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How does a ponzi scheme work? I'm 5 years old. | #1. you borrow lots of money, and promise to pay it back at huge interest rates over a long period of time. #2. you live like a king spending money on whatever you like until the money runs out. #3. you borrow even more money to pay off the original loans. #4. repeat this until china stops lending you money. |
How did BBC get the seemingly impossible footage for David Attenboroughs Life series? | Many many many hours of waiting. You can watch documentaries on how they film those documentaries. It involves cameramen being out in the field for months, being bored out of their minds while waiting for that opportunity to get that perfect shot. |
What is physically different about a hard drive with a 500 GB capacity versus a hard drive with a 1 TB capacity? Do the hard drives cost the same amount to produce? | The ones and zeroes used in binary coding are stored within a disk within the hard drive called a platter. Just as you can magnetize a nail this platter is divided into billions of sections each one able to be magnetized or unmagnetized to represent a 0 or 1. Depending on how many sections you can make that platter into and how many platters you can fit into a hard drive dictates the amount of memory you can fit in it. I was interested with this too so I decided to do some investigating and came up with this as he best explanation. _URL_3_ |
How to calculate Hamming Code | adapted from wikipedia 1. Number the bits starting from 1: bit 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. 2. Your parity bits are the ones in position 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc 4. All other bit positions are data bits. 5. Each data bit is included in a unique set of 2 or more parity bits, as determined by the binary form of its bit position. Let's see if the data bit in 37th position is correct. 37 in binary is 100101, so the 37th bit has parity bits at 32, 4, and 1. If the first bit is 0, 4th bit is 0, 32nd bit is 0, then you'd expect the 37th bit to be 0 (for even parity). If the 37th bit is 1 then you know it's an error and you can correct it. Same thing for the 103040203th bit. You find all it's parity bits and if they display an odd number of 1s then 103040203 needs to be 1 for even parity. If the parity bits show an even number of 1s then 103040203 needs to be a 0 for even parity. |
How Pirate bay can be so openly public and not be shut down. | They keep getting shut down. When they are shut down, they start the website back up again in a different country. They've been in a lot of countries now. |
In movie scenes where a kidnapper asks for ransom money, why do they ask for non sequential bills? (Extra Credit: What are "Marked Bills"?) | Because marked money can be tracked, sequential bills can be tracked. In the case of the Lindbergh baby they wrote down the serial numbers of the bills and used them to track down the kidnapper/killer. So lets say you kidnap someone and they pay the ransom. They keep an eye out for the bills they marked and notice them at a McDonalds, a Walmart and a Carwash. They know the area you've been in and now they can narrow it down to people who have been at these three locations in a specific time frame. |
Why do we still change clocks to Daylight Saving Time (DST) and back, when apparently, most people hate it? If most of us prefer a single time throughout the year - what are the obstacles to making this happen? | > Nobody goes around saying "Yay! I get to change my clocks! This is the best day since spring!" But that doesn't mean that most people hate it. Pretty much everybody says that when you get that extra hour to sleep. |
How can a modern ship sail into a known storm/hurricane? | Not a sea captain, but at least two things here: The ships today have been built to handle huge storms, so they are able to go through them without too many issues that would compromise seaworthiness of the ship. But these storms are also so large usually that it isn't as feasible for a slow ship to get around a storm as it might be for an airplane. Money is the second thing. It will cost the cargo steamship line money from losing time if they do navigate around the storm. It could add an extra day or so to their schedule which delays everything after. The more delays you have, the fewer trips you can make with the ship, the less cargo you can charge for. I would imagine a cruise line would also avoid refunding money at any cost. They have to order food for a week and can't afford for it to just sit around in port while they wait out a storm. They'd be motivated to get people out on their cruise even if it means everyone is miserable. |
Why is there a difference between girl bikes and guy bikes? | In the early part of the bicycle, women sill wore dresses and the lowering of the top frame bar was to allow the wearing of a dress. |
What is happening in our muscles when we feel the urge to exercise? | Personally, it's stress that causes that irritability/restlessness. Cortisol keeps your body in a continued mode of being alert and ready to fight/run. Exercise lowers cortisol levels, eliminating stress and causes your body to relax the tension it has built up. Stress usually means that your body doesn't feel comfortable with your current situation, unsure if you are safe and/or are able to relax. Unfamiliar situations, sudden life changes, daunting work, sleep deprivation, and poor diet can increase stress levels. Exercise lowers stress levels and promotes relaxation. (Exercise lowers circulating cortisol levels) [Source](_URL_0_) |
Why was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" considered such a revolutionary song? And what's so special about Kurt Cobain? | Nirvana gets a lot of the credit for starting the "grunge" movement. What makes smells like teen spirit so different is it's grunge sound and lyrical content. This was the first mainstream song to sort of glorify angsty, awkward teenagers and give them a coherent voice. It probably rings less with you because so much music has been heavily influenced by it. As far as his legacy is concerned, as one of the pillars of grunge music he has had a major impact on the last 20 or so years of rock music, most specifically alt/college rock. |
What is the significance of the recent French presidential election? | See brexit? See the US elections? That's what didn't happen this evening :p |
