post_title
stringlengths 5
304
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| post_scores
int64 15
83.1k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
9.61k
| comment_score
int64 10
43.3k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
Eli5: Why is black box (from plane crash) put in a container filled with water when retrieved from the ocean? | 54 | Salt really accelerates corrosion, but the corrosion will really only progress when exposed to oxygen and there's a lot more oxygen in air than water
By taking the box out of the ocean and putting it into a bucket of water they keep any innards which may have been exposed to salt water from being exposed to air which will provide the oxygen needing for the corrosion to progress. When it gets to its final destination it will be removed from the water and then cleaned, but you don't want it to spend a few days traveling and degrading because its exposed to the air. | 109 |
|
CMV: U.S. Democratic leadership is weak and needs to be replaced | Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are weak leaders who lack vision and need to be removed from their positions of leadership for the good of their party.
All the evidence you need for this is wrapped up in the most recent budget deal. Democratic leadership folded like a cheap lawn chair on DACA and allowed a bill to pass anyway. They also could have demanded that the Democratic response memo to the Nunes memo be declassified and released to the public in order to avert a government shutdown down. They chose not to do so.
These people are refusing to take a real stance that would put any meaningful pressure on Republican priorities and the Democratic party should replace them.
Discuss.
| 16 | The Democrats stopped pushing for a shutdown because popular sentiment was turning against them - the best interpretation of the outcome has Ds and Rs coming out with equal blame, but most put it more on the Ds. Most people want a deal on DACA, but they don't want it enough to shut down the government. It just isn't that time-sensitive.
>They also could have demanded that the Democratic response memo to the Nunes memo be declassified and released to the public in order to avert a government shutdown down.
That's just bizarre. The Nunes memo mostly fell flat and probably doesn't need to be rebutted at all, and it certainly isn't worth shutting down the government *again.* Especially so considering the spending money Ds got for favored programs their constituents want and the promise that an immigration bill will be considered in the near term.
We just finished 6 years of Obama wherein the Freedom Caucus ensured almost nothing got done unless their idiosyncratic demands were met. That was a stupid way to run a Republic, and it doesn't get smarter if Democrats do the same thing. | 12 |
How realistic is the idea of a Star Trek-like transporter (i.e. Teleportation)? | As I understand it from the shows/movies, they work by converting matter into energy, then "reassembling" that energy back into matter. | 15 | None. As it's supposed to work, you get scanned and the location and momentum (the state) of every little part of you is recorded and sent to another platform. Then the 'original' you is destroyed. The other platform then takes the info it has and makes a 'new' you out of some element bank or whatever.
The thing is, that requires knowing the position and momentum of particles with precision. And that plain can't happen. At all.
So...don't hold your breath waiting for one. | 34 |
ELI5: Why is it when I scan an area with my eyes, they move in a jerky motion from point to point, but when following a moving object, they rotate smoothly? | Try it: Scan across your wall with your eyes, notice "jumps" from point to point. Now stare straight into your eyes in the mirror while rotating your head, or following your hand while moving it across your field of vision.
Why can my eyes not smoothly scan across an area or surface? Are my eyes actually moving smoothly but the brain only registers certain "points of interest"? | 58 | Because there's no point to track nothing so we haven't developed the ability to do so. And between the "jumps" (saccades) we are technically blind. If you look in the mirror and look at one side to the other you can't see yourself moving your eyes. It just happens. Your eyes are not moving smoothly, they are jumping from one fixation to another at a speed of 800 degrees a second. | 20 |
ELI5: Why are babies’ cheeks so big when they’re born, and is there a function that the big cheeks provide in early development? | 81 | Babies don't have the capability to shiver when they're cold so they have high stores of something known as "brown fat" this type of fat has the ability to generate heat and circulate heat throughout the body. This is why babies are generally very plump out of the womb, and as they grow up they start to lean out a bit | 142 |
|
[Star Wars] Why doesn't Darth Vader stop Luke from falling on Bespin? | When Luke let's himself fall after finding out Vader is his father, there is nothing stopping Vader from just lifting his body and putting him back on the railing. It certainly isn't a hard feat for him. So why didn't he? | 76 | It's important to recognize that Vader had a significant change in plans during the fight against Luke.
Initially, his plan was simply to capture Luke, bring him to Palpatine, and let the Emperor turn him to the Dark Side. He attempts this by dropping Luke in the carbonite freezing chamber and activating it, but Luke leaps out and quickly proves that Vader has underestimated him.
At this point, Vader realized that Luke was very powerful despite presumably having no training. (Vader was unaware of Obi-Wan's Force Ghost and the fact that Luke had found Yoda). Perhaps he could become powerful enough to challenge Sidious. This made him consider a new option: have Luke help him overthrow the Emperor. Vader suggests this to Luke, dropping the "I am your father" bombshell in the process.
So **Vader actually no longer intended to capture Luke at this point, but instead to recruit him**. Taking Luke by force would no longer serve his purposes. Instead, he gave Luke a good reason to join him, then allowed Luke to escape and take some time to consider Vader's proposal, as well as come to terms with the fact that Obi-Wan had lied to him. Vader hoped that Luke would, after some thought, abandon the dishonest Jedi and accept Vader's offer.
If Vader had simply taken Luke against the latter's will at that point, rather than treat Luke as an equal capable of making his own decisions, then Luke would have been much less likely to work with Vader against the Emperor. And if he had simply continued with the previous plan of freezing Luke and bringing him to Palpatine, then there would be a very good chance that Luke would reveal Vader's betrayal upon Sidious' subsequent interrogation, once he was unfrozen.
Vader's decision was actually the best option under the circumstances. Unfortunately, he underestimated Luke's faith in Obi-Wan. | 121 |
ELI5: Guy Fawkes and Anonymous | I've been wondering this for a while, but can somebody explain the reasoning behind the Guy Fawkes masks and Anonymous? Guy Fawkes was a Catholic fundamentalist who tried blowing up the king and parliament, while Anonymous are a bunch of computer hackers.
Yes. I have seen V for Vendetta. | 70 | 4chan collectively identified with V, as a disfigured, anti-authority psychopath, and the mask he wears is both a practical way to remain anonymous in public and an appropriate symbol for an anonymous group of internet misfits.
Basically, Anonymous likes the mask for all the same reasons that V wore it. But usually with none of the historical awareness that V had. | 54 |
Can a geosynchronous orbit happen on every planet? Or does it need specific circumstances like certain rotation/revolution speed? And can you do it with any object? | 22 | If the rotation is too slow then the orbit would have to be so far away that it would be unstable (not clearly inside the Hill sphere of the object). While you can calculate the height of a stationary orbit and the radius of the Hill sphere in each case there is a surprisingly simple relation: The planet needs to rotate several times per orbit. Everything else cancels out. 13 times per orbit would give a system like Sun/Earth/Moon. | 21 |
|
Why do we measure decay in half-lives rather than just lives? | 3,312 | To explain in simpler terms. I've run into a misconception occasionally that OP might be falling prey to. If a certain material has a half life of 100 years that doesn't mean it'll be fully decayed in 200 years, it means about half will decay in 100 years, then half of that half in another 100, then half of that half in another 100, etc. | 5,181 |
|
CMV: A colony on Mars would eventually declare independence. | I don't think this is a particularly strong argument against some nation establishing a colony on Mars. If Trump had come out saying, 'We're going to Mars!' rather than 'Space Force!' I would have had a very different reaction. I hope in my lifetime we see someone go there.
However . . . it seems to me like it would be difficult to maintain your nation's governmental authority on a colony 34 million miles away. Especially if that colony is established primarily to serve the needs of the colonizing nation. It's just the classic colonial problem, only replace the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with space.
Not that this a serious impending worry. A self-reliant colony on Mars asserting it's own independence from the sponsor nation is so far in the future there's no point worrying about it. However, I just can't see how a colony designed for permanent human habitation on Mars would ever tolerate foreign political domination from a parent country millions of miles away. How long can you expect a Mar's farmer to submit to Earth taxes or send valuable raw materials back to Earth?
**EDIT: What am I not considering? How is it not just that deterministic?** | 21 | This is kind of tough to talk about unless we pin down some of the assumptions baked into it. On a long enough time horizon, with enough advanced technology, maybe they would get to the point where the could reasonably be a self-sustaining, self-defending nation - but that isn't anywhere near feasible in the foreseeable future.
- Having the colony be self-sustaining is a _huge_ challenge. You have to manufacture your own atmosphere, enrich your own soil, control your own weather, synthesize your own water, etc. in order to even have a shot at being self-sustaining. We simply have no idea how to do that on the scale necessary to sustain a real colony; for the foreseeable future, so they will be tethered to Earth for resupplies. Declare independence and everyone dies pretty quickly
- Even if you _can_ get to a single-generation self-sustaining colony, we don't actually know if people will be able to breed on Mars. We know that fetuses can't gestate in space in lower order animals (like mice) because gravity turns out to be super important in that process. Maybe Mars has enough gravity to allow for proper gestation, maybe it doesn't; if it doesn't, the colony will be dependent on new blood to keep it running, which would mean it would require tethers to Earth. Declare independence and everyone dies in a generation.
- Even if you _can_ reproduce on Mars, can you get a large enough population to support the standing army you will need to defend yourself when you secede? Even if we can be self-sustaining, producing those resources will be very difficult - you can't just plant a new field of crops for your growing population - you will need to build domes, hydroponics labs, create new air and water, etc. Scaling up is very difficult, and until you hit a critical mass that allows for defensive capabilities, any attempt to declare independence will result in you quickly being brought back into the fold when the Marines show up on the next set of rockets.
Sure, maybe _eventually_ those problems can be solved, but that basically requires us to invoke hitherto unknown and unimagined technological advances, and if you allow for that the CMV has no bounds and can't really be argued. | 13 |
ELI5: Why do children get leukemia more frequently than other types of cancers? | 175 | Most cancers are due in part to some external source, such as radiation (including from the sun) or carcinogenic compounds. Exposure to these carcinogens has a chance of producing mutated cells which are cancerous. Since exposure to some extent is unavoidable, it's simple mathematics that the longer you live, the more often you are exposed and the more likely you are to develop a form of cancer. Additionally, many cancers take some time before they develop into a medical problem. For the most part, it is unlikely that a child has lived long enough to develop cancer.
Leukemia is a cancer that is particularly influenced by hereditary factors, and is also fast-acting compared to certain other cancers. Hence it is both more likely to begin at a young age and to develop into a medical problem (which leads to diagnosis) while the person is still young, compared to other cancers.
But leukemia does not uniquely affect children; most cases of leukemia are in adults. It is just that children are comparatively less likely to have other cancers. | 113 |
|
ELI5: Why do smart phone / laptop batteries still suck after all these years, and when can we expect an improvement? | My lovely new quad core phone runs out of juice so fast it's embarassing, even with the power saver option on :(
Is money the issue? Not enough research done? | 1,317 | We're increasing power storing abilities and efficiency, but we're also DRASTICALLY increasing power demands by increasing how useful these battery operated things are.
