software, how do the large numbers of programmers involved make sure they don't break everybody else's bits of code every time they change something in their little bit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z0kzm/eli5_when_writing_a_really_big_piece_of_software/ | {
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"In we'll run projects they use tests to ensure this. They write test code that validates the way the program works. That way if something changes they can rerun the test suite and see if there is anything amiss. \n\nThis helps a lot but it isn't perfect. There is still human quality assurance that happens to catch unintended things. Even this isn't perfect, and that's how you get bugs in your program. ",
"you do it by modularizing your code. your own module takes X input and makes Y output. you can have an automated test that provides various X inputs and validates Y output. run it thru 100's and 1000's of different X's and make sure it comes out to the correct Y's.\n\nthen your module plugs into my module. my module takes A's inputs and makes B outputs. in order to do so, it takes the A's and uses some parts of it as X to call your module. and when it gets back the Y, my module does something to it and makes a B output. \n\nanother set of tests run thousands of A inputs and validates that output is correct B. \n\n\n\nwhenever the next time you change your module, we'll rerun all the 1000 tests for your module as well as my module. ",
"Large-team software stuff sucks unless you have a strong leader delegating well-communicated and specific tasks.\n\nIn software, abstraction is important. In other words, for two parts of a program to work together, they just have to know how to talk to each other - they *don't* have to know how the other part actually works internally. In other words, the two parts have to know how to \"interface\" with each other.\n\nImagine I had a method/function called 'add' that would accept two numbers and add them together. To call the function, id say add(3, 5) and the result would be 8. I have no clue how it adds those two numbers, and quite frankly I don't really care as long as it works.\n\nSo if I create the basic (theoretical) design of the software, I can design all of the interfaces (the function names, the parameters and their types, and what type of item the function returns as a result) and hand out chunks of the program for people to code. If you write my add() function, you can make it work internally however you want as long as you follow the requirements I gave you (that it accepts two integers, and returns the sum of the two integers). And that way I can assign Tim another part of the code that will constantly use your add() function. He will write his code assuming that your add() function will work. Then, everyone puts the code together and tests it. It won't work because that's how life goes. Fix the errors one by one with tons of testing in between. \n\nOf course, this is definitely overly simplified, but hopefully it gives you a small hint. The other important part is extreme communication and frequent meetings. Incremental deadlines are helpful, but are hardly met. Lastly, it's good to have a leader supervise everyone else.",
"It's been said multiple times, but software is built in modules that have contracts. \"I accept this, and I give that back.\" You can change anything so long as the contract remains unchanged. If you change the contract you (potentially) need to update everything that uses that contract.\n\nWhen ordering a pizza you don't need to worry that you might not know how anymore because they changed how their ovens work. So long as the contract remains the same you don't need to relearn how to order a pizza. If they changed the contract, like for example, no longer accepting cash, then you would need to make changes yourself.\n\nCode needs to be written in understandable components or it gets very messy very fast. I've worked with code like that and it takes ten times the brain power and time to get anything done. When code is broken down into manageable pieces with a single purpose it's beautiful. It doesn't matter how big the total software is if it's just a bunch of tiny parts. When working on something you should only need to know how that one tiny part has to work. It's as if the software only consists of that tiny part.",
"Just to add a note about Version Control Software. I anticipate I'm not native English so bear with my bad explanation lol. We use this type of software which allows teams to cooperate on the same project files while tracking changes and stuff. When merging your changes with other's (ie \"propagating\" them to the rest of the team) if multiple people have changed the same portion of code you'll get a merge conflict, and you'll know that for example someone did not respect that distribution of tasks. Again, sorry it sounds a \"childish\" explanation ",
"They don't, which is why startups can compete against companies with 1000's of engineers.\n\nThere are many tools and processes used to keep large projects together but in reality progress is slow and there's a ton of wastage. Every change takes time from several people.",
"Every studio does something different from each other, and so it seems most answers will be slightly different from each other.\n\nIn general, the most important thing to know is that things will and do get broken. Ideally, those things are then fixed before it impacts others much.\n\nI will step through each individual piece that's gone through for at least where I work (which is specifically with Video Games). This will likely be a very very long post, so I'll try to simplify each piece down for the ELI5:\n\n > **The Main Steps**\n\n1. **Space.** Room to work in. When there's a lot of code to work with, it's much easier for programmers to work on parts of the code where other programmers aren't touching it as often. If you think of programmers in a large house both building the house and building things in the house, the larger the house is then the easier it is to have a couple rooms to yourself or a small group of people.\n\n2. **Isolation.** Rooms try to stay mostly to themselves. You don't want to have your ceiling staying up because you put a log wedged into the cabinet in the next room. Especially if programmers work only on a single room at a time, they might not realize the random log in *their* room is important and that they shouldn't move the cabinet. It's better to build supports in your room for your ceiling.\n\n3. **Modularity.** You don't always know what the rooms next to your room might be, or if they might need to be replaced. So code makes things modular to deal with this, saying \"there are 3 doors. They are these sizes and at these locations\". Where those doors go to can change.\n\n4. **Compiler** (this one will be more specific and definitely not shared by all codebases). Strangely, this massive house everyone is working on only _describes_ the house. Which is why modularity (3) or isolation (2) is so important. You can't always easily see what your room will actually touch until the whole house comes together. There's this thing called a compiler that actually takes all the descriptions of room and builds a house out of it. The compiler will complain when things don't quite connect where they should, or where the modularity says something is wrong, because the compiler can't finish it's job. (Jargon note: There are actually a few pieces in this - such as the linker or preprocessor - and the compiler is just one of these pieces. Programmers a lot of times just group them all together to save time when talking.)\n\n5. **Unit tests.