Why can't you point lasers at a plane? | To be accurate, you *can* do it. You also *should* get arrested if you do. A laser could possibly blind a pilot. Even if the blindness is not permanent, having a blind person in charge of an airplane is an extreme safety hazard to the people on the plane and to the people on the ground. Don't do it. Not even once. It isn't funny, and it should result in you going to jail if you do it. |
How are people able to fast for long periods at a time yet stay healthy? | Fasting can be a pretty flexible term, especially when used in a religious context. The people who “fast for 365 days” are eliminating a specific thing, like red meat or bread, for a specific duration, and many of them rotate that “thing” every week or month. So they say they’re fasting, but really they are going without bread for one month, then without soda for a month, then without red meat for a month, etc. This demonstrates personal determination and commitment, but it’s hardly going without food altogether. |
Why is gmail (or most email service) free? | It allows google to collect a shit ton of data about you & charge more for advertising directed at you online. If you are not the customer you are the product |
What are the defining differences between streets, roads, avenues, boulevards, etc.? What dictates how it is designated? | **A boulevard is two lanes in each direction with a median of trees or greenery running the length of it.** **An avenue is often two lanes in each direction and in a nicer part of the area.** **A street can be any number of lanes in each direction, but is generally associated with a town or city or suburb.** **A road is getting a little more rural, generally one lane in each direction, but not necessarily.** |
Why is the majority of the human population right hand and right eye dominant? | So there is definitely a tendency towards right handedness in people, but I would also point out that right now, there is social pressure on that as well: many left-handed children born in the 90s were forced to acclimate to right-handedness. When I was in preschool, I had to wear a sock on my left hand all day every day to force me to use my right hand. Right-handedness has been found in our early human ancestors (about 2 million years ago) but not in our chimp relatives, which means that there is probably an effect of evolution on hand preference. A gene variant was discovered in 2014 that appears to increase your odds of being left-handed. So while the science isn't settled, I would say that right-handed is the default and somewhere along human evolution, a series of small gene mutations, makes people favor their other hand. |
Why is it we pass out from standing too long with our knees locked, but not when we are lying down? | Locking your knees causes issues with blood flow which in turn causes you to pass out. You don't lock your knees when you're laying down so it doesn't really apply. |
- What are both sides of this birth control debate and Congress? I've only heard the Rush Limbaugh stuff so I'm confused and would like as unbiased an explanation as possible | So Obama thought that religious affiliated institutions should provide healthcare through their insurance companies to their employees. These religious institutions didn't think they should have to provide healthcare options that provided birth control because they morally object to birth control. Republicans jumped on and said that forcing these organization to provide birth control violated their 1st Amendment rights. Congress called a bunch of people to testify before a committee about the matter. The committee refused to let any women testify, but heard from a number of priests and rabbis. Limbaugh then called one of the women meant to testify a slut for wanting birth control. Democrats have argued that if you let employers opt out of insurance options on "moral" grounds, then employers could essentially opt out of providing any sort of insurance. |
Why do police in America not seem to carry or use much non-lethal weaponry? | They do carry non-lethal weaponry. But have you considered that when that non-lethal option is used, it's not really newsworthy? Can you imagine a front page reddit post that says "Officer uses taser to stop suspect, who is sent to jail without injury. Officer goes home and has spaghetti with his family"? You're only hearing about things when they go horribly wrong, not the hundreds of times a day when they go right. |
What is the purpose of Information Technology Infrastructure Library(ITIL)? | At its most basic level, ITIL is really a set of best practices for IT Service Management - without a methodical approach, Service Management can be something that's done on a fairly ad-hoc basis without any specific direction to it. Although ITIL doesn't seek to specifically set in stone how things should be done, as a framework it provides a useful toolset to build a company's IT Service Management organisation and practices on. |
Why is it when people see an incredibly cute baby one of the reactions is to 'eat' the baby? Or bite at it? | _URL_0_ Take a read of the article above. To put it basically it is because the smell of the baby activates the same receptors of the brain as smelling nice food. |
luxury tax and sales tax are different things? | Sales tax is applied to everything. But on top of that the government can also impose extra taxes on certain products. So for a "luxury tax" that means that the government needs more money and taxes certain products a little more with the justification that if you can afford those products, then an extra 0.5% or so isn't going to make a difference to you. |
Why is most of society monogamous? | In the way olden days, if you went around having sex with anyone, you'd have no idea who actually fathered the child. Cultural norms grew around the realization that if you were monogamous, you could safely assume the identity of each parent. This is critical to the natural human family nucleus. We don't see this more in nature, likely because we have more sophisticated social structures. The extremely long time a mother has to nurse and raise a child (10-12 years) before it can be self-sufficient, necessitates a more prolonged and focused effort. Its a very complicated question. You could probably take several different angles, from evolutionary advantages, to social structures. |