We're making huge progress, but computers are getting more powerful at a similar speed, which means even though batteries are better, they are powering things that require more power.
Batteries are also REALLY hard, this is why battery powered cars are only very recently becoming feasible (and with a lot of issues). It's also why it's basically impossible to store power generated by things like power plants for any useful amount of time. | 1,005 |
[Indiana Jones] What would have happened if the Ark was opened by a group of devout, well meaning, good natured people? Instead of, you know, Nazis? | 28 | 2 Samuel, chapter 6:6-7
6 When they came to the threshing floor of Nakon, Uzzah reached out and took hold of the ark of God, because the oxen stumbled. 7 The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down, and he died there beside the ark of God.
Intent is irrelevant. | 75 |
|
ELI5: How are some photos from 50+ years ago amazing quality? | Saw a few pictures from around the WW2 era and the quality/resolution is on par with some top of the range cameras today.
y? | 39 | Good photographers + good-quality film = good photos, basically.
However, there's also always the possibility the photos were tinkered with in Photoshop before being published in whatever magazine/web site you saw them on. | 17 |
[Avengers]Could Thor have stopped the leviathan like Hulk did? | In the battle of New York, Iron Man brings the leviathan to the avengers where Hulk famously gets mad and stops it with his fist. But couldn't Thor just do it? Using his hammer? | 22 | Probably, but only if it hit it as part of a melee attack.
If he threw the hammer, it most likely would have gone straight though. In Ragnarok, we see the hammer punch through solid rock when called.
MCU Thor's power levels vary depending on the movie and if he's holding Mjolnir or not (pre Ragnarok). Post Ragnarok, I'd argue that he's a better fighter, seeing as he's less dependent on his hammer in combat. | 24 |
Can a kangaroo walk or must it always hop? | I've always wondered because I've never seen one walk and I've never read anything about being guitar e Hoppers but I've also noticed a few species of bird seem to only hop instead of ever walk. | 22 | Technically, because the tail is boned, muscular and used as a foot (and not anything else) there's an argument to classify it as a leg.
So yes, they "walk" by pushing slowly against the ground with their tail and moving both feet out in front, then planting the tail close to their feet again. Repeat. | 17 |
ELI5: How did Bungie spend $500M on Destiny when it literally just uses the same 4 maps for every mission and has no story? | I'm not counting the Tower and the Reef as a map because the Tower is very small and the Reef was just used for one of the very few cut scenes in the game.
I'm actually seriously curious about this... I mean... the game takes like MAYBE 10 hours to beat if you don't count the grinding fest at the end of the story. | 79 | That $500M number came from Activision/Blizzard. Bungie denied that is an accurate number.
Development time is the largest money sink. You're paying a staff for over 2 years to create the game (on a custom engine). | 39 |
Why is it that the blood rushes to someone's head when they're upside down but the blood doesn't rush to your feet when you're standing up? | 18 | The short answer is that it *does* pool in your legs when standing up. It works its way back up to hour heart because veins (as opposed to arteries) have one-way valves that prevent backflow and the contractions of our muscles squeeze it up as you use them.
Your head doesn't have the muscles that your legs do to get blood back to the heart; it relies on gravity to return blood to the heart. | 33 |
|
CMV: Candidates should always be interviewed by a person in their position instead of an HR representative whenever possible | When you go into a job interview, you may be interviewed by someone from the Human Resources department, or you may be interviewed by your potential supervisor or division leader. My argument is that Human Resources should not do interviewing because they cannot know what constitutes a great candidate in the field pertaining to the position.
For clarity, I'll make the following definitions:
"A person in their position" means someone who has been trained, qualified, or employed in the same line of work that the candidate is in, whether or not their position titles are the same.
"HR representative" means a person employed in the Human Resources department of a company but has no direct knowledge or specialization in the field they are interviewing the candidate for.
My thesis:
In order to hire the most qualified employees that best fit the company's work culture, candidates should be interviewed by a professional in the same line of work that they are hiring for, whenever possible.
The reason I want my view challenged is that I know there are people who do this for a living in addition to other Human Resources responsibilities like preparing payroll and onboarding/offboarding. | 126 | The simple answer, is that at least in the United States, with very few exceptions people are "At Will" employees. Meaning that if you aren't up to the task, a company can just fire you.
What this means is that it's much more efficient for an impersonal HR person to interview you for two reasons.
1.) It adds something to their job, and once you're big enough to have an HR department you can't hope to be functional without one, so you may as well utilize your investment in it.
2.) It takes time away from a person's ability to work, if they have to do interviews repeatedly. You have to consider that, on average you can't just interview a single person and call it good. You have to entertain multiple applicants, which means that over the course of a week you might pull 15 or more hours of Research and Development time away from a project so you can hire one person. That's assuming the situation is as cut and dry as I've stated. A lot of the time that isn't the case. | 22 |
CMV: transgender people need to look the part if they want their pronouns respected | Let me start by saying that I am pro transgender, I know it's not a mental illness and that gender is not determined by sex.
That said, I was working at a ladies fitting room when a person came up who had a full, well groomed beard, big men's hoodie, men's sneakers, and women's leggings wanting to try on prom dresses. Now male customers make the mistake of thinking that the men's fitting room is on the same floor with the ladies, so it is not uncommon for me to have to send them upstairs. Its also not too uncommon for crossdressers to shop at this store. This time though the person said "oh... I have to use the mens?" When they told me they were transgender I said well that's fine and let them in. They were with two friends one cis women and another male sexed person with a short beard in full men's clothing also claimed to be a women so I let that person in not wanting to argue.
So to me, either those women (if they were women and not men trying to exploit the new laws for shits and giggles) need to understand what they look like and not be surprised when they do not get treated like women, or they need to adjust their appearance to be more feminine even if they are tomboys, even though cis tomboys do not have to do that.
Even if I am wrong and need to be more open minded, it is impossible for me to know what to call someone if little or no effort to look feminine is put forth. And I don't see how I can be faulted for making the mistake when the person is sporting a beard. It just seems unrealistic that someone would expect the world to see them as a women when they present themselves this way. I'm not saying they have to "pass" but effort with visual cues is needed for the rest of us who don't already know them personally.
It's a "help me to help you" kind of situation in my mind.
What do you think reddit, should I be more open minded or should transpeople try to look the part if they want to be referred to in a certain way? Thank you! | 18 | Your anecdote doesn't seem to match your title. You didn't know they were transgender immediately, and they didn't seem mad about that. Then they said they were, and you respected it.
It seems like this was a perfectly civil interaction that went fine. Why is it evidence to you that something needs to change? | 28 |
ELI5: The Islam religion. | who is mohammed? where did islam come from? why dont they eat pork? why do they treat women badly? do they all treat women badly? why is islam always seem to be directed to terrorism? | 15 | 1) Who is Mohammed? Mohammed was a man born a little over a thousand years ago in the Middle East. According to Islam, Mohammed was the last prophet born on Earth, and was gifted with God's words because other religions were flawed. He founded the religion of Islam.
2) Islam is one of the "Abrahamic Religions," along with Christianity and Judaism. Islam was started by Mohammed. It shares many of the same stories as Christianity and Judaism too- like Adam & Eve, Moses freeing the Jews from Egypt, and Noah's Ark. It also shares some stories with Christianity that it does not share with Judaism- Islam considers Jesus to have been a prophet, like Mohammed, but not the son of God. Islam also features the Virgin Mary prominently; moreso than even the Bible.
3) Why don't they eat pork? According to Muslims, God told them not to eat pork. Jews believe the same.
4) Why do they treat women badly? Do they all treat women badly? No, not all of them treat women badly. There are some Islamic nations of the world which treat women very badly, but not all Muslims do, and not all Islamic nations do either. A lot of the bad treatment of women is actually something fairly new- historically, Islam has been a fairly liberal religion. Extreme Islamic conservativism is something that's really only taken hold in the past 50-60 years, largely as a result of Western military interference in the middle east.
5) Why is Islam always directed towards terrorism? It's not. Most Muslims are very peaceful people. There are, unfortunately, subsets of religious extremists in Islam who believe that it's their religious duty to purge the world of non-believers. This is a very small minority within the religion, but it does exist, and they do try to justify their actions with their religion. | 36 |
How is Venus' gravity able to retain an atmosphere that is 93 times more massive and pressurized than Earth's? | 21 | Earth could hold onto an atmosphere that thick, actually much better than venus on account of ourh higher surface gravity, protective magnetosphere, and reduced solar wind intensity thanks tot he greater distance from the sun.
The real question isn't how/whether venus can retain its atmosphere, it's why venus ended up with a thick atmosphere in the first place, while earth got a comparatively thin one.
This mostly comes down to volcanism, which is the largest single sorce of atmosphere after planetary formation. Venus has been much more volcanically active than earth for msot of its life, and thus has a much thicker atmosphere. | 16 |
|
[Star Wars] Would laziness be a defense against falling to the Dark Side? | Let's say I'm an average Jedi who's simply curious about the Dark Side, because I think knowing how to use Force Lightning would be a neat party trick. But I don't really have much ambition in life and I highly value my free time. Would I still fall to the Dark Side?
It seems like any time someone falls to the Dark Side, they suddenly have major ambitions to take over the galaxy and/or destroy the entire Jedi Order. But to me, that seems like too much work, stress, and responsibility. On screen, we only ever see Dark Side Force users gloating about ruling over the galaxy, but off screen I can only imagine the political shitstorm they have to navigate taking on a galaxy's worth of problems, ruling over quadrillions of people, collecting taxes, managing infrastructure, implementing regulations, etc.
Look at Palpatine; being emperor is so much work, I doubt that dude ever sleeps - just look at the bags under his eyes! And Darth Vader's job is to hunt down and kill all remaining Jedi; yes, that's evil, but I'll bet it also requires waking up before noon. As a Jedi, Anakin at least had plenty of free time to carry on a secret relationship, but does any Sith ever even get free time to spend a day binge watching space Netflix?
Does falling to the Dark Side suddenly imbue a person with a work ethic? Or would I be safe studying the Dark Side out of curiosity because I have no ambition to rule? | 29 | Palpatine offloaded all of the managerial aspects of the Empire to his underlings; he spends his time meditating on the dark side and only occasionally making appearances for broadcasts.
The very idea that you want to be able to throw lightning (literally hate rays) is enough to send you on the path to the dark side - it's the quick and easy path, the lazy man's path. | 29 |
What led to British philosophy being centered around ideas of practicality, empiricism and "common sense" ideas? | From Francis Bacon's scientific method, Newton's physics, Mill's utilitarianism, the 3 influential British empiricists, to Russell and analytic philosophy, British philosophy seems historically based largely in practicality and empiricist philosophy. This seems pretty unique compared to French rationalism and German idealism. Has anyone written about why this may have come to be? | 37 | Is this British philosophy, or is this a particular construction of British philosophy developed in a motivated way by deemphasizing cases that don't fit the view and emphasizing those that do?
