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isepzq
|
during the reign of julius caesar what year did the romans think it was like I know that it was 100 BCE to 44 BCE but at that point the no one knew about Jesus or ether parent.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"They didn't use the Julian or Gregorian calendar, the Romans used the Roman calendar. Imagine that. 46 BC was 708 \"Ab urbe condita\" or AUC, which means \"in the year since the City's founding\". To restate the obvious it was the 708th year since Rome was founded. Dates prior to that point could be defined similarly to that reference point. This is how many cultures measured time, by referencing the year in relation to known events such as how long a particular ruler had been in power. Someone might say \"In the third year of King Whoever...\" and that is how dates were conveyed.",
"Others have suggested auc, the chronology counting from the mythical foundation of the city of Rome, but the truth is that this was not used in the days of Julius Caesar. It was later applied to these years but not actively used much by the people who lived back then. What the roman Republic and early empire did use to count the years was the reign of the consuls. When specifying a specific year they would refer to the two consuls that held office during that time. For example the ear Caesar was born (100 BCE) would not have been refereed to as the year 654 AUC by most Romans but as the Year of the Consulship of Marius and Flaccus. This sort of reckoning of the year by who was in charge at the time was common throughout the world in the old days. You usually referred to years as the year x in the reign of some leader or other. the roman consul system had the advantage of consuls being elected at the same point each year."
],
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14,
5
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
iser3l
|
How does canned food remain edible for so long
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57dwuf"
],
"text": [
"The main thing that can spoil food, is microorganisms (usually bacteria) which can eat it and excrete toxins, and reproduce, creating more offspring to eat more of the food and convert it into toxins. Canned food has been sterilized with heat so that nothing inside can survive, and sealed so that nothing can get in."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
isf7we
|
Whats the function of the gyroscopic thing chickens do with heir heads?
|
You know the thing where you move their body but their head stays? Why do chickens do it but other animals lil humans don't?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57gr4b"
],
"text": [
"Actually we do too, but with our eyes. Eyes can't see well when they move, they have some delay until a sharp image is produced. So to get a clear vision our eyes and most birds heads lock onto something. You can try it yourself, just pan your vision sideways and you will notice it does very sharp steps and not one smooth movement."
],
"score": [
5
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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isfe9o
|
Why can’t consoles be upgraded like a pc can?
|
Is it possible to swap out components of a console like you could with a pc? Is there anything stopping you swapping for example the gpu in a PS4 or Xbox for something better, assuming it’s compatible?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g57kilm"
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"text": [
"Because they weren't designed that way, while PCs were designed to be modular. One of the main advantages of having consoles that way is that developers only have one set of hardware they need to develop their games for.",
"No. Those consoles have their GPU, CPU and RAM soldered directly to the board. You can't just take them off and replace them with something else."
],
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18,
3
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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isfhxu
|
What is the weird feeling in the mouth after eating pomegranates
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57hv8i"
],
"text": [
"Pomegranates contain tannins which are bitter and dry out your mouth. Tannins are also commonly found in wine (mainly red wine)."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
isfq4z
|
why do you sometimes only feel pain once you see the wound.
|
The title explains it sorry if I got the flair wrong.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57j4uv",
"g58uuwj"
],
"text": [
"Adrenalin is a great thing in your body that gets real eases when you are really active. It is helped to keep your body moving when you are really active so you don’t get tired and that’s why when a big thing happens when you get wounded, you can’t feel it because your blood is pumping a lot and your brain isn’t really thinking a whole lot. Sorry if this isn’t exactly accurate but I know why but I don’t know how to put it into a statement",
"One thing to consider here is that pain is both a neurological response, but also an emotional one. An injury mild enough not to cause serious harm, such as a minor cut or bruise, may not trigger any neurological response. It's only when you see the injury that the emotional reaction triggers the response. Look at when a toddler is walking and maybe trips. What's the first thing they do? It isn't to cry. The first thing they will do is to look at their parent(s) - if the parents laugh it off as a clumsy mistake, the child is likely to get up and react positively. If however the parents reaction is a concerned one, the child believes they have been injured and are in pain. So the short answer is that in humans the pain reaction is not a purely neurological response."
],
"score": [
8,
5
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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isfugz
|
5G would mean using internet, faster and better than it is currently. What is all this anti 5G about?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"My basic understanding of it is, people, have latched onto conspiracies that 5g is in the same wavelength as military weapons as well as a bunch of others conspiracies. The fact is 5g has been tested for decades and is safe to use.",
"Uneducated idiots that think that 5g is mind control, causes mental illness such as autism,. Causes cancer, causes carona virus. Basically, name a shitty thing in life, they'll blame it on 5g",
"Because some IDIOTS believe it acts as a carrier for coronavirus, there’s a whole conspiracy around it too.",
"All of the above, but I would like to mention that while the tin foil hats are all wrong, it’s easy to see where they are coming from because it will be very easy to see exactly where a person is and what they are doing in real time with 5G phones and in the wrong hands it could be a powerful surveillance tool."
],
"score": [
12,
11,
5,
3
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"text_urls": [
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[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
isfvtx
|
Is Gypsy a slur?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57jrid",
"g57kivz"
],
"text": [
"Yes. It's a slur used against the Romany people, a persecuted minority in Europe. While some modern Romany are okay with the word, many find it to be an offensive slur and prefer that others not use it.",
"There is actually a movie apt to explain this to a five year old. If you’ve ever seen the Disney movie The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, you’ve seen the Romani people like Esmarelda persecuted and attacked. And in reality they were banished and murdered for hundreds of years. The G word is what they were called by the people who hated them. That is why it is a slur, although it is fine for Romani people to self identify as such if they want to. They may choose to take back that word for themselves."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
isgxkk
|
Why aren't seatbelts at least an option or an requirement when riding the train/subway?
|
Trains are often going at speeds way faster than your average car so why not? I don't get why they aren't mandatory because crashes and accidents can happen even on rails. The aftermath will be worse compared to a car crash since there are more people on board with no safety precautions whatsoever.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57oyxd"
],
"text": [
"Subway cars are really big, which means that they're really hard to stop, which means that if they do collide with something they come to a stop slowly. What causes injuries in a collision isn't the collision itself, but rather the sudden stop. Because subway cars stop slowly, it isn't particularly dangerous to be in one during a collision. If you are going to be seriously injured or die in a subway collision its going to be because the car you're in was crushed, which resulted in you being squished. A seatbelt isn't going to do anything to help you under those conditions. In fact, seatbelts are more dangerous in a collision than just not having anything. Car style seatbelts, that are pulled tight against the seat, aren't practical in a subway. Loose, belt style seatbelts become projectiles during low speed collisions. These loose seatbelts will cause injuries to people that would have otherwise been uninjured in a low speed collision. Also, people get into fights on subways all the time. While seatbelts on a subway are useless for protecting you in the event of a collision, they do make effective weapons for people who are fighting. Finally, people regularly vandalize subways. Because of this, pretty much everything on a subway is made out of a material that is difficult to rip apart or destroy. Seatbelts are easy to vandalize and so wouldn't last very long in a typical subway environment."
],
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16
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ishe0c
|
what, specifically, is being transmitted/received by my cell phone when using it and where does that data physically go to get to its destination?
|
I'm curious as to what exactly my phone is doing. Its a transmitter and a receiver. Well....of what? What exactly is being sent?? And where does that data being sent/received physically go? I'm aware of cell towers, but are they just one of many points of travel?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g57rn5z"
],
"text": [
"Basically, the mobile phone network is very similar to the internet; your phone is like a computer, cell towers are like routers and there’s a host of technology on these devices which manages sending and receiving of messages. When you want to send a text you type it out on your phone. In the background that text is made into a data package which contains the text as a series of electrical signals. When sending the message your phone literally sends electrical signals (in the form of radio waves) to the nearest cell tower. Your phone knows which cell tower is closest because the phone is constantly sending out a signal which basically says ‘I’m here’ and the first tower which picks it up responds with ‘cool, I’m here’. That single cell tower is connected to other cell towers within its range (imagine a circle around each cell tower maybe 1 - 2km in radius, where the circles around different towers overlap these cells are connected and can send radio signals between each other), and those towers connect to still others to create a single network where signals bounce between different towers, so you can send a signal from Paris and this hops from cell tower to cell tower until it reaches its destination in Berlin. You might also find that the message spends some of its journey going through the internet instead of the cell network, because the system which provides the internet can also transmit and receive the same signals as your phone uses. That’s the bones of how cellular technology works - the two key technologies are signal modulation (creating a radio signal which your phone can encrypt as data and transmit, and your friends phone can receive and decrypt as text again) and networking (the cell towers in range with each other speak the same language and can send signals back and forth). In reality mobile tech is much more complex, you have to deal with how to make sure the network can manage lots of messages and avoid them getting jumbled up, how to find out the location of specific device within that network, how to manage longer data transmissions so that you can watch a video on your phone etc. The idea of different generations of cell technology (WAP - 3G - 4G - 5G etc) is that over time we’ve developed better ways to send and receive data through the network."