** There's a lot of pieces that require very very specific things that it must do. To keep running with our house analogy, this may be to say that a specific breaker switch controls the electricity to only a few specific rooms in the house. Or that a faucet always gives the same heat when turned on to the same angle each time. In code, this is usually complicated functions that bare most of this wait. Instead of having to check all of these things that are easy to miss, unit tests are made that checks these things for you. They're just more code that you say \"I expect this to always do these things when this happens to it. Check that for me every time I use the compiler.\" And they do. Thank you unit tests. In my experience though, unit tests can't cover even a tiny bit of the range of inputs a video game has possible, so in our case these aren't good enough.\n\n6. **Personal Check.** After the compiler puts everything together, each programmer can walk through the house themself and just check if everything seems to be in place, and then specifically check out the room they were working on and see if it's hooked up correctly for themselves. A lot of times, programmers will make their own tools to let them cheat around their room to make this type of check faster. For games, let's say you're working on a new way to purchase items, you might give yourself a tool that let's you freely make money. That kind of thing. (There's more code to prevent these tools from going out to everyone)\n\n7. **Functional Tests.** Unit tests (5) like to check very small pieces, but a large part of the house can be checked all at once with something called functional tests. Functional tests look at how something should work in general, rather the specifics. In our house, they could ensure things like... starting from the front door, can you still eventually make it into the attic? This helps for cases where someone might remove a door somewhere, for their own good reasons, but fail to see the big picture somewhere else. These also occur automatically, but in our code base it's usually after the programmer has committed the code - so that the programmer doesn't have to wait on these tests (they can take awhile).\n\n8. **QA - Quality Assurance.** There's a large group of people who are really good are doing all these different types of checks themselves as well, predicting what types of changes might break what, or even being very clever at breaking the code in ways nobody else thought to try. These are QA. Tests (like unit tests and functional tests) are only as good as a programmer can predict the program might work, but breaking something can be more extensive a job than what the programmer might consider. In those cases, QA is specialized in finding out where other problems might lie.\n\n9. **Build Pipeline.** Hinted with the fuctional tests bit, there's computers specially setup to do the compiler (4), unit tests (5), and functional tests (7) all on their own. A lot of people can be changing a large part of the house at once and need to have their changes all at similar times. This can create times where personal checks and running your own compiler doesn't catch problems that might arise from two different changes not liking each other. Build machines do the steps above with everyone's code (who put their code in) to provide their own versions of the checks.\n\n a. **Build Pipeline - Multiple Operating Systems.** This is a special note for game dev. Operating systems, like Windows XP, Windows 7, OSX 10.6, etc. can all be quite different from each other. Thing of these like broad locations your house can be built on, with the more different the operating system the more different the location. If you're constantly checking if your house might work in a forest, there might not be something you noticed when your house is on a tall barren mountain. Or underwater. Operating systems get very different. The \"big ones\" should be checked yourself, but build machines and QA (Compatability) can help to fill in the gaps.\n\n10. **CI - Continuous Integration.** (Blah that term sounds technical). CI is something of a philosophy that some studios have and a way of setting up the build pipeline (9). CI is the idea that, two sets of eyes is better than one set, and this can only get better from there. When you put code in the shared place so that a build pipeline can use it, it's *possible* that can be one of many places with many different build pipelines. Historically, this is how a lot of code bases worked, you would have teams with their own build pipelines who would then eventually do a large push of all of the changes they did in the last few months (or years) from their builds to the big central build. This was called \"integration\". CI just says \"Hey everyone, just put all your stuff in the central spot and figure out some other way to hide it.\". This means that while everyone is walking through their spots in the house, they might be more likely to see other problems for someone else more often. More eyes.\n\n11. **Playtests.** (Game dev specific, kinnnnd of. Just called different things elsewhere.) If you're building a fun house, play in that fun house to make sure it's actually fun and working the way it should be - and that no random spike it sticking out under a trampoline. It's better for you to get hurt than your players. Game programmers make sure to play where they build.\n\n12. **Large Testing Environments.** Beta testing. Similar to CI (10)'s mentality of \"the more eyes, the better\", programmers try to get lots of different potential home owners to try out their house for awhile just to get more eyes. And, more importantly, more environments - locations - where the house could be. Again, this provides more opportunity for something bad to occur and for someone to see it and report it.\n\n",
"Short answer:\n\n* By breaking down the problem into smaller problems, until each problem is a self-contained, manageable chunk.\n\n* Separation of concern. Make each part do exactly one thing. Nothing more, nothing less. This makes the interfaces between parts simple.\n\n* Documentation, documentation, documentation. Document in detail how every part should be interacted with.\n\n* Tests, tests, tests. Preferably, automated tests that immediately finds anything you accidentally break.\n\nOne must also know that the productive output per programmer is much lower in a large project. There simply is a lot more overhead to handle.",
"I'm a programmer. Can someone please explain to me too??",
"There are excellent ELI10 explanations before so I'll try to get down to ELI5 instead:\n\nBig piece of software is like building a really big LEGO Technics diorama, not a single building or vehicle. First there are people who decide what should be on the whole diorama (they define requirements). Then the Architects plan the layout of the diorama, let's say it is LEGO Railroad: the stations go there and there, the tracks go there, trees and hills will go over there.\n\nNow the actual programmers (LEGO builders) start their work: one team designs the tracks and bridges and tunnels and another one the trains. The train designers need to know the rail width, and the rail and bridges people need to know only the weight and size of the trains. The rest is decided within each team separately and they build their part and test if it works correctly.\n\nOnce in a while (depends on the team) the whole diorama is assembled and tested if the trains can run all over the tracks, if the junctions work, if the trees do not brush the trains etc. Every issue and problem gets recorded on a official form. If something needs fixing, the diorama is split to parts and each team gets the list of issues regarding their part. They fix the issues and cross them off list. Sometimes they need to talk to the other team to fix a issue.\n\nThen the diorama is reassembled and tested again, and again until all problems are fixed. Then it is loaded into crates and carted away for display somewhere. Sometimes there are issues that appear only in the new place because of reasons, and then the programmers need to sneak in the middle of the night and fix the issues on the live diorama on display. This is called patching the production and is considered Bad Thing."