Why Internet connections are fastest in South Korea? | > People in the United States basically invented the Internet. [people working at CERN in Europe basically invented the internet](_URL_0_) |
What is happening with he Chinese stock market and what effect will it have on people ? | Why would this cause the American stock market to drop nearly 10%? |
Marx's Labor Theory of Value | Essentially Marx said that the value of a commodity is equal to the labour that went into it, including the labour that built the tools used to make the item, or the buildings that housed the workers etc. It's contrasted by Adam Smith's labour theory of value, which says that a commodity is worth whatever labour somebody is willing to perform in exchange for the item. In essence, Smith says it's worth what people are willing to pay, and Marx says it's worth what was paid to make it. |
how the US are allowed to kill civilians with drones. | It's not really a question of being allowed or not. There's no authority above the nation state that can step in and lay down the law - all that exists are states and deliberative bodies composed of states (ie, the UN) . If a state is powerful enough to do something without the rest of the world finding it a worthwhile risk to intervene to stop it, then that's that. And that's what's happening. Nobody is going to risk annoying the US too much over this. And it's useful for countries like Russia and China, who will almost certainly use this same precedent in the future to blow up people they want to get rid of too. |
Why do people use 0-60 mph to benchmark the acceleration of cars? | Because the actual benchmark is 0-100 km/h, which get's rounded down to 60 mph. 0-100 is a nice round number, and since everyone except the US uses the metric system that's the standard. So the significance is that 60 miles is about 100 km. |
What's the difference between Space Opera and Sci Fi? | Science fiction is any work of fiction set in the future that deals with technology more advanced than our own. Space opera is a particular type of sci-fi that doesn't really care much about the specifics of the science and technology as much as it deals with grand narratives about galactic empires and grand heros. Star Wars is a great example of space opera. It has spaceships and robots and all that jazz but the story is really about good v. evil rather than the effects of that technology on society. You could tell the same story set in medieval/high fantasy world without really changing much. In contrast, look at something like *Ghost in the Shell* (just to pick a 2017 movie). The technology is central to the plot and you can't tell the story without it. |
When should I use recirculated air vs. fresh air in my car? | Recirculating air will heat it faster, so yes. You should also recirculate your air when you are in a dirty area (lots of smoke, etc). |
Can someone explain how tilt shift photography works like I've just learned to tie my own shoelaces | First, you take a photo of something, as if you were looking down upon it at 45 degree angle. So the angle already sets it up like it were one a table top and waiste height. Then you zoom in a little bit, to aleviete the effect of perspective, to make it look more like a 2d isometric video game for the SNES or Genesis. Then to photoshop you go! In photoshop. You jack up the constrast and the primary colours, to make it looke as if it were vibrantly hand painted. Last thing is that you apply degrees of blur to things closer and further away from whatever is in the middle of the shot. This makes it looks like your picture had a very very narrow field of depth, like a macro photo of a model from a few feet away. Voila! Experiment. Hardest part is getting the right angle, of the right things. Try bridges and parkades. |
What is happening to New York City? | Well a lot of small businesses that have been here for decades are being driven out by corporations and upscale businesses due to rising rents and taxes. Many of these businesses give NYC it's unique flavor that you can't find anywhere else. For New Yorkers like myself it hits home hard seeing stuff like this happen. This is just one example; the city truly is changing as more and more immigrants and transplants move here there are less and less native families living here and and more and more of them leaving to places like NJ, LI, Florida, etc. I'm sorry it this wasn't comprehensive enough but this is my perspective of the situation. Despite this, I still think people are overreacting when they say NY is changing and it'll never be the same. Every city changes, for better or for worse but I'm glad to say NYC isn't going anywhere and it will continue to be the capital of the world for decades to come. I love my hometown and I have much pride for it. |
Why do violinist always play the instrument on their chin? | The left hand of the violin player is the one playing the notes and it has to be free to move up and down the neck as required, not clutching the instrument. The strings seen in cross-section form an arced shape, not flat like a guitar. The bow has to be able to "attack" through a range of angles so that it touches one or sometimes two strings and not all of them. The length of the note sounded depends on the back and forth movement of the bow. It wouldn't be possible to move the bow through all these positions if the violin was in front of the body. Held as it is above the left arm and supported by the chin and shoulder, there is nothing to impede the range of movement of the bow. |
How does a satellites stay positioned on a geostationary orbital target that is not on the equator? | Geostationary orbits are only above the equator. Geosynchronous orbits are at the same distance but not necessarily in the plane of the equator. Communications satellites are not necessarily geostationary or geosynchronous; if there are enough of them all at different orbits then they can cover most of the earth. |
How does doing a "small o" with your mouth produce cooler air while opening up your mouth while "hah-ing" produces warmer air | [It is called the Venturi Effect. Fluids, when constricted-air is a fluid in this discussion-speed up when constricted. That makes things go relatively faster. Fast moving air pulls heat away, making the small o feel cooler](_URL_0_) |