],
"score": [
5
],
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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ishqx0
|
If energy can't be destroyed then what happens to the energy when a battery dies?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57sbmi",
"g57ubkd"
],
"text": [
"It's been transferred either to the device you're powering with the battery or it's lost it's charge (chemical energy potential) because it's sat there so long. The energy in the battery is usually lost through the light and heat of the electronic device it's powering, or it's been sitting for a very long time.",
"The energy is simply moved somewhere else. Some turns into heat and is radiated. Some in light if there is a light source in the circuit. Maybe sound if there is a speaker in the circuit. It isn’t destroyed. It just was moved."
],
"score": [
7,
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
ishuud
|
How did the ocean become so salty while freshwater isn't?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57tbkm"
],
"text": [
"As water evaporates and forms rain it is pure water. When it falls on land, and drains towards the sea it brings minerals into solution. Then as the water evaporates off the ocean it leaves the mineral deposits behind. So the lowest points, the oceans, remains salty."
],
"score": [
22
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ishw0h
|
How do sperm cells move their tails if they are too small to develop muscles?
|
Yes, I did Google the answer but the explanations I found assumed quite a bit of knowledge on chemistry and would definitely not be suited for a five-year old!
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57stri"
],
"text": [
"Not the way you think according to this article. URL_0"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.livescience.com/sperm-swim-like-corkscrews.html"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ishyai
|
Why is it easier for us to fall asleep unintentionally and instead harder for us to fall asleep intentionally?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57w2hr"
],
"text": [
"It's because I'm thinking about it. Any time I'm up kinda late and worry about falling asleep quickly I have a harder time falling asleep than I would (and do/have) if I had simply rolled over and closed my eyes. Also, this is entirely separate from the \"wake up at 2am for no good reason then fall back to sleep an hour before my alarm\" thing my brain does occasionally (rn, in fact). That really is the best."
],
"score": [
7
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isis0s
|
Why do anti-depressants take so long (months) to work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"The ELI5 answer is that we don't really know, although there are some theories like antidepressants (SSRIs specifically) modifying the way your DNA creates cells that transport serotonin in the brain, which would take a few weeks before the old serotonin transporters are replaced. The effect that antidepressants have on brain chemistry and serotonin levels are relatively immediate, which also happens to be a reason we believe antidepressants don't work by just increasing serotonin.",
"Honestly nobody is entirely sure. Some people on here have posted comments that are commonly accepted theories such as the DNA modification theory or the build-up theory etc. But we don't really know. I'll link you to a scientific article, but it's definitely not 5-year old language. The only way to ELI5 is to say we don't know why anti-depressants work or don't work. We just know that (for some people) they do. [Link]( URL_0 )",
"I prescribe these medications to my patients so I might be able to help understand. They can take months to build up in the system. It's called \"steady state\", and once you take enough of them for enough time, the amount of medication in the bloodstream is constant and can continue to work in a therapeutic, or meaningful way. Sometimes we can take a person's blood to measure how much of the medication is in the bloodstream and then we know if the person is on a high enough dose or if they are taking too much and should take less.",
"Agree with other posters about theoretical nature of how antidepressant medications work. It's been well established for decades that SSRI administration correlates with brain anatomical changes(i.e. increased hippocampal dendritic density). URL_0 To the OP's original question, these neuroanatomical changes use second messenger systems that take time to activate and weeks to see some of the above brain anatomy changes. URL_1 . The best explanation I've heard from a patient who took antidepressants is that it helped/enabled them to think of something else other than how crippling/crushingly depressed/anxious they were. This allowed for them to meaningfully engage in counseling therapy rather than further falling into helplessness/hopelessness and psychache. The antidepressant did not make them happy at all, but it did open a metaphorical window for them to see beyond their psychache. From a neuropsychology perspective, it fits in line with some conceptualizations of the brain hippocampus role in the limbic system mediating emotions and memory formation.",
"Antidepressants fight depression by slightly turning down how strongly your brain \"feels\" emotions, kind of like turning the volume down on your TV. There are different kinds of antidepressants, but the most common types work by making the chemicals that your brain uses to send signals between brain cells (\"neurotransmitters\") stay in between the cells longer (this is the \"reuptake inhibition\" part of the \"reuptake inhibitor\" name these drugs are known by). Because the chemicals stay in between the cells longer, these chemicals stimulate the cells longer than would otherwise be without an antidepressant. The body, in its never-ending quest to maintain balance (\"homeostasis\"), actually makes itself less aware of this overstimulation by turning off some of the parts of the brain cells that \"feel\" how much of the chemicals are between them (\"receptor downregulation\"). The overall effect of this is the brain \"feels\" emotions less extremely (\"emotional blunting\"). If somebody is chronically depressed, antidepressants help your brain feel less of the \"down\" moods, making the \"lows\" not as low. However, the process of the brain cells changing how they sense the chemicals between them takes time - usually weeks. This same process lies behind the tolerance that users of certain types of non-antidepressant drugs get, but medically useful antidepressants develop that tolerance only in certain types of brain circuits (serotonergic and noradrenergic systems), rather than the types of cells that drugs of abuse typically target (GABAergic, dopaminergic, and opioid systems). So in a way, just like it takes the brain time to become tolerant to drugs of abuse, it takes the brain time to \"become tolerant\" of an antidepressant, which creates the overall effect of softening the depression - often at the expense of limiting how \"up\" someone can feel, too!",
"They balance the neurotransmitters in your brain that effect mood and emotion. The way my doctor explained this is you stomach has to learn it has to go to the brain rather than trying to digest it as food. So it takes a hit for the body to adjust and to help with this they start with smaller doses for one or two weeks to help the stomach adjust before it goes into the blood/brain barrier for you to finally feel the effects. It can be explained better but that's what they told me"
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"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/"
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[
"https://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1083328",
"https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/second-messenger-system#:~:text=Second%20messengers%20are%20small%20intracellular,%2C%20and%20Ca2%20%2B%20ions"
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isizf8
|
Please explain how ads on social media work?
|
Because I litterally have never clicked on an ad on a newsfeed, or bought anything. Aren't they just losing money from buying my data?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57y9a7",
"g57yjvv"
],
"text": [
"Even if you never do, some people will. Data collection is kind of like casting a net. Even if they *”miss”* you, they’ll “*catch*” a whole lotta others. So long as there’s a net profit to be made, data collection and targeted ads will continue. I’m guilty of clicking on a social media ad once or twice. Never bought anything but I did give the company some traffic. I have friends who buy stuff they see in ads all the time. I’m sure there are millions who do. Those of us clicking on ads more than make up for those of us who don’t",
"If nobody ever clicks, the company probably loses money. Companies lose money on advertising all the time, it's a gamble and it doesn't always work. Sometimes advertisements also help to just get the name of the company out. Even if I don't click the ad, I've still seen it and it's possible I'll mention it to someone else who might buy something or maybe I'll think of it next time I need a product like that."
],
"score": [
6,
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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isj2la
|
why is our urine clear when we drink alcohol?
|
When our urine is a dark colour, it means we are dehydrated. When we drink alcohol it dehydrates us. So why when we urinate our urine isn't a darker colour when we're intoxicated?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g57yfxu",
"g5895ll"
],
"text": [
"Alcohol dehydrates in the sense that it's a diaretic. Diaretics stimulate the body to expel water, and this will primarily be through urine. Your pee looks clear when you drink alcohol because your body is being stimulated to add a lot more water to your urine than it otherwise would.",
"No answers are spot on yet. So here ya go. Here’s what I learned in Med school. Alcohol is a very small molecule that is able to cross the super tight barriers of blood vessels in the brain (the blood brain barrier), and thus have numerous effects in brain function. One of the functions in an area called the hypothalamus and the pituitary is the production of hormones. Hormones travel in the blood and have functions throughout the body. Alcohol blocks the production of one such hormone called \"anti-diuretic hormone.\" This hormone would usually travel to the kidney, and tell them to stop letting out too much water (diuresis is dilution of urine, thus this process is called anti-diuresis). Because alcohol blocks the production of the anti-diuresis hormone, we see a double negative effect....diuresis happens! Thus, urine becomes dilute with more water. And voila, your urine is more clear. This is why drinking alcohol makes you dehydrated despite getting plenty of fluid in with all those beers! The kidneys are tricked into making the urine too dilute, and that’s why you become dehydrated."
