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7izb52 | What is a laser printer doing when it is making all those noises but not printing? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Laser printers operate by attaching ink to a spinning metal drum. The paper then passes under the drum as it rotates, transferring the ink to the paper. In both cases (ink on drum, ink on paper) a combination of magnetism and electronic fields (which are the same thing but that’s for another ELI5) and heat are required to make the ink, which is responsive to magnetism/electricity and heat, attach to the surfaces. You can think of it like heating up a decorative patch with an iron to make it “stick” on a jacket. In order to get a large amount of magnetism/electricity gathered together an electrical storage device, called a capacitor, must charge up with electric current. In the case of heat, similar heating elements must warm up. So this is why you hear mechanical devices whirring and fans blowing and things rotating."
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7izbm1 | Why are nutritional facts based on a 2,000 calorie diet when that's well below the average for humans? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That is the nutritional need for the average medium activity person to maintain a healthy weight. If you are highly physically active or need to put on weight or muscle you will have higher needs, and if you are trying to lose weight or are highly inactive you will have smaller needs. So in example: a soldier, high performance athlete, or someone doing manual labor could need as much as 4,000 or even 6,000 calories to maintain the output they require. But a sedentary office worker who is small and does not exercise may only need 1800 to maintain weight. Basic bodily functions and brain operations take roughly 1400 calories so going lower than around 1600 should only be done under a doctor's supervision. As to your other question. That is only below the average of wealthy nations who have a food surplus."
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7izhy3 | Why does a hot shower make my skin dry? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Moisture evaporates very readily from the skin, but a certain amount of moisture is retained by skin oils (technically called sebum) and a hot shower can wash away these oils. Skin moisturizer can replace them. I personally use Vaseline skin lotion, but only for the palms of my hands, the rest of my skin does OK on its own."
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7izped | Besides Humans are there any cases of two different species hunting together? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Dolphins and several species of Whales have been known to work together. They even recognize each other individually. Blue Planet narrated by David Attenborough had that one of the episodes, Open Oceans I think.",
"When you get massive schools of fish like sardines, all sorts of animals join in to hunt them in different ways and are more successful than if they just hunted alone. Big predators will herd them and push them to the surface and shallow waters where birds can take advantage etc. It benefits all the predators to confine them in the smallest possible area."
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7izs84 | How do people see beauty? For example, what makes a rose beautiful but a Cactus not? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I find cacti beautiful, its all subjective. Beauty is not in the object, it is in your perception of it."
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7izt1h | What would happen if all the layers of the Earth's core cooled and hardened? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bye bye magnetic field? The churning in the earth I believe is what drives our magnetic field, which protects us from the subs radiation. Wed end up like mars. I think"
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7j05xu | The Tommy John surgery and how it makes baseball pitchers throw better | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Throwing baseballs at 80+ MPH for years is really hard on your arm. This includes the joints, tendons, and ligaments all the way from your wrist to your shoulder. One of the most affected areas is the elbow, specifically the UCL or \"ulnar collateral ligament.\" Tommy John surgery is basically a tissue graft where they replace or reinforce the damaged UCL with ligament tissue taken elsewhere from your body, or from a cadaver. It doesn't necessarily make pitchers \"throw better,\" unless you're considering that those with a severely damaged UCL can't throw a ball at all anymore."
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7j0waf | Why is almost every country in debt? | Who do they owe money to? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They owe money to other countries, civilians, companies, retirement funds and investment institutions that buy treasury bonds or government debt. Every country is in debt because it makes financial and economic sense. The interest rate charged to countries on loans are typically low and thus in almost all cases the benefit their able to gain from investing/spending that loaned money is greater than the downside of having to make interest payments.",
"Countries go into debt by investing in themselves. Building infrastructure, building the economy, building militaries, supporting the citizens that cannot support themselves, supplying benefits such as education/healthcare/police/fire/etc to citizens. A country that is not at least slightly in debt is not investing in itself, or is not doing so quickly which means it is dying.",
"National debt is what is termed 'sovereign debt'. It's very different than say, your credit card debt in that the 'sovereign' is also the one who prints the currency. Let's say your weekly paycheck is $500. You only spend $400 this week. No big deal - you just leave it in the bank. However, if you're a 'sovereign' issuing currency, you can't just leave it in the bank - that would cause currency-crushing deflation. You *have* to spend that money somehow. Unfortunately, there's no direct link between revenues and expenditures. There's no way to predict when you collect the revenues how much you'll spend. Given that you'll crush your economy if you spend too little, you have to set revenue far enough below tax receipts that you never risk spending too little. The solution is sovereign debt - borrowing against future tax receipts to bridge the gap between revenue and expenditures. A side benefit of this system is that it gives investors a place to park their money. Without sovereign debt, you'd need to put your money in private securities - which are much, much riskier.",
"They owe money to other countries, civilians, companies, retirement funds and investment institutions that buy treasury bonds or government debt. Every country is in debt because it makes financial and economic sense. The interest rate charged to countries on loans are typically low and thus in almost all cases the benefit their able to gain from investing/spending that loaned money is greater than the downside of having to make interest payments."
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7j0zog | As carbon chain size increases, molecule become less and less water soluble. Why? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While London dispersion forces /u/lordpektroni mentioned are a factor, they aren't the driving factor behind solubility in water. There are London forces between the water and the solute (your carbon chains) as well and would approximately negate any attractive forces between two molecules of solute. The trick is that water attracts other water way more than it does the carbon chains. This is because water is polar, like /u/CornFlaKsRBLX said. Because of this polarity there is an electrostatic force pulling waters together that is way stronger than typical London forces. Now carbon chains can't do this, because C-C bonds don't like letting electrons move through them and C and H (which usually hang onto the sides of your carbon chains) pull on electrons almost the same. So now you have water that is pulling other water close to itself, and in effect squeezes out any non-polar solutes. The solutes have nowhere else to go, so they clump together so that they get less contact with the water, because that water would much rather have another polar water next to itself than a non-polar carbon chain. This is the basis of the hydrophobic effect. Now, as to why longer carbon chains do this more: they are bigger. A bigger carbon chain surrounded by water would prevent more waters from being next to each other than a small carbon chain in the same situation. So the energy of that situation for a big carbon chain is much larger and the water squeezes it out harder and faster. TLDR: water is a bully and likes other water more than carbon chains. Larger carbon chains annoy more water, so they get bullied more."
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7j12rw | Why do so few people live in the Canadian Territories like the Yukon but Alaska has a much larger population with similar climate and geography? | Alaska population is 741,894 but Yukon right beside it has the lowest population out of any Canadian territory with only about 33,000. Why might Yukon have such a harder time attracting settlers? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is actually warmer in Alaska as it is coastal. Being coastal also means settling it easier to travel as you can use boats, and sea planes. Being inland means you have to build infrastructure like roads, airstrips, railroads for modern travel, or like horses and pack mules.",
"Alaska has a coast. Having a coast influences weather and allows for a whole lot of transportation and resources extracting options using ships etc. Anchorage alone accounts for something like 40% of the states population. If you look at the inland parts of Alaska you will find them similary empty of people as the neighboring Canadian areas.",
"Alaska has a population base of roughly 300 million people to draw immigrants to it from, Canada has ten percent of that as a population to begin with. Also most of the Canadian high Arctic has no trees and is far colder with no easy sea born resupply capacity. I lived in Delene which is at the same north latitude as Fairbanks, where the sign on the store says, - and its not a joke - its the same cut off temperature for kindergarten to grade two for walking to school - \"If the temperature is below minus thirty, the picnic will be cancelled.\" There are no roads to the town, because the surrounding land is swamp for a hundred miles, and trucks can come only in winter during about six weeks when the ice is strong enough and there is enough light to see by for driving. The swamp is permafrost and can be as much as several hundred feet deep. Furthermore there being no economic way to ship heavy stuff, there is no cheap housing, no cheap fuel and of course no farming. The summers are plenty warm with near constant sunshine and temperatures in the high 80's, but the mosquito count is unbelievable. The swarms cast a shadow as they zero in on you with probes strong enough to penetrate two layers of bluejeans. Two layers are a touch warm in the heat. Travel and transport is majorly difficult and expensive. Delene has the world's biggest lake trout, and a diamond mine beside the uranium mine at the other end of the lake, Which is one honkin' big lake. Great Bear Lake is its own length from the Arctic ocean and oil wells at the end of the Great Bear River where it enters the Mackenzie River. Which is navigable only for the summer. It is the most habitable place that far north for a distance of about a thousand miles to the east. Northern Canada is several times the size of Alaska as well, so direct comparisons are difficult.",
"The US government encouraged/encourages people to live there through financial incentives.",
"* Alaska is quite a bit bigger * coastal Alaska, where most of the population lives, has a milder climate * coasts make it easier to travel and get goods to Alaska * Alaska subsidizes residents with money from oil production * the First Nations control a lot of land in the Yukon, resource extraction on that land has to go through them"
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7j18sc | If all human cells replace themselves every 7 years, why can scars remain on you body your entire life? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Human cells can replace themselves, this is correct. But they need a scaffold to replace themselves ON for them to be in the right place. And the nature of that scaffold is why scars stick around forever. Let's compare our bodies to a multi-floor brick building that King Kong or Cloverfield or Godzilla or something punches a big chunk out of. You have a couple choices to do something about that building before the weather gets in and wrecks it worse. But a feasible one of them isn't a complete tear-down and rebuild using scaffolding and heavy construction to recreate the building properly. People have got to go on living in there and there's not enough free spending money around to do it. So you patch that hole as best you can and maybe brick up the opening, and that's good enough for people to keep living in it. But it leaves a not-very-pretty gap in your building. It's functional even if some of the electrical stuff or elevators don't work due to the still missing area, and it looks ugly because you couldn't quite get everything perfect without bringing in super-expensive heavy machinery and shutting everything down, and the bricks don't match. So you're left with a serviceable building with ugly spots that you can't ever afford to make perfect-looking again. Scarring's the same. The body doesn't have the ability to regenerate huge missing areas because it can't create scaffolding once you're out of the womb. All of the 'heavy equipment' necessary for it is no longer available. This wasn't critical enough of a skill for us to evolve as a species because enough of us survived and had kids even without it to take over the world. So the body goes with a \"walling off\" strategy without coming with a bunch of perfectly set-up scaffolding to build new clean supporting structures for the new cells to grow back into their perfect original shape. And those wall-offs are dead 'hard' tissue that is permanently set into their walled-off shape and can't be replaced. Again, perfect-looking repairs weren't necessary to the survival of our species so we didn't evolve them.",
"Your scar-tissue is replaced as well. Basically your body can simply “forget“ what is scar tissue and how it originally was supposed to look like. Luckily we have developed a mechanism that reduces scar tissue back after it has done it's job but it's not perfect and since, most often, the consequence of this “failiure“ is only a minor optical flaw the evolutionary pressure to improve that process is rather low. Possible causes for the system “failing“ are most likely quite diverse but what can be said is: Replacing cells does not automatically restore the information of how the cells were arranged. Edit: Forgot burn scars- i assume they work quite differently from scars caused by purely mechanical damage. But the basic idea is always the same: replacing cells can also copy the “damaged/faulty“ tissue...the correction of what is copied needs to be done separately.",
"The short answer is that they don't replace themselves every 7 years. While it's true that some cells are constantly replaced (e.g. the outer layers of your skin are continuously dying, falling off, and being replaced throughout your life), others are never replaced. Many of your cells (e.g. neurons, muscle cells) are the same ones you had when you were born or when you finished growing. This is why you can recover from a stab wound but not a brain injury - skin regrows quickly, but neurons never do. I've heard the 7 years number before, usually in relation to specific cell types. I'm not a PhD in biology (did a minor with my BA and I'm a nursing student), but I'm calling urban legend on that number.",
"Human cells don't replace themselves every 7 years. Different cell types regenerate at different rates. I believe that muscle cells replace themselves once every 10 years at birth, but this declines rapidly as you age. By the time you die, only about half of your muscle cells have been replaced. Your intestines are replaced every 4 days or so (the poor things). Your pancreas beta cells are replaced every 60 days or so. Your epidermal cells (outermost skin cells) are replaced every month. Your liver cells are replaced every year or so. Fat cells are replaced at the 7-8 year cycle rate that the urban legend dictates. When you get a minor cut that does not puncture the entire epidermis, the injury will generally heal completely because there are epidermal cells underneath that grow outwards. As the cells above are pushed upwards and outwards they will slough off revealing the newer epidermal cells beneath. The skin is as good as new after a month or so. However a deeper wound heals differently. The wound fills with blood, platelets and clotting agents to form a clot. Next fibroblasts are attracted to the wound site and begin producing collagen. The epidermis then tries to cover the wound site with skin cells (this can only happen if the wound remains moist - if the wound dries out, the healing process slows immensely which is one of the main reasons why bandaging a wound is so important). Scar tissue forms by filling the wound with collagen. Once the wound has healed, the collagen remains. Over time, the collagen around the edge of the wound may slowly get replaced by neighboring cells, but if the wound is simply too large the regeneration of neighboring cells isn't fast enough to replace the nonfunctional tissue with functional cells. Remember, the neighboring cells have to pull double duty. In order for the scar to disappear, neighboring cells have to replace not only themselves but also their neighbors. They can do this to a point, but it is ultimately limited. So the body keeps the collagen in place which prevents the scar from disappearing entirely. The scar isn't functional, but it is strong, tough tissue that holds itself together so its better than nothing.",
"Too much text here for your ELI5 answer, so here it is. Scars are not cells, they are extracellular (outside cells) materials, mainly 'collagen' formed when more severe injury can not be healed by simple cell replication. Some scars fade slowly over many years (depending on severity and location) because that dense collagen is reabsorbed by cells and replaced by living tissue (cells) again. *Note this is a gross oversimplification (ELI5) there are many, many extracellular proteins, collagen being the most important and prolific in scar formation.",
"I believe there's a misconception here from OP. If you've been on the internet long enough you've here this before. However, your cells are not what's fully replaced every seven years, but the atoms in your cells. About 99% of the atoms in your body that you had seven years ago have now been replaced by ones you've ingested in food or drank in liquids. There's also some groups of cells that do regenerate and are replaced through mitosis(a type of cell division, where one cell becomes two) but this is dependent on the cell type, and is not seven years. Your skin cells in a scar go through this division too but they only clone the scar tissue. So your body can't get rid of scars that way.",
"Most people go their whole lives eating every day. When you don't eat for a few days, or fast, autophagy starts to consume these scars for the protein and clean up the damaged cells. Otherwise its just not a priority for your body. But if the scar is large enough, there will never be enough autophagy to clear it all up.",
"The cells in the scars are replaced with by new \"scar cells\" and not by cells as they where before the damaga, as cells dosnt have a memory or know how its \"surpose\" to be. If you weld a damaged car, and keep the maintancance up, and continue to repair it as it breaks, it dosnt fix the original damage, you just keep repairing. :) Sidenote: Repairs going wrong = cancer.",
"Some cells take up to 10 years. And the body can only replicate what is there, rather than restore it to it’s original state, if it could remember how it was before and recreate that we would never age!",
"How to tattoos remain permanent if all the cells, and the cells the tattoo ink is placed into are dying and being replaced?",
"> 'all human cells' not the same as everything in the body. the whole body is not replaced every 7 years. this is a widespread misconception",
"I feel like people are over explaining this. The cells are replaced with new cells with the information or memory of the old cell. It replicates what is stored in the memory."