What is the point of harvesting "likes" on Facebook if you are not directly promoting a business? | ALY5: It's the same reason that people try to get karma on Reddit, lad. They want recognition. They want to feel agreed with. |
Why does it hurt more to get an IV put in your hand than in the crook of your arm? | The hand has more nerve endings (sensors) because you need to feel what you're doing with your hand while doing complex tasks (typing for example). The high density of "useful" nerves to sense touch, temperature, etc, also comes with a lot of nerves that detect pain. Arguably this serves a purpose, allowing you to detect/avoid injury while using your hands. But evolution isn't perfect, and many things that aren't clearly helpful occur as "side effects" of helpful adaptations. |
Why do some people with special needs have such similar facial features? | Because people who have the same problem generally have the same cause for that problem. Take, for instance, Down's Syndrome. It's caused by having 3 copies of the 21st chromosome instead of just two. Every single person with Down's has this problem, and every single person with this problem has Down's. Along with varying degrees of mental retardation (some people with Down's are just as functional as someone without, others aren't), having trisomy 21 causes the facial features distinctive of the disorder because that's how genes work. If you break the program in the same way, you will get similar results. |
How do poems translated from one language to another still rhyme? | Because it's not a literal, word-for-word translation. The translator had to take liberties with the poem to get it to rhyme in English. Here's a very short example from a rhyming English translation of *Tartuffe*, originally a rhyming French-language play. Rhyming French: *C'est véritablement la tour de Babylone,* *Car chacun y babille, et tout du long de l'aune.* Google Translate output: *It is truly the tower of Babylon,* *For everyone there babbles, and all along the yard.* Rhyming English translation: *Parties are towers of Babylon, because* *The guests all babble on with never a pause* |
Can people have smaller than average organs and what does it mean? | If you made it this long with little to no problems, I wouldn't worry about it. Best thing to do is talk to your doctor about it. She would probably feel bad if she knew what she said made you uncomfortable and she didn't know/therefore couldn't explain things for you so you could feel better. I'm almost 36 and was 7 weeks early at 4lb 5oz. I have a medically documented legit thick skull. Lol. A host of other problems too, but family genetics are to blame. |
why is it that flies seem to appear out of thin air so quickly (even indoors) when rotten things or feces are nearby? | Fun fact, up until recently in modern history people simply believed that things like garbage and feces spontaneously generated life because like you said, it seems like there are no flies, then trash and boom, hella flies. The truth is a little more boring and gross, it's simply that flies and maggots are all around you all the time, and they just congregate quickly. Since they have a fairly short life cycle and make tons of babies, it only takes a few days for a handful of flies to become a swarm. |
What are fair split screens? | If you're going to ask about a current Reddit post, [it's helpful to include a link to it in the question](_URL_0_). Split screen video games are where you have multiple players, each with their own view on half the screen. Think playing Golden Eye/Halo on a single system. One of the problems you run into here is that the other player can look at your screen to see where you are, making it impossible to sneak up on somebody who is "cheating". A "fair" split screen is one that somehow prevents this. The method used in the post I presume you're talking about involves using a 3D TV and giving each player special glasses. One player only sees the "left eye" image and the other only sees the "right eye" image. When it works right, this means two people are looking at the same TV, playing the same game & seeing completely different images. |
What are mirrors made of? How does it get that reflection quality? | They used to be glass that had electroplated silver on one side and then black paint on top of that. And they also used to be really well polished metal. Now a days it is usually much cheaper aluminum on glass. |
I'm far sighted. Are there reverse-blurred images that would appear clear to me? | So you want something like this [shortsightedness optical illusion](_URL_0_). but for farsightedness. |
Why stage 4 cancer is "uncurable" | At stage 4, the cancer has spread throughout the body to multiple locations distant from the original tumor. It's considered uncurable at that point because it's not feasible, or really even possible to any degree of certainty, to remove all the tumors. At that point, the odds are pretty good you've not only got the tumors they can find, there are any number that are too small to be detected yet. The best you can do is chemo and/or radiation and hope for some degree of remission - but since it's already spread throughout the body, someday it IS going to come back and there's not much current medical technology can do about it. |
Why don't console developers re-release older consoles? | Because almost nobody buys them. The market for any electronic device drops through the floor as soon as a newer version comes out. |
Why does the US government bail out General Motors every time they go under? | > every time they go under You mean once? |
What happens if Hillary Clinton is charged with an offence by the FBI, how would this affect the Presidential race and would she be allowed to continue? | Legally speaking, it would have no impact. Nor would a conviction, or even being in jail. Article 2 of the US Constitution lays out the requirements for being elected president, and none of these factors enter into it. In fact, not having an indictment would be a terrible, terrible requirement. Imagine if the day before the election, the leading candidate was barred because their political enemies managed a trumped up indictment. |
Why do children seemingly enjoy being tickled but grow to hate it as adults? | Tickling is a tool that animals use to learn fighting skills with play without actually harming each other. Fighting off a tickle attack is similar to fighting off a real attack. But with tickling nobody gets hurt. After you reach adulthood those skills have been developed and it feels more like a real attack and so is unwelcome. |