],
"score": [
10,
4
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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isj44e
|
Why is that 100% branded cotton T-shirt from some designer/premium brands feel so much different from normal store branded ones? Is it the thread count or something else?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5832kz"
],
"text": [
"There is a lot that goes into fabric preparation. In the case of cotton there are a ton of chemicals used to prepare it for use in addition to whatever they use for dying the fabric to another color. More expensive cotton has more attention to keeping the cotton softer, less expensive cotton has more economical treatment. Also there is an incredible mark up on basic clothing items so they may not actually be a lot more expensive to make it softer, just trying to make it seem more lux. Also, factories may be contracted to produce for different brands so your hanes shirt and your Calvin Klein May have come from the same place, just on different days. If you’d like to learn more, there was an amazing story on marketplace radio in 2013 where they follow the manufacturing lifecycle of a tshirt."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isjuno
|
Why Aren't There Any Living Gigantic Marine Reptiles Today?
|
In the Prehistoric Times, there were a lot of Gigantic Reptiles roaming the seas, like ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs. I understand why there are no gigantic land mammals (I mean as Gigantic as the Large Sauropods in the Prehistoric Times, even larger than Indricotheriums) today (because of the size and weight limitations set by live birth), but why aren't there any Gigantic Sea Reptiles Today like there were in the Prehistoric times?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g582ggu",
"g585mbp"
],
"text": [
"There are plenty of gigantic land mammals, elephants come to mind. Gigantic reptiles both terrestrial and marine disappeared in the same time; the environment changed, they got outcompeted by other animals and now the niches they held are occupied by other animals.",
"The mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs also exterminated the large marine reptiles. Once the devastation subsided, only small animals remained and a new group of oceanic monstrosities would have to evolve. Mammals were better positioned to survive the environmental collapse, and so they were the ones with a jump-start that eventually repopulated the seas with gigantic whales. Now the environmental niche is filled, and the surviving reptiles have adapted to (or, like a crocodile, remained unchanged for) other environments"
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isjyqx
|
how does a digital watch know how long a second is?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5833dq",
"g5837oi"
],
"text": [
"There's a few different ways. The most common in our life is a tiny quartz crystal that when supplied with a small voltage, vibrates at an incredibly consistent frequency, which our computer can measure.",
"Digital watches use a piece of quartz that when you apply electricity to it, it vibrates. The watch's electronics are able to count these vibrations. When a certain number of vibrations are counted, 1 second has passed."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iskjfm
|
What's a credit score and how does it work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58admo"
],
"text": [
"How stuff works also has a good article - URL_0 Basically, it's like that Permanent Record your teacher threatens you with. It's a history of your debt to income ratio, your debt to credit ratio, how many lines of credit you have (aka, how many credit cards), and how old those lines of credit are. This score tells financial people like lenders how much of a risk you are. Do you have a reputation for missing payments or do you have a lot of people you owe money to?"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-management/credit-score.htm"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
islpfu
|
Why does Windows have "Program Files" and "Program Files (x86)"?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58fg07",
"g58inoj",
"g58iaze"
],
"text": [
"X86 = 32-bit programs, because Windows supports both 64-bit and 32-bit programs. Anything that goes into the (x86) folder runs through a different set of instructions to ensure it functions properly. URL_0",
"Program Files (x86) represents applications programmed for 32-bit operating systems. The reason to have the two folders is that you want to be able to install (potentially) a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the same application. Windows exposes a special Environment Variable for applications to call. They can ask for **%PROGRAMFILES%**. If a 32-bit program does it, they get the x86 directory, and if a 64-bit program does it, they get the non-x86 directory. This means that you can use the same code for working with both, and let Windows decide how to handle everything.",
"This is from when 64 bit processors were introduced. Most applications were 32 bit. This is fine as the new processors were backwards compatible so a 64 bit processor could run 32 bit applications. However it was not as simple as that. Because while the processor could run 32 bit applications this required 32 bit libraries (dll) and special handling by the operating system. So you ended up with sort of two different versions of the operating system, one for 32 bit applications and one for 64 bit applications. So it made sense to split these into different folders. You can see similar things on Linux and OSX. Most applications are now 64 bit so this is less of a problem and compatibility for 32 bit applications is going away."
],
"score": [
21,
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/wow64-implementation-details?redirectedfrom=MSDN"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
islq7h
|
the basics of rotating gears
|
In [this]( URL_0 ) video adding more gears to the system seems to lead to more RPMs on the wheel. But in [this]( URL_1 ) video shows the addition of gears to a system slows the later gears down in the sequence. Does it have everything to do with the size of the gear and number of teeth in a gear? How they’re put together in the sequence?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58dhjf"
],
"text": [
"Yes, it’s all About the gear ratio, either the number of teeth or the diameter/radius of the gears. If you have a big gear going to a small gear, youll get faster rotation at the cost of less turning force. If you go the other way, small gear to big gear you’ll get more turning force at the expense of speed. You can do it fast and a lot of effort or slow with little effort, that’s the trade off you make with gears"
],
"score": [
12
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ism2bb
|
How is Vinegar made?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58gvc8"
],
"text": [
"Vinegar is [acetic acid]( URL_0 ), the acid form of [ethanol]( URL_1 ), which is the alcohol we can consume. So, historically, vinegar was made by letting wine get contaminated with bacteria which would cause it to [ferment]( URL_2 ) (turn the alcohol into vinegar). Nowadays, they can use chemical reactions to directly produce the acetic acid, to various concentrations (glacial acetic acid for example)."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetic_acid",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermentation_in_food_processing"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ism5p9
|
Why do people sometimes feel their heartbeats in random body parts, like in an eye or a foot?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58hses"
],
"text": [
"The blood that is being pumped by the heart is the same blood that is in the eye or foot, being pumped at the same rhythm as the heart. It’s weaker as it’s further away but you can still sometimes feel it. The reason paramedics check for a pulse on your neck/wrist is because the blood vessels here happen to be large and close to the surface, so you are more likely to feel it than anywhere else in The body."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ism8qj
|
When you have a cold, does blowing your nose have any real benefit aside from temporary relief)?
|
If your nose just gets immediately congested again, is there any point in blowing your nose?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58hu92",
"g58i8m8"
],
"text": [
"The mucus needs to go somewhere - if you're not blowing it out your nose, it's draining down the back of your throat. The more drains down the back of your throat, the more likely you are to get throat irritation, or that some of it will be aspirated into the lungs, potentially causing an infection in the lungs.",
"If you're blowing hard to clear your airway, then no, you're just going to risk damaging your inner ears or nasal paths. If the restriction in your nasal passages is mild enough that you can actually blow out mucus, then it can help. When you have a bunch of mucus in your sinuses, it ultimately has to drain somewhere. If you can't blow it out your nose, it'll drain down your esophagus, which can lead to a sore throat or an upset stomach."
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ismc2k
|
Why is the Gulf stream weakening?
|
I get that climate change is to blame, but I'm not really understanding why that's the case
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58lf7f",
"g58lm56",
"g58m7ju"
],
"text": [
"\"Normally, the current is driven by the cooling of water as it travels to the northern part of the Atlantic. As water cools, it becomes denser and sinks. This pulls warm water from the south to replace it. But with climate change, melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice are overwhelming the system with fresh water, which is less dense and therefore less heavy than salt water, so less water sinks and less warm water is drawn from the south, disrupting the entire system.\" URL_0",
"The Gulf Stream is part of a planet-wide conveyor belt system for water, with warm currents near the surface and the cold ones further down. As the water from the Gulf of Mexico flows north, it cools down, with some of it eventually freezing. Since the salt doesn't get frozen into the ice, the remaining water is denser and thus heavier, so it sinks downwards and becomes a south-bound current (for a map of the system, check [here]( URL_0 )). This \"pump\" is weakening since less and less water is freezing due to climate change. Also, more and more fresh water previously bound up in Greenland ice for tens of thousands of years is now flowing into the sea, further diluting the salt water and further weaking the conveyor belt effect. That's how I understand it at least.",
"The \"pump\" that powers the gulf stream is cold salt water sinking near Greenland. When the ice on Greenland melts, it runs into the ocean. Since fresh water is less dense that salt water this dilutes the sinking water giving it less gravitational potential energy. Weather causes the current slowdown, it's about 10%. But, the weather will change and this effect will go away in a few years. However, the long term climate trajectory is not for a more robust Gulf Stream. The overall effects might be less about the Gulf Stream than Climate Change in general."