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7j1n2m | How do brands manufacturing non-concentrated, natural fruit juice keep the taste constant? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm not so sure they do. I drink apple juice, grape juice, and orange juice and I notice they do change in taste year in and year out and also season in and season out as the source of the fruit changes as seasons change in different parts of the world. So answer is, they don't control it. Some batches are better than others."
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7j1n9j | Why is there a "feels like" temperature? Shouldn't that just be the temperature? | I understand things like wind chill and other factors, but shouldn't the temperature that it "feels like" just be the actual temperature? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> shouldn't the temperature that it \"feels like\" just be the actual temperature? Thermometers measure the actual temperature and that's just it, the objective temperature measurement, not affected by anything else. Humans try to keep body temperature constant, so that's where \"feels like\" comes from - it's harder to keep warm in a cold wind and it's harder to cool off by sweating in hot and humid weather.",
"Lot's of answers here kinda miss the mark. It has nothing to do with the layer of air around your skin. Humans don't feel temperature, we feel temperature change. If you have a steel ball and a tennis ball both at room temperature, the steel will \"feel\" colder because the metal is conducting heat away from your hand faster than the tennis ball. So things like wind chill and humidity have the same effect. The wind will conduct heat away from you faster, making it \"feel\" colder than it actually is. Humidity will make it harder for your body to radiate heat away, making it \"feel\" hotter. The feels-like temperatures are just accounting for these variables.",
"It has to do with heat transfer rates. Overall, temperature is a measure of how fast the atoms in a substance are moving around, but the heat transfer rate is what we feel. If you lick the frozen flag pole, your tongue freezes to it since metal is a good conductor of heat, so you feel your tongue getting cold quickly as it freezes to the flag pole. If you just stick your tongue out into the cold air (that is the same temperature as the flagpole) if feels cold (but not as cold as the flagpole)because it’s contacting cold air, and there’s some evaporation of your saliva going on that releases heat. Your dry face feels the least cold in this case since air is a poor conductor of heat energy. The flag pole and the air are both the same temperature, but we can feel the difference in heat transfer rates.",
"Nope. You've been outside in winter, and you know objects laying around are going to be ambient temperature right (generally speaking)? But presumably you've noticed that a metal object feels a lot colder than, for instance, a piece of wood, right? Does this mean metal gets colder somehow than wood at the same temperature? Nah. The metal is more effective at conducting heat away from your hand than the wood is. Your body senses this as the metal feeling colder than the wood, even though they'd both be ambient temperature."
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7j1o07 | What is Pi-Hole, what does it do? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s a really awesome and effective network-wide ad blocker. It pretends to be a DNS server and instead of returning the ip of a requested ad server, it instead returns its own ip. Then when the browser requests the ad, it returns a 1x1 pixel webpage. I installed on on my home network and it even blocks in-app ads on my iPhone. I no longer get the commercials at the beginning of YouTube videos on my smart TVs."
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7j1sb0 | . How did climate change become a partisan issue? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It was never just about climate change. The Republican party has represented business interests for a very long time, and has a long history of opposing government intervention and regulation. A large number of environmental issues have typically been solved by telling big businesses they have to spend more money cleaning up, or limiting what they can sell. From DDT to acid rain to chlorofluorocarbons to nitrous oxide to carbon dioxide, environmentalists have been restricting the ability of businesses to dump whatever they like into the atmospere, and/or sell whatever they like to others. It's not so much that climate change gradually *became* a partisan issue: it was born into a partisan issue which was already ongoing.",
"I am 49 years old. I saw climate panic many times, too many people, no landfill space, holes in the ozone, coming ice age, DDT, genetically modified food, not enough food, certain animal extinctions, mad cow disease, and I am sure a dozen more if I thought about it. Keep calm, carry on; we work towards a solution. Global Warming came with massive claims, a prominent liberal spearheaded and made over a billion dollars pushing global warming, many of the early claims were quickly debunked and the level of rhetoric was higher than anything I have ever seen before. That alienated many people. Later, as more evidence came in, computer models were created and heavier research was done, it seems that global warming is actually climate change and has a ton of support for it. But the damage was already done, enough was wrong in the beginning to turn off one side and fear and anger was stoked to harden the other side. Many on the right were on board if it meant a gradual reduction in carbon over a few years, the left ratcheted up scare tactics and demanded immediate and costly changes. That creates what politicians call a wedge issue, and whenever they find a wedge issue, they exploit it. Obama gave some climate change/Obama supporters a ton of money, and whether justified or not, the Republicans use it as evidence of collusion. Now, look at this thread, find how many people dismiss or down vote the \"other side\" without merit or cause and draw your own conclusion.",
"The fossil fuel industry would be endangered by a shift to alternative energy. So they lobbied the government and news sources to combat the theory of antropogenic global warming. The Republican party took the money and picked the side of denial which left the Democrats on the other side. In other countries it's different. Pro-fossil fuel industry politicians don't deny global warming, but instead don't consider it as a primary issue or just make false promises to combat climate change.",
"Climate change became a political issue when money became involved. Climate change, on it's own, is an interesting phenomenon that would make a good documentary that few would watch, but what a happened was a call for *economic* change, and with it, blame. People become resistant when a finger points and someone says \"You are responsible for this,\" Followed closely by \"You have to pay for this.\" Voila! Political issue."
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7j1tlp | How do principal and interest payment work ? How to calculate them ? | Hi sorry I know you can calculate them using Excel, but I don't understand the meaning or the mechanics behind it ? Why does one number decrease why the other one increase etc ? Any explanation would be appreciated thank you | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The *principal* is the actual amount of the loan that you are borrowing. The *interest* is a percentage of the principal that you pay the lender that they keep as profit. Many large loans, such as mortgages or car loans, use what is known as an *amortization schedule* With this, a portion of each monthly payment goes to pay back the principal and another portion goes to pay the interest. Though the total monthly payment stays the same, the portion of each part to pay of the principal and interest changes over time. Usually, more of it is used to pay the interest, and this decreases over time, while the amount used to pay the principal increases over time. The exact way to calculate depends on a lot of specific factors. * The principle; * The interest rate; * The duration of the loan; * The monthly payments; * The exact amortization scheduled used by the lending institution;",
"If you just pay the interest, the amount you owe will never decrease. Therefore, you have to pay a little more than the interest. With your very first payment, the amount you owe decreases a little, and therefore so does the amount of interest that is calculated for the next payment. Just by a very tiny amount, but that's what is required. Your payments stay the same, but with each payment, less is required to cover the interest, and the remainder reduces your principal. The principal reduces slowly to begin with, but increases more quickly over time. Your very last payment will reduce the principal to zero, and a very small amount of it will be for the interest on that last portion of the principal."
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7j21t2 | What is the benefit of having the bathroom light switch outside of the bathroom? | I see this all the time, in both newer and older homes and apartments. The light switch for the bathroom is on the wall outside the bathroom door, rather than inside the bathroom, and it leaves me baffled. It's common enough that there must be a reason for it, I just can't imagine what that reason could be. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a lot harder to electrocute yourself when the switch isn't in the same room as your wet body. That said, I've never lived in a place with the switch on the outside but I like to live dangerously.",
"Depending on where you're based. In the UK we (generally) have drop cords from the ceiling and the switch is inside the bathroom. Outside bathroom, wall mounted switches are placed due to water and electricity not playing well together. It's assumed that you will have dry hands when you leave the bathroom so you don't get electrocuted when you turn the light off.",
"This reasoning applies mainly to Sweden, where I happen to be a certified electrician. But the reasoning is the same in other countries too. Bathrooms are wet rooms. That means, basically, that there is a source of water in there. And in a bathroom, there is more than one source. It's not just a faucet like in a kitchen, it's also showers and bath tubs. You know, places where you tend to put small children and let them splash a lot. Everything in a bathroom that can be a source of splashing has a restricted area (i.e, a distance from the water faucet, or from the tub itself - where the shower handle on the hose is taken into account) and if you install something that has electrical wiring in that area, you have to pick electrical material that handles the splash. Or...you know...move it away further. Electrical material got something called IP-coding, which is basically a number that specifies how well the material handles water. And dust. And other types of environmental issues. Inside the splash zone, you need a higher IP rating. Which means that you often can't possibly use the same light switches in the entire house AND in the bathroom unless you spend a lot more money on the switches in the entire house. The easiest solution is really to just put the switch on the other side of the wall, directly outside the door. Where it's shielded from the splash zone.",
"In some countries it is illegal to have any kind of electrical switch or outlet within reachable distance of a source of water. By putting the switch outside the door you can meet this requirement. Sometimes this requirement can be hit around in other ways. A common way used in the UK is to a ceiling mounted switch operated by a rope.",
"I think that oftentimes, back in the day, there was ceramic tile in the bathroom, and it was difficult for either the ceramic tile installers or the electrician who worked afterwards to cut the appropriate sized hole for the electrical switch. So they just elected to put the switch outside the bathroom to make it easier."
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7j2dwj | How PICC lines don’t do any damage (poking/scraping) to the heart and/or veins when you move around? | PICC line IVs that starts at your arm and goes directly to/into your heart? How the FUCK could you move that arm and your torso without that PICC line doing damage to your hear and veins. It hurts my heart just thinking about it. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few reasons: 1. The material used in PICC lines is designed to reduce the risk of abrasive damage. The tip especially is very \"not pokey\" just in case it pushes into the superior vena cava. 2. The line doesn't actually go into the heart. It stops at the superior vena cava, which is a giant vein that feeds into the heart 3. Veins are very elastic and flexible, so they can deal with a parallel tube bumping into them. Keep in mind that the veins in your arm (where a PICC is usually inserted) can be manually pinched closed, squeezed, and twisted -- and you probably do this inadvertently every day. 4. You can't really shorten/lengthen the veins by moving, so you're not going to inadvertently jam the end of it into your heart tissue"
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7j2fjw | Why are there holes in Swiss Cheese? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically: Cheese is milk that has gone bad because bacteria breed in it. The bacteria fart while breeding. The farts make up the holes and the stink of the cheese.",
"During the cheese making process carbon dioxide is releasedd. The holes come from the gasses escaping from the cheese.",
"Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why does swiss cheese have holes in it? Does it have to do with how it's made it is it just a gimmick? ]( URL_3 ) ^(_33 comments_) 1. [Why does Swiss cheese have holes? ]( URL_7 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [Why does Swiss Cheese have holes in it? ]( URL_5 ) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [ELI5:Why does swiss cheese have holes in them? ]( URL_6 ) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [Why does swiss cheese have holes? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: The holes in swiss cheese and how they are formed? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why does some cheese have holes? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_10 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why does cheese have holes? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_3 comments_)"
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7j2huf | What is the difference between a daily, bi-weekly, and monthly contact lens? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's mostly about the quality of the contact lens. A daily lens will be thin and prone to drying. Particles from you eye and air will accumulate on it and it won't be much durable, so using it more than 1 or 2 days might causes problems. They will be less comfortable, might irritate your eyes and will easily rip if you put them in and take them off several times. But they cost less since they are thinner and use material or less quality. Monthly contact less are thicker and more durable. The surface is more easy to disinfect so particles can be removed, making it comfortable to use for a longer period. Of course, they are more expensive."
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7j2l13 | If the atmosphere is pregnant with moisture and the conditions are right, what stops the snow from just all falling at once? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two reasons: 1. Heat is not constant and there are temperature gradients so the freezing of water will take place at different rates in different areas. 2. Heat energy is in a way released (in an eli5 sense) when the snow freezes, so the atmosphere around the snow particles temporarily will not be cold enough to create snow. Bonus number 3. Water also needs to condense to form snaw which takes some time, though this is usually negligible"
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7j2nbi | What's the best way to measure intelligence, and how do we compare it to genetics? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"IQ is NOT a controversial subject in the scientific field. It is the most researched and best-understood part of our minds. Because it's a measure that can be reduced to a single number it is a very good subject of research. It involves a lot of very complicated statistics when creating the tests to make them measure the actual intelligence. It can be made culture-independent. The research is not controversial, only the results are. They show differences between ethnics, namely, Africans have much lower IQ than Europeans, who have lower IQ than south-easter Asians. Any and all research into the topic is considered racist by the PC crowd, to the point of ending careers. Identical twins raised together have almost identical IQ scores (the variability between them is same as the variability of a single person doing multiple tests). The correlations are smaller for less genetically related members of the family and even smaller if they are raised in different backgrounds. Upbringing has an influence on IQ but it seems that it is mostly negative (that is, bad childhood lowers IQ bad very good one does not raise it). IQ is also correlated to simple measurable biological traits like the weight of the brain. Imagine a very simple experiment: a button and a light, the subject presses the button as soon as they see the light turning on. The speed at which they react in this simple test (literally see light - press button) is correlated with their IQ. It cannot be argued that such a simple test is culturally biased. Creating a serious test is a rather complicated process. You start with lots and lots of questions and give them out to lots and lots of people. We are talking thousands here. Then statistically analyze the results and see which questions are linked together (that is, if the people who do well on question A do just as well on question B then those questions are linked). The broadest set of linked questions can be considered the G factor if intelligence."