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1gy2wt | why can cars with manual transmission be push started and cars with automatic transmission can't? | I tried to explain to my mom but I failed miserably :( | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gy2wt/eli5_why_can_cars_with_manual_transmission_be/ | {
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"Break it down into something simpler. When you had to start one of the old cars, you would insert a crank handle and turn it a bit. The turning of the crank turned the piston rods and created a spark. Same thing you do with your lawn mower, you pull the cord, it turns the rotor, that creates a spark. \n\nWhen you push start a car, you hold in the clutch and push the car. Get the car rolling, and you can quickly snap the clutch and make the piston rods turn. Turn them just a bit, and it may make the spark that the battery isn't. Note, the engine isn't turning when the clutch is depressed, but it will when you let off of it. That is where the spark comes from. \n\nWhy won't this work in an automatic? Two reasons. One, you don't have a clutch to snap to make the engine turn. Two, it will work, but you have to catch the car between first and second gear which would mean you have to push most American made autos at about 35 mph. If you can push your car up to 35 mph, you don't need to start your car, just jog to your destination. ",
"The main problem, not mentioned yet, is that an automatic car uses a pump to operate the gearbox, and the pump only works when the engine is running.",
"Because you can't pop the clutch on an automatic."
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30y6p2 | what's with the blinking (usually green) light in that bathrooms that you usually see when the lights turn off? | I've always seen them in hotel bathrooms and apartment bathrooms, but wondered what their specific purpose is for. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30y6p2/eli5_whats_with_the_blinking_usually_green_light/ | {
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"Could be a motion sensor, battery indicator light for the air freshener, co2 sensor/firealarm."
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l5kqc | android, rooting, flashing, everything | I want to know everything about android. What rooting and flashing are, how you could do those things, and what roms, like cyanogen and miui, are. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l5kqc/eli5_android_rooting_flashing_everything/ | {
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"android is an operating system built and maintained by google for smartphones and tablet computers. the innermost part of it, the kernel, is based on linux. it competes with apple's iOS and windows phones a long with some other phone OSes.\n\n**Rooting:** a process that allows you to have higher control over Android. this higher control can open up options such as getting around carrier-specified limitations or random things such as app backups, rebooting the phone (without manually turning it off and on), and controlling hardware (LEDs or over/underclocking)\n\nthere is usually software that is developed for the sole purpose of rooting android and these are easily available in android forums. \n\n**Flashing:** this is installing a new ROM to your phone\n\n**ROMs:** these are basically custom operating systems that are installed into the memory inside your phone. stock ROMs are the vanilla ROMs that come with an untouched, brand new phone. custom ROMs are useful for a few reasons:\n\n- community-updated. these can be churned out faster with faster bugfixes and more features that can be catered to you, the user\n- they are usually faster, as ROM makers will take out bloatware or useless apps that carriers will put on as advertisement\n- customizability. some ROMs, such as cyanogen, have theming utilities written in. in addition, with custom ROMs, you can change the look and feel of stock apps, the notification bar, icons, font, etc.\n\n\ni apologize for not going indepth, but this is the basics of what i know.",
"Your phone runs an operating system, just like any computer. All modern operating systems have user accounts. Usually, you can differentiate between regular users and administrator accounts. Administrator accounts have privileges that regular accounts don't have.\nAndroid is based on Linux operating system. In Linux, the user account with maximum privileges is called 'root'. By default, your android runs on a non-administrator account, so you don't have the right to used your phone to do whatever you want... only what the manufacturer wants you to do. \n'Rooting' is the process of getting around security measures to make your phone run with 'root' privileges. Once you have 'root' access, you're free to do what you want with your phone.",
"android is an operating system built and maintained by google for smartphones and tablet computers. the innermost part of it, the kernel, is based on linux. it competes with apple's iOS and windows phones a long with some other phone OSes.\n\n**Rooting:** a process that allows you to have higher control over Android. this higher control can open up options such as getting around carrier-specified limitations or random things such as app backups, rebooting the phone (without manually turning it off and on), and controlling hardware (LEDs or over/underclocking)\n\nthere is usually software that is developed for the sole purpose of rooting android and these are easily available in android forums. \n\n**Flashing:** this is installing a new ROM to your phone\n\n**ROMs:** these are basically custom operating systems that are installed into the memory inside your phone. stock ROMs are the vanilla ROMs that come with an untouched, brand new phone. custom ROMs are useful for a few reasons:\n\n- community-updated. these can be churned out faster with faster bugfixes and more features that can be catered to you, the user\n- they are usually faster, as ROM makers will take out bloatware or useless apps that carriers will put on as advertisement\n- customizability. some ROMs, such as cyanogen, have theming utilities written in. in addition, with custom ROMs, you can change the look and feel of stock apps, the notification bar, icons, font, etc.\n\n\ni apologize for not going indepth, but this is the basics of what i know.",
"Your phone runs an operating system, just like any computer. All modern operating systems have user accounts. Usually, you can differentiate between regular users and administrator accounts. Administrator accounts have privileges that regular accounts don't have.\nAndroid is based on Linux operating system. In Linux, the user account with maximum privileges is called 'root'. By default, your android runs on a non-administrator account, so you don't have the right to used your phone to do whatever you want... only what the manufacturer wants you to do. \n'Rooting' is the process of getting around security measures to make your phone run with 'root' privileges. Once you have 'root' access, you're free to do what you want with your phone."
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15g9z9 | how does a company like hbo have so much money to dump into shows and movies without ads? | I understand that people pay the monthly fee to watch HBO but the company had clearly dumped billions into producing top quality shows, it kind of blows my mind a little bit that they can make so much money and still turn a profit, I understand there is international licensing and DVD/online sales, but wouldn't HBOGo kind of kill it for the company and cut massively into their profits? What am I missing, what is HBO's big cash cow these days | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15g9z9/eli5_how_does_a_company_like_hbo_have_so_much/ | {
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"Remember, just because you don't see the ads doesn't mean they aren't there. Lots of product placement in some shows, which brings in a lot of $. \n\nMore info [here](_URL_0_) as well",
"HBO makes huge money on DVD sales as well as syndication rights. HBO Go doesn't cut into profits because you still have to have a subscription to use that, it isn't a free service. There's also lots of product placement, and they make over a $1 billion annually with subscriptions.",
"Comcast and other cable companies subsidize HBO I believe (someone correct me if I am wrong) to get you to buy bigger cable packages with the \"fancy\" channels. ",
"Every legit distribution nexus has to pay HBO a royalty for any show it uses, even past episodes of Dream On. \n\nHBO makes content, sells a license to satelite, cable, iptv providers, they pay through the nose so that HBO can continue to make more content. "
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"http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0812/how-hbo-makes-money.aspx#axzz2G8D5sv8G"
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5uvwjo | how do helicopters measure their speed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uvwjo/eli5_how_do_helicopters_measure_their_speed/ | {
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"If you're looking for speed moving forward it can be approximated using the change in GPS coordinates ",
"Thee same way airplanes do. They have a probe with a hole in the front of it. Air is forced into it by the movement of the helicopter or plane that pressure is read as airspeed "
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7113tx | why does the skin on our palms and soles of our feet have ridges but the skin on the rest of our body appears relatively smooth. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7113tx/eli5_why_does_the_skin_on_our_palms_and_soles_of/ | {
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"I would assume this is because of the increased grip that such skin provides; very useful on your hands and feet. \n\nEdit: it may also be associated with the large concentration of nerves in the hands and feet and the surface area that convoluted skin provides.",
"Well, the rest of your hand has ridges, too - most notably, your fingertips. When you have time, take a few moments to really look closely look at your hands. You might find it helpful to use some kind of safe ink on different parts of your hand and press it on some paper; you'll see ridges there, as well.\n\nYou might find the palms and soles more noticeable because the skin there is thicker and tougher."