Why is liquor supposedly better the longer it is aged? | Not all liquor and wine improve with age. Many are designed to open immediately. With whiskey, for example, the process of making whiskey involves aging for years in a barrel. The alcohol will cause chemical reactions with the wood of the barrel, which gives it it's iconic "whiskey" flavor and its caramel-brown color. Most whiskey must be ages for 2-3 years before it can even be called whiskey, but many whiskeys are aged for 15-20+ years. With wine, your average consumer wine will turn brown and lose flavor if not opened for years. It is not meant to be aged. Good wine that has lots of tannins, like a Bordeaux wine, is aged and the tannins soften over a long time. |
Carbon-14 half-life and why it's only useful for dating organic materials less than 50,000 years old? | I think you're confused as to what a half life is. A half life is how long it takes for half of the material (in this case the radioactive carbon-14 isotope) to decay. I've never heard of a full life. For example, take 100g of Carbon-14. After ~5,700 years (it's half life) you'll have 50g of Carbon-14. Now take another ~5,700 years and that 50g will be cut in half to 25g. Then in half to 12.5g. Repeat. We say it's only good for about 50,000 years because after that point there's too little of the isotope left for us to reliably measure. You'd need to pick something with a longer half life to reliably date farther back. |
why do we cringe with certain sounds (nails on the chalkboard, etc.) | why do mods cringe when people refuse to search the archive? |
. Why is IPhone so popular? The new 6s has 2gigs of ram the same as my old Galaxy 4 and half as much as my note 5. | Like every Apple product, it is user friendly. It is really hard to screw anything up on it, and it is designed to be intuitive. How it is marketed has something to do with it too. (and their planned obsolescence helps keep them making money) |
Why to they have traffic reports on TV? How does it benefit only people watching at home? | People may be leaving the house soon, or they are waiting on somebody to arrive. And I suppose its because people watching the news want to see the traffic. If every time they had a traffic report everybody changed the station, they would stop running traffic reports. |
When a city loses power (like in a lot of movies), why aren't all the lights going off at the same time? | They call it a power grid for a reason, it is an actual grid. The main power lines come in from the power plant, which are then routed to different areas, then routed to smaller areas in each area, and so on and so forth until it reaches the end user. Think of it as an upside down tree. Trunk is the main line, branches are the end. Depending on what systems and safety protocols are in place, each grid may be on a little longer or shorter than others. Movies may exaggerate this somewhat but yes, it can happen like that. |
How do countries export electricity? | > Do they connect power lines to other countries? Pretty much - yes |
How long would it take to accelerate to the speed of light in space so that the crew wouldn't suffer any negative effects from accelerating too quickly. | You can't accelerate to the speed of light, and still have the crew made of matter. So let's presume you meant 99% of the speed of light. People deal well with 1g, 9.8m/s^2 of acceleration, and can stand 1.5g for a pretty long time. But to allow for safe sleep and digestion, 1g should probably be your limit. After a year you're a .76c, and you can get to .99c in a little over 18 months. |
What is it that makes someone a naturally talented singer vs. someone that sounds like nails on a chalkboard? | Both your natural choice and your technique. Using the human voice to sing with good quality is like playing an instrument and the skill needs to be developed as such. |
"Era of Bad Feelings" | The Era of Good Feelings was a period of American history (early 1800s) that fell between major conflicts, expectations were high, the major political parties cooperated and people got along. The Era of Bad Feelings is just a cloy way of saying now is a time of conflict, lowered expectations and partisan bickering. |
Why is it that pretty much everyone enjoys music? | I used to work on an assembly line and we were allowed to have small radios on our benches while we worked. My supervisor was a really cranky old lady that just never seemed happy about anything. I was working near her desk one night (we rotated benches often) and to as not to offend her (and because I have a very eclectic taste in music) I asked her what kind of music she liked in order to find something that she would enjoy. Her response was "I never listen to music, I don't really like it". After that she just seemed less...human. That quite possibly explained why she never seemed happy, I mean how can you go through life without music...it's just not right. |
how does your digestive system get liquids separated to your kidneys? | It doesnt't really. The digestive system mostly absorbs everything it can from the food into the bloodstream (nutrients, water, etc.) and the rest of it (fiber, some water stercobilin from bile, etc.) comes out as poop. The kidney then takes the blood and removes the things you don't really need in it (some water and electrolytes, waste products, etc.) Capsaicin, the substance responsible for the spiciness of pepper, is mostly absorbed into the blood, but most of it is broken down in the liver, so its concentration in the urine will not be enough to make it burn when you pee. The small amount that's left in the poop is more concentrated, which gives you the ring of fire. This applies both to spicy food and pepper vodka. |
Why are certain organs associated with certain feelings? For example, why do people think love comes from the heart? | In Shakespearean time the liver was where courage lied. If your liver did not receive enough blood you would have a pale liver. hence "lily liverd" |
Why don't/can't governments just illegalize smoking? | The tobacco lobby is very powerful, smoking is a huge economic industry, tons of people like smoking, lots of people object to the government acting as a nanny and regulating our well being, and prohibition has a poor track record. It's a losing proposition for just about the entire country. |