],
"score": [
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.theinvadingsea.com/2019/08/03/the-gulf-stream-is-slowing-down-that-could-mean-rising-seas-and-a-hotter-florida/"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thermohaline_Circulation_2.png"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ismv9s
|
How do allergies work? How can they kill you?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58nirh",
"g58owxk"
],
"text": [
"They are your immune system reacting some something otherwise mundane in the environment. Some responses are annoying but otherwise not life-threatening such as sneezing, itching, and runny nose. But some can be potentially lethal such as swelling, especially if that swelling occurs in your throat, cutting off your ability to breathe.",
"Almost any little molecular pattern can be recognized by certain cells of the immune system. This includes virtually anything that would be bad for us, but also virtually anything that would be beneficial or harmless. To help decide how it should treat something new that it has no prior info on, the immune system relies on other context clues. For instance, we know that route of presentation matters a lot; something that got in via your digestive system is a lot more likely to be okay than a foreign substance that's first detected under your skin. Additionally, the presence of specific molecules that are associated with pathogens can skew a response towards immunity, rather than tolerance. Essentially, an allergy is when something harmless is somehow registered as harmful, and treated as such. There are many, many questions still unsolved about the exact how and why. As for how they can kill you: in the more severe cases, the immune system responds to the presence of the allergen by releasing inflammation-driving compounds into the blood. These will do all sorts of things, including causing blood vessels to turn leaky and causing tissues all around the body to swell. This can cause a person's blood pressure to nosedive, or block their airways and choke them."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isn2ry
|
Why do militaries use depleted uranium in armor and ammunition
|
I have heard about depleted uranium shells and armor before but i wanna know why of all things you would use uranium as a metal compared to more conventional metal types.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58sukg",
"g58osu3",
"g5a2zkp",
"g58onp2",
"g58p1j0",
"g592dmn"
],
"text": [
"It has properties that make it ideal for military usage, both defensively and offensively. It's also cheap and readily available. **Density**- DU is very dense, which means it can absorb a lot of energy, like from the impact of an incoming projectile when used in armor plating. Conversely, as a projectile it can *carry* a lot of energy- meaning it can be highly destructive for its size when placed into the core of a conventional bullet or projectile. **Anti-Tank Weapons**- A big challenge on the battlefield is neutralizing enemy armor, such as tanks. Not only do you need a projectile that will penetrate its thick armor, but you also need to disable it- such as by killing the crew inside. A DU projectile can do both of those things because it has two very appealing properties- it fractures on impact into razor sharp pieces and it readily ignites into ferocious flames when it does. So with DU you have a high energy projectile that punches through armor plating, breaks into a swarm of deadly sharp spikes, and then incinerates the crew inside in a molten fireball. That makes it exceptionally appealing considering those rounds can be fired from a man-portable weapon.",
"It's really heavy. That's all there really is to it. There's a limit to how fast you can get bullets going, and the how-hard-it-hits factor is determined by speed times mass. So you want the heaviest (ie, densest, because there are also limitations on size) projectile possible. That's uranium. Pretty much everything else that people will tell you about uranium isn't really about how *uranium is great at this* as much as how *uranium doesn't suck at this as much as you might have though, considering we only picked it because it was super-heavy.*",
"It is as dense and heavy as metals can get. You want that in the core of bullet because more density/mass = more energy which, in turn = better armor-piercing capability. DU also tends to break apart into deadly shrapnel rather than mushrooming like other metals do. That can be devastating to the people inside the target.",
"It is very dense and it is really cheap to get since it's both found in nature and a byproduct of nuclear energy/production processes. The isotope that is used, U-235, only emits alpha particles so it's not *too* dangerous as long as you're not licking it or eating it. Alpha particles can be \"stopped\" by putting a few feet of distance between you and the radioactive source, or using virtually any kind of material (from paper to lead or anything in between) to create a shield.",
"Depleted Uranium is very dense. It's denser that tungsten so it does a better job of being heavy and still fitting into a cannon barrel.",
"The common answer is 'density' and that is pretty much right, but wait, isn't tungsten more dense than depleted uranium? Yes, yes it is. Keep in mind that this is for a military application. A depleted uranium shell going through armor is essentially incendiary, so whatever is on the inside of the target is going to get a flaming piece of metal flying through their compartment which will ignite things inside. It is a bad day for that target. Of you were in space and firing dense projectiles, you would probably stick with tungsten. In space the flame isn't that helpful, punching a hole in the side of whatever your target is and getting it to de-pressurize is very helpful."
],
"score": [
530,
39,
16,
11,
9,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isn8dv
|
What is Check, Checkmate, and Stalemate?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58pgdz",
"g58phsm",
"g58psy2"
],
"text": [
"Check means the king is currently in danger of being taken but has an escape route. Checkmate means the king is in danger of being taken amd cannot escape. Stalemate is when the king is not in check but any move made by the person in stalemate would put them in check so they have no legal moves. A stalemate is a draw.",
"In chess, check is when your next move would allow you to take the king. Checkmate is when your next move would allow you take the king, and your opponent can't stop it. Stalemate is your opponent is not in check, but has no legal move.",
"Check- one of your pieces is directly threatening your opponents King, but there is some move that can be made to immediately stop it. This does not end the game. Checkmate- check, except that there are no legal moves that take the king out of check. This wins the game. Stalemate- no legal moves can be made, but the king is not directly threatened. This ends the game in a tie."
],
"score": [
10,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isnj1z
|
How do fizzy drinks like Diet Coke, manage to have no calories and sugar whilst keeping a near exact taste to their sugary counterparts?
|
Usually found Diet tastes better too. Edit: Thanks for all the info guys!
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58s3ma",
"g58shd8",
"g58sxgd",
"g58sl60",
"g58sm3e"
],
"text": [
"A lot of people *don't* think they taste \"nearly exactly\" like their counterparts. Otherwise, there are a lot of artificial and natural sweeteners out there on the market that have no caloric content to them. Throw in a little Stevia or Aspartame and you've got a sweet-tasting drink without the calories.",
"The only thing in a fuzzy drink with calories (or energy content) is the sugar. Sugar just happens to taste sweet. At some point, clever people worked out how to make something taste sweet without sugar - that's what artificial sweeteners like saccharine, aspartame etc do.",
"Most people don't think diet drinks taste the same or better. Most people think they taste worse. There have been improvements over time in how they taste. But the answer to your question is: artificial sweeteners Sugar is sweet. But other chemicals are too. So they take out the sugar, and use an artificial sweetener.",
"Sugar tastes sweet. Our bodies can digest sugar and turn into energy. Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that scientists made that taste sweet, but our bodies can't digest them and turn them into energy. Diet sodas use those chemicals to trick our tongues into finding them sweet like sugar, but our digestive system gets nothing out of them.",
"They use artificial sweeteners which are actually sweeter than sugar, but our bodies can't digest them, they go right through us, so they can say 0 calories (it's actually a small amount of calories, but the Food and Drug Admin says if calories per serving is less than 5, they can say zero). Aspartame is the popular one, also called Nutrasweet. This is the primary sweetener in Diet Coke. Other diet drinks (and drinks like Coke Zero) usually use a combination of sweeteners to reduce their bitter aftertaste. Acesulfame Potassium (aka Ace K) is a popular one to combine with Nutrasweet."