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7j2xad | How come VCs & Angel investors don't just hire people to copy an idea rather than invest in it? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Investors are investing in you, your ability to make a viable business, not your idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but entrepreneurs who are willing to do all the work for half the company are a rare and desirable thing to invest in. They are busy running their investment business, they don't have the time to run your business. Plus, they would prefer to invest in an idea you had patented, to reduce competitors, and they don't see a benefit in breaking patent laws.",
"Usually, it's the entrepeneur's smarts, grit, etc. that is the ultimate determining factor whether something works or not. And the amoutn of time, size of team, etc. asking for funding would already have a head start. Plus, VCs, etc. are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and other legal documents that would open then up to huge lawsuits if they just did that, never mind that entrepreneurs would stop meeting with them.",
"First and foremost, they are usually legally prevented from doing so. Potential investors evaluating the company typically sign NDAs and other agreements to prevent exactly what you describe from happening. Also, it usually isn't cheaper for an investor to try to do it themselves. They and anyone they hire is going to lack the specific expertise and would have to from square one. Also, without the prospect of becoming a successful entrepreneur, a hired hand is just going to put in their 40 hours a week and go home, the will not be busting their ass to be successful at all costs like a owner would.",
"When you invest, you are not taking on all the risk. If you copied the idea, you face all responsibility in losing start up costs.",
"Copyright, patent and workload amongst other things. A VC doesn't necessarily want the extra workload of having to hire people when they can just throw money at it and let someone else work out the details. Patents and copyrights on existing ideas and products make it really difficult to \"copy\" stuff, unless you're in China (where they don't care about legalities)."
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7j39e0 | I understand the technical difference between mass and weight but, if we measure them both with a scale that is dependant on the influence of gravity, how do we meaningfully distinguish between the two measures? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"We don't have to measure mass by using its relationship with gravity. We can also measure an object's mass by seeing how its inertia affects it. [Here is an astronaut demonstrating this by measuring his body mass while having a weight of 0]( URL_0 ). He does this by measuring how much an oscillating spring slows down when he adds the inertia of his body to the system.",
"Imagine you're at the edge of an ice skating rink. You're on regular ground and your friend is on the ice facing away from you. If you give your friend a push your basically only working to accelerate. Friction, both from the air and the skate is minimal. Now think about the difference if your friend is a small child vs a sumo wrestler. The difference in how hard you need to push them is almost entirely due to mass with the effects of gravity almost completely eliminated."
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7j3enm | Why do so many rappers have weird/fucked up teeth? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Many rappers come from very poor households, as a result said households often cannot afford proper dental care, especially for things such as braces which can cost thousands of dollars."
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7j4crx | What causes us to forget what we were just about to say? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"probably the biological version of temporary data corruption in the information stream bouncing around in our somewhat hodgepodge spaghetti monster designed brains."
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7j4kkd | Why are tasks like whistling easy once you learn them, but hard to explain/teach others? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Because they're muscle memory that you inherently learn through trial and error. They're easy once you learn because your body remembers exactly what it needs to do in order to do the thing. However, all the things that are required in order to do something like whistle or even roll your \"R\"s are difficult to describe even if you know how to do them. Similar to how you can theoretically tell someone how to play a guitar and even show them but they have to develop the muscle memory on their own in order to do it. I once tried to teach my friend how to roll her \"R\"s since she was learning Spanish and she couldn't manage it for the life of her. I tried to tell her to \"relax your tongue and try to push air both under and over your tongue\" but it didn't work. She still can't do it.",
"It's possible to explain some things that seam hard if you give it a bit of thought. To whistle, just whisper \"Q\" and play around with the subtleties of it. To wiggle your ears, try making your face as \"wide\" or \"expanded\" as possible, then try it without moving your eyebrows.",
"Whistling is using your mouth and the bits inside it to create a resonating chamber. Like many things that involve precise resonances- for example, finding the exact angle to blow over a bottle to make a sound, or the exact speed and pressure needed to make a wine glass sing- the margin for error is very small. So it's as simple as the fact that everyone's vocal passages are shaped differently. Your mouth, teeth, tongue, nose, throat, vocal cords, & c. are all almost certainly different from mine. It's hard to tell you exactly what you're supposed to do, and what you're supposed to feel, in order to get the resonance you need. You need to try it for yourself until it works. The beautiful part of this is that we humans are great at learning, remembering, and muscle memory. So once we've got it a couple of times, it becomes natural for us to do it again."
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7j4l1o | Why do plants growing in the wild not have to be watered like the same type of plant as a houseplant | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Houseplants contain a small amount of soil. Even when the soil is fully saturated, it takes relatively little time to dry out. In nature, the soil is virtually limitless, and the plant's roots can reach deep down into the soil where there is much more water available",
"Plants growing in the wild grow in the places that naturally have the amount of water they need (outside of flood or drought). So if they need a lot of water they will be near a creek, lake, river, spring, or be a low lying place with a high water table."
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7j4rfk | What is the use for giving AB+ Blood when people with the AB+ typing can get blood from literally anyone else? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because all the other types of blood can be donated to other people. Better to use the single purpose blood before the multipurpose blood for the same job.",
"Because AB+ can also get AB+, while nobody else can. It saves other, more widespread blood types for other people who need them more.",
"If the hospital has AB+ blood on hand, they'll use it on an AB+ patient. If they don't they'll use whatever else is on hand or whatever they have the most of. But of course, if I'm O-, then I need O- and nothing but O-. If a hospital happened to use the last O- in their bank on that AB+ patient, then I might just be out of luck. So hospitals always prefer to use blood of the closest type available, in order to avoid situations like that where the blood could have gone to someone else with no alternative.",
"We define blood types by markers on blood cells. If you have A blood, you have the A marker on your blood. Your immune system will attack and clot blood cells that have markers you don't have. So if B blood gets into an A person, the immune sees the B marker as an invader and will clot the blood. Blood clots in your veins mean strokes and the recipient's death. If you have AB+ blood, you have ALL the markers. None of the markers will trigger a clotting response. If you have O- blood, you have NONE of the markers. Your blood ninjas into anyone else just fine. But because you blood is sneaky, your blood identifies everyone else's blood as an invader and can't receive any other blood types. Note that AB+ people should still receive AB+ blood when possible. The reason is the blood pumped into you still can have a working immune response. So the blood pumped in, will try to clot the blood already inside you. It's not as bad, but still bad."
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7j5lwq | Why is it whenever I am about to throw up, burps and saliva production ramp up dramatically? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I don't know about burps, but saliva is there to protect your teeth from stomach acid. Also, in my personal experience, if I spit out that extra saliva - I usually don't throw up at all. No idea why.",
"Vomiting is a actually a fairly big, multi-system process, but one of those systems being engaged is the parasympathetic nervous system. If you've ever heard of adrenaline, you can imagine what the nervous system branch *opposing* the parasympathetic system, and relevant to this part of vomiting, does. Adrenaline and the sympathetic nervous system are \"fight or flight\", while the parasympathetic system is \"rest and digest\". Part of that function -- the digesting part -- involves the churning of your stomach, the wave-like muscle contractions of your intestines. It's this, partly, which allows you to push up the contents of your stomach. But, our nervous systems aren't perfect, and so when your parasympathetic system is engaged, often other effects occur -- for example, salivating, producing tears (lacrimation), and you often feel a bit tired after vomiting, too. So that's why you salivate and burp. Your \"rest and digest\" system is being kicked into overdrive, among other things, and your stomach is getting ready to heave. This just so happens to cause other effects controlled by the same system, such as burping and salivating. Incidentally, the \"salivating protects your mouth\" thing isn't especially accurate, and you should absolutely brush your teeth after vomiting to minimize damage to your teeth. People with bulimia nervosa can often suffer ongoing damage to their teeth due to the effect of stomach acid on their tooth enamel."
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7j5ruk | Why are most of the landmasses on Earth located north of the Equator? | I teach elementary science and I did not have an answer when a student asked me this today. I know that most maps tend to alter the actual size of certain countries or entire landmasses (ie Greenland or Africa) but you still see a whole lot more land in the northern hemisphere than you do in the southern hemisphere. Is this because of tectonic plate movement? Intra-Earth currents? Magnetic fields? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Continents are always shifting. At some point in the future it won't be that way, as in that past it hasn't always been this way. It's just the year you happened to be born in.",
"\"how does most landmass located towards one of the rotational poles in the year 2017 ?\" because tectonic plates moved that way. why did they move that way rather than south pole? ...just because if you ask the question 100mil or 150mil or 200 mil years ago... URL_0",
"Random tectonic plate movement. There have been several different \"supercontinent\" formations when almost all the land masses were together - and the last one was mostly based in the southern hemisphere (Pangaea). The biggest change into the north was the drift of of the Indian subcontinent from near the south pole up to...India, and Africa, the Middle East, and Italy drifting from mostly at or below the equator to mostly or all above the equator. Africa started to drift away from Europe, and then came back and kind of hit it. The basic mechanism is 'rifting' of the ocean floor, which is a long line where basalt pushes up from the earth and leads to a \"spreading seafloor\" which leads the above ground parts of the plates to move away from the rifts. Here's [a little animation for you]( URL_0 ) - that's about 175 million years."
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7j5sfq | Given that the universe does not have a center, and all positions are relative, what's wrong with saying Earth is the centre and that the Sun revolves around it? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Nothing, we do it all the time. Every time you say you are driving at 75 mph, and not something closer to 70,000 mph, you are implicitly assuming the earth is stationary and everything moves around it. Problems arise when you assume choosing the earth as the center is somehow special or meaningful. If you are guiding a space probe to Jupiter, assuming everything travels around an insignificant speck like the earth is pointless and creates unnecessary complication. Far better to use the Sun and/or Jupiter as a reference on such a mission. And when you get further out, saying the motions of galactic super cluster is governed by a tiny rock a billion light years away, that is just idiotic.",
"The Sun's trajectory relative to all the other stars is smooth. The Earth runs rings around this smooth, continuous line. So do the other planets. Using all the other stars as a frame of reference, [the paths look like this.]( URL_0 ) (Edit: as another user has pointed out, this picture is greatly oversimplified, but it makes the point accurately enough.)"
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7j5yrq | When does deferring to scientific research become appealing to authority? | Im a biological scientist with a BSc. Obviously I have yet to scratch the surface on many key concepts in the field but Ive had a good overview and have been exposed to many fundamental ideas. I like to believe that I am able to quickly assess the quality of a research paper and notice any p-hacking or conflict of interests. But when I am engaged in a debate with people who have not gone through my field of study - climate change, and vaccine safety are two key examples - I constantly cite relevant studies or theories that would suggest we have a breadth of information available on the topic. Im wondering when does it become appealing to authority? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's an appeal to authority (in the fallacy sense) if you defer to a person who, in turn, did not justify his/her statement. Scientific research, by definition, does real work to justify its claims and conclusions.",
"An appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority referenced is not actually relevant to the claims being asserted. An appeal to scientific evidence is not really a leap of logic, as scientific evidence that is properly documented requires no trust in authority. The data presented as not an argument, it is a factual record of an experimental result and should be readily replicable.",
"It's an appeal to authority if they're not an authority in a way that's relevant to the topic at hand. Citing an evolutionary biologist in a discussion about evolution is not an appeal to authority because they their work is relevant to the topic. You are referencing the research, not the person.",
"Appeal to authority is only a fallacy if the actual basis of the argument is \"Well he's an expert/authority in X, therefore he's more likely right.\" If I'm an evolutionary biologist and I tell you that the process of natural selection gave rabbits big floppy ears, while your mother (who I assume isn't a biologist) gives you another reasonable explanation for their ears, accepting my answer over hers without any other knowledge on the matter would be fallacious, whether or not I'm right. Even experts are often mistaken. However, if I, as a biologist, showed you several years of research on these big floppy ears, and I had written several peer-reviewed papers on the matter which I could show you, then you're no longer relying on my authority to come to a conclusion, you're relying on the evidence I've provided. My authority, in this case, only comes from my being able to direct you towards these examples. In other words, the facts make my argument more valid, not the fact that I'm a biologist.",
"There's nothing wrong with appealing to authority. Much of the knowledge in your head right now is justified by an appeal to authority - it's something you read in a textbook, or heard from a teacher/professor, etc. That's simply how society and the spread of knowledge works; otherwise we'd be limited only to our own personal experiences. Appealing to authority is only a fallacy when you appeal to the *wrong* authority. A scientific study or qualified expert in the field that you're discussion is a good authority. You can appeal to that, no problem. But you can't appeal to an expert qualified in some other, irrelevant field. So when discussing vaccine safety, for example, you could appeal to the US Surgeon General, a qualified doctor and biologist. But you couldn't appeal to, say, Noam Chomsky. That would be fallacious because for all of his qualifications as a linguist, he's not a biologist."