What is happening in the brain when someone has an "Aha!" moment? | One cell in your brain makes a path to another one, and voila you have a scenario that you reference for the rest of your life, unless you dont use it often, then it deteriorates. I don't remember all the specific terms cuz its early in the morning. But i suppose that IS what I'd tell a five year old |
How do they get the bubbles inside the soda? | The bubbles are carbon dioxide which is soluble in water. The main method they get the CO2 into the soda is a two step process. The first step is chilling the soda by running it through a chiller. This is necessary because CO2 (and gases in general) can stay dissolved in cold liquids much better and warmer ones. The second step is passing it through a carbonator which is essentially a small pipe that injects the CO2 into the soda. Both of these processes happen "in line" meaning they happen more or less in the pipe as the soda is going from whatever tank its being held in on its way to the filler to put it in a can or bottle. Both the chiller and the carbonator are devices in that pipe. |
If I use a credit card and only buy 10$ of something, but my "minimum amount due" at the end of a payment period is 35$, do I pay just the 10$ or 35$? | You read the invoice, and figure out why it's 25 dollars more. Was there a fraudulent charge ? Than you call their fraud department. Was there a 25 dollar fee added on ? Was it legitimate ? Then you pay the 35. |
Why did I have to throw away the lid from my water bottle going into a stadium in Hamburg? | Removing the lid hampers the bottles ability to be used for other nefarious-type uses. It's hard to throw water bottles at the field/other team/your brother-in-law if most of the liquid and subsequent weight is removed while tossed. Also, removing the cap puts shame on the bottle which might make it think twice before launching itself at unsuspecting stadium goers. |
As someone not from the US, what exactly are sororities and fraternities at university? | Sororities and Fraternities are essentially social clubs. The process can differ from school to school but here's how it was at mine. The first couple of weeks of the semester is called Rush. This is when the Fraternities throw parties and try to convince new students to join. Sororities operate differently. Not sure how exactly. Anyway, at the end of Rush, Fraternities give out Bids to the guys they want to join. If you accept a Bid then you become a Pledge and spend the rest of the semester being Hazed. Hazing usually involves lots of drinking, doing crazy public stunts, or in some cases some pretty disgusting shit. At the end of the semester there's Hell Week. In my case, you pretty much lived in the Fraternity house for a week and drank the entire time. Then you go through Initiation where you promise to be a good little Frat Boy and now you're a Brother. |
How is there wifi on buses (ie. megabus) and not on airplanes? | There is WiFi on many planes. The reason there wasn't for a ling time after buses got it is for safety concerns. |
I googled Iran in the 1970s and none of the women wore burqas. Why has that changed? | Because they had a revolution in 1979, which led to the establishment of an Islamic republic & restrictions on the rights and freedoms of women. |
Why is our current world map, the Mercator Map, not to scale? It represents the US as gigantic is reference to South America and Africa. In reality both of continents dwarf the US in size. | There is no way to accurately project a spherical surface onto a two-dimensional map. Something has to be inaccurate, size, shape, distance, and or direction. The advantage of the Mercator projection is that it preserves direction, which is useful for navigation. It is also rectangular, so it better utilizes the space on a rectangular map. There are [several other](_URL_0_) map projections, all with their strengths and weaknesses. |
If jury decisions have to be unanimous, why aren't there way more hung juries? | [Not all juries need to be unanimous](_URL_0_). I believe that some courts don't allow juries to return hung until a certain amount of time has passed, in order to encourage discussion. |
How animals like Octopus are discovered to get "bored" | "Bored" is a human term, and it's associated with a set of negative behaviors. The "cure for boredom" in humans is additional interaction. When an octopus is in a closed area, after a while they start to take on some of these same behaviors, and they stop when they have more interaction. Thus the term "bored" gets applied by the humans observing them. In nature, they probably just go a little farther to explore an area beyond their normal area. Just like humans who decide to explore frontiers. We're applying human emotional state labels to their observed state because it makes good predictions. |
How do airplanes take off? | They use their engines to push them down the runway faster and faster, until the amount of wind passing under their wings is enough to lift them into the air. |
What made militant Islam what it is today? | I think it's similar to the "Know Nothing" party in the US that developed. It's a counter movement to enlightenment, to be proud to be ignorant, because knowledge is frightening to long standing thoughts about the way the world works, such as religion. Couple that with some seriously barbaric text in the Koran that calls for the killing, subjugation, and forced conversion of non-believers, and you have a recipe for disaster. Here's one example: > Quran 9:29 "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled." |
how does dust form? And what generates the biggest amount of dust? | A lot of people will tell you it's mostly dead skin cells, but that's obviously not the majority of dust. You can easily verify this by leaving stuff in a non climate controlled storage unit for a year and coming back to find a layer of dust. Dust is mostly just particles of dirt and whatever else that is light enough to be picked up by wind. |