],
"score": [
9,
7,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iso56y
|
Why Can’t the worlds Billionaires feed poor countries?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58xjmn",
"g592z6y",
"g594kh8"
],
"text": [
"The money cost of \"solving world hunger\" is quite low. The political complications are high. Most starvation in the world is caused by things like wars and other political conflicts. Getting the food to the people who need it is the problem, not buying it. That means the billionaires would either need to bribe warlords (counterproductive) or get their own private militaries (expensive, and also probably not something you want to happen)",
"Aid is a fickle thing. Suppose you pay for roads and wells to be built in Africa. In a few years they will need repair. Unless those roads and wells are producing more wealth, they cannot be sustained. The more infrastructure you have, the greater the maintenance cost. And so the amount of sustainable infrastructure is limited by the productivity of the economy. Moreover, Aid given foollishly can reduce the accountability of the government, encourage corruption, and fail to deal with underlying problems. So why are some economies unproductive? A large number of people in Africa rely on subsistence farming. This is where people grow up on a farm, and spend their whole life working that farm to provide enough from themselves only. As no surplass is created, it does not contribute to an economy. Also, economic productivity requires that you can trade with other regions. For this, you need to transport to the coast, where you can ship your produce to a global market. Or you need easy transport to other neighbouring regions. The geography of Africa is very bad for this. The rivers have many waterfalls, making them unsuitable for transport. The land itself is difficult to traverse. The continent has a huge amount of land area, compared to the coastline. Meaning that many people have no way of accessing the global market. In other words, many countries are **Land-locked.** It is no surprise that international markets flourished from countries with lots of coastline - northern Europe/Scandinavia! In addition, many countries near the equator, such as africa, suffer from tropical diseases. Livestock are devastated by diseases carried by insects. A large amount of research is in progress to eradicate these diseases, which will hugely improve agriculture output. Furthermore, investment in these countries is unattractive, due to disease, war, instability, and weak institutions. For example, nobody will invest money into building a company there, if they cannot be guaranteed **property rights.** Property rights mean that if you pay for something, it is yours, and can be backed up by legal enforcement. Therefore, legal instittions, paperwork, beaurocracy etc, are required for an economy. There are great resources in africa. However, those who want to mine gold, must do so with an armed militia to protect them. This is not how businesses should operate. And this kind of operation leads to corruption. Property rights, justice, and financial transparaency are essential. This is not helped by war. And a major driver for war recently has been disputes over territory. When Africa was colonised, borders were drawn which did not match the demographics of ethinic identities. As such, when the colonies left, many wars have been fought over redrawing the borders. For example, Following colonisation, Ethiopia was left Land-Locked by a newly formed country along the coast. This resulted in decades of war. Thankfully, Ethiopia now has some access to the sea, due to a newly built railway by china. Billionaires may seem very rich and powerful, but this is only the case within the context of a functioning economy. The rich western world is tiny compared to the dormant potential of the undeveloped world. Google cannot solve these problems, they are too vast. The goal is to bring these ecomonmies to the edge of the '**Hockey Stick**'. This phrase refers to how the wealth of an ecomony changes over time. They tend to grow very little. But then, when the conditions are right, they suddenly grow exponentilally. So the growth over time looks like a hockey stick. This has been seen in china, india and vietnam. The recent boom of china has lifted 500 million people out of poverty. This will soon happen in Africa.",
"Greed and apathy, plain and simple. Let's take a look at Jeff Bezos as an example, now that he's got around 200 billion dollars to his name. He earns my entire yearly salary (75k) *in under half a minute,* every minute of every day. Even if I had zero expenses it would take me **millions and millions of years of working to amass that kind of wealth.** He has so much wealth that even if he gave away $1,000,000 *every day for the rest of his life,* the interest he earns on his remaining wealth would mean that he would still get richer, not poorer. Using conservative estimates he earns about $12,700,000 in interest *every day,* which means that he could give away around $4,639,000,000 a year and *still* break even. We might not be able to feed the entire world on $4.6 billion, but we could make a pretty damn big dent in the problem. And that's just one billionaire who isn't even losing money in this scenario. The reason comes down to greed and apathy. There's no real return on investment for feeding the whole world, therefore they won't do it. **Edit:** This is rough napkin math that glosses over the details, but it's important to recognize the sheer absurd scale of resources these people have, especially when non-billionaires make piddly excuses for them that amount to \"it's complicated to implement, therefore we shouldn't try.\" When you have more money to your name *than most countries,* you have an obligation to do good with that wealth."
],
"score": [
25,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iso61a
|
Why do blinking lights cause seizures?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g594b10"
],
"text": [
"The specific pattern of the flashing lights affects the brain and causes bursts of electrical signals that stop normal electrical function. To put it simply, patterns in light makes the brain stop sending messages like it normally would. Each person is different and gets triggered by different kinds of patterns."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isoacw
|
Why are there only two candidates in the US presidential election? (IE: Why are there only two candidates left for people to vote on, instead of the entire initial candidate pool?)
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g58xszt"
],
"text": [
"America has what is called \"Primary elections\" where members of a political party vote for which of the many people running for President will be the official nominee of their party, in the spring of the election year. So this year, Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren, Yang, and Biden were all competing in the primary elections, and Biden got the most votes in that process and became the Democratic Party's nominee for president. The idea here is that if you have 5 people from Party A running for president, and 1 person from Party B running for president, Party B is going to win, because all of the votes from Party A will be divided between those 5, so none of them will get a majority, whereas all the votes from Party B will go to one person. So the political parties hold \"Primary Elections\" as a way for the public to choose who they want as their candidate. & #x200B; Some people feel that switching to a different voting system, such as ranked choice voting, would make that process unnecessary, but with the current American voting system, that is how things are. (Changing America's voting system is very difficult, but not impossible.)"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isowxl
|
Why is there a national coin shortage in the US?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g593l6y"
],
"text": [
"It mostly stems from the pandemic. Fewer people are paying with cash/coin so there is little flow going into stores, which in turn pass it to banks, which in turn typically exchange/give coins with/to stores. In addition, the Federal Reserve is pulling back on letting coinage out due to their own issues with the pandemic. Stores are still paying change to people using coins. This lessens their supply but also creates a demand for the coins (the stores need coins to be able to pay out coins.) Not to mention, most people who get coins as change are holding onto it until they can either deposit it into a bank (which typically can't be done via drive thru and many banks still have closed lobbies) or they simply don't plan on spending it since it's safer to reduce contact with other people at this time."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isoxke
|
How do we know that plastic bottles will take 450 years to decompose?
|
I realize there should be some kind of chemical component analysis involved, but not sure how it works. Also very curious, how would it look?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g592p4t",
"g593ht4"
],
"text": [
"You can guage the rate at which it is currently decomposing then extrapolate that to how long it would take. We have decades worth of plastic to sample the varying decomposition rates of the different types of plastic.",
"I general, carbon to carbon bonds are very stable, and the math to describe the formation, and decomposition rate of those bonds has been worked out on very small pieces of plastic, exposed to scaled up environmental stressed. By measuring the rate of destruction to these scaled up stresses, we can work our way back to make a good prediction of how long it will take the natural world to break something down. If it takes 2x sunlight, one year to break something down... We would expect normal sunlight to take two years. It's all a prediction based on probabilities and assumptions. It's not that we \"know\" it's that we have a good idea, all things being equal."
],
"score": [
15,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ispa78
|
How "Among Us" has been out for 2 years but became popular overnight
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g595rdc",
"g596652"
],
"text": [
"With these types of games you just need a big streamer to stream it. Besides. Being a mobile focused game doesn't appeal to the mass.",
"The creators of Among Us also created the Henry Stickman series. A very popular series of flash games, which got a new installment (and remastered the old installments) and saw release on Steam. Numerous streamers and YouTubers played the Henry Stickman Collection and saw a lot of attention for it, and some of them tried this other game by the same makers. This caused the game to catch on with even more streamers and YouTubers and their fans, and we had a snowballing effect that led to an explosion in popularity."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isq51a
|
Do mosquitoes have any purpose in life except being flippin annoying?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59j281",
"g59lmri",
"g59hm37"
],
"text": [
"They are very handy as disease vectors; for the malaria parasite the mosquito is everything!",
"As you may know, \"purpose of life\" and \"serve humanity\" often don't overlap They do serve as pollinators and food",
"As well as being a food source for their predators, I believe there are animals that use them in their reproductive cycle. But it’s equally important to reorient your understanding of the purpose of the natural world. Weather or not an animal “serves humanity in any way” isn’t just irrelevant, it’s a downright unethical way of evaluating the world and it’s inhabitants."