I mean, if British philosophy is the tradition of common sense empiricism, what do we make of Cambridge Platonism, which represents the clearest and most significant extension of Renaissance Platonism into the early modern period? What do we make of the school around John Norris, which represents the clearest and most significant continuation of Malebranche's program? What do we make of the culture around Coleridge, arguably the most influential Anglophone philosopher of his generation, and function as an Anglicizing gateway for continental ideas about idealism and romanticism? What do we make of British Idealism, arguably the dominant tradition in academic British philosophy for several generations, and a the most robust continuation of a broadly Hegelian program even after Hegel had lost his hold on the continent?
Usually, these movements get presented as the losers in a process of historical development: Cambridge Platonism loses to Lockean empiricism, which then stands for us as the true spirit of British philosophy; British Hegelianism loses to Russell and Moore's logical atomism. But it's important to note that when we say things like this, we're not presenting a description of what philosophical ideas were most popular in Britain during most of the time, but rather presenting a motivated history according to which we take it that certain ideas -- though not necessarily most popular for most of the time -- count for us as the *right* ones.
On top of this, the resulting construction of a supposedly integrated tradition of British empiricism suppresses what were in their time quite different phenomena. Philosophers like Hume, Butler, and Shaftesbury, now happily recruited as paragons of British empiricism, positioned themselves as critics of Lockean empiricism. Newton, who we're happy in retrospect to reinterpret in, say, Berkeleyan-Humean terms, was himself a rather more ambivalent figure and significantly indebted to, for instance, Cambridge Platonism -- and found, in his time, his most intimate spokesman in Samuel Clarke, an emphatically "rationalist" sounding philosopher with massive influence in his time, who is himself now often suppressed in folk histories of British philosophy for not fitting with the desired stereotype. | 66 |
ELI5: What is a HOLDINGS company and how does it work? | Is it the same as LLC? I don't know that too. I did my fair share of googling, but I still do not get it. Please someone help and explain it to me like a toddler. Much appreciated. | 42 | A Holding company is a business entity that doesn't produce any goods or services. They own a controlling stake in smaller (subsidiary) businesses that do produce something (operating companies). The Holding company keeps all the money used to invest in the operating companies (assets). The operating companies keep all the liabilities (taxes, lawsuits, etc) of operating a business. It is hard to sue the holding company instead of the operating company. | 50 |
ELI5; what is the difference between a normal, official and diplomatic passport | 34 | A passport is just a document certifying identity and nationality. It may (but not necessarily) signify that the holder has certain rights such as protection by the consulate of the issuing country.
Diplomatic/official passports are regular passports that may (but not necessarily) entitle the holder to privileges such as immunity from arrest and prosecution in jurisdictions they are accredited in.
Official passports are usually granted to government employees that must travel internationally for work. Diplomatic passports are granted to diplomats and their dependents, but can also be granted to non-diplomats who undertake similar functions like members of a royal family. | 14 |
|
Why is there only one species of human? | 36 | There are a variety of reasons, but here are two:
1: Due to our technology and general intellect, humans around the world have been able to live in far more similar conditions than another, equally distributed species.
2: We are a relatively young species . Since the migration from Africa and the general distribution throughout the world, we didn't have enough time to develop to many unique genetic traits in various isolated populations. Now that the world is so much smaller due to technology, that will never happen.
It should be noted that various groups did undergo independent evolution leading to changes in skin colour, sand slight changes to things like bone and muscle structure, certain desease immunities and other minor differences, some of which we were directly responsible for, such as lactose tolerance which is more prevalent among populations who historically milked cows. | 18 |
|
ELI5: How did my 1980's watch maintain more accurate time than my digital clock from today? | When I was younger, I would set my watch to the shortwave time broadcasting station. The drift over months seemed minuscule. Now, I have digital clocks that seem to shift minutes in months. Other smart watches I use seem to loose seconds in a week, if not synchronized. Why are the new clocks much less accurate? | 19 | The watch was *meant* to be accurate and was made with higher-quality materials, especially by the standards of the time... not only “better” ones but ones more suitable for keeping accurate time.
Many electronics have ring or relaxation oscillator circuits— things that create a rhythmic on/off signal. These are entirely electronic, using the same type of parts already used to supply power, light up different segments of the display, etc. They’re also used to tune in radio stations and regulate the speed of digital circuitry, so they’re cheap or *already included* inside a clock radio type device.
But they’re not too accurate. A nice watch likely uses a quartz crystal. This is like a tiny “tuning fork”, it actually has vibrations going on in it. And it’s very good at keeping time accurately.
Since this is the whole point of a good watch, and there isn’t other circuitry already there for other purposes, it seems like the obvious choice for timekeeping needs. But in the bedside clock where it has an alarm, maybe radio reception, powers a digital display, etc... the temptation to cheap out or repurpose existing circuits for timekeeping purposes would be stronger. | 20 |
ELI5: How does a relatively small amount of chromium prevent steel from rusting? | 573 | Because it rusts instead.
Stainless steel is about 10% chromium. And when exposed to the air the chromium reacts with the oxygen much faster.
This forms a layer of chromium oxide on the surface. And that layer of chromium oxide stops any more oxygen from reaching the steel (specifically the iron atoms). And since the oxygen can’t reach the iron, it cannot rust. | 577 |
|
[Diary of a Wimpy Kid] Why does the book claim Greg is wimpy? To me he's just a sociopathic Bad Luck Brian. | 30 | Because Greg is A) the in-universe author so he named the book himself (and the author admitted that Greg is just a huge douche who is trying to elicit false sympathy) and B) he is actually considered a wimp by both his father and Rodrick who bully him for it. In fact, most of his father's storylines involve trying to toughen Greg up by a variety of ways. | 29 |
|
Why doesn't the Earth build up a positive charge from cosmic rays? | We are continually bombarded with lots of cosmic rays, which are mostly bare protons. Shouldn't this mean that the Earth accumulates an excess positive charge over time?
| 69 | Cosmic rays are not the majority of particles striking Earth. In quantity they are greatly outnumbered by the particles of the solar wind, which are both positively and negatively charged.
If the Earth does happen to acquire a slight positive charge, it will tend to repel positively charged particles and more strongly attract negative ones. If Earth acquires a negative charge then the opposite will happen. This means that over time, the charge of a large object will tend toward neutral. | 33 |
Why is good quality vision called '20/20' vision, and not 100% vision? | 17 | 20/20 basically just means you can see what a 'normal person' should see at a range of 20 feet, from 20 feet away. It means you have normal eyesight.
Perfect eyesight can be a lot better than 20/20. You can have 30/20 vision, meaning you can read what a normal person sees from 20 feet away, from 30 feet away, for instance.
It's not uncommon for people who have had corrective eye surgery to come out of it with better than 20/20 vision. | 25 |
|
ELI5: What happens while we are asleep that makes our breath smell so bad when we wake up? | 74 | You're not moving your mouth around as much, and in some cases you leave your mouth hanging open all night which dries it out.
The smell of bad breath is the smell of ~~your saliva~~ bacteria breaking down food in your mouth - called putrefaction. During the day you talk, yawn, drink, eat, smoke, run, and salivate and swallow. The process continually exposes and flushes (by way of swallowing) the decaying food.
When you sleep, you mostly lay there. The saliva pools and chemically digests food, and the results stick to your tongue, teeth and gums. This stuff stinks.
If you take a decent solo road trip, like four plus hours, and stay quiet the whole time, your breath will usually stink by the end. | 36 |
|
[WM40K] Why did the Emperor allow the Mechanicum so much power? | It just seems a bit dangerous in retrospect to hand a weird Martian cult an absolute monopoly over all technology. | 31 | The weird martian cult was already there, and breaking it would result in more conflict and instability than the Emperor considered worth it. They were literally one of the most powerful forces of humanity at that point. | 46 |
[Spiderma]How old is (616) Spiderman? | 29 | He looks to be in his mid-late 20's; think 27 or 28. He graduated high school and college, married (depending on who you ask), was a teacher for a while, worked as Tony Stark's assistant for a short time, and now runs a major US technology company. | 20 |
|
ELI5: What's so special about air-condition air that irritates people's throats? Can it be corrected? | 72 | The amount of moisture the air can hold is correlated with the air's temperature.
Warm air has the ability to hold a lot of moisture. But as that warm air cools down, it loses the ability to hold onto all that moisture. This is known as condensation.
Colder air then is dryer than warmer air. As you inhale that cold air, your body heat begins to warm it. As the air warms its moisture potential also goes up. So, now with a higher moisture potential to equalize the moisture has to come from somewhere; your body.
~~There is a component of the ac unit called a 'condenser'. This part stores the moisture the warmer air contained, but after cooling process can no longer hold onto in its less energetic (colder) state. If you've ever seen an ac unit dripping water this is because the ambient air is warm and full of moisture (called humidity)~~.
In the winter the ambient air has low humidity, when that cold, dry air is pulled into your house and warmed its moisture potential increases and you end up with dry eyes, cracked lips, nose bleeds etc becuase the air is leeching that needed moisture from every source of moisture available.
Hope that explained it well. | 43 |
|
[King Kong] What would, realistically, be the consequences of the ending of King Kong? | New York just had a giant ape rampage through it, killing dozens of civilians and hundreds of National Guardsmen, before the giant ape itself was killed. What would the reaction be by the rest of the world and how would it affect history? | 148 | It's a dramatic event sure, but there wouldn't be many long term consequences. One or more of the survivors would be charged with manslaughter for their negligence in allowing Kong to escape, they would probably be convicted. New York would ban dangerous animals from being brought into the city, and Skull Island in specific would be blockaded by the federal government until responsible safety procedures could be developed.
That's about it though. Megafauna like Kong are already mostly extinct and contained to a single island. There isnt much to do about it.
For perspective, he probably did about as much damage as the Great Molasses Flood, and the long term effect of that is to be the go-to example of a goofy sounding disaster. | 151 |
Why does your saliva go watery before you vomit? | I couldn't help but notice when I feel like vomiting is imminent, my saliva goes super watery in consistency, and was wondering the function behind it ^_^ | 48 | It's part of the reflex. The parotid gland squirts a load of watery (serous) saliva into your mouth. This not only lubricates the vomits' path outwards, it also helps to alleviate some of the acidity of your extremely acidic stomach acid to minimise damage.
(Dentist answering here btw) | 76 |
ELI5: What makes plastic recyclable? | What is the difference between recyclable and non-recyclable plastic (materials)? Similarly, why are some plastic bags degradable while others aren't? | 27 | There are a lot of different ways to make plastic. Even though it all sort of seems the same when we look at it or touch it, there are many different types. These types of plastic are made of different "ingredients." The most common two ingredients for making plastic are ethylene and propylene, which you might have learned about in science class. These plastics are hard to recycle because when you melt them down to reuse them, they separate out into different layers. When those layers cool, it weakens the plastic, making it much less useful. So, if you want a plastic to be recyclable, it needs to be made of special ingredients, and/or made in a special way. Not all plastic is, and so not all plastic is recyclable.