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2i3fa8 | how do colorless pictures from the 1900s and below get an accurate colorization? how does one go about doing the transformation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i3fa8/eli5_how_do_colorless_pictures_from_the_1900s_and/ | {
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"I've done some colorization and honestly I just guess. It's easy enough to shift colors once you've applied them so I just tweak it until it looks right.\n\nI'm not sure if there is software that can look at grey scale and calculate what color something might have been but depending on the film stock I believe certain colors normally fall along certain ranges of grey. For example red often shows up as darker than most other colors. ",
"As everyone else said, we just kinda guess. But it is always a guess based on what you see on the picture. I give as an example [this picture](_URL_0_) colorized by me and posted to /r/Colorization. The picture is of Marie Doro, an actress, taken in 1902. I'm pretty sure her hair and skin colors are correct, because she seemed very pale on the original, also, her hair is dark and so are her eyes, which points to dark brown on both (dark eyes are almost always brown).\n\nMy only doubt to this day are her clothes. The dress could be any light color, such as yellow, orange, cyan, violet, etc. It is definitely not red though. Red is pretty easy to spot (or mistake with shades of brown, but that's another story). The same applies to the background, which I left b & w because it looked better.\n\nEdit: There many ways to colorize a picture using photoshop, so people may explain the process differently. I often use only brushes for example, slowly \"painting\" the picture. ",
"You can do this in Photoshop!\n\nOpen any black and white photo, and make an empty layer on top of it. Set the layers mode to 'Color', and you can literally just color in the picture! I.e. take a red brush and draw in the red on the picture. "
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rzipl | the relationship between the us and its territories (peurto rico, etc.) | What sort of control does the US have over its territories, and what independence do they retain? Why would a territory want to remain a territory and not become a state or its own country? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rzipl/eli5_the_relationship_between_the_us_and_its/ | {
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"*Puerto Rico dammit",
"There is a huge range between the different territories and the local and federal politics over their status also is very diverse (both for example between different people in Puerto Rico today and over time).\n\nThis is a good first chart to look at (the specific wikipedia pages can enlighten you as to the discourse over their individual status): _URL_1_\n\nand this might also be useful:\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically being a \"territory\" gives the residents the right (or at least option) of US citizneship in most cases (Somoa is complicated). Remember adding a new state would potentially have huge implications for the electoral college and even more so the senate (image if there were consistently 2 new democratic senators from Puerto Rico) so it can be hard to change the status quo.",
"I'm from Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is a unincorporated territory of the U.S. PR is like a state except that we can't vote for the president in general elections. We pay most U.S taxes with the major exception being federal personal income tax. Puerto Ricans pay Social Security and are elegible for Social Security benefits after retirement. We also have a non voting delegate (Resident Comissioner) in Congress. \n\nWe are U.S citizens at birth, have fought in every U.S war since 1898 and vote in U.S primaries. Spanish and English are the official languages. Puerto Rico became a U.S Commonwealth in 1952. There are three main political parties in PR which are \n\n* Popular Democratic Party (Supports Commonwealth Status)\n* New Progressive Party (Supports Statehood)\n* Puerto Rican Independence Party (Supports Independence)\n\nSeveral referendums have been held and the winner is always Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth status). Statehood received 46.7% of the votes and Independence received 2.5% of the votes. Another referendum is being held this year on Election Day.\n\n",
"Remember that the US is a federal republic, with powers constitutionally divided between the federal and state governments. The territories thus have no powers except those granted by Congress. Generally Congress doesn't interfere with purely local affairs, but the territories have no independent foreign policy, or monetary policy, etc. Nor do they have any real say in those policies.\n\nThere are no territories on a statehood path anymore. It's been 53 years since any states were added (before that it had been 47 years.) Most of them are just too small and distant to ever be considered for statehood. It's counter to the interest of the states' elected representatives as it would dilute their power and reduce their ranks to accomodate the incoming representatives and senators, and worse yet, give these formerly under-represented areas major *over* representation on a population basis.\n\n* **Wyoming** (least-populated US state): 564,000\n\n* Guam 159,000\n* US Virgin Islands 110,000\n* American Samoa 55,000\n* Northern Mariana Islands 54,000\n\n* **Puerto Rico** 3,707,000\n\nObviously, Puerto Rico is the biggest by far and has 7 times as many people as the least-populated US state. Despite that, I doubt there will be a successful push for Puerto Rican statehood anytime soon if ever. In my opinion, probably better that Puerto Rico gain full independence after a transition period (like Cuba, or the Philippines) rather than statehood (like Hawai'i.) Tea Party types would absolutely block statehood for a very low income, Spanish-speaking Caribbean island. And 50, 100 years later the people on the island are likely happier as well.\n\nThere's different kind of territories, as well - organized, unorganized, incorporated, unincorporated. The Wiki link below explains more.\n\n_URL_0_"
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4vgqml | could we really hook a human brain up to a machine that simulates the body functions and live? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vgqml/eli5_could_we_really_hook_a_human_brain_up_to_a/ | {
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"Someday maybe, but not today or any time soon.\n\n\nThe question of simulating bodily functions is an interesting one. If you provide nutrients to a disembodied brain are you simulating the digestive system? Sort of, but not really. You end up in the same place but in two completely different ways. Nobody thinks that a plane flight simulates a car ride even if both end in Atlanta.\n\n\nI don't think we need any of the body for consciousness. We aren't our bodies, we're only our brains. We live inside our bodies, looking out through our eyes. People who lose an arm or a leg are still the same person, just in a slightly different body. People who get organ transplants are still the same person. Changing the body might change the person (through depression or resolve, etc.) but it doesn't *necessarily* change the person. Because the body is not the person it's only the bag that carries the person.\n\n",
"According to [the old Russian experiment conducted on a dog](_URL_0_) (probably NSFW/L), you don't need very much of a body to remain conscious.\n\nEdit: A [Wikipedia article on the matter](_URL_1_).",