],
"score": [
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isqf5n
|
How come we don't bleed out during surgery?
|
I've always wondered how the blood doesn't just keep flowing out of you like say, during knee surgery when they cut you open to expose your knee bones. I've always wondered how this works.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59g2s6",
"g59w0lj",
"g5a7n46"
],
"text": [
"Blood doesn’t wander wherever it wants the body, it’s largely confined to the circulatory system. In an ideal world, you just don’t cut any of the blood tubes. Surgical cutting instruments are *extremely* sharp, which lets them cut through tissue very cleanly without tearing open more capillaries than is absolutely necessary. Surgeons will avoid cutting through larger veins and arteries whenever possible, and can burn or clamp them closed if safe/necessary to do so. Sometimes this isn’t possible, and the patient will require blood transfusion(s) during the operation because a major blood line had to be opened.",
"Depending on the kind of surgery, a tourniquet will be used to restrict blood flow for up to a couple hours. Additionally surgical instruments are extremely precise and do the minimum possible damage to surrounding tissues which results in (hopefully) minimal bleeding when combined with the body’s natural clotting systems. I’ve participated in major joint replacements where net blood loss is was only a few hundred milliliters / so many ounces. In other words less than a standard blood donation. Finally, if it becomes necessary, transfusions are readily available for consenting patients. Including devices that actively catch, clean and transfuse *the patient’s own blood* back into their body during surgery. Barring trauma before surgery, multiple things would have to go very wrong for a patient to bleed out during surgery.",
"There are large blood vessels and small blood vessels. Doctors avoid cutting the large blood vessels, especially arteries. If they have to cut them, then they'll temporarily clamp them off so they don't bleed, then reconnect them. For the smaller vessels, nowadays they have these cauterizing scalpels that cauterize (burn closed) the ends of blood vessels so they don't bleed."
],
"score": [
41,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isqlu2
|
Why can’t something actually be done about the corruption in this world instead of just being aware of it
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59hsmx",
"g59hvjo"
],
"text": [
"Corruption is a natural consequence of systems of power, and it takes significant political pressure against corruption to significantly affect it. It happened with Teddy Roosevelt. There was a political niche for someone to take against corruption, and eventually that pushed him to the vice-presidency, and then presidency when McKinley died. So things can be done, and only edgy cynics are saying that the world is fucked, and there's nothing we can do.",
"Something could be done, it would just require a lot of effort from a lot of people, and I mean like major political movements, protests, and social upheaval. And generally why nothing gets done is because people just don’t care enough, or don’t have the energy for it. You ask the average person and they’ll say “yea corruption sucks but I’m not gonna spend my energy fighting this system that I as a person can’t do anything about.” That why you usually only see huge pushes against corruption after something major happens (like an economic collapse, or recently in Lebanon after the explosion in Beirut, those kind of major catastrophes can refocus the light/pressure on a corrupt system. Otherwise, people just wanna love comfortable happy lives, and if the corruption just means they pay a more in taxes, or make less, but they can still live that comfortable happy life, then there just isn’t the social energy to fight it."
],
"score": [
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isqujp
|
When running the shower, bath or otherwise, why does the sound of the water change as the temperature increases?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5afq1o",
"g5ag0s0"
],
"text": [
"There are two common answers to this, but only one of them is right. 1) sound travels faster in hot water than cold, so sound waves bounce around in the pipes at different frequencies. 2) hot water has a lower viscosity (thickness vs runniness) than cold water, so the turbulence of the water flowing through the pipes and valves is damped out differently. \\#2, viscosity, is the most important factor. One reason why is that the speed of sound only varies by about [10%]( URL_1 ) as water goes from freezing to boiling, but the pitch of water in pipes changes by much more than that. The viscosity of water, on the other hand, changes by [600%]( URL_0 ) over the same temperature range! Agree with /u/svangren : check out Steve Mould's video, which is linked in their comment below.",
"Not an expert but I would think that the change in pressure between when its fully cold (high pressure to the pipes straight to the shower) vs the heated water having a different pressure through the pipes after having gone through the water heater could explain a difference in how it sounds. Maybe when you change the temp, the mixture of hot and cold water pressures differ from the different pipes."
],
"score": [
23,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/water-dynamic-kinematic-viscosity-d_596.html",
"https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/sound-speed-water-d_598.html"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isqxup
|
How are patents enforced internationally?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59mwvx"
],
"text": [
"You can't enforce a patent internationally, but you can file a patent in multiple countries (I think EU might be considered one country for the purposes of patent filing, but otherwise you need to file for patents in each country). So a company could file for patent in, say, the US, EU, China, Japan, etc., and get a version of the patent in each country, each able to be enforced in its respective country. If you have a patent in one country but not in another, you can't stop a company in the other country from copying you. For example, if you have a patent in the US, and a Japanese company starts copying you and selling that product in Japan, then there's not much you can do. However, if that Japanese company ever tries to sell that product in the US, then you can try and enforce your US patent against them, with regards to their attempts at entering the US market."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isr434
|
how scientists know what compounds are in the atmosphere of a planet that's light-years away
|
How do they figure out there's methane on titan for example? Edit: titan was just an example because I know they discovered methane there. Yes, I know it's not light-years away. It's not a planet either. Feel free to have an imagination of a five year old.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59l6re",
"g59w34f",
"g59lzlz"
],
"text": [
"Spectroscopy. Different elements and substances absorb different, specific wavelengths of light. You can therefore analyse the light from objects, see what wavelengths are being absorbed, and work out what it's in the atmosphere.",
"Different gasses block different colors so what scientists do is look at some starlight then look at the same starlight through the planets atmosphere and the missing colors correspond to the different gasses.",
"Titan and exoplanets are known about in completely different ways. We know quite a bit about Titan from various probes sent to Saturn that took pictures, did samples, and other stuff we can do on Earth. For exoplanets, the main way we know about composition is through \"transit spectroscopy\" This is where the planet goes in between the star and us, and dims the star's light, but because some of the atmosphere, some of the light gets absorbed, meaning that the wavelengths of light that do reach us holds information about the atmosphere, but only in some broad strokes."
],
"score": [
38,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isr5wt
|
Why is smoking not illegal?
|
There are numerous facts and research that proves it leads to lung, mouth cancer etc. How come there aren’t changes being made or efforts to stop being companies from causing horrific issues to people?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g59le7l",
"g59lwuo",
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"text": [
"Partly because it's been grandfathered in, partly because governments make a fair amount of tax revenue from it, and partly because tobacco companies spend a lot of money 'lobbying' to stop it from happening.",
"Why isnt giant sodas illegal, or high salt chips, or gasoline, or a million other things that are harmful to health? Its a cash crop, and considered a freedom to enjoy.",
"For the same reason that burning fossil fuels isn't illegal: big corporations with lots of money.",
"The last time the USA tried to ban a harmful recreational substance (alcohol) there were many negative consequences. The laws didn't do much to curve drinking, and it helped cement criminal operations within the country. In other words, their attempt to make society better failed and made it slightly worse. The same could potentially happen with tobacco products.",
"Everyone has personal autonomy. You can choose to smoke, or eat bacon, or free climb a skyscraper. If you die, that choice is on you. Nobody held a gun to your head. They tried making alcohol illegal in the US and it wasn’t very successful, and alcohol is just as unhealthy.",
"There are many ways to consider this question. 1) Individual freedom vs government action. One attitude is to say that the people are responsible for their choices and government isn't there to make people do the \"right\" thing. The other perspective is that there are sufficient secondary affects and these are severe and widespread enough to justify some action. There are reasons not to want a paternalistic or, even worse, authoritarian government that tries (even with the best intention) to regulate many parts of everyday life. 2) What kind of action? The simplest way to think of it is black or white - the outright ban. Most governments have a spectrum of action. High taxes, bans are imposed in indoor smoking or smoking in public places, restrictions on retail, limits on advertising, warning labels on packaging etc. Better public education and support for cessation efforts are also part of the actions that can be taken. 3) Economic consequences. There may be employment considerations if the country has many tobacco farmers. Like it or not, the production, transportation, retail and consumption creates income for many people. There is economic value created offset, of course, by lost productivity for health reasons. Economic value isn't about the money but the value attached to the (freely made) choices of producers and consumers. 4) Other consequences. Outright bans encourages the black market. This increases criminal activity. This means more costs of enforcement, greater social fear/unrest, productivity lost to criminal activity and prison.",
"Same reason alcohol isn't illegal: taxing and regulating it makes tonnes and people riot when something wide-spread is banned",
"* Smoking is very bad in the long term. * But the government doesn't believe is so bad in the short term that it should be banned. * There are lots of activities that can be considered harmful in the long term that are ok on the short term and so it isn't really the governments place to prohibit those things in adults."