Similarly, for a plastic to be biodegradable, it needs to be made of special ingredients. The most important thing about making a plastic biodegradable is that it has to be tasty to certain bacteria. Bacteria are what "eat" biodegradable plastic and turn it into things that are safe for the environment. Normal plastic like we talked about in the last paragraph usually isn't very tasty to bacteria. To make biodegradable plastic, either the plastic itself needs to be made of special ingredients (again! plastic is complicated), or else it needs to have special ingredients added to it. The first kind is better, but the second kind is popular because it lets companies use the ingredients they already have, but *also* make their plastic a little bit biodegradable. | 28 |
[Spider-Man PS4] What happens to NYC if Spider-Man didn't solve all of the problems that Oscorp's Research Stations were meant to prevent? | Seems like every research station is meant to fix a very specific problem, and it also seems that each one is on the brink of disaster. What happens when Spidey doesn't help them out? | 17 | Moderate ecological and environmental issues - additional pollution in the river, some blown steam pipes in Harlem, a mini-pandemic spread by pigeons, etc. No one thing would be a complete 'this destroys NY' level calamity but even by themselves they'd be majorly disruptive for months at a time. If they all happened to reach critical mass at the *same time?* Yeah, that'd be bad. | 24 |
CMV: I think using the events of the Orlando shooting as a reason for coming out publicly on social media is in bad taste and only serves as a cry for attention. | Recently many of my "closeted" Facebook friends have decided that because of the Orlando shooting it is now time for them to publicly come out on social media. I think this just serves as a cry for attention amidst all of the chaos and tragedy and I think it's incredibly tacky and ill-timed. However last night I was speaking to somebody who explained to me he felt the same sentiment and was honestly contemplating coming out on Facebook. I do not understand this, and would really like to. Can anyone CMV on this issue? | 51 | The people in the Orlando shooting were targeted because they were LGBT. 49 people died, and for at least some of them, that was the first time anyone in their family found out they were gay. At least some of them were likely closeted trans people who will be named with a name they didn't want, because almost no one knew the name they preferred. The same goes for the survivors of the attack. Many of them were outed not on their own terms, but on the terms of a horrible, violent person.
Homophobic attacks on this scale are rare, but homophobic violence is distressingly common. Coming out publicly is a declaration that they're not afraid, and they want to express their identity on their own terms rather than living in fear of being outed. | 44 |
Why is a sodium-potassium alloy more reactive than either metal alone? | Pretty much the title. Noticed [this Popular Mechanics article](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/news/a20860/watermelons-potassium-bullets/) where someone's playing with alkali metal bullets, and I'm curious as to why the Na:K alloy seems to react more violently with water(melons) than pure sodium or potassium. | 41 | It's a eutectic alloy which is liquid at room temperature. When it slams into a watermelon, it disperses into very fine droplets as it starts off as liquid so you get a very fast exothermic oxidation which liberates combustible hydrogen from the water in the watermelon. The fine droplets have a higher surface area to volume ratio than the soft chunks you would get from a fragmenting sodium or potassium pellet. Surface area to volume ratio is important because all of your wet reactions can only happen at the surface of a droplet or solid particle of reactive material.
That guy should put on safety glasses and practice better trigger discipline. | 19 |
CMV: Men Should Have a Choice In Accidental Pregnancies | Edit 3: I have a lot of comments to respond to, and I'm doing my best to get to all of them. It takes time to give thoughtful responses, so you may not get a reply for a day or more. I'm working my way up the notifications from the oldest.
Edit 2: u/kolob_hier posted a [great comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/u6hv4h/comment/i58gb4x/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which outlines some of the views I have fleshed out in the comments so far, please upvote him if you look at the comment. I also quoted his comment in [my reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/u6hv4h/comment/i58kjlw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) in case is it edited later.
Edit1: Clarity about finical responsibility vs parent rights.
​
When women have consensual sex and become pregnant accidentally, they have (or should) the right to choose whether or not to keep the pregnancy. However, the man involved, doesn't have this same right.
I'm not saying that the man should have the right to end or keep an unwanted pregnancy, that right should remain with the woman. I do however think that the man should have the choice to ~~terminate his parental rights~~ absolve himself or financial/legal/parental responsibility with some limitations.
I was thinking that the man should be required to decide before 10-15 weeks. I'm not sure exactly when, and I would be flexible here.
While I am open to changing my view on this, I'm mostly posting this because I want to see what limitations you all would suggest, or if you have alternative ways to sufficiently address the man's lack of agency when it comes to accidental/unwanted pregnancies. | 567 | >I do however think that the man should have the choice to terminate his parental rights with some limitations.
I assume you mean terminate any financial responsibility, not just parental rights? Because a guy could choose to not be a father to the child, but he still bears financial responsibility. | 335 |
Eli5: If the bottom of an iceberg is surrounded by water, shouldn't the iceberg slowly melt? Isn't water warmer than ice? | 19 | Where icebergs form, there is no or almost no temperature gradient between the water and the iceberg, so they can last in those waters for centuries. Once they float a bit further south (or north) from their formation point, they encounter slightly warmer water and melt. But some icebergs are enormous - so large that it can take months or even years to melt even in (relatively speaking) toasty water. The largest icebergs can weigh more than 10 million tons. | 38 |
|
CMV: Demonstrating outside the Supreme Court is misguided (unless you're just there because the television cameras are there) | Like every other time an abortion case has been decided by the Supreme Court, yesterday we were greeted with the fundamentalist crazies of both sides protesting/demonstrating outside the court building. These people either (1) don't understand the role of the Supreme Court or (2) are just there to be part of the news.
Holding a sign that says "protect babies" or "keep abortion legal" is going to have zero impact on the ~9~ 8 Justices deciding the case. The Court doesn't make law, it only interprets the Constitution and laws that have been passed by congress and state legislatures. If you want to "protect babies" or "keep abortion legal", then it is congress and state legislatures that should be the target of your demonstrations.
Demonstrating at the Supreme Court is like complaining to your credit card company because the price of the TV you bought is too high. That wasn't the credit card company's decision, that was Best Buy's decision. | 24 | Demonstrating outside the Supreme Court has a couple of things going for it besides the TV cameras:
1. Justices of the court have unusually wide discretion over the conduct of their offices as compared to other public officials. The demonstrators may care a lot about the specific interpretation of the law and the Constitution which the court fashions, and that fashioning is almost entirely at the discretion of the justices. While a demonstration is probably unlikely to sway the justices, it's certainly the case that swaying the justices would produce important policy outcomes.
2. Demonstrating outside the Supreme Court building is also demonstrating outside Congress. The Supreme Court building is across the street from the US Capitol building. Demonstrating there can show Senators that voters care about certain issues which they might inquire about with prospective judicial nominees or integrate into passing statutes. Protesting on the corner of First Street NE and East Capitol Street NE kills two birds with one stone. | 11 |
If Palpatine orchestrated the clone wars, why did the CIS win so many battles? | 19 | Because it had to look like a desperate struggle for the Republic's very survival. If the senate wasn't constantly terrified, they would have begun to squabble about petty things and concentrating less on what Palpatine wanted them to vote on, like giving him more and more emergency powers.
Not only did it keep the senate terrified, it kept the general population of the galaxy supportive of the war if they knew the clones and the massive military production were the only thing keeping them safe from the CIS. They had to see the clones lose so they could see them win now and again and feel that spark of pride for the "good guys" and a twinge of hope that the war could be won and things return to normal. That pride and hope kept people voting for the same senators, contributing to the war and keeping things going exactly as Palpatine planned.
On top of all of that, when the Republic lost a battle, it lost officers and military personnel who were either part of the Republic's tiny "military" before the war or people who would be inconvenient in the new order. Having them killed off was important so Palpatine could fill those roles with people he knew would do what he wanted. | 44 |
|
Because of gravity's constant effects, is there infinite energy in the universe? | So it's been a while since i've taken a physics course, but the last one I did take was grade 11 physics. One of the major units we learned about there was energy, and a big part of that was the kinetic vs potential energy balance. Now we also learned that energy is always conserved so it cannot be created or destroyed, but this never sat quite well with me.
Say we have two apple trees. One at the top of a hill, and one at the bottom of the hill. The trees grow their apples, and when they are ripe enough they fall to the ground. Now the apples at the bottom of the hill just fall straight down to the ground and stop, but the apples at the top of the hill fall straight down, and then roll down the hill. This means that for the apples on the top of the hill, they have a greater potential energy before they fall, and greater kinetic energy during the fall and subsequent roll.
Now normally you have to lift something up against the force of gravity, for it to gain potential energy, but in this case, there is no extra energy expended to put the apples in a higher location gaining that extra potential and kinetic energy. In other words, both apple trees are expending the same amounts of energy to grow the apples, but the ones of the top of the hill will generate more energy when falling, purely because of their location.
So it seems like in this scenario, we have a situation where two of the same objects have differing levels of energy based off location in space, but no energy input was required to create that difference in location. And because energy cannot be created, my only explanation for this is because of gravity's constant force on everything with mass, there is infinite energy.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope this can be answered as it's really bugging me. Thanks. | 15 | No, see the potential is not to the ground, but to the center of mass of the system of the apple and the earth (with the difference of mass this is simply the center of mass of the earth.) The ground is just stable enough to oppose the force of gravity on the apple, so really the same force is being applied to both objects. Now you are correct about there being more energy required to get apple B versus apple A in the first place but what you are failing to recognize is that that energy was applied outside the confines of the system defined in the problem (i.e. the energy was applied by the trees being planted in their separate locations and growing the apples in the first place.) | 16 |
[Avatar:TLA]Given the Avatar's long history as a force for good in the world, how was the mission to capture or kill him sold to the average fire nation citizen? | Did no one start questioning if they were the baddies once they were ordered to kill a living saint? | 94 | We saw in The Headband that Fire Nation kids are forced to learn a very distorted version of history that paints them as the heroes and other nations as instigators of the 100 year war.
Its likely information they got about the Avatar and Aang specifically was similarly skewed, if they even bother to teach much of it at all. | 113 |
[Star Wars] Who was funding the rebellion during the original trilogy? | I've been a Star Wars fan my whole life, but never really dipped my toe into anything outside the films.
Unless I've missed something, I never understood how exactly the Rebellion came by its resources. I'd imagine the personnel was largely volunteer (being a Rebellion), but food, weapons, vehicles, starships... Who was picking up the bill on all this?
I would imagine there was probably a hand-ful of benefactors, but funding on this level would be pretty difficult to hide. If it was public, I would think it would make them an easy target for the Empire.
Anyway, I always kind of wondered if this was ever addressed. Kinda stumbled on to this sub by accident and saw an opportunity!