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7j66jn | How does futures trading work? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"No, it's not fraudulent as long as you have good reason to believe you can secure the items when needed. Kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5:How does \"trading futures\" work? I've been told it's a good and cheap way to play the stock market, but everything I've read on it confuses me even more. ]( URL_0 ) ^(_13 comments_) 1. [ELI5... How do futures work? They really interest me but the over all concept escapes me. ]( URL_3 ) ^(_31 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What is the futures market? And how does it work? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What are 'futures'? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_19 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How does trading in the futures market work? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_3 comments_)"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ilgbo/eli5how_does_trading_futures_work_ive_been_told/",
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yec34/eli5_what_is_the_futures_market_and_how_does_it/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/1i0xs1/eli5_how_do_futures_work_they_really_interest_me/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/3geo89/eli5_what_are_futures/"
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7j67ia | How can a rocket go fast enough to leave earth, slow down enough to land on the moon, then repeat that process the other way, all without running out of fuel | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. carrying a lot of fuel. Rockets are heavy, really heavy, and the vast majority of that is fuel 2. they actually orbited the moon and detached a lander so they didn't shoot straight at it 3. they don't spend much fuel on re-entry, they just hit the atmosphere really hard and let air resistance do its thing. Rockets aren't exactly re-usable (until space x anyway).",
"The bit that lands on the Moon (thus needs to slow down) is *very small.* That giant rocket that leaves Earth is mostly abandoned on the way. The bit that returns to Earth is *even smaller* and uses the atmospheric friction, not a rocket, to do most of its slowing.",
"With lots and lots of fuel. It also helped that the Saturn/Apollo rockets left behind all the bits they didn't need, like empty fuel tanks and the hugely powerful rocket engines needed to lift all the fuel off the ground, once they had been used up.",
"They were different rockets! Step 1 - Leaving Earth. Here's where the big boyz are playing. You take a Saturn 5 rocket that is just loaded with fuel and engines that takes the actual moon landing ship into space by means of *an incredibly powerful controlled explosion*. This bad boy doesn't really leave Earth, it just pushes the actual moon mission out of Earth's atmosphere and then falls back to Earth. Step 2 - Getting to the Moon This is actually not that hard. See first of all you are flying away from Earth at a very fast speed (you have to be to get out of Earth's atmosphere) so you only need relatively small bursts of small engines to get you going in the right direction. If you are very clever (and NASA was full of clever people) you can even use Earth's gravity to give you a bit of a sling shot to speed you along. Step 3 - Landing on the Moon So again, you don't exactly slow down very much. The Lunar Landing module disconnects from the Command Module and fall down using its engines to slow its descent as the Moon's gravity brings it down. Meanwhile the Command Module just orbits the Moon. Step 4 - Leave the Moon So the thing about the moon, it has about 1/6 of the Earth's gravity and NO atmosphere. So while we need a building sized fuel tank and massive engines to leave Earth, leaving the moon is comparatively simple. Much smaller engines, much less fuel and boom you are back in orbit. Step 5 - Coming Home This is probably the easiest part of all, considering that gravity is pretty good at doing it's thing. All the returning craft has to do is get going in Earth's direction at an angle that the returning craft will enter the atmosphere without skipping off (which is bad) or burning up in the atmosphere (also very bad)."
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7j6ohs | why is facilitated diffusion considered passive transport? | I’m going fucking insane. Everything online says it’s passive, but it seems like every one of them ignores or doesn’t acknowledge that proteins need to use atp to change shape? They can only facilitate diffusion through phosphorylation. Which means it’s not passive transport by definition? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Facilitated-Type Transport proteins do not need ATP to change shape. The Transport Protein will change shape by just interacting with the solute passing though. It's like how a magnet could change the shape of a bunch of iron fillings/pieces if placed nearby. It's passive b/c the solutes move from a [high] to a [low] until they reach equilibrium. They are are not pumped like in active transport."
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7j6yyh | Why does the visible light spectrum appear cyclic to the human eye if the spectrum is based on specific linear wavelengths of light? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It doesn't appear cyclic to the human eye. It appears cyclic to the human *brain*. Our eyes can detect 3 \"regions\" of color: red, green, and blue. If we detect some combinations of those, we typically perceive that as an \"in-between\" color. For example, orange light stimulates both the red and green sensing cells in our eyes. So stimulating the red and green cells is what we perceive as \"orange\". And, interestingly, if we just use red and green light (no orange light), we can stimulate those cells exactly the same as orange light, and so we still see orange. In fact, that's the basis for how computer and phone displays work: They only emit red, green, and blue light, and our brains perceive combinations of those as other colors. But here comes the strangeness! What happens when you stimulate the red and blue cells in the eye with red and blue light? Well, your first guess is that we should perceive the color that is \"in between\" red and blue on the spectrum. But that color is green, and we're specifically *not* stimulating the green-detecting cells in our eyes. However, your brain isn't really capable of seeing it as two different colors (red and blue) simultaneously, so it invents a new color! Purple! That's right, purple, the color that allows our sense of the spectrum to be cyclical, *isn't a real color*. There is no such thing as a purple photon of light. Purple can *only* be perceived by the human brain as a side effect of the limitations of our visual system.",
"Just to add something extra to the excellent explanation already provided... Our color vision is usually a matter of our vision system interpolating between the colors detected by our three flavours of cones in our retina. Think of it like a triangle, with red, green and blue in the corners and all the other colors somewhere in the middle. But then consider that a small percentage of human females are \"tetrachromats\". For them, there are 4 types of color receptors in their retina. For them, the perceived color is interpolated between 4 different points. You have to imagine this in 3d now, like a 3 sided pyramid with 4 point of detected color, and some interpreted color point somewhere in the 3d space of the pyramid. Tetrachromats may be able to distinguish 100 million colors ... URL_0",
"Could you also explain the question like I'm 5?",
"Pink/ magenta bridges the gap between red and blue. Usually there would be no specific wavelength to represent pink, however our brains made up a colour to find the average wavelength of red and blue . It couldn't be green, since this new colour should be the opposite of green. There's a great explanation by minute physics on the topic. URL_0"
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7j76mn | How do heat seeking missiles work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the simplest terms, there is an infrared (heat vision) camera at the front of the missile attached to a computer, which is attached to the missile's control fins. The computer adjusts the fins to keep the brightest heat source the camera can see in the center of the picture."
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7j778y | - How does a hot air balloon work? How does the pilot know where they're going to end up and what happens if it all goes wrong? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Controlling a hot air ballon is a lot of guesswork. Educated guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. By controlling the heat inside the actual ballon (this is done using gas burners) it's possible to control if the ballon is rising (because it's hotter than the surrounding air) or declining (because it's colder, respectively.). The ballon also has a valve at the top where you can let hot air out, to speed up the process of cooling down. And that is really all there is to it. Hot ballon goes up. Cold ballon goes down. Actual navigation, though, takes skill. A ballon is always and indefinitely moving in the direction the wind is blowing. Which means that if you want to go west, you'll have to wait until you have wind blowing towards the west. Complicating things a bit, wind can blow in different directions at different heights. Which means that you can go higher and find a patch of wind going in sort of the right direction instead of staying low and going in the exact opposite direction. The easiest way to find out exactly how the wind is blowing above you is to release a small helium ballon (because helium ballons always go up) and see in which direction it goes when the wind grabs hold of it. The rest is all about skill. Knowledge. A tour ballon pilot would typically have several pre-planned routes to choose from depending on wind direction. \"If the wind is blowing westward, we'll have to start east of the national park with all the wild animals. And land someplace west of it.\" The problem is the \"someplace\" bit, because you don't necessarily end up where you intended to. Most aircraft can fend for themselves and force a direction they want with a propeller, but an air ballon just...can't. So, to simplify things for everyone, air ballons got their own set of aviation rules where other aircraft has to make way for them. The obvious issue here is of course that ballons are not necessarily welcome in any airspace, because the extra considerations everyone else has to make for them. Things that typically go wrong is that the wind changes at the exact worst thinkable time, pushing the ballon towards a high voltage power line. Or, you know, towards a forest. Or a cliffside. Any place where you can't immediately land is a risk that the pilot would try to avoid. Passing a risk area means that they have to plan ahead. When all you can control is height, you'll have to go higher. Because if you can only go up, then you are soon out of options. But if you can also go down, then you got two options to choose from. What happens when the ballon risks running into a power line is that the pilot has to consider the two options. 1) burn gas and get more heat so that the ballon slowly rises? 2) release hot air so that the ballon quickly goes down? Going down is always easy. Going down comfortably, thats more difficult. Going down comfortably when you are in a hurry, When you desperately have to come down immediately, that takes skill. And could definitely involve bruises as a calculated better outcome.",
"Definitely not an expert, but I think the pilot just has to raise and lower the craft until he finds a crosswind that takes him the (general) direction he wants to go. I'm sure there are times when that can't be accomplished at all, so they just go with the flow and see where it takes them. As long as they don't hit a power line or get blown out to sea, it's probably all good with them.",
"Hot air is less dense than cold air. A balloon full of hot air produces lift than can carry the basket and its contents They're pretty much at the mercy of the wind. A rough idea of their direction can be found by checking weather reports before flying. However, the one thing the pilot can control is his height. By changing how much and how often he uses the burner, he can control the temperature in the balloon. This changes the amount of lift the balloon has, so it goes up or down accordingly. Some limited ability to steer is given by the fact that wind direction at different heights can vary. The pilot can use this to gain a small amount of control over his direction. But most importantly, he has plenty of fuel. A wise pilot will land well before he runs out of fuel, normally in a convenient field. He then gets picked up by other people who have been following the balloon on the ground by road.",
"Why do they not have any sort of fan or similar device to help steer even just a little bit? Would they just end up spinning in place?"
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7j78i5 | when a woman has a hysterectomy what is put in his place? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nothing. It is left a void and her other organs will shift to take advantage of the space.",
"It can be kind of hard to tell from diagrams, but the uterus is actually pretty small. It's [about the size of a small pear]( URL_0 ). Removing it doesn't leave an enormous void or anything."
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7j7cf6 | Will a refrigerator magnet eventually loose its pull over enough time since it is perpetually fighting gravity? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Magnets don't use energy. The process of magnetising a piece of iron does not involve infusing it with huge quantities of energy. There is no energy to be transferred. So the question you are asking is really, how does a magnet do this without using energy? Think of it this way. The door of your fridge is not staying up in the air due to energy use, it is because it is attached to the rest of the fridge. The magnet is bonded to the metal of the fridge and becomes essentially part of the fridge. No mechanical work is needed to keep it there.",
"There's a reason it's impossible to build a perpetual MOTION machine, and objects can remain still indefinitely. A magnet attached to your fridge is not doing any work, it's just staying there so there's no lost energy. The fridge itself would hvae the same problem: its shelves hold up your food via electromagnetism, too, just on a different scale.",
"Is a suction cup stuck to a piece of glass using energy to stay stuck there? Is paint using energy to stay stuck to your walls? Magnetism is a force, just like gravity. It doesn't require energy maintain. As far as forces are concerned, sticking a magnet to a fridge is no different than using glue or suction. That being said, many types of permanent magnets do lose their magnetism over time. But this isn't due to fighting gravity, the tiny magnetic particles inside magnets become slowly misaligned and the overall magnetic field gets weaker. This happens super slowly though, like 1% loss per hundred years. Heat and impact can also cause magnets to lose their power."
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7j7dhh | Why do our mouths still feel dry even after chugging a lot of water? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you are thirsty, it's because you are dehydrated. Your body needs a balance of electrolytes (mainly sodium) and water. When there isn't enough water in relation to sodium, your body makes you feel thirsty and also to conserve water in the kidneys. It will take awhile for the water you drink to pass from your stomach into your intestines to get absorbed. The feeling of thirst won't go away until your brain knows that the electrolytes and water in your body are in balance again."
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7j7geu | What is the purpose of joker cards in a deck of cards? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Jokers were originally introduced as the highest Trump as a variant in the game of Euchre in the 1860's, and it caught some popularity with card players and manufacturers at that time. Poker later adopted the Joker as a wild card, resulting in the legendary \"five of a kind\" which beats the royal flush. Finally, jokers started becoming standard in the 1940's for the game of Canasta. Now jokers are used in all sorts of card games, including Pitch and Rummy.",
"Jokers are wild and substitute for all other cards. Some people take them out based on preference."
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7j7n2h | how seeds are sold deshelled so perfectly? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a combination of winnowing and filtering. You crush the shells. Then you bounce the mixed shell fragments and nuts across a mesh. You can filter out large shell fragments with a mesh that's just large enough for the nuts to drop through, and you can filter out small shell fragments with a mesh that's just small enough that nuts can't drop through. Also, nuts are denser than shells. Bounce them both, apply compressed air in one direction, and the shells go further than the nuts. That gets you good enough for many purposes. To finish up, you can have a human pull out the remaining debris.",
"Typically the seeds are run through a machine that bashes the shells open. It breaks a certain percentage of the seeds, and fails to break some other shells, but these are sorted out. Sorting machines range from simple screens for size, to weight-based sorting, to electronic high-speed optical sorting machines."
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7j7zqe | How do humidifiers work and why is the vapor not hot? | What exactly is produced by the humidifier? It's not hot like steam should be but it also seems too fine to be water mist. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is water mist. Usually you just run water through an atomizer to make it into tiny particles. You can do basically the same with a fan and a bowl of water. The fancier ones run it through a compressor thing to make it look more misty, but it is just water"
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7j82ko | Why does some fruit go from unripe straight to almost rotten, like when a banana starts green & turns brown, while skipping the optimal ripeness of yellow? How does this occur? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr4grc7"
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"text": [
"With bananas specifically the turning brown does not necessarily mean it has gone bad but is a product of the environment it is kept. Put one in the fridge and it will turn brown almost overnight but the fruit inside will keep for longer than if left out."
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7j8x94 | What causes your mouth to taste so bad after forgetting to brush your teeth the previous night? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Bacteria are able to reproduce very quickly when you give them food and put them in a humid environment. Just like how milk goes bad if you leave it out. It becomes difficult to deal with because the bacteria will just form bio mats all over, creating those white areas on your tongue once there are enough of them. brushing your teeth keeps them from reachig that critical point."
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7j8xyh | What exactly is happening with our bodies when we are falling asleep and then have a "jolt" that wakes us back up? Why does this happen? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[Hypnic Jerk]( URL_0 ) Unknown what causes it, but I like the theory that it was as primates sleeping on branches, making sure we would not fall down. That suggests it should also occur in other primates, and I wonder if a study has been done. It is nowhere as bad as [Exploding Head Syndrome.]( URL_1 )",
"I believe that when your mind falls asleep faster than usual, your body’s reaction is that it’s either falling or that it’s dying. So your mind sends a signal to the body and flexes all your muscles to make sure your body is still ok. Basically it’s like “Oh crap, i’m falling asleep too fast! Maybe i’m falling? I’m about to die? Better shock the body to see what’s going on! Zap!”"