"There is nothing to prove you are not hooked up to one right now. \n\nAll you need for consciousness is the brain every else is just support structure ",
"I feel like if I was just a brain without sensory input I would spend my entire life dreaming. That would be a strange experience "
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7l8c4u | what is actually coming out when a girl squirts? why can't all girls squirt? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7l8c4u/eli5_what_is_actually_coming_out_when_a_girl/ | {
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"Depends on what you mean when you are talking about squirting. \n\nIf you are talking about what is commonly done in porn and called squirting? That is often a woman urinating to make it look like she is gushing liquid. \n\nWith actual squirting the various glands that lubricate a woman's vagina when she is aroused have the ability to expel a higher than average volume of liquid when she orgasms. This will not be of the volume that you see in porn, but will be noticeable and even significant. The mechanism is about the equivalent of a male ejaculation. "
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88y0w1 | why does a video stop and show the buffering icon when the grey bar which runs ahead of the main progress bar in them is still much ahead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88y0w1/eli5_why_does_a_video_stop_and_show_the_buffering/ | {
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"This depends a lot on what player you're using, but could be because the player is supposed to have a certain amount of data buffered (say, 5 - 10 seconds or so) and has dropped below that threshold.\n\nOr there could have been an error in the data received, so the player is attempting to re-download the corrupt data.",
"As a guy who streams alot I can tell you some resons.\n\n1) Most streams stop to load too much ahead, so with a big grey bar they stop to load and then get bugged if they have to continue to load.\n\n2) If you lose your conection even for a short time, the already loaded part is still lost.\n\n3) If your conection drops low, high ping or package loss, the stream thinks you need to load like 20 mins ahead to run smoothly, so it still wants to buffer more. This will mostly get stopped by 1)\n\n4) Random bugs, streams are so fragile tbh"
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ao0mvr | why does our vision not shake and wiggle like a video of say, someone mountain biking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ao0mvr/eli5_why_does_our_vision_not_shake_and_wiggle/ | {
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"Our eyes are constantly shifting and are able to move to maintain smooth vision while a bike camera is locked in place and bounces on a trail same as you feel while riding it",
"Our eyes compensate for movement without us needing to think about it. It's called the [vestibulo-ocular reflex.](_URL_0_) When we look at something, our eyes lock onto it. This is called the [fixation reflex](_URL_1_). In fact it's hard to make your eyes pan and tilt smoothly without gazing at something that is moving. Our eyes dart around and attach to specific points of where we are gazing, and temporarily lock onto it. \n\nTry smoothly gazing from left to right around your room and your eyes will not smoothly pan. They will dart. Now hold your finger out at arms length and look at your finger as you move it left to right. Notice the background blurs now and your eyes smoothly follow your finger? It's because they are locked onto it. \n\nThe neurological feedback loops that make stabilized vision possible can be inhibited with depressants. Translation, drunk people lose some of their ability to stabilize their vision. Movements such as walking can cause dizzyness as every movement of the body makes the vision shake around. \n\nSome animals don't do this with their eyes, they do it with their entire head. If you've ever seen the videos of a chicken holding it's head perfectly still while it's body is moved around, this is very similar to what our eyes do. Except chickens can't do this with their eyes, so they do it with their neck muscles. "
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2o5nyk | why do stores not sell cigarettes in smaller quantities than 20 in a pack? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2o5nyk/eli5_why_do_stores_not_sell_cigarettes_in_smaller/ | {
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"It's called a loosey. When a store sells you a single cigarette. It used to be fairly popular, but for the most part, laws have passed that have banned the sale of single cigarettes, and you can only sell whole packs now. You can still find people and stores who sell them if you're in the ghetto.",
"I know in Ireland, smaller quantities were banned as they were seen as more affordable and sought after by younger consumers. The hope was more expensive packages would deter them from buying them in the first place.\nEdit: spelling",
"You can buy packets of 10/14 in England.\n\nPlus the shops don't really make money from the smokers so they just sell what they are given.",
"I know half packs are commonly sold in Argentina. Not a half full pack but a manufactured slimmer box with fewer cigarettes",
"The real reason loosies are illegal: when you are trying to quit and you have that temporary lapse of willpower where you end up buying a cig. Well now you have 19 more in your pocket so good luck quitting. ",
"I believe they sell \"10 decks\" in Scotland. It's been quite some time since I've been, so I'm not sure if that as changed. ",
"They have small packs (10) of marlboros in Costa Rica. I'm sure elsewhere, but that's the only place I've seen them. ",
"It's an attempt to cut down on young teens smoking. For the most part, they wouldn't have a lot of disposable income, and when shops sold 10 packs, they were, naturally, more affordable. (At least that was the excuse that was given when Ireland banned the sale of 10 packs)",
"Come down to North Philly, buy as many loosies as your heart desires.",
"Typically a smoker will smoke around 20 ciggerettes in a day the idea is that purchasing a pack of smokes every day becomes part of the habit/addiction. Although this is changing with smoking becoming more restricted depending on country. ",
"If you live in the right neighborhood you can buy 1 at a time.",
"Ireland banned them a few years ago, only 20 or more can be bought at a shop",
"I have some vague recollection of 3-pack, about 45 years ago. I can't recall if they were actually sold, or were sample packs given out to try to get you to try a new brand.",
"They used to sell packs of ten in Norway, they removed them to reduce smoking, somehow. ",
"Convenience stores in low income neighborhoods often sell singles... source: lived in crack motel",
"In my towns they sell \"loosies\"..used to be 3 cigs for a dollar now I think you get two. It is illegal, though, I believe..",
"In Ireland it's illegal to sell smaller than 20 packs because its too accessible to children. The thinking is that a child will more likely have access to the cost of a 10 pack than a 20 pack.",
"There are plenty of stores here in the poorer neighborhoods of the US that sell individual cigarettes for $0.25-0.50 a piece.",
"Internal tobacco company documents revealed during the tobacco trials in the 90s that for the vast majority of smokers, 20 cigarettes is the perfect amount of \"units\" to get them through a day while successfully keeping withdrawal at bay. ",