],
"score": [
24,
12,
11,
5,
4,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isrdnq
|
Why do we react to cringe by making faces or tensing up ourselves?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59pluq",
"g59ndjd"
],
"text": [
"Our brains react basically the same to both physical and emotional/social pain or injury. The theory for this is that since individual humans don't tend to do too well in hunter-gatherer groups without the approval of the group so we evolved to avoid socially unacceptable behaviors just as much as physically painful ones.",
"It must be our mirror neurons making us feel the same. The base for empathy. URL_0 for when you have time."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3510904/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isrhll
|
Why is it so much easier to balance a bicycle while it is moving forward than when you are standing still?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59nx3w"
],
"text": [
"When you're standing still you can't use the bicycle's forward motion to help you stay balanced. Turning the handlebars on a stationary bike does effectively nothing, not counting a very small effect from the steering tube angle. Turning the handlebars on a moving bike rearranges all the forces and can be a powerful righting action. The wheels are also spinning and provide a gyroscope effect that tends to resist tipping. Basically, you've got a lot more to work with to help keep you upright on a moving bike."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isrvf5
|
why do we say a ‘pair of underwear’ when we are only wearing one?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59sfs8",
"g5a3v7r",
"g59te98",
"g5b5ort"
],
"text": [
"A pair of pants really used to consist of three separate parts (left and right leg and middle) and even longer time ago it was like just the 2 leg parts that got tightened to the legs and longer clithes for the upper body for males and females. These clothes were common till the 16th century.",
"Because they evolved from socks! These socks eventually become so long that they needed to be tied to the underwear to stay up. Eventually they were joined together by a codpiece and lost the foot part to become the trousers we know today, and then shrunk down to modern underpants.",
"According to some, the phrase “**pair** of **pants**” harkens back to the days when what constituted **pants**—or pantaloons, as they were originally known—consisted of two separate items, one for each leg. They were put on one at a time and then secured around the waist.",
"We got a pair of buttcheeks, right? So we need a pair of underpants to put over them."
],
"score": [
51,
46,
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isrzzz
|
How is the earth's magnetic field simultaneously weaker than a refrigerator magnet but it also extends out thousands upon thousands of miles into space.
|
Is size of a magnetic field indepent of strength? Why does a refrigerator magnet's field only extend a couple of inches out?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59z3qk"
],
"text": [
"Technically, both (and all) magnetic fields extend forever, but their strength is indirectly proportional to the square of the distance; move twice as far away and you cut the strength by four. They are also directly proportional to mass. Double the size, double the strength. The relationship between the Earth's magnetic field (generated by it's core) and a personal magnet is very similar to the relationship between the sun's gravity and Earth's. The sun has stronger gravity because it's bigger, but we are far away from it. The Earth's gravity is weaker, but we can get so much closer to it's source."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iss2hr
|
Why are Levoamphetamine and Dextroamphetamine not considered different drugs?
|
I take vyvanse now (a prodrug of d-amp), and used to take adderall (a mix of d-amp and l-amp). The presence of the l-amp makes a meaningful difference in the medications effects. Both subjectively as well as what it does in the brain (regarding reuptake at different parts of the brain). With that in mind, why are they both called Amphetamine? Why are they not treated differently? I read somewhere that one is the “left hand” and the other is the “right hand” of the amphetamine molecule. But I’m not quite sure what that means. Thanms
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g59tfhp",
"g5a9hdu"
],
"text": [
"They are both stereoisomers of each other: the same atoms arranged in the same order, except for being arranged differently at one particular point.",
"\"Amphetamine\" properly refers to a racemic (50/50) mixture of l-amp and d-amp. Adderall actually contains 75% d-amp and 25% l-amp. These compounds are enantiomers, meaning they have the same chemical formula but are arranged differently in 3-dimensional space. It's sort of hard to imagine without having a 3D model in front of you. They are treated differently. There is an amphetamine drug that contains only dextroamphetamine, it's called Dexedrine. It was in use long before Adderall, but Adderall came along and became the standard due to superior marketing and a (mostly unsupported) belief that Adderall might be less addictive because the l-amp isomer causes side effects which make it less desirable to an abuser. It's become very popular in the last few decades for Pharma companies to make new drugs by taking available racemic mixture drugs (that are usually older than dirt and have cheap generics available) and isolating a single enantiomer so that they can patent them again and make a bunch of money. Examples of this include escitalopram, esketamine, esomeprazole, etc. They usually claim that the single-enantiomer drug has more clinical benefit or less side effects than the old drug, but these claims are usually made on shaky evidence."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isspog
|
How does car insurance work and why it is mandatory to have it?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g5a8lin",
"g5aaizh",
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"text": [
"The legal minimum is liability insurance. Since it's very easy to cause hundreds of thousands of dollars of harm to someone else, states usually require you have some way of paying any damages in such a situation. The preferred way is an insurance plan: you pay an insurer a monthly/annual amount and they agree to cover most of any claims you are responsible for paying in the event of an accident you cause.",
"A bunch of number nerds called “actuaries” run a lot of very complex excel spreadsheets and determine the amount of money auto related crashes, thefts and other losses will be in a given area. They take this educated guess and divide that by the average number of drivers in the given area. They add little things like “desired profit margin” and “agents commissions” and “advertising budget” to get an average premium. Then these number nerds figure out things that are likely to lead to having a crash or loss and adjust this average premium to an individual policy.",
"Insurance is what is called a shared risk pool. Everybody pays a monthly fee to mitigate the financial risk of having an accident. Everybody pools their money and repairs are paid out of that pool. Safer drivers in this situation are basically subsidizing the reoair costs of less skilled drivers. If you are a higher risk of causing an accident then you pay a higher premium every month because you are more likely to decrease the size of the pool by making a claim. It is mandatory for 2 reasons. 1.) The bigger the pool the smaller the risk, which drives rates down. 2.) Unless you are particularly wealthy there is no reasonable way to expect you to be able to cover your liability in an accident, so the state requires you to carry enough liability insurance to compensate the other party for losses incurred by the damage you caused. Most states will waive the insurance requirement if you can demonstrate an ability to cover your liability on your own without insurance.",
"Car lot of money. You crash you pay. Most people with Jobs can’t afford because a lot of money. You get insurance pay for car when car get accident.",
"One thing I would note is that, in certain states, it is not mandatory to have auto insurance. For most of those states (it's not universal) you must purchase a bond or set aside a certain amount of money that will pay for an accident you cause. That allows someone with enough money to potentially opt out of insurance by setting aside money ahead of time.",
"Great, my wife is an underwriter and since I hear her talk (TLVs etc) I can answer, crap people already have. There was a good skit where Chris Rock talks about insurance. \"In case shit happens\", and he isn't far off. STOP, don't think about medical insurance, it is a perversion of what insurance is supposed to be. So you have an expensive product, a car, or an old sailing ship (from where the word 'underwriter' actually comes from) full of stuff. You have enough money to buy this thing and MAYBE you have enough money to replace it. What you can't possibly have enough money for is if you crash your car into another car and then crash into a building and someone needs six months of intensive care. So, enter insurance. For a monthly fee I agree to operate my vehicle in a safe manner in accordance with the insurance stipulations. This gets super important if that vehicle is really expensive or if you are dealing with cat insurance on commercial buildings. Assuming you are fitting the criteria, and the event wasn't an 'act of god' (yeah, look it up), that money you pay promises that should an event happen, the firm you insured with will take care of the accident or incident. So think about this, if you are loading up a sailing ship in 1686 and you went in with a bunch of your buddies to create a stock-company to fund this expedition, you may find that you are still uncomfortable with risk. So the newly formed Lloyd's of London may 'back' you with many more investors, their sign off is 'underwritten' by them. In other words, they looked at the entire idea of your expedition and found the captain was good to go, the ship is in good repair, the cargo is whatever. So your risk starts looking a lot better, if you total loss that thing you and your buddies will take a hit, but insurance will pay out. Lloyd's makes money by backing many expeditions, most which will not fail. It is like a pyramid scheme, but legal, provided you have enough policy holders who are paying regularly and not sinking their ships, you are making money and risk is controlled. This is why insurance likes to ask probing questions and send inspectors of their own. Once you seek insurance it is your risk AND their risk, and if they have been doing it a long time (as in car insurance) with a lot of customers, the insurance is WAY more qualified to understand risk than you are. So you are paying to reduce your risk and to generally have your back. Before autos and auto insurance, you might have had crop insurance but the average person had nothing nearly valuable enough to actually insure. And, if you did, you often were required to store it at a bank or something. A car is the most valuable thing other than a home most people will have, so you pay insurance on it in a manner not unlike the original Lloyds way back in the 17th century.",
"Mandatory (liability) insurance exists to protect vehicle owners from possibly facing bankruptcy after an accident. Injuries and costs associated with repair of one's vehicle can already be a significant burden by themselves - additionally being held liable for damages caused to others could absolutely devastate a person or household without liability insurance."