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7j924l | Why is vision loss permanent | I just got new glasses, and realized how shit my vision has become. Why is vision loss permanent? How come cells can't reverse this? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It... Kind of depends on the kind of vision loss - a lot of vision loss or degeneration is caused by the lens of your eye being shitty, for example if you're long sighted (so you can't see stuff up close), in a lot of cases it means the lens of your eye won't flex enough when shoved around by the muscles of the iris to focus on close up stuff - same as it won't elongate for short sighted people who can't see stuff really far away. (which is how glasses work, it provides the ideal curvature of what your lens should be doing in order to give you a clearer picture) I guess the most basic example of this if you've got relatively okay vision is that you can only look so closely at something before it gets super blurry, or you can only see so far away in detail. The lens of the eye itself has some ingrained limitations - if you got a plastic disk, you can only flex and bend it so far before it pops out of shape or breaks (I'm pretty sure your iris muscles aren't strong enough to completely detach stuff just because, and I really hope that's right because otherwise that's terrifying) If it's stuff like the degeneration of your optic nerve, or your iris muscles stop contracting properly around the lens - unfortunately the body can only regenerate some kinds of cells. It's kind of like your cells and DNA are full of blueprints, but only for SOME cells. Some cool early stage cells like stem cells (like embryonic stem cells that are usually in the news) are like little libraries - they can become pretty much anything they want. Once they do that however, it's kind of like a video game inventory - there's only enough room to remember basic functions like \"what to do if you're a little bit damaged\" and \"how to operate all the time\" - the rest just doesn't fit. But some cells can - they have taken space for various reasons to have that stuff encoded in there and they can make copies of themselves, like skin cells, liver cells, etc. Perhaps there are people out there who have unique genetic mutations where they have like regenerating organ cells or something, but they aren't a dominant trait today, so unfortunately we're all stuck with shitty eyes that break if we look at the sun for too long. It's also worth mentioning that there ARE some reversible types of vision loss, like cataracts, which is less about your eye cells being crap and more about a random film developing over your lense which hecks with the focus. That's just a case of removing the offending cells and the cells underneath are mostly okay. There's also fun vision loss associated with your brain - although that usually has to do with how you parse or process images rather than the raw quality of what your eyes are capable of seeing."
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7j96e6 | If I drink something poisonous, would it help to drink lots of water to dilute it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on a lot of factors such as the specific poison, how much you have taken and how it effects the body. If the poison is something your liver can filter out then yes drinking water may help as it will help reduce the rate at which the poison is absorbed into your blood and therefore even the load on your liver . If the poison is highly potent this might not matter too much though. I imagine the doses that people use when poisoning someone will accommodate the contents of the stomach so that it doesn't matter."
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7j99as | Why are some smells stronger than others? E.g. With the same ammount of rotten egg and lavender the rotten egg would be alot more pungent | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In regards to the potency of a smell, as noted, the amount of gaseous molecules that it has produces or the volatility of the substance is a major reason why some smells are more pungent. In regards to your specific example, a rotten egg is undergoing decay and has many chemical reactions going on at that moment so there may simply be more odorous chemicals being produced than the flower. On top of that, the chemistry is something massively different from clear air, aka our reference point for odors. There is also an evolutionary advantage to having a negative reaction to the smell of something that is likely harmful, such as rotten food and so forth.",
"Could be a survival adaptation, smells indicating a potential danger will be detected more readily",
"Because some substances are more volatile than others, meaning they release more stuff for our noses to detect. Some materials aren't very volatile at all, such as metals, though some metals can have quite specific scents caused by organic substances that accumulate on them.",
"your body is more sensitive to some things because of evolution. compounds associated with death and decay tell you there is a serious health hazard nearby, so you are evolved to be well equipped to sense it and have a strong aversion to it. many highly toxic compounds carry no scent because they're not something we interact with in nature. carbon monoxide is the most famous. despite being very dangerous to humans, it only occurs in significant quantities due to combustion, so we never had any reason to evolve the ability to detect it."
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7j9h5w | What is so different about their pathways that causes aspirin to be useful in anti-platelet therapy and Ibuprofen to be a detrimental factor regarding heart disease? | Considering that both ASA (aspirin) and Ibuprofen both inhibit COX-1 and COX-2, why does chronic use of Ibuprofen increase risk of heart disease whereas ASA is given to patients having a heart attack? I know that ASA is derived from salycilic acid and Ibuprofen is derived from propionic acid. Otherwise, I cannot find a distinctive difference between the two. I've already found information regarding the increased risk of hypertension and peripheral edema with chronic use of ibuprofen. I am specifically looking for what causes the difference between the anti-coagulant effects of ASA and the increased risk for heart disease from Ibuprofen. [Link regarding Heart Disease and Ibuprofen]( URL_2 ) I promise, I searched prior to submitting. I did not find the **exact** answer to the question I have. [ELI5: Differences between Aspirin and Ibuprofen]( URL_0 ) [AskScience ASA anti-platelt therapy but not other NSAIDs]( URL_1 ) Rephrasing of the question 1: Why is Aspirin more notably considered a "blood thinner" and Ibuprofen an anti-inflammatory even though they inhibit the same enzymes, therefor being capable of completing the same function, but chronic Ibuprofen use has a side effect of increased risk for heart disease? Rephrasing of the question 2: What is the difference between aspirin and ibuprofen that causes them to specialize in different treatments? Anti-platelet therapy and pain relief respectively, even though they follow the same biochemical pathway, but both have slightly different adverse effects? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both aspirin and ibuprofen inhibit COX1 & COX2 yes but the degree and mechanism for each is different. Ibuprofen is a reversible inhibitor of COX2 so you only get the anti-platelet effects when you’re taking it. You have to keep taking high doses to get those anti-platelet benefits but you risk GI ulcers from constantly inhibiting COX1 and heart failure from your kidneys having to continually clear the large amount of drug. Aspirin is a irreversible inhibitor of COX2 so a little bit goes a long way. Once aspirin inhibits COX2 it is inhibited for the life of the platelet, about 8-9 days, so you don’t need to continually take high doses to reach therapeutic levels like you do with ibuprofen. EDIT: Aspirin is an irreversible COX 1 inhibitor, and that’s where platelet inhibition/antiplatelet works. My bad!",
"Actual ELI5: aspirin loves to hug a platelet and won't let go! So until a new platelet is made, aspirin will continue to help your blood thin, because the way the platelets are hugged by aspirin keeps the blood thin. But ibuprofen likes to only hug until something better comes along, so it won't keep the blood thin for a long time. So you have to keep taking ibuprofen to keep your blood thin. Plus, taking lotsa ibuprofen makes your tummy hurt and your heart tired :C That's what I gathered from the top comments anyway",
"Did you mean to submit this to r/askscience? Because this seems well above the eli5 level of knowledge and specificity.",
"ASA in low doses inhibits thromboxane, which is responsible for the cardioprotective anti-platelet activity with only minimal COX1/2 activity. Because ASA is causes irreversible blockade, the duration of the antiplatelet activity persists for the duration of the platelet (1w+). NSAIDs at typical doses(much higher) have much more effect on COX2, which through complex poorly understood mechanisms are thought to cause the increased cardiovascular risk. This is why many COX2 inhibitors were pulled from the market. Of note, NSAIDs also increase bleeding risk due to antiplatelet action, however, it is shorter duration due to the reversible inhibition opposed to irreversible inhibition with ASA. Sorry for grammar and spelling, writing on mobile.",
"ELI5: Imagine you are having guests over and there is a room that you don't want anyone to go into. If you simply close the door that's ibuprofen. If you lock the door and throw away the key that's asprin. More details: Both asprin and ibuprofen affect the production of compounds that contribute to platelet aggregation (clotting). The difference is that asprin is an irreversable inhibitor (locked door, no passsage because people can't open door) while ibuprofen is a reversible inhibitor (closed door, some passage if people choose to open door). Answers to your specific questions: 1) Both drugs act on COX enzymes (COX-1 AND COX-2) non-selectively. This just means that they affect both COX enzymes **not** that they affect them equally - that's the key point. COX-1 and COX-2 work together to regulate blood clotting. COX-1 promotes clotting (platelet aggregation) COX-2 inhibits it. Main side effects of COX-1 inhibition tend to be gastrointestinal. Main side effects of COX-2 inhibition tend to be cardiovascular. I feel like that answers your questions but I'm going to ramble. Asprin acts significantly more on COX-1 (anti-clotting effect), and does so irreversably. Ibuprofen acts on both to similar degrees, or at least not nearly as different as asprin, but reversibly. Inhibition of COX-2 is what is associated with cardivascular risk because you are removing the inhibition of platelet aggregation (basically making platelets more sticky so they clot). That's why COX-2 selective NSAIDs like Vioxx were pulled. 2) It is the difference between irreversible and reversible inhibition as well as the difference in affinity for each COX enzyme. Since asprin acts more on COX-1 its effect is primarily anti-clotting. Ibuprofen acts on COX-1 and COX-2 but because it's inhibition is reversible the anti-clotting effect is lower than asprin but the pain killing effect greater since it acts on COX-2 more than asprin. The main adverse effects of both asprin and ibuprofen are gastrointestinal like ulcers, stomach bleeding, stomach discomfort and upset. These are caused by inhibiting COX-1. The cardiovascular side effects of ibuprofen are related to COX-2, which asprin acts less on.",
"put this question on /r/medicine I can answer for Aspirin - Aspirin (ASA) is a platelet aggregation inhibitor, they decrease the formation of platelet plugs. It inhibits cyclooxygenase, an enzyme needed for the synthesis of thromboxane A2 (TXA2). By inhibiting TXA2, ASA decreases the formation of platelet and anticoagulant drugs, but has no effect on existing thrombi; it only curbs the formation of new thrombi. ELI5 - Aspirin works on not allowing a clot to form, but does not effect established clots. This is useful, because most heart attacks or strokes are caused by a clot.",
"Both of those should be out of your reach. I’m gonna warn your parents. Maybe you want to know what’s the difference between orange and purple Flintstones vitamin?"
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7j9ml3 | What are CASE tools in programming and how are they used | *Title* | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"CASE, Wow! Haven't heard that in a while Computer Aided Software Engineering. Back in the days when software was rarely properly designed, when it was, it was usually with a pen and paper on a spare piece of paper. Then someone came along and said, 'Let's use software to design our software!' and so we started using stuff like Visio and Rational to model the interfaces and classes and data we were going to implement in code. These days Agile has taken over and Aglie says we should let software design evolve naturally rather than designing everything up front so CASE tools aren't used that much anymore"
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7j9q2n | Boltzmann Brain & Entropy | My brain is confused by this and I want to be able to understand it: URL_0 In relation what exactly is entropy? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4oh4u"
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"text": [
"Let's talk about entropy first. Entropy is basically a measure how ordered something you are observing is. Take a piano for example. The instrument only really works when everything is build exactly right. It is in a very __well ordered__ state and is said to have __low entropy__. Suppose you, for some reason, decide to shred it to parts. After doing so, the pile left on the ground is in a very __unordered__ state, which corresponds to a __high entropy__. Now, the Boltzmann brain is, in it's most basic form simply a brain (human or not) that formed by chance. This may sound weird, but remember, current models of how early life on earth formed assume the exact same principle. Basic biomolecules formed by chance and evolved from there. A Boltzmann brain just skips these steps and directly forms from random."
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7j9rpd | How do those hand warmers work? The ones were you literally shake them and they heat up for hours? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4ooyp"
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"text": [
"There are iron bits inside that when exposed to oxygen (opening the package) cause them to oxidize (rust) which generates heat. There are also other things in the pouch to help out the process. But in shorts that’s what’s going on. If you open one up it basically looks like crushed charcoal with little iron shavings."
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7j9tpb | when babies have their teeth, why isn't the gum bleeding when the teeth break through? | I mean, the teeth break through flesh and it goes fairly fast too (my LO shows first signs of teething and like two or three days later half of the tooth is out already). Isn't it damaging the flesh? How can gums "split" to let the tooth through and stay unharmed at the same time? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are bleeding, but as it's happening in the mouth, their saliva is picking it up and they're swallowing it as it comes out. The bleeding also isn't very severe, so it may not look like they're bleeding, especially since the gums are already red from swelling. I only saw actual blood once when my daughter was teething and it was a very slow flow."
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7j9vom | How do you know how loud to talk in various settings? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4q5ya"
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"text": [
"Training. It is not something we know by instinct but rather it is learned from constant feedback from peers (usually parents). Source: am a parent and still have to tell my 9 year old when they are being too loud or quiet."
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7ja4nt | How do chemicals like formalin or formaldehyde preserve organic specimens in jars? | All those neat animals in jars you see in museums are pumped with chemicals and then put into a jar of formalin or some kind of alcohol - but how does that make the specimen last for possibly hundreds of years? I can read about what goes into the jars on google, but I don't really understand how it works? Like for example, the above chemicals don't react well with living human tissue, what's the difference when it's dead human (or other organic creature) tissue? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4qtbt"
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"text": [
"When body parts decompose it is because they’re being broken down by bacteria Formaldehyde and other embalming fluids work by “fixing” the cells such that the bacteria can’t break them down. It does this by reacting to connect the primary amine group in a protein to a nitrogen of another protein or DNA molecule."
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7ja86p | How do Menthol filters work in Cigarettes? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4rpjk"
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"text": [
"I thought the menthol was chemicals/flavoring(?) in the tobacco, and the filters were just filters."
],
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7ja8tg | How come when you’re listening to music that’s a while away, you can only hear the bass line? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4smqx"
],
"text": [
"The distance traveled by sound depends on its frequency. Lower frequencies are able to travel further than low frequencies. This is why certain animals like elephants and whales communicate across vast distances using very deep noises, at or below the limit of normal human hearing. So when you hear music far away, the higher tones have been filtered out because they didn't carry as far, and what remains is the bass."
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7jakm0 | What’s a Webhook? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4ukxl",
"dr4whlh"
],
"text": [
"Its a way for one server to subscribe to events on another. Lets say I had a server that parsed Reddit comments, for some reason. I *could* check every 5 minutes to see if there are any new comments, but then I could be up to 5 minutes out of date, and if no new comments where created its wasted time to check. Instead (if Reddit offered it) I could subscribe my server to their webhook, which is basically me asking reddit to send a message to some URL every time an update happens.",
"Lets imagine you have a friend called Tommy (the service sending you a webhook). You tell Tommy that when school finishes or the rain stops (actions to cause a webhook), he should come to your house and ring your doorbell (your server / application), and then you can make a decision based on those actions (your application logic). :)"
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7jan9a | What is predictive validity? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5e1qg"
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"text": [
"It means that one variable A is meaningfully able to predict another variable B. For example, if people's score on a driving test correlates very well with their likelihood of safe driving in the following year, that test has high predictive validity."