"There are packaging laws in a lot of countries; the product needs to have warnings and basic information about the product. Selling a single cigarette would not provide this, and creating the proper packaging for a single cigarette would be too cost-ineffective.\n\nWhere I live (GTA), you can buy individual flavoured cigarettes at most convenient stores (e.g. [Prime Time](_URL_0_) ) but there are quite expensive for a single one, sometimes well over $2 each.",
"No one is also addressing one very relevant cost savings for the tobacco companies. Manufacturing. They have to purchase, store, and use all the packaging material they have. They don't process that themselves. I would not be surprised if there are 2-3 manufactures for ALL cigarette containers (I know there are in plastic bottle caps). A cigarette producer would only need one style of machines across all facility(s) to package my cigarettes, why change it? That only costs time and money.",
"Disappointing thread so far.\n\nYes, other countries allow you to buy smaller packs.\n\nYes, you can buy loosies.\n\nSo, back to the call of the question. What's up with the 20 cigarette pack regulation in the US? Any rhyme or reason? Anyone know when/why/how the regulation was passed? ",
"In america, its to keep you addicted. If you have five cigarettes, which you bought as a \"pack\", its easy to space them out and not smoke as often. If you have 20 of them, its much harder to smoke two to three times a day because you have so many of them. This could either be complete bullshit or an accurate business model, but as an ex smoker looking back at my addiction im inclined to believe this.",
"I live in India and Ive bought 10 packs of Goldflake normal and light as well as Marlboro Mint. ",
"In Britain we have 10 pack, 14 pack, 20 pack, 40 pack, 100 pack in shops",
"For the same reason you usually can't buy just 1 grape.\n\nAt a small enough quantity it is not worth their effort to distribute for the small profits."
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1krxs0 | since the efficient market hypothesis is widely accepted, how is high frequency trading profitable/viable? | I've read where HFT/algorithmic trading/automated trading accounts for a sizable portion of all trades that occur every day in the NYSE. The EMH states that, basically, all stocks are always fairly valued based on all available information. I understand it is indeed just a hypothesis, but the EMH is an Intro to Economics staple and makes a lot of sense to the layman. I'm a Computer Science major and while I can comprehend how such trading can occur, I find it contradictory that it could be consistently profitable. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1krxs0/eli5_since_the_efficient_market_hypothesis_is/ | {
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"In reality stocks are rarely fairly valued based on all available information. Hysteria, fear, and greed are can be even greater drivers than the fundamentals behind a company. That's part of why you'll see the entire market go up and down without any reflection on the underlying companies.\n\nIn addition, big investment banks are able to gain access to reports about companies before the rest of the populace does. When information access is unequal there is profit to find.",
"Algorithmic trading can be used to hide the full extent of a transaction to prevent the prices from changing as fast. For example, if you offered to sell 100,000 shares in xyz co for $1 each, everyone would say \"something bad must be happening at xyz co, let's sell!\". The price goes down to 50c and you make less money.\n\nInstead, you have a computer break your sell offer into lots of smaller ones at different prices. The people see only a few shares trading here and there, so they don't notice the big sell down until they have seen all of the sales.\n\nHFT algorithms reverse engineer this - they look at patterns of buying and selling offers, and work out whether the market has worked something out yet. If not, they quickly buy or sell all the good offers so the market prices adjust faster.",
"HFT *makes* EMH true, in a pretty real sense.\n\nThe role of stock traders is to act on any idiosyncratic information they have, and to do so until their information content cannot be exploited any more.\n\nThe essence of EMH is that in equilibrium, all information has already been acted on. Thus you only make money (relative to the market) if you have private info that you can act on."
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22vcvq | how are the xbox one and playstation 4 able to allow players to start playing a game before it is fully updated or installed? | I've never seen any PC games that can update themselves in the background while playing, so why is this the case with the new consoles? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22vcvq/eli5how_are_the_xbox_one_and_playstation_4_able/ | {
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"There are pc games that allow you to play while the rest of the game downloads one i can think off the top of my head is star craft 2. \n\nSimply put Say you have a SP game well the game could be 50 hours long but they know you have to start on the first level right? and that it will at least take you some time to play through the level right? so when the game is installing it installs the game in order basically. starting with the first level or whatever the first part of the game that the player will experience is. When thats done you can start download the second level while you play the first and so forth until its done.\n\nAlso if need you can still read the data off the disc if it hasnt been installed to the hard drive. ",
"In the case of PC games doing it, I think most of Blizzards games allow you to play it while it still installs/downloads, World of Warcraft does for sure, iirc Diablo 3 did it too, I can't say whether Starcraft 2 does or not though.",
"The files needed to start playing the game are downloaded and useable. The rest is downloaded while playing.",
"Halo 2 for Vista. You can put disc and play while installing the game. It's the only game of MS to use tray and play tech to do so. I was quite impressed with that."
]
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40l7dk | why in 2016 do cell phone cameras still have a better quality one on the back and a lower quality one facing you? would it really up the cost of the phone to just put 2 good cameras in it? | I realize you don't necessarily need 12MP to take pictures of yourself, but it seems like it would just be easier to slap 2 of the same camera in there. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/40l7dk/eli5_why_in_2016_do_cell_phone_cameras_still_have/ | {
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"text": [
"The front facing camera has to fit between the edge of the screen and the edge of the phone, and people like having the screen as large as possible, which means that the front facing camera has to be really small, and it's hard to make good small cameras. The one on the back is behind the screen and can be as wide as they want.",
"In addition to what /u/42N71W has said, there is another reason. The rear camera is used to make pictures or videos. The front camera is intended for video calls. Due to bandwidth limitations, you are just not going to be able to take advantage of a 12+ megapixels on a video call, so it makes sense to put a lower-quality camera on the front.",
"Well, since a front-facing camera is usually used for facial chatting, I'm sure you don't want to send 4k quality video over your data network, when something like 480p quality does it well enough.",
"The question is if you would pay 30$ (20, 12, 5, 1...) more for a better camera on the front. Is your ongoing selfie resolution more important than your night out this week?"