Thanks! | 78 | Starships were built by the Mon Calamari and remnants of Incom Corp after it was absorbed by Siener Systems. Also, the Rebels had numerous sympathizers among the former Separatist planets and the former Republic Senators of the Delegation of 2000, Senator Bail Organa being the most visible and vocal member of this Rebellion. | 66 |
ELI5: Why do you "black out" when you've had too much to drink? | 19 | People have 2 different types of basic memory-- Short Term and Long Term. Short term memories are processed and stored in the brain for only a few minutes. However, short term memories that are deemed by your brain to be "significant" are later converted into your long-term memory storage.
In excess, alcohol somehow blocks the brain's ability to convert short term memories into long term ones. Therefore you can still operate on a short term memory level-- you can still have conversations, interactions, and function on short term memory-- but since due to alcohol these short term memories cannot be successfully converted into long term memories, the next day you may have no recollection of the previous night. | 21 |
|
[Star Wars] Why did Sidious/Palpatine treat Vader like shit when he became robotic (from all the EU comics and ROTJ)? | 48 | Basically he was disappointed in Vader's strength. George Lucas mentioned that when Vader lost his limbs he became significantly weaker and no longer had the potential to exceed Sidious. Palpatine wanted the ultimate apprentice and Vader had the ability to be the strongest force user in history. After losing that strength, the Emperor considered Vader to be nothing more than Maul or Dooku; a pawn to be used until he found a suitable replacement (Starkiller or Luke for instance). | 77 |
|
How is Operating System implemented in C and not Assembly? | From what I understand, operating systems like Linux and Windows are almost entirely written in C (with some C++ at times). Given the fact that they main function of the OS is to abstract hardware from user applications and maximize efficiency of hardware resources, how can this achieved by using a higher level language such as C?
For example,
\-Operating Systems handle processes through process control blocks, which involves saving CPU registers to context switch between processes. How can this be achieved in C and not assembly? Doesn't accessing CPU registers required that it be done in assembly?
\-Implementation of system calls such as opening, reading, writing, and closing files are within the operating system kernel. If the implementation of these require directly manipulating the hardware to access data, how is it possible that this is implemented in C?
\-Memory management
​
Forgive me if I am just completely uninformed about these topics. I am currently taking undergraduate operating systems for the first time, and lots of these things are still unclear to me. Detailed information is definitely welcome! | 44 | the compiler does the job. The C that you code into gets converted into assembly of that particualar cpu architecture. The very basic code that commands the cpu to start running and loads in the first process from hard drive to ram are all hard coded in assembly then compiled code takes over though depending on the needs assembly is used too. | 23 |
ELI5: How is it that people can easily walk many miles but standing still for 20 minutes makes you uncomfortable ? | 1,873 | To add to other answers, your calf muscles activate much more when walking than standing. Calf muscles are known as your "second heart" because they aid in delivering deoxygenated blood back up from the legs to the heart. So walking promotes better bloodflow throughout the body. | 1,490 |
|
[General] In a world where magic is real, rare or common, known or unknown, is using real magic during a stage magic performance considered cheating akin to camera tricks? | 36 | Not an answer from sources, but in our world, where magic may exist but it is assumed not, the fun of a "magic" show is in trying to figure out how the *trick* was done. If there actually isn't a trick, and the stage magician is "merely" using actual magic, that would be cheating according to the unwritten compact between the performer and audience. | 31 |
|
ELI5: I work in an office, one of my colleagues is forever 'too cold' whereas I'm forever 'too hot' despite us being well and in the same vicinity. Why? | I work in an office, one of my colleagues (female) is always saying she's too cold and wanting windows closed and heaters on, sometimes when it's 20 degrees outside... I'm exactly the opposite and I'm too hot sometimes even in the winter. Why is it so different between people? | 41 | Lots of possible reasons.
- Percentage of body fat. If you are heavier than her, you will feel warmer.
- Men tend be warmer than women in general.
- She might have poor circulation.
- You're wearing a suit with a jacket and she's only wearing a shirt. | 35 |
ELI5: Quantum physics experiments suggest that reality doesn't exist until it is measured or observed. What the heck? | 25 | Observed does not mean by a sentient being. Observed simply means interaction in this context.
Here's an analogy:
Say you're measuring the temperature of water with a thermometer that starts off with a temperature, say 20C, and the water you're measuring has a temperature of 50C.
If you're measuring a pool, it doesn't matter. If you're measuring a tiny droplet of water, the heat of the thermometer will effect the temperature of the water!
It's like that for quantum particles. In order to measure them, we have to interact with them, which then collapses the waveform.
Note that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has nothing to do with this. | 15 |
|
I think that in America, nudity should be allowed on television, CMV. | On American television, tons of horrible things can be shown. Blood, gore, inappropriate language, etc. But for some reason, seeing boobs is the worst thing in the world.
You go onto the internet - and let's be honest, it's 2013, nearly all Americans have access to the internet - and you have more access to porn than you can ever believe.
I can see how someone could be worried about nudity being on television, as their children could be exposed to it. However, there are plenty of parental controls on television, you can block certain shows, entire channels, you can certainly censor what your children see.
I would love to hear someone else's side on this, change my view if you can! | 20 | Nudity *is* allowed on television. There is no governmental regulation that prohibits nudity on cable television. But most cable companies/channels have agreed to a common set of standards that effectively amount to self-censorship. You see nudity on HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. because they don't follow those standards.
I do think it's weird and slightly racist that tribal and indigenous nudity is rarely censored on the Travel Channel/National Geographic, though. | 10 |
Why can't you donate blood after receiving eye surgery? | 726 | You may have received something like a corneal transplant and acquired a disease from that donated tissue. Rather than delving into the specifics of the operation they may simply disqualify you out of an abundance of caution. | 401 |
|
[Frogger] Why don't the cars slow down or swerve when they run into a frog the size of a water buffalo? | 71 | While the frog might be the "length" and "width" of a Water Buffalo, it probably isn't the height. Based on the fact that hitting the frog doesn't seem to stop the cars from moving, we can infer that the mass of the Frog isn't comparable to a Water Buffalo. | 50 |
|
How can Olympic skiers jump the distance of a football field going 40+ mph without sustaining an injury? | 39 | Because the distance doesn't really matter (for the injury part). Imagine if they were on a horizontal plane. The height of the jump would not be that high relative to that plane.
Also, the angle of the landing zone to the angle of the skier when they touch down is small because the slope of the landing zone is similar to the trajectory of the skier. | 19 |
|
CMV: Heterosexual and homosexual polygamy should be legal | Starting out, I want to ignore dual sovereignty and the federalist arguments about what should and should not be legal based upon the preferences on the citizens of the states because I, ultimately, believe that people living in a state should be able to define their own marriage laws. Personal and sexual relationships between consenting adults should be legal and recognized by society. However, while the government does not need to regulate the marriage itself, it is free to regulate the adults' duties and obligations to offspring once the marriage decides to have children. Even if one can show that heterosexual and homosexual polygamy does present some detriment to society, society should collectively carry that burden for the sake of personal liberty until that liberty infringes upon the rights of other citizens. Let's have a discussion.
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 48 | >personal liberty
To clarify, do you really mean polygamy or polyamory? Polyamory is about personal liberty. Polyamory is when multiple people (of whatever genders) choose to live together and make their lives together. Polygamy is not about liberty - it's about binding people into a more stable situation using the force of the law against them if they try to leave.
Basically, do you just want to legalize polyamory by getting rid of the rules about who can live together and what they can do? Or do you want the government to impose alimony on these people, waiting periods before divorces, and other restrictions we put on monogamous marriages? | 15 |
[Marvel] Since Magneto has been shown to be able to control blood via the iron content, could be manually circulate his own blood if his heart stopped working until he received medical attention? | In a comic in the 90s, I believe it was the Magneto limited series, Mags is shown killing a bunch of soldiers sent to kill him by manipulating their blood. So could he provide himself with artificial circulation?
I guess we can have a twofer here and ask the same question about bloodbenders in the Avatar universe. | 279 | Magneto: probably. He once survived his own death as pure energy by maintaining the nerve impulses using his power without any body.
Bloodbenders: usually benders need to move to bend, but if you're really good - and you have to be good to be a bloodbender - you can do it without moving. Bloodbenders have been shown canceling out the effect of bloodbending on their bodies, so they can clearly effect themselves. They should be able to resist a heart attack no problem if they realize what's happening. | 134 |
CMV: Being pro-death penalty is immoral especially with not knowing what the future will bring to humans psyche. | If/when we advance as a species to a point where we can alter someones psyche to "rid" people of that "thing" that made them commit such offenses that are currently faced with the death penalty and guarantee that they will not commit a future offense that would warrant a death penalty, it is immoral to act with the death penalty because we can or may be able to "fix" them at a future date. It would be immoral kill someone who is fixed of his or her fault and could not act on such fault ever again. We don't know what the future holds and acting on something as valuable as life that has a permanent consequence is immoral.
_____
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 96 | You propose to "fix" someone's free will and make them literally unable to act in certain ways? Isn't that worse than killing them?
And even if some criminals didn't see it that way, changing someone's sentence for undergoing a medical procedure is coercing them to undergo that medical procedure. Therefore we could never ethically let that influence decisions regarding parole. So the comparison can't be "death or nerve-stapled", it still remains "death or life without parole". Nerve-stapling would just be an option for people who were already sentenced to life without parole that would let them rest assured they wouldn't be able to harm any of the other prisoners. | 107 |
Would a tsunami have a “pull” like a normal wave? | Would it have a stronger pull or the same, and would it get stronger the bigger the wave was? | 2,867 | The water that was carried onto the land by the tsunami retreats backwards into the open sea. This is arguably the most dangerous part of a tsunami. The force of the watermasses can carry lots of debris with it and knock loose lots of objects; Cars, boats, even houses or parts of them at least. People might survive the initial arrival of the wave. They may perhaps hide behind objects so that they are not directly hit. But when the water retreats, everything that is not firmly connected to the ground will be dragged with the water. Debris is thrown around everywhere potentially killing many.
Even if you can survive the debris you will not be able to hold on to anything so you will be simply swept away onto the open ocean.
What you should know is that tsunamis are not like "normal" waves. They are more like an extremely rapid and big tide. They are not one small wavepeak with a small wavelength, but much more long and drawn out waves. The strength of the pull depends on the amount of water it carries, the momentum and of course also the coastal bathymetry and topography. | 2,503 |
CMV: Comedy should not be exclusively PC. Everyone needs to get poked fun at sometimes. No limits. | This all came to a head when Dave Chapelle was getting shit for his netflix "Sticks and Stones" special (great foresight on the title). People bitch too much. The show was a thought provoking and fresh change in the sea of boring "airplane food" type jokes/routines going around.