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7jb0bh | Genetics, I’m Native American and have been declared “naturally” immune to smallpox on my medical record. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4xtok",
"dr4xd7t"
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"text": [
"The fact you're immune is probably why your ancestors lived through the epidemic. Science is discovering people naturally immune to all kinds of things, even HIV. Usually it's a mutation in a cell surface protein or some other binding site the virus normally attaches to.",
"Viruses come equipped with chemical \"keys\" they use to bind to your cells, breach the protective shield, and hijack them. Cells being attacked then signal for help and initiate the immune response. Usually the viral \"key\" works, but some individuals have slightly different \"locks\" on their cell surfaces that immediately thwart that viruses' attack before it can even begin. That mutation is probably why your ancestors survived the smallpox plague that ravaged their neighbors."
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7jb6df | How is point Nemo, a sea point which is the farthest from any land mass, calculated? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr56w2t"
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"text": [
"Here is how I would do it manually: For a start, much of the sea can be dismissed as a matter of course. E.g. the entire Mediterranean Sea is nearer to land than a point in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The next step would be to take a compass set at some set range (say 1000 miles) and draw outlines from prominent points - Western Australia or Hawaii for example. Point Nemo must be outside these lines. By increasing this in steps, the area where point Nemo can be decreases. Eventually you get down to a single point. You would need to use a globe for this method due to the inaccuracies in flat projections."
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7jb7a0 | Why do other mammals all seem to love having their bellies rubbed, but for humans, tickling is bordering on unbearable? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4y582"
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"text": [
"Do they like it though? Dogs seem to enjoy it.. some cats will tolerate it.. but most other mammals don't like it. Horses are ticklish on their tummies and cows will kick you. These animals are eventually trained to tolerate human touch but don't really \"enjoy\" it. I said dogs seem to enjoy it. That's not the same as them actually loving it. They are showing their submissiveness to us. They like attention and they love being touched so, the combination makes it look like what they love is their tummy being touched but really what they love is our attention and the understanding that it is reaffirming a bond."
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7jb8ga | How does the price of cryptocurrencies go down? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr4yd0k",
"dr4yhwi"
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"text": [
"Things are only worth what people are willing to pay. If no one is willing to pay for a cryptocurrency at whatever the current price is, the price goes down.",
"If you have 10 shares of bitcoin for which somebody is willing to pay $10,000 each today, they are worth $10,000 each. Tomorrow if you can only find somebody willing to pay $9,000 for each then they are worth $9,000. Why does the price go up and down? That is what free markets do. What drives the free markets? Lots of speculation (bets that the price will go up and down) and response to public news. Somebody figures out how to hack the exchanges and steal all the bitcoin? The price collapses. Domino's starts accepting bitcoin as direct payment? That increases utility of the bitcoin, hence demand is stimulated so the price goes up. Feds announce that they are working on a way to track down all bitcoin owners and tax them? That makes more squeamish users dump their bitcoin onto the market, supply goes up, price goes down. Malicious people spread a rumor that bitcoin prices are about to plunge, people get scared and sell their bitcoin as fast as they can driving down the price, then those people who spread the rumor buy up all of the cheaper bitcoin which drives the price back up. And so on and so on."
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7jb9qx | Why is carbon such an ideal building block for life as we know it? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr4zf1z",
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"text": [
"It is chemically \"cheap\" in that there is lots and lots of it, freely available. It is stable, and is happy to form all kinds of bonds to create all kinds of molecules so it is incredibly useful. In biochemistry carbon is the equivalent of the red 2x4 Lego brick.",
"Carbon atoms build long chains, with the ability to add additional molecules along it. The only other atom that does that is silica, but that's less reactive and silica chains are not water stable. Carbon is. Carbon is also smaller than Silicon, so the chains made from it are more flexible. There isn't really any alternative to carbon as a building block.",
"Many reasons: 1) it's versatile. Carbon can form one to four stable bonds, and assume a large number of electron configurations to suit different chemical structures. Most elements strongly prefer a very specific format. 2) it's resilient. Unlike silicon, the carbon atom is well shielded when bonded. Silicon is much larger than the atoms it usually binds to, and this leaves the silicon core exposed to oxidative (electron thieving) attacks. Carbon resists this destructive chemistry, which is critical in an oxidative environment like Earth. 3) it's common. Carbon is produced in vast quantities by stellar fusion and is present in large quantities around younger stars. 4) it's not aggressive. Carbon isn't a very strong oxidizer (looking to steal electrons from someone) or a very strong reducer (looking to shoot electrons at someone). That lets it act as an intermediary between atoms that are. Agressive oxidizers like oxygen and agressive reducers like sodium will react violently and irreversibly with eachother, but interact more calmly with carbon. All that unique chemistry makes carbon essentially critical for the kinds of complex chemistry that makes life tick. None of the other elements can do so many different things so easily."
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7jbfgs | Why is it unhealthy to consume Human Meat and is it still unhealthy if you cook it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Prions are highly resistant to just about everything and it's a nasty way to die. You can avoid them by properly butchering but people who cannibalize usually do it out of need and aren't concerned with living long term. Sadly those who perform ritual cannibalism tend to eat the parts you shouldn't because they make human stew out of all the parts. They don't spit roast humans. They chop them up into bits. When you eat another animal you are putting yourself at risk to contracting whatever illness that animal is carrying. Most illnesses won't transmit from one species to another. You can't catch the majority of viruses a cow can catch so there isn't much worry. You can catch pretty much 100% of the illnesses another human carries.",
"It is unhealthy to consume human meat, both cooked and uncooked. Uncooked: Not only do you have the risks of eating raw meat, but blood-borne diseases/pathogens like HIV can also be transmitted through cannibalism. Cooked: While this will get rid of most of the nasties, prions are still an issue. Prions are screwed up proteins that cause a disease known as Kuru. Kuru takes years to show up, but when it does you'll lose coordination, have tremors, laugh uncontrollably, and eventually die as your body shuts down and can't fight off infection or other low-level diseases. Most people with Kuru die within a year and showing symptoms, but the incubation period can take decades.",
"Not sure why you'd want to eat the long pig. Have you seen them? Disgusting creatures. Long story short is you can eat human meat, and certainly people have done so for survival purposes. But cannibalism increases risks of certain diseases. Others have mentioned prions. These are defective human specific proteins that didn't fold quite right. The problem is they're a similar shape to useful proteins, to the point where the body can't really tell the difference. Think of like trying to screw a metric nut onto an imperial bolt. You might be able to get it to fit, but you're asking for trouble. Something's going to come loose or otherwise break eventually. Eventually these bad proteins build up and start blocking normal biological processes. In the brain, this causes a wasting disease similar to Alzheimer, called Kuru. It was first documented in an indigenous tribe in Papua New Guinea, who consumed their dead as part of a funerary ritual. One individual was infected with prions, and the others got the disease by consuming them. These prions aren't necessarily destroyed by cooking.",
"You're probably thinking of kuru, a prion disease. This is not eliminated by cooking. That being said, you can only be infected if you are eating an infected human. Other diseases can be present as well, and since the food is a *human* (you weirdo) any of them could also potentially infect you, although some may be eliminated by cooking (you weirdo).",
"The issue arises with [Prion diseases]( URL_0 ) which are improperly folded proteins. They can be passed through eating nerve and brain tissue. A common one you’ve probably heard of is mad cow.",
"Cows have cow parasites and cow diseases. Most of them cannot survive in a human host, making beef safer to eat. Humans have human parasites and disease, which will readily infect a human who eats the meat they reside in. Cooking will get rid of most, but not necessarily all of them.",
"The problem with humans eating humans isnt a problem on a single person scale. The big problem comes when people eat people often and generationally. First imagine eating a cow it has some cow disease and that gets passed to you but because it is a cow disease it doesnt know what to do and doesnt infect you. Now imagine eating a human who died of a human disease this can infect you so you have a higher chance of getting a deadly disease. This cause the rapid spread of disease in cultures that have rituals involving eating of their dead."
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7jbmcq | Why does frost accumulate on cars in the open air, but the cars under a carport don't have any frost? | Here is a picture: URL_0 My truck is frosted over completely, but this van is clear of all frost. Why does this happen? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr55597"
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"text": [
"The car port is giving off heat (heat retained throughout the day) and the car is giving off heat. When night time comes, a car's heat radiates outward in an open environment, so frost can occur. Under a carport, however, the heat given off by the car port and the car bounces back-and-forth between the two, retaining heat so that no frost will form. To put it another way, under an open enviroment the car is exhanging heat with the atmosphere (which at night is very cold), while under a carport, the car is exhanging heat with the carport (which is warmer than the open sky). EDIT: Wording"
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7jbmk7 | Are organisms that live in water affected by gravity in the same way as their out-of-water counterparts? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr52j2j"
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"text": [
"Organisms in water and on land are equally affected by gravity. The earth exerts a downward gravitational force on all organisms. This downward gravitational force is their weight. However for organisms in water, there is also an upward force (upthrust) acting on the organism by the water. So the resultant downward force acting on the organism in water is less. Resultant downward force = weight - upthrust . So the downward force acting on organisms in water is less than the downward force acting on organisms on land."
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7jbmpp | The Keaton Jones Controversy | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"- Keaton is being bullied. - His mom takes a video of him crying about it, posts it online. - Turns out she has a friends who has a friend who is someone, a blue check on twitter, lots of followers. - It goes viral, as these things do. - Celebrities start offering Keaton things, trips and such. Gets an invite to the Avengers:Infinity War premiere from Chris Evans - People start questioning whether it was a good parenting decision to put her son's humiliating moment online. Red flag #1. - Mom sets up a GoFundMe, people start donating. Red flag #2. - Black twitter puts on their Sherlock Holmes hats. - They find pictures posted by the mom of confederate flags, some racist stuff, lots of trump crap. Red flag #3. - Eventually it comes out that Keaton may have bullied for being different but he also may have been bullied for calling other students niggers. - On one hand, a kid can't choose his parents. On the other hand, actions have consequences. TL;DR: Keaton is Balloon Boy 2.0 Personally, I hope he still gets to go to the Avengers premiere but only gets his picture taken with Black Panther, War Machine & Falcon",
"Mom makes a video of her kid crying about being bullied and made fun of and beat up at school. Mom starts a GoFundMe and makes around 60k. Turns out that the kid actually just got beat up for repeatedly calling people niggers at school. Pictures of him and his family holding up confederate flags are discovered. Now the internet hates the kid and his family for extorting a bunch of people for a lot of money for no reason at all."
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7jbqkq | The fundamental attribution error | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You're out in public and you witness someone doing something rude or mean, like rushing a barista, cutting someone off in traffic or generally being difficult. You assume this is the way this person is, that this rude individual is just a mean person. Most people don't think, \"Obviously they're late for something, or they wouldn't drive like that.\" You've *fundamentally attributed* the rudeness or the meanness to that *person* rather than some circumstance in which *you would do the same thing*. It would probably take you 5 seconds to come up with three examples where you might rush a barista or drive a little aggressively, but you won't give the benefit of the doubt to another. That's the fundamental attribution error.",
"People tend to attribute their own behavior (particularly bad or rude behavior) to external factors, but attribute *other* peoples' behavior as representing who they fundamentally are as a person. In short, people judge others for doing certain things while making excuses for themselves when they do the exact same thing. \"*I* acted this way because I was having a bad day, I was in a hurry, it was an honest mistake, etc... *They* acted that way because they are a mean/bad/rude person.\"",
"People assume the best of themselves (and their close friends) and the worst of others. There's a joke that goes \"everyone who drives slower than me is an asshole, and everyone who drives faster than me is a maniac.\" It's that \"whatever I do is right, and even if wrong, I'm coming from a good place because I'm a good person.\" But you have one fleeting encounter with another person, if it's negative, that is their defining trait, and likely done out of malice."
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7jbrbl | What causes the monsoon season in India+Nepal? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Wind is air that moves from a place with higher pressure to a place with lower pressure. During summer months, sunlight heats up both the sea and land. But since land absorbs heat better, land get heated up to a higher temperature than sea. So the air above land is at a higher temperature, thus the air expands more and is less dense. So the air above the land is of a lower pressure than the air above the sea. So air flows from the air above the sea to the air above the land (higher pressure to lower pressure). Since seawater evaporates and become water vapour in air, more water vapour is also carried to land, resulting in more frequent and heavier rain. Thus resulting in monsoon."
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7jbvso | How do we know the universe is really expanding instead of photons losing energy as they travel through space and time? | I've heard that the background radiation of the universe proves the big bang but couldnt it also be from photons coming in from all directions that has degraded massively and normalized? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr5509d"
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"text": [
"The main answer to your question is because photons don't do that. they don't degrade, they travel until they hit something. Then they are absorbed. So no the background radiation is not degraded photons because photons don't degrade, and they aren't photons..."
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7jbwkp | Integumentary System | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr54byb"
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"text": [
"Skin keeps you warm in cold places, cool in warm places, and stops infections from getting into your blood. It keeps fluid from leaving your muscles, and helps you express emotion or relays messages."
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7jbymg | Law of Laplace. Why ventricular dilation leads to decreased cardiac output even with hypertrophy. | Yep Law of Laplace related to cardiology. Thanks! | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Heart failure is a tricky thing to explain, and is actually a series of problems that add up over time. The heart has 2 sides- a left side and a right side. The left side is bigger, thicker and stronger. That is because it has to pump blood the entire body about 60 times a minute. That's a lot of pressure it is working against, and a long network of blood vessels to fill. The right side of the heart is smaller, thinner and weaker. That's because it receives the blood from the whole body but at now very low pressure. It's only job is to push that blood into the nearby lungs which then get's sucked back into the left side and the whole thing starts again. It's a bit like blowing air down a long piece of hose- near your mouth the air would be quick, but near the end you would barely feel it. We can see the Law of Laplace at work here- larger spheres (ventricles) with thicker walls and more tension produce more pressure, while the inverse produces very little pressure. When the heart muscle thickens in the left side of the heart, it makes the space for blood smaller, and the contraction (tension) of the heart wall is weaker. This leads to a drop in pressure, and so blood backs up into the lungs. When blood backs up into the lungs, there is more pressure in the vessels of the lungs, which means the right side of the heart has to squeeze harder to push blood into that area. Trouble is, the right side isn't all that strong, and soon starts to dilate. This makes the right side bigger but much thinner and floppier, leading to less pressure. When all this happens together, we call it complete heart failure. When it happens only to one side, we call it left- or right-sided heart failure."