what is the difference between the cheap batteries that come in toys and major brand batteries, like Duracell, and why does the latter last a lot longer? | Usually toys come with an "extra heavy duty" battery which is a generic name for [zinc-chloride](_URL_1_). These batteries are really bad. An AA might hold 1.5 watt-hours of power. Some really cheap toys come with "heavy duty" batteries or zinc-carbon. These are the worst and an AA might have 1 watt-hour of power. Duracell is an [alkaline](_URL_2_) battery. An AA might hold 3 watt-hours of power. Twice or three times as much! But there is an even better battery out there. The [NiMH](_URL_0_) battery doesn't hold any more power than an alkaline but it will never leak inside your stuff. And it is rechargeable so it can be used over and over. Saves a lot of money that way. To avoid a lot of fancy mumbo jumbo let's just say that NiMH can also "push" electricity a lot harder than alkalines can so they do better in toys with motors or flashlights or stuff like that. |
Are there prostitutes or camp follower types with modern armies? | The army, of course, does not 'officially support' prostitutes. However, wherever there are soldier, there will be prostitutes. War time poverty compounds the effect, and often the soldiers who are foreign to the locale will enjoy the companies of the local girls. The military rather does not like its personnel spending time with hoes because they might get sick or give away intelligence to the enemies, but it is very difficult to not let soldiers get their release, so they will turn a blind eye. |
What happens when a currency 'dies'? | Typically the government prints a new currency, and for a limited-time period, they offer you to exchange the dying currency with the new one. In Zimbabwe's case, they abolished their old currency in 2009 and just started using foreign countries' currencies like US dollars and South African rands. People stopped using Zimbabwean dollars long ago because of hyperinflation, the money lost value so quickly that within a single day a Zimbabwean dollar lost half it's value. The government at one point was printing bills worth Z$100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred trillion). |
Were the Earth to be attacked by external force & we bonded together as a whole regardless of economics and borders, what are we be capable of defensively? | Attacked by an external force? We wouldn't be capable of anything. It'd probably be over before we even knew we were under attack. They'd have to be more advanced than us because they made it here. They would most likely be a lot more advanced than us. It'd be unlikely that another "nearby" civilisation was only slightly more advanced than us given how old the universe is. It'd be like us attacking a stone age tribe. |
How does alcohol make you dehydrated? Where does the water stored in your body go just by drinking another substance? | Humans have a hormone that prevents them from urinating. Alcohol lowers this hormone so you urinate a lot more than you should which results in you losing more water than you gained from drinking the alcohol. |
Why can't energy be harnessed through gravity? | We already harness energy from gravity... just not in the way your friend thinks. Hydroelectric dams use their height to store potential energy in a reservoir. The height difference between the water and the turbines means that gravity is used to move water past turbines thus creating energy. |
Why does the computer mouse sometimes jump in a random direction? | It shouldn't, when just sitting still. I assume you mean when you are moving it. Older mouses had a ball that made two different little wheels inside rotate, and that would be translated by the computer into mouse motion. But those little wheels would pick up dust and gunk and that could make them get erratic. Most modern mouses use a laser diode emitter and a sensor. The laser diode shines a bright light at the surface, and tiny changes in the reflections back into the sensor are used to determine the direction that the mouse is moving. But if that sensor gets dirty, or the surface it is being used on is dirty or very uneven, then the software gets a bit confused. This can also happen on some very shiny or smooth surfaces, since there isn't much information for the sensor to work with. |
Why does it take so long (longer than a week) to feel pain after a car accident and not a few days? | If there still is pain you better go see a doctor and ask an actual professional about your very specific case! There can be no general answer as injuries - from neglectible to very concerning - of all imaginable and unimaginable kinds can happen. |
How accurate are nutrition labels on foods? | Theoretically, they're pretty accurate. Numbers can be gotten through chemical testing or by combining the known nutritional quantities of the ingredients that go into the food. Typically, the bigger the food manufacturer, the more accurate its nutritional values are, as the manufacturing process and ingredient quality are typically more tightly controlled and regulated. |
Why are lactose-free products primarily targeted towards women? | I'm assuming it is purely marketing... women still do most of the domestic tasks of a hetero-normative, "average", family. This includes the shopping. Perhaps women are more likely to engage with the dialogue around "wellness" too? |
How did diseases that are only transmitted Sexually originate ? | Follow-up question (ELI5): Are there even diseases like that? HIV gets to you via blood (and certain fluids, but not exclusively), and it just so happens that your skin tears a wee bit during sex, making it easier for the virus to find a way in; HPV is contagious through the contents of the warts, and those warts develop down there, because your skin barrier is weakened by all the sexy rubbing and fluids have an easy time getting there in the first place... and so forth. None of the diseases I know are transmitted *exclusively* sexually. Sex just facilitates the transmission. |
How and why are the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 exploding and catching on fire? | A huge flaw in the lithium ion batteries they use. Unlike most batteries, lithium ion batteries contain a flammable electrolyte. Under certain situations this can cause it to release gas, which builds up inside the highly pressurized case. In most cases, it starts to swell first and then, well, explodes: _URL_0_ This is normally caused by over-charging. So while we don't have all the details for the galaxy note 7 issues, you can be sure its a flaw resulting in this outcome, but very fast. |