* Comedians are the ones that call out the bullshit in our society. Jokes cannot exist without an element of truth, and often reveal to you the fucked up shit we deal with daily. The Humor is only offensive to you specifically, and dragging everyone down because your fragile feelings got hurt is a shitty thing to do. Humor does not give a shit. Please do not have a stick up your ass as this makes you unlikable and a buzzkill imo.
* Comedy is a medium to help us grapple with the complex and often disappointing (depressing/not fun) realities we face in the world, and the PC Police staunching it over trivial things has gone too far and is not helpful. Comedy makes you think about why the joke was funny and the elements of truth and fiction in the joke. People who want to police jokes are the disillusioned ones who dont want to face the truth and the music.
The beauty of comedy is that anything flies for laughs. It is self policing. Its the responsibility of the comedian or joke teller to analyze his audience demographic and based upon that, alter the severity of the joke. If a joke went to far, nobody laughs. And that to me, is beautiful.
CMV.
EDIT:
I urge all to check the delta post. Very good breakdown. Comedians should either shit on everyone by the same amount or delve into controverisal topics and use jokes to explore them with the audience. Bigots pretending to be comedians with their circle jerk audience should not be allowed. If your special focuses on the jewish for the entire hour and only trashes and does not meaningfully explore, its not comedy. Its being a cock. That being said nobody is untouchable, and somebody shouldn't cry and bitch if they were offended from 3 minutes out of a 1 hour show. | 9,305 | People who are racist or sexist or otherwise nasty have always used humor as a vehicle to convey their bigotry in public. And then tell everyone "it was just a joke". Or target people and then tell them "can't you take a joke". Or complain about how everything has become too PC nowadays.
Now there are great comedians like Bill Burr who base their comedy on being politically incorrect and say some wild things. But if you make an effort to listen to them carefully, you realize they really are not being racist in a genuine way. There are always ways to figure this out in a fairly clear way. Such as comedians who will uniformly trash everyone.
But if there is a comedian or someone who plays the role of a jokester in a group and they always seem to target certain people, and never others, it is not comedy or a joke. It is just their bias and bigotry hiding behind a thin veil. And there should be no tolerance for it. | 2,674 |
[MCU] How did Stormbreaker survive a beam made of the power of all 6 stones? | Even if Thnaos was surprised its still an energy beam of a full set of stones. How did Stormbreaker even manage to overpower it? | 27 | Stormreaker is the result of a lifetime's work. Etiri is the armorer of the Asgardian gods, and Stormbreaker was his magnum opus, a weapon capable of channeling the full might of the Odinforce.
The Infinity Gauntlet is the result of a few harried hours of work, performed under the watchful, threatening eye of a madman who had just murdered everyone else on the entire planet. It was a theoretical design pressed into service, without time for craftsmanship or refinement.
If Thanos had given Etiri time to study the Infinity Stones and design a weapon fully capable of harnessing their power, nothing in the universe wold have stood a chance against him. But Thanos didn't give Etiri that kind of time, and as a result, the full might of the Odinforce was able to defeat a fragment of the Infinity Stones' power. | 38 |
What exactly makes a question philosophical? | What exactly makes a question philosophical?
What defines the bounds of "philosophy" and "not philosophy"? | 53 | Typically, that it's a question that pertains to the typical concerns of philosophers.
That is, to issues of norms, the formal aspects of thought, the foundational principles of the specialized fields of culture and their objects, the relations among the specialized fields of culture and their objects, inquiries into particular ideas or practices related to the aforementioned themes, and the history of the foregoing -- or something like this.
What common feature connects these various topics? Opinions are divided. Maybe nothing, beyond the historical contingency that they're topics that have typically been left to people calling themselves philosophers. Maybe something like this: that non-philosophical fields of intellectual culture involve participating non-reflexively in a certain kind of cultural act, while philosophy involves reflexively raising into consciousness and inquiring into the grounds of the conditions of these cultural acts. | 43 |
CMV: The World should switch to a 13 month calendar. | The Calendar is the last major measurement system that is out of wack. Here is what the calendar would look like with 13 months.
|M|T|W|T|F|S|S|
:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|
|01|02|03|04|05|06|07|
|08|09|10|11|12|13|14|
|15|16|17|18|19|20|21|
|22|23|24|25|26|27|28|
The new month could be called Novissime last in Latin. The last day would be New Years Eve and Leaper would be before it. They would be know as the Tristique days (Floating in Latin) as they would have no month or week they would simply be NYE and Leaper keeping the days of the month and week the same every year.
Why should be do this. Make planning easier and possable for years in advance. You won't need to check if said day is on a weekend one year.
Birthdays would also be static though people might be upset not having a weekend birthday just make ever persons birthday a paid time off day and free day off of school. | 62 | >Why should be do this. Make planning easier and possable for years in advance. You won't need to check if said day is on a weekend one year.
Given the propensity of phones and computers, what do you think would be more difficult?
1. Opening up a calendar and flipping to the desired year to determine if the date is a weekend or not.
2. Getting the entire world to agree on changing their calendar system. | 109 |
[MCU] Which Avenger had the best biological father? | Most Avengers have daddy issues to some extent, many of them clinging to a surrogate father figure as a replacement. So which one had the best upbringing from their biological father?
(For this purpose, I'm considering "avenger" as anybody with special powers, tech, or abilities who fought on the front lines alongside the team, as long as they had a name and decent screen time) | 126 | Wanda Maximoff’s dad seemed like a pretty nice guy, and a good dad, not his fault he died when Wanda was a kid.
I know that the comics have all sorts of intrigue regarding who Wanda’s ACTUAL biological father is, but so far in the MCU we have no reason to believe that guy wasn’t Wanda’s father. | 170 |
ELI5: Why is it frowned upon to shoot down enemy soldiers in a parachute? | 25 | It's only "frowned upon" when they're pilots/airman who have abondoned their aircraft (as opposed to airborn soldiers parachuting into a combat zone to fight). At the point they've been forced to abandon their plane, they're no longer combatants. It's considered cruel to shoot them because they're basically defenseless. Generally, pilots/crew in distress are given the opportunity to surrender when they reach ground. Basically, it's "not fair play" to shoot at pilots when they can't fight back. | 51 |
|
Can we synthesize Gold in the laboratory? | One of the aims of Alchemy was the transmutation of common metals into Gold. It seems we are able to synthesize rare elements that are very high on the periodic table in the laboratory. The process described on how that is done sounds an awful lot like Alchemy to me. So my question is why don't we synthesize Gold? Is it just that the cost to do so would be more than the value of gold which is somewhat readily obtainable? Or is there something else about the lighter elements on the periodic table that make it not possible to do when it can be done with heavier elements? | 19 | > Is it just that the cost to do so would be more than the value of gold which is somewhat readily obtainable?
Yes. However:
- Reaction rates are generally low
- The products are often radioactive
For instance, if we pass mercury through a nuclear reactor, 196-Hg can absorb a neutron, becoming 197-Hg, which decays fairly quickly to 197-Au.
The problem is that 196-Hg makes up only 0.15% of naturally occurring mercury. The other isotopes can also absorb neutrons, which decay to unstable isotopes of gold (or other elements).
So if you were to attempt synthesizing gold this way, you would be left with a radioactive mixture containing small amounts of gold, which you would then need to process. The costs of operating a nuclear reactor, passing large amounts of mercury through it, and processing radioactive mixtures make the whole thing not very cost-effective. | 13 |
Where do the electrons go in a Neutron Star? | I have been reading a little bit about neutron stars and I think they are really fascinating. However, I've never understood where the electrons go when the atoms collapse into neutrons. It was explained to me that the protons in the nucleus absorb the electrons, giving the atom a neutral charge. But, neutrons are made up of 2 down quarks and an up quark without an electron in it. So what happens to the electron? | 16 | They combine with the protons to form neutrons (an up becomes a down), while a neutrino shoots out. So to answer the question of where the electron "goes," the electron-ness is carried away in the form of the neutrino, while the charge is cancelled out by the proton's. | 28 |
Does having a having a larger skull/brain cavity increase your chances of suffering a cuncussion upon impact ? | Edit : apparently I can't even formulate a sentence properly. Sorry about that.
Edit 2 : thank you all very much for taking the time to reply. | 2,697 | Your brain to skull ratio could influence a coup contracoup concussion where your brain literally rattles back and forth in your skull and bruises. It also puts you at increased risk of subdural hematoma (shearing of the veins in the layer surrounding your brain) if you are elderly or have a smaller brain for other reasons. Can have small impacts, not remember and end up with a chronic bleed. | 725 |
[Futurama] What is ultra-porn? Why must you be 160 years old to watch it? | 56 | It's a form of pornography where you experience the life-time sexual experiences of a single member for an entire species, from the perspective of all sexes/gender involved, in the spans of a minute.
After you've experienced it once, you get kind of bored with the idea of recreational sex itself. | 103 |
|
ELI5: Why do seafood meats taste so noticeably different from land-based meats? | I don't even understand enough about this situation to describe it adequately. There's a vividly recognizable flavor to shrimp, crab, lobster, fish, etc. that just isn't there in chicken, beef, etc. - what causes it? What does it mean?
This is probably a really terrible question, but here I am. | 25 | Those animals are entirely different taxa and are the products of a hugely different environment, spending their existences in salt water. They contain high amounts of iodine and other minerals compared to land animals. Their musculature evolved for environments with very low amounts of gravity. | 14 |
When Betelgeuse goes supernova, how will it affect life on Earth? | With the [Betelgeuse](http://www.universetoday.com/110394/which-star-will-explode-next/) supernova being brighter than the full moon and shining for weeks or months, I'm just curious if it would have adverse or beneficial effects here. | 17 | It might mess up the mating habits of some noctural species that tie their mating to full moons as it'll basically be a full moon every night for months.
It might cause a baby boom for humans, too. It could be quite romantic to take a midnight stroll in the super nova light. 8) | 12 |
ELI5: Before the invention of the barcode, how did concerts and other events prevent scammers from simply printing out lookalike tickets and getting in for free? | 30 | They did not have to.
The barcode was invented in the 50s and had its first commercial use in 1974.
High quality printers didn't really enter the home until the mid 90s.
There really isn't a period of time where the barcode wasn't in use but people had access to printers they could use freely.
There is also the burden of sourcing the correct card stock by weight and color. | 49 |
|
[Halo] Do spartans ever get their magnetic backs, where they hold their weapons, stuck on things? | Assuming that's how they hold their spare weapons in the first place. | 36 | First of all, the level of magnetic attraction needed to secure even large ordnance would be barely noticeable to the Spartan operator if he got "stuck" to something. The suit is powerful enough to effortlessly throw around its own 1/2 ton weight (to say nothing of flipping a 66-ton Scorpion like it's made of styrofoam).