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7jc1ip | Why is the primary braking force on a motorcycle applied to the front wheel? | I got my motorcycle licence earlier this year and the question has been bugging me. I’ve been told that to decelerate the motorbike you use 70/30 on the front and back brake respectively. Wouldn’t it be better if the brake lever on the handlebars was for the rear wheel? (To avoid people locking up the front wheel and flipping over the handlebars) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Well this is the thing, the front wheel is way less likely to lock than the rear. As soon as you start applying braking force, the mass of you and the bike press the front suspension and consequently the front tire hard into the road. Unless you're on ice or something or properly standing water, you're very very unlikely to lock up the front wheel provided you don't snatch the brake on that hard that it doesn't get chance for the bike to load up the front suspension. Once that suspension is loaded up, you can keep squeezing that front brake lever up until the point that the back tire would start lifting off the road because the harder you brake, the harder the front wheel is being pressed against the road, and the more grip it gets. You can put a **lot** more stopping power into the front wheel. On the other hand, the back wheel has the opposite problem. As soon as you're braking it's throwing the weight forward **off** the back wheel, which makes it more likely to want to lock up. You get the most braking force of a tire on the road just before the wheel locks, so not only is that bad for your braking ability anyway, it reduces the control you have over the bike, because the back wheel can now slide around. So when they say the front wheel does most of your braking, it literally does. The back wheel physically can't put the same braking force into slowing the bike down as the front wheel can. It's the opposite situation as to why rear wheel drive cars can accelerate harder than front wheel drive, because the act of acceleration forces the back wheels into the ground which gives them more grip, whereas on the front wheels, acceleration lifts them up."
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7jcomv | Exhaustion of intellectual property rights. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5ezff"
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"text": [
"Let's say you write a book. A publisher prints it. I buy it. Now I can sell that book to anyone at all, and you can't stop me. Your copyright over that book was exhausted by selling it to me. Let's say you design a car. You patent everything you can about it. You sell me a car you built according to that design. I can sell that car even though it's covered by your patents. This is also known as the doctrine of first sale."
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7jctjw | When birds migrate (flying in the V formation) how do they determine which bird leads the flight? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5b99h",
"dr5f3xz",
"dr5bau8"
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"text": [
"They actually switch. They use the technique partially for the drafting effects that share wind resistance. The lead bird expends the most energy, so they will peel off to the rear and take a break after a while.",
"They don't determine... whoever feels like flying fastest becomes the lead, with everyone else drafting off of the wingtips of anyone in front of them. If you watch them long enough you'll see that sometimes the lead moves over by one, very fluidly and automatically, sometimes repeating enough that the 'V' becomes very lopsided. If the entire flock reacts to something in the air, there can be a momentary tangle but it quickly resolves into a 'V' again as each bird that doesn't feel like it is the strongest falls back to draft on another bird... first multiple little 'V's with moving points, eventually merging into one large 'V'. That 'V' behavior can be very well modeled by having any bird that is feeling tired fall back off the wing of the next bird. The 'V' reshapes itself, or enough birds do this that they all decide to land somewhere.",
"The birds in back are actually working less to fly forward because of the aerodynamic effect of that formation. So basically you get tired and fall behind, get energy and pull forward. Presumably some level of alpha mentality is involved but the gist of it is that they just want to keep up with their buddies and whoever flies fastest gets the lead"
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7jctk0 | The feeling you get when you stand up too quickly and you lose vision/get dizzy | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5ijga"
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"text": [
"That feeling has a medical term - orthostatic hypotension. Orthostatic is a fancy way to say while standing; hypotension means low blood pressure. When you're sitting down and resting, your blood pressure is lower than while you're standing. When you stand up suddenly, it can take a moment for the body to adjust and raise the blood pressure so that enough oxygen is going to your brain. In most people, the feeling of dizziness is brief and only happens occasionally. If the feeling doesn't go away or if it makes you faint, it might be because you're dehydrated or have some medical issue. If you tell a doctor about it, a nurse can take your blood pressure laying down, sitting, and then standing to see if there's a problem."
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7jcvjz | Why does hearing your own voice sound different to when somebody else hears it, or when you listen to it on video? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5bzwx"
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"text": [
"When you are speaking, your voice gets transmitted to your inner ear very efficiently by direct bone conduction through your skull, which gives a richer sound than is heard by anyone else (or by yourself in the form of a recording) when the sound has to pass through the air, instead of the bone."
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7jd7it | Why do many "bad habits" involve chewing on or picking at our bodies (nails, cuticles, lips, etc.)? Why is this so satisfying and hard to stop when it can be bad for our bodies? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Grooming each other is something primates do. It bonds us together and is comforting to both members. With physical contact being a less acceptable form of socialization, we are probably motivated to recreate the grooming 'program' on ourselves when we're stressed.",
"1. It's hard to stop once you've been doing it long enough because it becomes easier to do it then not to do it (i.e. to constantly remind yourself not to). 2. It's just difficult enough to provide your fingers/mouth/brain with something to focus your spare energy on but not difficult enough to make it not worthwhile. 3. Once started, leaving the results of a half-picked/chewed area is usually more irritating then to just see the picked/chewed area through until it's either no longer irritating or it's too painful to continue.",
"Skin picking disorder is considered a type of repetitive \"self-grooming\" behavior called \"Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior\". It is caused from stress or anxiety.",
"Can confirm, chewing my lips right now. My dog does the same thing (well, not her lips). She chews at her legs, like she's try to scratch a spot. Maybe it's something built into all mammals as a form of self-care?",
"I clench my teeth like crazy when I'm programming. I really don't notice until I go to get a drink or something and my jaw rests and it feels like it's deflating.",
"It's kind of comforting knowing that other people also chew the inside of their mouth/lips. That being said, I just caught myself doing it after reading this thread...",
"I think like all addictive tendencies it's a matter of dopamine levels. With these specifically, it's something akin to ticking boxes and clearing away unwanted emails. There was a recent scientific study on the front page a few weeks back about how doing such things gives gratification - even if only very subtle (I think it referred to getting rid of the red dots that come up when you don't look at email or social media notifications, and how clicking on them clears it and reinforces the behavior). Biologically, it's natural to do these things, although many of them are considered outside of cultural normativeness. Take picking your nose. Practically everyone on the planet does it, and it likely comes down to clearing out bacteria once it has collected up in there. Doing the action and getting those boogers out is good for you, even though you wouldn't want to do it in front of people you're trying to impress. In some form or another this is reinforced by either feeling good, or fresh, or otherwise not bad (eg. picking boogers out lets you breathe again, takes weight out of your nose - even these small things are desirable compared to the alternative). Your brain over time makes positively reinforced associations with doing the behavior. That's how we get personal grooming as a matter of hygiene reinforced over time. Then comes the old saying: \"Everything in moderation.\" While it's typical that almost everyone will observe this, at the same time almost everyone probably does some habit or activity more than moderately. This can take form in addictions, but on this scale it's less of an addiction than a compulsion to do a small habit. You may have one habit or all of these habits. Unless it's getting in your way and taking over a part of your life, then there's no need to worry, you are human like everyone else. If it's getting in the way, then tell your doctor. It's senseless to be dishonest with your doctors. They might tell you that there's a therapeutic solution to your habit, a medical solution, or that it's even less of something to worry about than you suspect.",
"It's always with us, so it's easier to pick up or resume bad habits. We also tend to do these things to comfort or console ourselves. It's all in our minds. We can, and frequently do, override senses of self preservation for to increase dopamine in our brains."
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7jdd2c | Jelly Belly sells irregular jelly beans as Belly Flops. How inefficient is their manufacturing process to generate so many irregulars? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr5g0gg"
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"text": [
"It's more that when you make billions of jelly beans, even if you have 99% of them be perfect, that 1% that aren't perfect will be in the millions."
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7jddk2 | How do scientists date fossils that are millennia old? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5n7xg"
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"text": [
"To find out the age of a fossil, you need to use an absolute dating technique, either on the fossil itself or (more usually) on the sediment it has been deposited in or that you know is the same age. The most common form of radiometric dating uses radioactive isotopes. There are dozens upon dozens of radioisotope systems that are used in geology and which you use depends on the age and type of sediment you are interested in. For millennia-old sediments, two systems that may be of interest are U-Th (often used for corals and stalagmites) and radiocarbon dating. It's important to mention that 1000 year old sediments are, geologically speaking, extremely young and it will generally take longer to form a fossil, apart from in certain environments. A lot of people assume that radiometric dating = carbon dating, when in actual fact carbon dating is barely ever used in geology because it's only useful for extremely recent sediments that contain organic matter (and there are also a host of problems associated with radiocarbon dating). There are other ways to carry out absolute dating, usually based on some clever chemistry like correlating concentrations of trace metals or measuring the magnetism of detrital iron grains, but radiometric dating is more widely used."
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7jdodx | Shortened URLs like goog.le, URL_1 , URL_0 | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5ih8r"
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"text": [
"Just because a domain is registered in Italy does not mean that the traffic is routed there. Remember, domain names are created for humans. Computers use IP addresses, not domain names when it comes to actual traffic routing. There is a service, called a DNS, that your ISP provides that translates domain names into IP addresses. All that the suffix of the domain name means is that the country in question is in charge of issuing the domain. It has nothing at all to do with routing."
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7jdonj | How does an animal/insect get trapped in amber or another preservative? Surely it doesn't just walk into it right? | title. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5ige1",
"dr5p1ds",
"dr5iqjx"
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"text": [
"In some cases the insects may be attracted to something in the sap (like sugar) and they just get stuck in it when they're trying to feed. In other cases they just land on it accidentally and never get out. I suspect that the small lizard preserved in amber (was on Reddit a couple of days ago) was probably attracted to insects stuck in the amber and got stuck itself, which happens with insect sticky traps these days as well.",
"Have you ever spilled anything on the corners of your mouth while you're drinking something? It's like that except once that little bit gets you, you're stuck and helpless for when the rest of it comes pouring down the side of the tree and covers you.",
"Why would that not be the case or flying and landing in it. Inscts are not that bright and can get stuck on thing. Fly paper and gule traps works ans can catch animals. Resin in trees is sticky and sometimes if the tree is damages it can flow a lot and even drip. I suspect a small insect can quite quickly be encased it in the correct circumstances."
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7jdryc | Methanol vs Ethanol | How are they made and are they interchangeable? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5k1mt",
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"text": [
"Methanol is a methyl group (a Carbon atom connected to three Hydrogen atoms) connected to an OH group (an Oxygen atom connected to a Hydrogen atom). Ethanol has the methyl group connected to a hydrocarbon link (a Carbon atom connected to two Hydrogen atoms with two link bonds available) connected to an OH group. These are different chemicals with different properties. Of particular interest, methanol is poisonous to humans and ethanol only makes humans drunk. Both are used in gasoline, though the methanol is usually MBTE. Ethanol is the one that's like 10% in ordinary gas and 80% in E85 gas. Both are flammable, so they are interchangeable if you want something to douse a building in before you burn it down (and you have a gas mask). Both can be solvents, but the whole \"poisonous to humans\" makes methanol hard to use in a lot of situations.",
"Alcohols are a category of chemicals that all have the structure X-OH, where X is some number of carbons in a chain. So you have: Methanol: C-OH Ethanol: C-C-OH Propanol: C-C-C-OH Butanol: C-C-C-C-OH Pentanol: C-C-C-C-C-OH Hexanol: C-C-C-C-C-C-OH And so on. Chemically they're similar to each other, but not completely interchangeable. Ethanol and methanol are *not* interchangeable as drinks: ethanol gets you drunk but methanol makes you blind.",
"You have just named two chemicals. What concept do you want explained here?"
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7jdvsr | How is comet Oumuamua (C/2017 U1) able to come closer to the sun than most of the planets in our solar system, and escape without going into solar orbit? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5k54n",
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"text": [
"It's going fast enough -- higher than *escape velocity* -- for its momentum to overpower gravity's pull.",
"It boils down to the fact that the asteroid has a high velocity relative to the sun. Imagine that you have a trampoline with a bowling ball on it. If you roll a baseball slowly on the trampoline, it will just sink into the bowling ball. If you roll the ball fast enough, it will still have its course changed towards the bowling ball, but it would still fly off the other side. The speed at which you would need to roll the baseball in order for it not to end up rolling back to the bowling ball is called the escape velocity. In the case of Oumuamua, it's essentially the baseball rolling on a trampoline with the bowling ball (aka the sun). The asteroid is going so fast that it escapes Sun's gravity before the sun can pull it in."
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7jekgh | Why do bandaids stop being sticky when you remove them? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Oil and skin flakes are now covering the glue. Also sweat and oil will break down the glue over time."
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7jekiq | why just going 100 mph on a roller coaster feel scary but going 100 mph in a car doesn’t? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"dr5t8d8"
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"text": [
"passenger cars don't swerve left and right up and down. if you ever get a ride-along in a F1 car, you'd be scared too.",
"The coaster is designed to have you pass by numerous objects just a couple of meters away. Doing that in a car would feel scary too. The coaster is also designed to give you clear visibility down at the track, less than a meter away. The enclosing structure of a car hides the view of the nearest part of the road.",
"A number of factors come into play. Psychologically you are aware before you board a rollercoaster that you are on a thrill ride. This causes a surge in adrenaline and triggers the fight or flight response. Secondly you're not enclosed as in a car and can experience the wind resistance. Thirdly, your sense of balance is off kilter as your body (inner ear and eyes) sense the constant bends and dips of a rollercoaster as opposed to a relatively smooth drive. Fourthly there is a sense of fear, fear of heights perhaps or mechanical failure that you don't generally speaking have when in a car. Finally you become desensitised to an experience once it happens regularly. Driving in a car is a relatively safe and uneventful every day occurrence and therefore we consider it boring. A rollercoaster ride isn't something we do regularly, but if we did we'd probably become bored of it too."