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1uk42p | how is slavery still a problem in the world today? | I came across this website earlier today that claimed there are still 29 million slaves around the globe (_URL_0_). I was astonished by the information the website had. However, I'm still not sure how slavery is still being used, why it is being used, and how people are not being caught participating in the slave trade in the modern world. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uk42p/eli5_how_is_slavery_still_a_problem_in_the_world/ | {
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"text": [
"A lot of it is forced labor instead of legal ownership. And a lot of it involves children. "
]
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| [
"http://www.walkfree.org/learn/"
]
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[]
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|
|
bl010n | why is douglas macarthur so famous in the korean war? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bl010n/eli5_why_is_douglas_macarthur_so_famous_in_the/ | {
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"His Island Hopping campaign strategy against the Japanese during WW2 was brilliant and was covered extensively by the press. He would simply bypass any strongly fortified Japanese strongpost islands and move on to attack the ones behind it which were much weaker. Then, with their supply lines destroyed, the strongpoint islands were left to starve and wither for a few months. When they finally *were* attacked, the defenders were too weak from starvation to mount a credible defense.",
"The landings at Inchon that beat back the North Koreans when they occupied most of South Korea, but mostly for being outright fired for refusing the orders of the president.\n\nMacArthur was a military genius but so morbidly politically ambitious he honestly planned to retire from the Army in 1944 before the war was over and run for president against FDR.",
"MacArthur was held in wide esteem after WWII because, as mentioned, he led the island hopping campaign that was ultimately instrumental in Japan's defeat. Besides being a successful commander, he was also a great orator, winning over both his troops and the public with his speeches. \n\nAs the commander of US forces in the Korean War, he turned around what started out as a dire situation for South Korea, pushing the North Koreans almost all the way to the Chinese border. However, as a consequence of this China sent thousands of troops across the border to aid the Noth Koreans. MacArthur favored escalating the conflict, using tactical nuclear weapons to halt the Chinese advance, and continue the invasion northward into China. President Truman opposed this, and when MacArthur publicly denounced this decision, he was forced into retirement.",
"South Koreans were (losing the war) pushed all the way down to Pusan (bottom of the peninsula) and getting destroyed by the North who were being aided by communist China and Russia. MacArthur against the command of his superiors used his brilliant military strategy to flank the Northern army at Incheon (middle of peninsula), essentially blockading any more northern soldiers from entering the south, then proceeded to wipe out the northern army from behind until they ultimately surrendered. Instead of continuing to fight a long drawn out deadly war, that’s when both sides agreed to the Korean Armistice Agreement separating the country into two and whereby creating the DMZ divider. Over 70,000 US soldiers lost their life during this war, RIP."
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2htg15 | why is violence still exercised in wars between countries? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2htg15/eli5why_is_violence_still_exercised_in_wars/ | {
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"Because that's what war is. Violence is the ultimate force; just like they say in starship troopers, \"the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived\".",
"Wipe my ass. No?\n\nWipe my ass or I'll kill your family and rape your corpse.\n\nViolence gets things done, for better or for worse."
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2pfat0 | why are eastern asians so successful compared to other minorities in america? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pfat0/eli5_why_are_eastern_asians_so_successful/ | {
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"text": [
"Support network of friends and family that ties your sense of self worth to how much money you earn at respectable profession. "
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41ay1j | off brand and store brand products. | Take mayo for example. I know every discount chain and grocery store chain doesn't have a kitchen churning out batches of mayo so they buy from a producer and private label. So is there one or two producers creating product for everyone or is it across the board with some shit coming from China or God knows where? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41ay1j/eli5_off_brand_and_store_brand_products/ | {
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"It depends a bit on the product and the label, but it is not unheard of that a brand-name product and store-brand or no-name product come out of the same factory.\n\nSometimes different sore brands come from the same supplier that just switches out labels and sometimes you can stand in front of a row of different choices in different packages that all contain more or less the same thing inside differing mostly in the price and marketing.\n\nIn other cases there can also be huge difference between products."
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1k4owc | the differences between types of milk. | First off, (and i know ill regret saying this) but, I've never drank a full glass of milk. Which is probably why I dont understand this. What makes people choose Half & half as opposed to regular or skim? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k4owc/eli5_the_differences_between_types_of_milk/ | {
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"Generally, it is whatever you were raised with. Maybe personal taste would explain a twist, but generally you will stick with whatever you drank as a kid; basically, whatever your parents bought.\n\nHowever, no one drinks half and half straight. Most people will use half and half with coffee, as it makes it a little richer in flavour (I call it my morning nutrients).\n\nEdit:\n\nI drink 1% straight, and half and half in my coffee. 2% seems creamy and thick in my mouth, skim seems watery and flavourless.\n\nEdit:\n\nFor information sake:\n\nCows milk starts around 3.5% fat; which roughly corresponds to homogenized milk. The fat will rise to the top and is skimmed off for butter; I assume homogenized (3.25%) is the lowest percent where it is stable. I hadn't checked what the fat content of straight from the udder milk before now either."
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29c1ne | why aren't the muscles that move our jaw super muscular?(9 | We use them constantly
Edit: sorry about the title, don't know what happened there, also don't know why it's tagged nsfw
Thanks for all the replies!