However, MJOLNIR also responds to subvocalized commands, so the operator can toggle the electromagnet essentially at will. | 28 |
Do carbonated beverages such as soda help keep you hydrated? If so, how do they compare against water? | 598 | Carbonation is nothing more than carbon dioxide in solution. The body doesn't metabolize ingested CO2 (it tends to be released in burps), so it has no effect on the body's absorption or retention of water in the beverage.
| 463 |
|
What qualifies one as PhD-worthy? | Thought this subreddit may have more professors who are better able to answer this question.
I'm currently in my fifth year of PhD in STEM and somehow I landed myself in an extremely unusual situation of reporting my previous PI on multiple violations on multiple fronts including scientific misconduct.
The thing is, I've seen and endured so much BS, and it's just not healthy for me to stick around here (few professors who know me and the situation also recommended that I set my defense date ASAP and GTFO). When it came down to having to report scientific misconduct, I seriously just wanted to report and leave and give up on my PhD. Now that I reported, I still feel the same; is sticking around to get my PhD really worth it?
My PhD committee is meeting next Monday to decide what I need to do to get my PhD. I've worked hard in grad school: two 1st author research articles and two 1st author review articles and 7 other co-authorship papers, all of them in decent journals (IF>5) and several conference/presentation awards/small research grant/fellowship. 3 out of 5 committee members think I should defend and get out ASAP while 2 of them think I need another paper, but these 2 are less familiar with work I've done and open to discussion with other members.
**TL;DR So clearly, some profs think I already have done enough to get a PhD while some don't. As much as this situation sucks, I don't want a half-assed, pity PhD either. So reddit, what does it take to make one PhD-worthy? Is it certain # of papers, or what is it?**
EDIT: Thank you all for your advice. It's been such a messy, disgusting journey this past few months and I keep thinking about how petty everyone/the institute is, and how I'm wasting my life and energy getting caught up in this. But after reading all your comments, I decided that I will work to get my PhD no matter what, as soon as possible. Thank you for the tough love (especially /u/parkway_parkway) and all of you for your encouragement.
EDIT 2: If anyone is ever checking back, my committee decided that I should write my dissertation and defend ASAP. I will never find out if it was the merit of my work and/or the unusual circumstances (probably both). I view PhDs much differently than I did before, unfortunately with less respect in some regard, but I suppose that's just how it is. Thank you all. | 27 | IMO don't throw away the work you have done. There's no such thing as a pity PhD. If you care about your own standards that's great. Let the university decide their own standards. If they will give you one then you deserve it, it's as simple as that.
In life things often look bleak but that's the moment when you get a chance to show some character and push for what you really want. If you want to quit because you don't like the work or you want to take your career in another direction or you have a great opportunity then those are good reasons to quit. If it's just bullshit then plough through it. Remember all those stories you were told as a child about carrying on even though it was difficult? You know with the kid with the magical leaf who is lost in the deep dark forest? This could be one of those times they were trying to talk about.
| 22 |
ELI5: I just watched the Big Short, and I still don't understand what "shorting" is. How does buying credit swaps profit you when the market collapses? Who pays that out and why? | 1,316 | Say Bob has a bunch of stock in a business called Company, Inc. Bob's friend Henry thinks Company, Inc.'s stock is about to drop significantly. Henry makes a deal with Bob: Bob will lend Henry 100 shares of Company, Inc. stock, but Henry has to give it all back exactly one year from now. So Henry gets 100 shares and sells them at their current price of $10 each. Henry now has $1000, but he'll have to buy back 100 shares before the end of the year in order to hold up his end of the bargain.
A year later, Company, Inc. stock isn't doing so well, selling for only $1 a share. Henry buys up 100 shares and gives them back to Bob. By shorting the Company, Inc. stock, Henry made a profit of $900.
In an alternate universe, Company, Inc. is doing pretty good at the end of the year. Their stock is selling for $20 a share. In order to get the 100 shares he needs to give back to Bob, Henry has to use the $1000 he got from selling the stock originally AND $1000 from his own pocket. In this universe, Henry's attempt to short the Company, Inc. stock has cost him $1000. | 1,271 |
|
ELi5 Why is population decline a problem | If we are running out of resources and increasing pollution does a smaller population not help with this? As a species we have shrunk in numbers before and clearly increased again. Really keen to understand more about this. | 7,896 | Mostly severe population decline sucks for old people. In a country with an increasing population, there are lots of young laborers to work and directly or indirectly take care of the elderly. But with a population in decline, there are too many old people and not enough workers to both keep society running and take care of grandma. | 8,935 |
I think college is way too easy and the number of people graduating college should be cut in half. | College degrees are becoming more and more valueless because just about anyone with half a brain and enough money to pay 4 years worth of tuition can obtain a degree. I'm a Junior at a major University right now and I can with all honesty say that at least 2/3 of my classmates do not put in any respectable amount of work towards their classes or are just plain dumb/apathetic. The Cs get degrees attitude is rampant, but the thing is that its true. As long as the university is getting their money they can keep churning out unqualified students with increasingly worthless degrees and it will only benefit them.
Without rarity there is no value, and without competition there is no rarity. Graduating college with a degree should be an accomplishment of one's intellect and hard work, not the product of paying tuition and doing the absolute minimal for four years.
This would also help ease the student debt problem. | 41 | I argue that the minimum level of work to graduate, in general, is still sufficient, and that there can still be much diversity between "A" and "C" level students.
First, a college degree, even if accomplished at the minimum level, requires more effort and yields more educational benefit than simply ending the academic life after high school. They're already distinguishing themselves from those without college experience.
Second, competition already exists - at least, for jobs. A person who puts more effort into their academic career is one who can put their knowledge into practice, minimize errors, and find experience in their field. The same could not be said for those who put in the minimum effort. An employer would likely identify and hire the former of the two, and the latter, if employed, would probably fail often.
So if you put more effort into your degree than your colleagues, good for you. It'll show when your experience and abilities beat the competition. | 21 |
Can the electron-capture decay be stopped? | I know there's a type of radioactive decay where the electron can be capture by the nucleus, transforming a proton into a neutron. I understand radioactive decay can't be stopped, but if you strip an isotope (that decays that way) of its electrons, like plasma, can you make it stop decaying completely? I only found articles saying that chemical bonds can change the half-life, but i didn't have much luck confirming if my question is possible | 17 | >but if you strip an isotope (that decays that way) of its electrons, like plasma, can you make it stop decaying completely?
Yes, you can stop electron capture completely. If it is unstable to other decay modes, those can still occur. | 11 |
[Star Wars] We always hear about Jedi's turning to the darkside, but what if a Jedi raised/taught only the way of the Darkside wants to use their abilities for good instead of evil? | Lets say you have a Sith, taken in by a Sith Lord at the age of 18 months and raised as a Sith/under Sith Teachings. They are now in their early 20's and want to turn their back on the Sith Ways and follow the path of the Jedi. Their desire is honest and genuine-there's no "hidden" agenda other than they want to become a Jedi and use their abilities for good instead of bad. How receptive would the Jedi be of this? How easy/hard would this be to do?
We always hear about Jedi's turning to the darkside, but what if a Jedi raised/taught only the way of the Darkside wants to use their abilities for good instead of evil? | 19 | You don't want to try and do this. The dark side has an extremely strong allure, and is highly addictive. It blinds its users to the true nature of what they are doing. Just look at Anakin Skywalker as a prime example. He thought all the evil acts he was committing were to save the love of his life. The dark side is inherently corrupting. Using it will twist your mind.
One thing that many people overlook is the fact that Jedi are *not* emotionless, nor do they strive to be. Yoda isn't humorless. Obi-wan doesn't lack empathy. They try to control their impulses, to stay away from the extremes. Why? Because with these extremes comes the influence and temptation of the dark side. It creeps up on you, and before you know it you're slaughtering children thinking you're doing the right thing.
Is it impossible for one to use the dark side of the force for good? No, it's not, but the chances of such a thing are minuscule. In the history of the galaxy there are, maybe, a handful of people who have done this, at the most. The forces that you fight against when you are trying to use the Dark Side for good are immense. | 19 |
Why is a cooling tower in a Nuclear power plant, the shape that it is? | 263 | The towers you are talking about aren’t exclusive to nuclear power plants. In the US, more nuclear units use once through cooling than cooling towers. You also see these with fossil plants like the Michigan city coal plant in Indiana.
The large cooling towers are called natural draft cooling towers. The shape creates a chimney effect, where the rising steam and moisture creates negative pressure as it passes through the contours of the tower. This sucks cold air into the bottom which supplies additional cooling.
If you didn’t have the large hyperboloid shape, you would need to use fans to create that air draft to create the same cooling effect. Look up Columbia Generating Station which uses 6 forced draft cooling towers that use forced air fans for contrast.
The purpose of the cooling towers is to cool the water which circulated through the condenser. Recall that the condenser takes the waste steam and makes it a liquid again for re-use in the plant. If you don’t use cooling towers you need to push 500,000 gallons of lake water per minute through the condenser and back to the lake. If you use cooling towers you just need to draw to make up for evaporation (10,000 gallons per minute).
Hope this helps. | 230 |
|
ELI5: how do solar panels work? | 40 | Firstly electricity is simply the flow of electrons. Electrons are all negatively charged and particles with the same charge repel each other like when you out the wrong ends of magnets together. Therefore electrons will always flow from an area with high concentration to an area with low concentration.
All electrical power sources work by creating what's called a potential difference between two poles. That is a difference in the concentration of electrons, so that if you connect a wire between the two poles electrons will flow through it to even it out.
Solar panels work by something called the photovoltaic effect. Basically, light consists of packets of energy called photons. When photons hit atoms they can "excite" the electrons. You can think of it as the photons knocking the electrons out of their orbit, usually into a higher orbit, but sometimes they can completely dislodge an electron from it's atom. That's called ionization.
The next part simplifies a lot: A solar panel consists of two layers, one that absorbs sunlight and one that stores the electrons. The photons dislodge the electrons in the first layer so that they jump over in the second layer. It is designed so that the electrons can't jump back the way they came from so the concentration of electrons increase in the second layer.
Now, as you probably have guessed, if you connect a wire between the two layers, the electrons will want to flow through it. | 45 |
|
[MCU] Would (Jessica Jones) Kilgrave's mind-control ability work on the following MCU characters/people? And why | -Vision
-J.A.R.V.I.S./F.R.I.D.A.Y./E.D.I.T.H.
-Spider-Man
-Doctor Strange
-Thanos (depending on stones)
-A Westviewer under Wanda control
-Someone who does not understand English
-Ultron
-Loki
-Groot
-Drax, if Kilgrave's order wasn't completely literal
-Zola in the computer
-Echo (who is Deaf)
-A "Widow" after dosage with red freedom dust
-The Watcher
-A Kilgrave time variant | 96 | > Vision
* No, he's made of metal. Pheromones probably wouldn't work on him.
> J.A.R.V.I.S./F.R.I.D.A.Y./E.D.I.T.H.
* No, they don't even have a body.
> Spider-Man
* Yes. Normal enough human.
> Doctor Strange
* Yes. Normal human.