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7jeq61 | Why do we sleep better when its dark? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"dr5ws3j"
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"text": [
"Ahoy, matey! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [Why do we prefer to sleep in the dark? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_40 comments_) 1. [ELI5: why do you fall asleep better when its dark than when its light? ]( URL_3 ) ^(_6 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why do most people sleep in complete darkness? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why do humans need darkness and quiet to fall asleep? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_4 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why is it easier to sleep in the dark than in the light? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_1 comment_)",
"There is a small gland located in your brain called the pineal gland. It releases a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin helps to control your body's sleep cycle. Your body has its own internal clock that controls your sleep and wake cycle. For the most part, your body is in control of how much melatonin the pineal gland releases (you can take melatonin pills that increase the amount of melatonin your body produces, in order to help you sleep). There are special cells called photo receptors that are located in the retina in your eyes. These cells are sensitive to light and communicate to your brain the amount of light being picked up. More light means more stimuli in a room for your eyes to pick up on. Less light means less stimuli, which means less work for your eyes to do. Even when you close your eyes in a brightly lit room, the photo receptors are still being stimulated. Before the invention of artificial light, humans relied on these evolutionary traits to survive, and help their bodies understand when it was time to sleep. So when the sun sets, their bodies are preparing for a night's sleep. Consequently, when the sun rises in the morning, the body knows it's time to wake up. So in short, photo receptors in your eyes can detect light. These photo receptors then send that information to your brain, and your brain will control the amount of melatonin released, which is the hormone that makes you sleepy. Less light means the photo receptors tell your brain it's time to sleep, and your brain then releases melatonin. More light means these photo receptors tell your brain \"hey, it's not dark yet, not time for bed yet\" or \"there's light! Time to wake up!\", and so your brain will dial back the melatonin release."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xxs2k/eli5_why_do_humans_need_darkness_and_quiet_to/",
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kubjl/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_sleep_in_the_dark_than/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fsyrx/eli5_why_do_you_fall_asleep_better_when_its_dark/",
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7jer5y | How do public terminals wipe everything and reset every session? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5st7j"
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"text": [
"depends on how the IT dept setup the terminal. back in the day, the entire computer ran off a static disk image. after every logoff, the entire computer wiped itself and restored from the image. nowadays alot of it is just storing session data in a container. once session is gone, toss the container away. when you login, make a new container."
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7jfiph | Why does instant coffee taste bad if it's mixed with warm water and not boiling water? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dr5z331"
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"text": [
"Temperature affects our ability to taste. It's like how cold water \"tastes\" better than lukewarm water. The taste isn't really different, but your ability to taste. (So basically instant coffee always tastes like shit, but boiling water makes it too hot to taste)"
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7jfn0d | Why is requiring ID when voting considered voter suppression? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The main issue is that is it trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud from people misrepresenting their identities. Many people have expended a lot of effort to try to find some, and thus far have come up empty. So while in isolation it might seem to be an innocuous requirement, in practice, it is not, because it is being used selectively to gain a political advantage.",
"According to the ACLU website 11% of Americans (21 million people) do not have government issued photo ID and obtaining ID can be difficult and expensive. So to require individuals to have an ID, you are inherently blocking some individuals their right to vote. Not only that, but some states do not accept certain forms of ID as being \"valid\". Also, to your first poing about non-us citizens voting, there are measures in place for voters when they go and vote. Its not like people just walk in and fill out a ballot. At least in NY, I have to actually speak to somebody before being able to cast a ballot.",
"to get an id you need to provide multiple documents to your identity. you have to pay a fee and wait in line for hours. namely, poor people don't have the time/resources to jump through this extra hurdle. so it's seem as discrimination to the poor. you have to understand that a lot of the things you take for granted, like having cars, credit cards, bank accts, cell phones, etc. poor people may not have them.",
"This is a valid question, and one answered here a number of times. The answer is that no, 99.9% of adults don't have valid ids or need to use it regularly. Those who have expired or missing ids are disproportionately the poor (which in this country overlaps strongly with minorities) and urban populations (which also overlaps heavily with minorities in this country). Urban populations are less likely to be car centric, so not as drivers-license-by-default centric. The poor move more often (which can both cause losing the license, as well as creating discrepancies between ID info and other records, which some states treat as \"invalid\"), often have less flexibility with work to get to places primarily open during business hours, and are less likely to know about requirements ahead of time. All of this is floated to solve a problem, in person voting fraud, which is consistently shown not to actually be an issue (despite Trump's mysterious 3 million Californian voter claim). So, there isn't anything inherently racist about the idea of ID laws. However, when you make continuous efforts to fix something that isn't broken, and that solution \"just happens to\" have the side effect of making it so more minorities and more of your political adversaries are denied their right to vote.... then people question the purity of the motives of those who push it. It is similar to if democrats kept saying \"we should have centralized voting. All voting machines should be in cities of at least 500k people. That way it is easier to keep an eye out for fraud, and if you really want to vote, taking a road trip isn't too much to ask. Most people have cars. Oh, that just happens to mean white, rural Republican voters will vote less? Well that wasn't intentional.",
"It's a form of [Poll Tax]( URL_0 ) and is prohibited by law in the US.",
"One of the two major political parties generally garners a majority of the support from “un-IDable” voters."
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7jfuyz | Why are people's in-person vs online personalities so different? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The psychological influence of anonymity. People tend to think and behave differently when they believe there are no likely consequences from that because no one knows who they are. This also relates to what's considered 'mob behavior'. In a mob you become anonymous--like any animal in a school or herd--and subject to a collective tide of emotion in the group. Anonymity is both the greatest virtue and greatest curse of the Internet. Some architects refuse to design buildings over four storeys high because they fear that the sense of anonymity created by looking out windows and seeing people as masses of tiny creatures on the streets below can encourage a sociopathic mindset.",
"Trolling aside (and let's be honest, everyone trolls to some degree from time to time, because it's fun), what you are most likely noticing is not necessarily a different personality, but a different aptitude for communication. Speaking and writing are very different forms of communication, for several reasons. There's the urgency issue, for one. Having a conversation is an immediate type of communication - Person A says something, Person B responds right after that, rinse and repeat. Writing is leisurely. I can and absolutely have spent upwards of five solid minutes crafting the perfect sentence, especially when it comes to academic writing. You can't edit a conversation. Some people are great communicators on the fly; people like you and I cannot fathom this. Those folks are often careless writers, though. It's odd, but something I have consistently noticed throughout my life. Then there is the interpersonal issue, or lack thereof. For people who suffer from anxiety (generalized or social), shyness, confidence issues, certain neurological conditions such as Asperger's, etc., having a face-to-face conversation can be difficult, daunting, or even downright terrifying depending on how well they know a person, how comfortable they are with them, or their ability to cold-read physical, facial and tonal cues. These people (I fall under some of those categories; I'll venture that you may as well) can really suck at effective verbal communication. I find I'll often say things that are awkward, misunderstood or unintentionally offensive. I can also apparently display body language that others interpret negatively. My crossed arms and shifty eyes are for my own comfort / safety, but they don't understand or give a fuck about that. Lastly, knowledge and intelligence differentials can come into play. When we write, we are functionally using ourselves as an audience, so we just do our thing to the best of our abilities and leave it at that. When we converse, we try to match the other party on their level (higher or lower), with varying degrees of success. Wow, look at that wall o' text. But if you asked me the same question on the street, I'd probably be like, \"I dunno; lots of reasons. People be different, yo.\" and walk away."
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7jglgg | Why do stars twinkle while planets don't? | Also, why do some faint stars seem to disappear when we look directly at them, but can be noticed when we look at a nearby patch of sky? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Starlight is from so far away, it's essentially a single point of light with near zero diameter. When the atmosphere refracts that light, you can notice it more, because the amount of refraction is greater than the diameter of the source. Light from planets is refracted too, but since they're a lot closer the source isn't zero diameter, it's just slightly bigger. The refraction is more obscured by the diameter of the light source. So, planet light is dimmer light, but coming from a larger diameter source.",
"planets twinkle too. twinkle is caused by the Earth's atmosphere being inconsistent density which causes varying refraction angles. sometimes strong sometimes not. any light that goes thru the atmosphere twinkles. if you were on the ISS and look at the stars, they don't twinkle.",
"The answer to the second half of your question has to do with the two different types of light detecting cells in our eyes. They are called “rods” and “cones”. Rods are good at detecting dim objects (stars in this case) while cones are good at detecting bright objects. It just so happens that the center area of our vision is mostly handled by the cones, while our peripheral vision is handled more by the rods. So when you look a little off to the side, you’re forcing your eye to use the more light-sensitive rods. This technique is called “Averted vision.” Most people need to look 5-20 degrees to one side or the other for the best effect.",
"Stars = 1 pixel Planets = 2 or 3 pixels Earth's atmosphere continuously warps the light enough for 1 pixel to momentarily disappear. But usually not enough for 2 pixels.",
"Imagine you're looking down on two lights at the bottom of a pool. One is a tiny little LED and the other is a big fat glowing orb. Disturb the surface a **tiny** bit and the LED will seem to move around dramatically, but the big fat orb will seem to stay relatively still.",
"Umm, I'm surprised nobody actually explained it like ELI5?! Astronomer here, the stars twinkle because there is dust and particles in the air in our atmosphere. The stars themselves don't actually twinkle, it's the dust and stuff in between your vision and the stars light coming through the atmosphere. Astronomer tip: if stars are twinkling its a bad night to view the sky through a telescope, on nights that the stars don't twinkle is the best nights cause you have a more clear sky",
"The center of our vision is less light sensitive than the sides, so if you look directly at something, you see it with less sensitivity, or it seems darker, if you look at it out of the side of your eye it becomes brighter. For things just on the line between bright enough to see and not (stars and meteors and things), sometimes they disappear when you look directly at them.",
"They actually do twinkle. All light travelling through the atmosphere is messed with. Look at the wiggling setting sun as it sinks into a big body of water. Look down a long stretch of highway on a hot summer day. The stars that magically appear shows you have found your blind spot. There are two types of light sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye. The ones to the sides of your focal point are more light sensitive. For example, I cannot see the Pleiades unless I concentrate on it out of the corner of my eye, or use a telescope or binoculars. Have you ever wondered where the moon is at noon on the day of its New Moon phase?",
"Stars twinkle because they’re distance is so far away from the Earth that when its light passes through the atmosphere, it is bent countless times due to refraction, making it look like as if they were twinkling. Planets on the other hand do not twinkle. They are relatively closer to the Earth than those distant stars, so planets may seem larger in comparison. Due to its closeness, the light coming from these celestial bodies does not bend much due to Earth's atmosphere."
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7jgwe9 | Why doesn’t the human race lose traits like baldness or color blindness if they’re unnecessary? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dr6ah8p"
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"text": [
"Because traits like baldness and being colorblind don’t have a very late impact on people’s ability to pass on their genes. A man that goes bald at 50 hasn’t had his ability to reproduce lessened in anyway. Likewise, colorblind people don’t have any more difficulty reproducing or living long enough to reproduce than those of us that can see normally."
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7jh5nz | Why do muscles weaken severely after semi-intense to intense use? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"As in why aren't they as strong the hours/days after being fatigued?",
"This usually happens to me after using gardening equipment all day. I'm completely unable to lift my arms (can't even hold up a book to read), and it usually lasts 24-48 hours. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but this is how it's been explained to me: Muscle tissue is made up of fibers. Strenuously exerting your muscles actually tears those muscle fibers. Torn muscle fibers cause weakness in the muscle and require time for your body to repair. \"Building\" muscle is actually torn muscle tissue being repaired over and over (think repeatedly lifting weights at the gym). Hope this helps!"
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7jhcng | what does Doug Jones win mean in the grand scheme of things? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When faced with unanimous Democratic opposition in the Senate, Mitch McConnel can now lose only 1 Republican vote, and still get the legislation passed. Before he could lose 2, and get it passed. In 2018 it is now ever so slightly easier for Democrats to retake control of the Senate, as they need to flip 2 seats instead of 3. The math is still not on their side though. Also the whole public slap in the face for Trump thing."
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7jhjco | How does a gpu work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"I work in ASIC design (mostly analog and layout design, so bear with a relatively imprecise but hopefully mostly accurate answer) 1. a gpu core is designed to be very good (fast) at solving a certain kind of problem, namely things like simple addition and scaling, it pays for this by not being as general purpose as a normal computer cpu - which is in turn not as fast as a gpu can be (at certain problems). 1. GPU cores are relatively easy to pack on a chip because they are individually small compared to a CPU core, which lets a single chip work on multiple problems at once, if used correctly by software. For things like graphics processing, you need to do various types of scaling and addition problems for each frame you draw. A single GPU core is optimized for this problem. By using the multiple cores on a single chip/card (or multiple cards, even), you can work on multiple pieces of the frame at once, letting you draw more frames faster. The data that makes up these frames has to be stored in a buffer (or holding area) of some sort. This is why GPUs have large banks of high-speed memory - so that they may store the large amount of data that makes each frame and send it to the screen once it's ready, and do so quickly.",
"A normal computer (a CPU) is like a stream. The flow of instructions happen in sequence, one after the other. You can make the stream's path as long and as complicated as you want, and it's very easy to control. This is great for when you need to do complicated logic. The only problem is that the flow of water through the stream is slow. A GPU is like a tsunami. It can do a great many instructions at once! You can't make a long complicated paths of logic, but you can do a flood of short and simple operations very quickly. This is great for when you need to do graphics operations, like computing the lighting on millions of pixels sixty times a second.",
"The other answers explain it very well, but I'd like to go into a bit more detail. The main job of the GPU is to execute what are called *shader-programs*. These are usually \"small\" programs designed to do a very specific job during rendering. A very basic example would be the Fragment Shader (or Pixel Shader), that is called toward the end of the graphic pipeline (the process by which an image is rendered on your screen), and it does nothing other than being called for every pixel that should be rendered and output its color. Now, one thing you want the GPU to do in the Fragment Shader is compute lighting/illumination. Not to go into too much detail, but imagine you have a certain algorithm that computes a \"brightness\" value for your pixel. This algorithm will be repeated for each pixel, bearing the same instruction just different data (it's the same algorithm after all), and if you managed to construct your algorithm in such a way that it includes no conditionals (constructs like *if*/*else*), the GPU knows exactly what do to each time the shader-program is called, *before it even calls it*. This means, the GPU can build a pipeline with the instructions written in it, and then execute that pipeline for a number of pixels in parallel. Each instruction that is executed accesses different data and produces different results, but the instructions for each pixel are the same. This is called SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) and leads to a highly parallel execution of your shader for each pixel. Modern GPUs can run that shader for hundreds/thousands of pixels in parallel. In addition to that, they have dedicated circuits for certain math problems that appear frequently in 3D-geometry. Examples would be the Dot-Product, the Cross-Product or Matrix-Multiplication, those are basically hard-wired, removing the need to transfer values into different registers multiple times on each operation."
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