It's answered, thank you all | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29c1ne/eli5_why_arent_the_muscles_that_move_our_jaw/ | {
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"Why is this labeled with NSFW?",
"They are fairly muscular already, but what would be the point? We can already bite hard enough to break our teeth and perhaps our jaws, so why would they bulk up more? Obviously we aren't using them that hard.",
"As someone else has said, they are already strong enough to do any daily task and assist us with eating, making them any stronger could cause potential problems such as accidentally biting down and breaking teeth as well as biting down and cutting the tongue badly.",
"Why'd you set it as NSF–– oh I c u",
"All of our great ape cousins have much stronger jaws than we do, and so did our pre-human ancestors. This is especially striking in gorillas, whose jaw muscles are so huge they connect to a bony ridge at the top of the skull (rather than to the side of the skull as in humans) for maximum force. These strong muscles provide the force necessary to chew raw plant material, crack open nuts, and tear raw meat from bones.\n\nHumans have smaller, less powerful jaws due to our species' relatively high level of [neoteny]( _URL_0_ ), or the tendency for juvenile traits to persist into adulthood. Other neotenous traits human have include our relative hairlessness and flat faces.\n\nWe're not exactly sure *why* humans are so neotenous compared to other apes, but the prevailing theory is that it made room for the development of a larger braincase. Juveniles of almost any animal species will have a disproportionately large head compared to adults, and the benefits of a larger, more complicated brain outweighed the drawbacks of less powerful jaw muscles.\n\nFurther reductions in the size and strength of our jaws may have also been the result of technological advancements like using stones to crack open nuts and grind up plant material, using fire to cook and soften meat and other tough foods, etc.",
"Leverage. Do a google image search for random pictures of human jaws and the relative position of jaw muscles to where the jaw connects to the skull (the fulcrum).\n\nThey don't need as much force to do work where the most force is needed. Your molars (the ones in the back that crunch things) are really close to these muscles so they have a more favorable ratio of leverage than the finer teeth in the front of your mouth, and that's okay because they're the ones that really need to apply force to grind up food.\n\nCompare this to your biceps. Your biceps are generally going to be lifting weight that's positioned in your hands. The trouble with them is that they connect to your forearm at a point much closer to the fulcrum of the lever (your elbow) then the point where the load is generally experienced (your hands). The biceps don't have as much leverage as the load does so they need to be a lot bigger.\n\nThink about how many places in your body have similar poor leverage and how you still function very well. Then realize just how strong muscles are!"
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[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny"
],
[]
]
|
|
qz96w | the mass effect controversy i've been seeing lately | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qz96w/eli5_the_mass_effect_controversy_ive_been_seeing/ | {
"a_id": [
"c41muy3",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Please use the search, this has been asked almost daily. ",
"People wanted their choices to matter, but in the end all they got was different colored lights mo matter what they did and a buttload of plotholes.",
"People played the first two Mass Effect games which had a lot of player choice. They made all kinds of choices, which all get ported over to Mass Effect 3.\n\nMass Effect 3 has another large chunk of player choice. You can save or destroy entire civilizations. Furthermore, there is no \"next\" step. The game doesn't have to lead into another story, so it can end in many different ways.\n\nBecause of this, fans were promised endings that reflected their choices and were influenced by how they played. Instead, there were three endings. These endings were not influenced at all by your choices, but by how many of the side quests (and multiplayer) you did.\n\nOf the three endings there are a few plot holes, the endings went against many of the themes in mass effect, and came out of nowhere. The three endings were also extremely similar - the end result of all three looked nearly identical (aside from color, which is the source of many jokes) and ended with almost the same results. \n\nAs a final issue, these endings don't give much closure. The player isn't given a look at how things work out after this ending, and much is left up in the air. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
||
1v8c9b | why do people occasionally take a much larger, deeper breath? | I've also realized both of my dogs do it as well. When I was young and I used to take naps with my mom, I would listen to her breathing patterns. After every 5 or so normal breaths, she would take a much deeper, larger one. Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v8c9b/eli5_why_do_people_occasionally_take_a_much/ | {
"a_id": [
"cepowl4",
"cepsi9l"
],
"score": [
3,
5
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"text": [
"The best theory is that sighs reset an imbalance in the respiratory system. Too much carbon dioxide building up triggers a large, deep breath to raise the oxygen level.",
"Your lungs are essentially a massively branched set of tubes, at the end of which are tons of little balloons (alveloi). All of this is coated with surfactant (a fluid that keeps the lungs moist, allowing for gaseous exchange), and whatever else you inhale from the environment.\n\nOccasionally those balloons fill up a little bit, get clogged, or collapse. Inhaling deeply moves the fluid, unclogs airways, or re-inflates the collapsed alveoli (hopefully). These big breaths can also mobilize excretions within the chest (not just in the lungs), moving them around. It is also part of the cough response, helping with the pulmonary toilet (It's actually called that, look it up).\n\nThere are some other processes that are probably responsible as well. Stretching the chest wall is certainly beneficial. Correcting an acid/base imbalance or CO2 spike, maybe.\n\nSource: In emergency medicine for 23 years, teaching for 20"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
|
1mti6u | why a picture or video of a person looking directly into the camera lens appears to be making eye contact with anyone looking at the picture or video, but it's not the same with a live person. | I hope this makes sense! I was watching a video tonight where the person speaking was addressing the camera, so it looked (to me, and everyone else in the room) like they were addressing me (or everyone else in the room) specifically. However, if an actual person was speaking, he or she could only make eye contact with one person at a time. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mti6u/eli5_why_a_picture_or_video_of_a_person_looking/ | {
"a_id": [
"ccchcwd",
"cccib7o"
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"score": [
3,
2
],
"text": [
"\nBecause \"you\" in this situation are the camera. When the speaker looks into the camera, he looks into what you would be seeing, as the viewer at that point. The cameras lens is a proxy for your eyes.",
"Video is two dimensional, so as long as you are within approximately a 90+ degree cone in front of that screen, you and anyone else in that cone can see every point on that screen. You can all see exactly the same thing. With an actual person, who is three dimensional, pretend you stand directly in front of them and make eye contact and then freeze them in place. As you start to move around to the side, even just the slightest bit, new parts of their face are added to your point of view, and other parts are lost, including parts of their eyes which made it seem they were looking at you. Now if you then freeze yourself in place and unfreeze the other person, and they start to look around the room, it has the same effect. Since no two people can stand in exactly the same place at exactly the same time, and even just the slightest difference in position changes what you see in 3D, it's not possible for more than one observer to be making eye contact in 3D."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
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