> Thanos (depending on stones)
* Maybe? He's an alien and may be an Eternal, so their biologies might different enough that he's not affected.
> A Westviewer under Wanda control
* Yes, unless Wanda was actively counteracting at that moment.
> Someone who does not understand English
* Yes, you can still communicate without words.
> Ultron
* No, non-biological machine.
> Loki
* Frost giant biology, so probably not.
> Groot
* Plant-like alien - almost certainly not affected by mammalian hormones.
> Drax, if Kilgrave's order wasn't completely literal
* Alien, so maybe.
> Zola in the computer
* No, machines can't be affected by pheromones.
> Echo (who is Deaf)
* Yes. Normal human.
> A "Widow" after dosage with red freedom dust
* Good question! Maybe the Widow mind control formula is similar to Kilgrave's abilities. Kilgrave's parents may have even been a Western attempt to replicate Dreykov's formula or Dreykov could've gotten it from them.
> The Watcher
* Extra-dimensional entity outside of space and time - no.
> A Kilgrave time variant
* No, he's probably immune to his own power, otherwise Kilgrave would be equally suggestible to everyone else around him because he's constantly breathing in his own musk. | 95 |
Why can't you melt chocolate more than once? | I'm trying to make peanut butter balls, and had to melt the chocolate in the microwave. The problem is, when it hardens, and I try to put it back in the microwave, it doesn't really melt a second time. I know it had something to do with some chocolate bonds or something :P | 24 | If melted chocolate comes in contact with moisture, it will seize. This is due to the cocoa powder absorbing the liquid and swelling, which prevents it from dissolving back into the cocoa butter. If you keep your chocolate dry you can melt it again after it has cooled. | 15 |
[Terminator] If Skynet was defeated and its time travel equipment seized, how did it send back other Terminators? | Just something I've been mulling over. If Skynet lost in the first film and committed a final, desperate act, where did the other Terminators come from? Why weren't they sent right after their first failure (with Sarah's protectors dead), where did the Resistance get another time travelling machine or figure out Skynet's temporal destination? | 20 | Each time Skynet loses and initiates the time jump, the timeline changes. It isn't a closed loop, Skynet doesn't know the effects a Terminator going back in time will cause, otherwise it would have sent the Terminators from all the movies back before it lost. Therefore it sends one back, hoping it will not disrupt the creation of Skynet (in the case of T1's terminator, it basically ensures it), and the new timeline proceeds from there.
This is somewhat ignoring the mess of T3's "judgement day is inevitable" which trashes the whole "no fate but what we make" from T2. Though it could be argued that perhaps Skynet discovered laws about the universe which dictated that even if time trave, changes the course of the river of events, it can only be diverted so much. So perhaps judgement day was inevitable in some form, but the timeline could still be altered to change the course of the war
| 10 |
[Star Wars] Would it be possible to construct a circular Lightsaber like a Chakram style weapon? | This is what they look like, for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chakram | 47 | Good question. There's the obvious problem of holding it, but let's skip to the technical questions.
The biggest problem is the containment field. How do you keep it in that shape? We've only seen straight lightsabers. That's likely for practical reasons, but there isn't anything definitively against a curved blade. Another problem is that there has to be some sort of emitter piece. Where would that go? Putting it on the edge would kinda defeat the purpose of the weapon, but putting it in the center raises the question of how it's emitted and held in shape.
I don't really have a straight answer to this question. Theoretically, it's possible. But the gap between theory and practice is smaller in theory than in practice. | 30 |
ELI5: how do babies know to start breathing as soon as they're born? | 37 | Actually, they start "breathing" in utero. However, the amniotic fluid is much easier on their system. During birth, the babe "holds its breath" through the birth canal but can often still breath via the umbilical cord. Otherwise any birth lasting longer than 3 minutes would be terminal.
After birth, they spit up the amniotic fluid & take their first breaths of gaseous air. Diaphragm motion is automatic. The air stings their lungs. Some think it's just because the lungs are new while other say it's because of the temperature difference as room temp is much colder than body temp. Thus they usually cry when born & start breathing. Within a few minutes, the fluid is all expelled & the air no longer stings.
Deep sea divers can use a breathing fluid based on amniotic fluid for oxygen exchange. It warms inside & feels "heavy but comforting" once the initial fear of drowning is past. Surfacing & emptying for regular air breathing has similar discomforts & may be similar to a newborn's experience. | 36 |
|
ELI5: The process of blood coagulation in wounds | 37 | The liquid part of your blood is called the plasma. It's what remains when you remove red blood cells (that carry oxygen through your body), white blood cells (that are part of the immune system and protect you from some diseases) and platelets (cell fragments that play a role in coagulation, but we'll get back to that).
Plasma is essentially water with minerals in it but it also carries differents molecules that are in solution. Glucose, fats and proteins from your food for example.
Among the molecules in solution are a group of proteins called "coagulation factors". Usually, they just sit quietly in your blood, doing nothing. If you're injured, the outer part of your arteries come in contact with blood and release another protein in it, called 'tissue factor'. Now, when factor VII (for 7, as the coagulation factors all carry a number to identify them) encounters the tissue factor, it activates. When it's activated, Factor VII activates Factor X and so on.
When tissue factor is released in your blood, it creates a series of chemical rections among the coagulation factors that'll end in the formation of thrombin (that's factor II activated). Thrombin reacts with a small protein called fibrinogen and this reaction will allow the polymerization of fibrinogen. It means all the small proteins of fibrinogen will attach to each other and form big fiber-shaped molecules : fibrin.
Fibrin is a really strong protein for its size. And it's very elastic too. So when fibrin forms in the blood and hooks on red blood cells, platelets and the arterial wall, it will form a network and trap everything.
This network of fibrin transforms liquid blood into a gel that can no longer flow : it's the clot !
| 13 |
|
[WOLVERINE] can wolverine be killed | Can you kill wolverine? | 31 | He's been killed in an alternate timeline or two.
In one alternate, there was the Egyptian version of Thor who used a solar blast that stripped all the meat from his bones, killing him.
Cyclops could probably kill him if he really cut loose.
| 45 |
ELI5: What does Zero Sum game mean? | On wikipedia it explains it like this - "Thus cutting a cake, where taking a larger piece reduces the amount of cake available for others, is a zero-sum game if all participants value each unit of cake equally (see marginal utility). "
But I cant grasp it | 26 | A zero sum game is one in which someone has to lose something in order for someone else to win something -- that's all.
You have to get less in order for me to get more. There's no way for us both to get more without someone in the game getting less. | 24 |
ELI5: Why the aging process varies between species (Humans, Dogs, Turtles etc.) | 59 | Because we and they age differently and have different strategies for reproduction.
One of the things most of us are programmed to do is to have kids that carry on the species. Depending on how many and how often, once that job is done our own purpose isn't as necessary so off we go into that good night eventually. Mice have lots of kids REALLY fast, dogs have larger litters, and humans take a long time to do it in onesies and twosies. So we have to live long enough - at least ten years after giving birth - to raise enough kids to carry on the species or our species would have died out. Because it grows up so quickly, a dog can put out a lot of puppies and finish its species-propagating job well before that.
The aging process is affected by a whole lot of stuff. Part of it is how good your DNA (your basic blueprint that's found in every cell and was the instruction guide that made you you once mom and dad got busy) is protected against damage. There's some interesting research going on for Bowhead Whales that live a VERY long time - 200 years! - as they have certain genes that are good at repairing DNA.
And part of it is how rough our environments are. Many humans live WAY longer than they normally would because they're in a nursing home, for example. | 27 |
|
[Star Wars] Who’s the worst Jedi in history? | I don’t mean someone you think is bad, or someone who turned to the dark side/failed the trials. I mean, objectively, who sucked the most as a Jedi throughout the history of the entire order? | 98 | In KOTOR, Jolee Bindo gives us a yarn about a jedi he knew who had a "destiny" around him. Everyone could feel it, apparently, and all the masters were seemingly all over him and doting on him. He's important! He'll do something great! Can't you feel the destiny around him?
This comes to a head when he and Jolee were sent to deal with a pirate king. They get captured on his flagship (of course), and the Destined Jedi starts making all sorts of vague Jedi-y threats and boasts.
Eventually the Pirate King got fed up with him and threw him into the ship's reactor.
Now, either our Destined Jedi hit something very delicate on the way down, or the reactor doesn't like being fed Jedis With Destiny. So, the bridge lights up with all kinds of warnings, everyone starts scrambling around, and in the chaos Jolee manages to find and escape pod and punch out before **the ship explodes, taking the Pirate King with it**, resulting in a power vacuum in the region.
I'd say that "Destined" Jedi was the worst one in history, if we're taking legends into account. | 167 |
ELI5: “Money today is worth more than money tomorrow” | I get that the value of money depreciates over time hence why they tell you that the best time to invest is now. But i don’t get how exactly investing now helps you in the future if the cost of living increases with time too anyway. So like let’s say you invested $1000 today and then in the future that’s equivalent to $4250, but then the price of things have also increased so how much richer are you really if you have to spend a lot more in the future anyway? | 60 | So there are two sides to this.
The investment/value side which has already been discussed. The tl:Dr is that investing money is almost always going to give you a better return than whatever delayed payment would give you.
The other, more important, side is that money today gives you more *options*. If you get the money today you can use it today. If you have to wait for the money you can't use it today. The option to use the money whenever you want is extremely powerful.
Another example is that money later is not guaranteed. The person/organization providing the money could go bankrupt or die or all kinds of things. On top of that, you might not need or be able to use the money later. $10,000 today is much more valuable than $1,000,000,000 in 100 years. Regardless of inflation, if you're not alive to spend it it doesn't do you any good. Same with something less dramatic like other life events. | 69 |
ELI5: If recording artists are not selling music because everybody steals it, how do they afford multi-million dollars mansions and private jets? | Just curious. We are constantly hit with this barrage of claims about how the recording industry is being wiped-out by theft. Yet, Gulfstream and Bentley seem to be selling tons of their products to these same broke-ass singers. Are they making 10's of millions per year just doing concerts and selling t-shirts? | 21 | Artists have rarely made money from record sales themselves. That money has almost always gone to the record companies. Recording contracts are structured to give minimal money to artists. We're talking pennies per album. For artists, the real money is in performances, publishing rights, merchandise and synchronization rights (allowing your music to be used in TV, movies and video games).
The recorded music industry absolutely is getting their shit wrecked, but it's hurting the corporations' profits, not so much the artists. | 35 |
[Star Wars] Why are speeder bikes called bikes? | Bike is short for bicycle, and those things certainly don't have two wheels! | 42 | I believe the actual term for the vehicles are something like lightspeeders. Being called a speeder bike might just be due to their resemblance to an old two wheeled vehicle (that may have existed in they're universe) in both form and function. They are single passenger vehicles, with the driver riding on top in the open, they're controlled with handlebars, and are highly maneuverable. | 30 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.