How does metamorphosis work? | Inside the cocoon and the chrysalis, the caterpillar is transforming into a new creature. This requires that the old caterpillar body be broken down and turned into something new. Think of it as insect recycling! Inside a chrysalis, a caterpillar’s body digests itself from the inside out. The same juices it used to digest food as a larva it now uses to break down its own body! The fluid breaks down the old caterpillar body into cells called imaginal cells. Imaginal cells are undifferentiated cells, which means they can become any type of cell. Many of these imaginal cells are used to form the new body. The process of transformation within the chrysalis is known as holometabolism. Although it varies by species, the whole process usually takes about two weeks. In some species, though, the process can take months if they stay inside the chrysalis to survive cold winter weather. Eventually those cells I told you about earlier turn into new cells (Wing, eye, leg etc) and a new butterfly forms. |
If deep freezing only puts bacteria to sleep rather than killing them, then why does deep freezing sushi/sashimi fish makes them safe to consume raw? | I think you're confusing bacteria with parasites. Freezing kills harmful parasites like tapeworms and roundworms. The bacteria you're concerned about has nothing to do with the fish itself and everything to do with who handles it. If there is any harmful bacteria on your sushi, I'd blame your chef for not washing their hands. |
How can this camera "visualize" the movement of light? | Unlike a normal camera it doesn't capture the action as it happens. Instead, what it does is it takes many different images at different times and different experiements and then splices them together to form a coherent picture. It's like if you wished to get a slow motion video of water falling. You could get a high speed camera, or repeat the drop many times, taking pictures at different times each drop and then combine them together. As for the question of how exactly they captured the image, there is scattering going on. That's why they have to run this many times (many laser flashes). Every time they do it, they acquire more and more 'leaked' photons. That coupled with the previous technique gives a good imagine of where photons are and where they came from. |
Why when recording a song in a studio do they use a screen in front of the mic? | It's called a pop filter, and it is used to break up "plosives" which are your Bs and Ps. When these sounds are produced they release a blast of air, and the microphone picks these up as bass rumbles under the fundamental frequency of the voice. The mesh of the pop filter diffuses the air passing through so everything useful goes through while the rumble is reduced. |
How does the resonance in a certain room make just a single string of stringed instruments vibrate and get louder and louder? | Sound is a wave - a series of compressions (extra dense spots) and rarefactions (extra empty spots) in the air. Those sound waves bounce off the walls of the room, and propagate back into the room, where they overlap with other sound waves. (Mathematically, the overlapping of two waves is called [superposition](_URL_0_) ) If the peaks and troughs of those waves overlap at exactly the same points in space, they will amplify each other. This amplification is known as resonance. |
When you burn yourself, for instance by running very hot water over your hand, why does it take a solid second or two to actually feel pain? | This coming from highschool bio knowledge so someone else might be able to give you a better answer. But there are 2 different kinds of nerves. The reason you pull your hand back is the first nerve in action, it's a reflex nerve. This saves time for the brain. Rather than have the signal go all the way to the brain, and all the way back to the muscles to move the hand, the reflex nerve takes it and does it quickly, then the signal to the brain is sent Sorry if it's not very clear, been a while side I did bio. |
What happens to a country's Nuclear Weapons after its government falls? | As far as I am aware the only time something like this happened was during the fall of the USSR. Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan all returned the war heads to Russia as far as I know. |
What are the scientific reasons why consanguineous marriage causes disabilities, malformations and congenital anomalies in the offspring? | They don't, always. The degree to which it happens is typically overstated. However, inbreeding tends to result in homozygosity. Basically, more people sharing the same copies of genes. Since you get them from your parents, and your SO is closely related and also got them from their parents, your kid has a greater chance of getting one from either/both parents, and so on. If these genes happen to be ordinarily recessive, harmfully messed up genes, this ups the chance that you get two copies of the bad thing, in which case, even though it's recessive, now you're stuck with the associated condition. If grandpa has a bad gene, and passes it on to dad, at least you've got a chance to get a good gene from mom. If grandpa has a bad gene, and passed it on to both mom and dad, well, that's more risk. |
Google Reader (or RSS feeds in general) | Readers subscribe to sites (mostly blogs) that update regularly, so you can read all of em in one place. Like a twitter feed. |
Why do ghostwriters ghostwrite when they are clearly talented enough to make a name for themselves? | Some ghostwriters are already famous authors, and write for a paycheck. Some might be modestly successful, but an "auto"biography from someone famous is likely to make a lot more. Also, some writers like their subjects and want to write those stories. People line up to write for Presidents and Politicians. There's also less risk to your reputation, and some writers like the opportunity to take some literary risks or break the mold they are known for. And, of course, others do it to get writing "credits" under their belt. Manuscripts from nobodies end up in the circular file. But the new book from the guy that ghostwrote the last Kardashian Sutra is going to get some curious glances. |
Whats the point of voting for President if the Electoral College exists? | Your vote tells the electoral college how to vote (more specifically, you're voting for an elector who has promised to vote for a certain candidate). |
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