],
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44,
25,
16,
7,
7,
6
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[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
istcqt
|
When you yawn and sometimes spray saliva out from what seems like small holes under your tongue, whats happening there?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Your sublingual salivary glands sit beneath your tongue. The Wharton's ducts are small tubes travelling forwards to either side of the lingual frenulum in the front of the bottom of the mouth, still below the tongue. You can see these if you look closely. Moving your jaw in a certain way squeezes the glands and the ducts, and saliva squirts out.",
"wait Ive never heard of/noticed this does it happen to everyone??",
"Btw if you didn’t know, the slang term for that is bleeding. Some people can do it on command! EDIT: I MEANT GLEEKING not bleeding",
"My mother called it “gleeking”. You’re hitting under your tongue where saliva comes out, speeding it up and potentially out your mouth when open. I have no idea how so many people on here seem to call it the same thing...",
"Happens to me accidentally sometimes, it’s called “gleeking”. Can never do it on command but I had a friend who could, it was hilarious. Only cool think I can do is form bubbles under my tongue, bring them on top, then blow them off my tongue into the air, thought it was cooler than gleeking lol.",
"Gleeking. Compression of your submandibular glands by the surrounding digastric and mylohyoid muscles causes the saliva to be expelled via the opening of the duct. The openings are immediately lateral to your lingual frenulum which is why it shoots from the centre of your mouth. Yawning is the perfect movement as you retract your tongue and elevate the base of your mouth, both the compression and alignment of the opening with the widen mouth.",
"You have a couple of salivary ducts that terminate under your tongue just there. They’re emptying serous saliva from glands in the soft tissue under you tongue regularly, but it’s only when you lift your tongue that the watery saliva squirts out."
],
"score": [
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591,
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
istk6i
|
Why were dinosaurs so big in the past but current animals are nowhere near the size we find today?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5a88eb",
"g5a6prv"
],
"text": [
"This is a common misconception that's not actually true. 1) The largest animal to ever exist is alive today: it's the blue whale. 2) A lot of those animals you think of having lived \"in the past\" did not co-exist together. They were separated by 10s-100s of millions of years. When walking through the dinosaur wing of the museum it's easy to wrongly think \"WOW! Look at all these huge animals I would see if I went back to the time of the dinosaurs!\" 3) There were a lot more large mammals comparable in size to the dinos until just about the onset of humans. These large mammals went extinct only very very recently(leading theory is that human beings were the cause of the extinction).",
"A few, linked, reasons. Firstly, higher CO2 levels at the time meant abundant plant life. Recent evidence suggests that dinosaurs didn't chew their food as much as modern animals, they just stripped it off the tree and then swallowed it more or less whole. This meant they could take in huge amounts of vegetation. More food means bigger animals. Large size is an advantage against predators, but of course then you start an evolutionary arms race - bigger prey means bigger predators do better, and so then you have big carnivores too."
],
"score": [
12,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
istvxb
|
If the sun is at its highest during noon, why is sunrise 6 hours, but sunset 9 hours from noon?
|
Shouldn't it be the same amount of time from noon?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5adeu0",
"g5acyxi",
"g5ahav0",
"g5aaxeu"
],
"text": [
"> if the sun is at its highest during noon It usually isn't. This depends entirely on your location in the world, timezone, and what season you're in. The problem with your question is that it's based on a false premise.",
"The sun being highest at noon is no longer true. This used to be how people set their clocks, but it makes it impossible to coordinate people over large distances. When technology advanced to a point where scheduling across long distances became a common occurrence, it became important that everyone's clocks lined up, and more reliable ways of determining the time were developed. At least in the US, this is generally attributed to the expansion of the railroads.",
"Let's see... Where I live sunrise on Sept 15 is 6:56 and sunset is 7:17 pm, ie 19:17. This is a day length (duration) of 12 hours and 21 minutes. Half of this (noon) is 6 hours 10 minutes. Look up sunrise/sunset times at URL_1 Solar noon (when the sun is at the most northern point of its daily arc) is 1:07 pm, ie 13:07. See URL_0 , then click \"When is solar noon in your city\"\" to see time at your location. Here's the arithmetic: Start with sunrise, 6:56 Add half of 12:21, which is 6:10. You will get 13:06. Solar noon. Now add 6:10 to 13:06 and get 19:16 So noon really is halfway between sunrise and sunset. Don't forget Daylight Savings Time can mess with your mind in this. And there is right now about a half hour between \"sunset\" and \"last light\" when it gets close to dark. Hope this helps.",
"The sun is highest at some time. Noon is when your clock shows 12 noon. They are not technically related. When is noon is based on your time zone. China has one zone. So the relationship between noon on the clock and the sun could only apply to a small part of china."
],
"score": [
28,
14,
14,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/solar-noon.html",
"https://sunrisesunset.willyweather.com/"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isuh0p
|
What makes bacteria toxic vs beneficial?
|
What is it that makes toxins vs beneficial chemicals? Is it just a waste product or something that bacteria leaves behind? You hear often that bacteria makes you sick with toxins and that others are essential for our internal ecosystems... I've read some attack living parts of the body and some leave behind toxins, but its difficult to understand how complex single cell organisms really are. Thanks for responding!
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ahu52"
],
"text": [
"Actually a lot of the bacteria we consider \"beneficial\" - such as our gut bacteria- can cause us illness or death if they escape the isolation of our digestive system. It's part of the reason why penetrating injuries to the digestive system are so serious- bacteria can leak out into the warm, nutrient rich environment of our bodies and proliferate explosively. But yes, many bacteria produce toxic compounds as a byproduct of their metabolism that can affect us, and others may actually feed on our cells or tissues as part of their lifecycle. Bacteria aren't inherently good or bad, all they know is to grow, reproduce, and feed. It's the effects on the host (us) that determines how we classify them (good or bad)."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isv5d7
|
Why do chipmunks move in “bursts”
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ajfx8"
],
"text": [
"Some animals cannot see very clearly when moving rapidly, and so they make moves in chunks where they can stop and get a clearer picture to analyze the situation. They don't HAVE to, obviously, they can just keep running from a threat for instance, but for normal running around they like to stop to take a better look every once in a while."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isvabq
|
why do digital images of the same size (width x height in pixels) have different size (megabytes)?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5albgf"
],
"text": [
"Almost all images are stored in formats using some sort of compression algorithm. There are different types, and for a given kind, some images can be compressed more efficiently than others depending on the subject of the image. Solid blocks of the same color generally compress quite well. Also, some compression algorithms allow different levels of compression. They can get a smaller file size if you're willing to sacrifice some of the accuracy. Perhaps this thin stripe in an image has a shadow across it and actually requires ten shades of the same color to accurately reproduce but you can shrink the file by just making it all one color. Different trade-offs result in different file sizes."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isvchc
|
why finding the same gas etc on another planet is potential for another life form
|
There was some gas found on Venus that penguins have in their gut, which scientists are excited about because it means there's potential for a life form. But in an environment that is SO different to ours, why is it that the scientists think that life forms will need the same form/nutrients/gas etc as us? Would it not be that life forms as known on Earth, and maybe Venus Mars, every other planet would be unique and completely different to other planets, bc how different each atmosphere and environment is? Edit: Thanks heaps for all the comments! It's more fun than googling. And also thanks heaps for my first award!
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5akiha",
"g5aksgs",
"g5al6j4",
"g5az5x4"
],
"text": [
"There are certain molecules that only (or usually only) come into existence by certain processes. If we find a molecule that is only generated by biologic processes, then it's a good sign that something is living in there. We could be wrong, and that molecule ended up being generated in a non-biologic way, but that's why we need to investigate further.",
"It is possible that life could be completely unique on every single planet, but we have no idea how that kind of life would work . But we definitely know 100% for sure at least one way that life can work. Space is really really big, so we have to narrow down our search for life somehow, so we start by looking for things we know are by products of life as we know it. The Venus discovery is significant because we only know of one possible way that phosphine can be created in significant quantities, and that's life like life on earth. Therefore if Venus has lots of it, it might have life like life on earth.",
"One thing that is crazy to realize, is that even when we visit other places in our solar system, we still find all of the same elements. So in some sense, they really aren't all that different. Sure they have the elements in completely different ratios and amounts than earth, but we have a decent understanding of how that specific element is created, and why that planet would have that element. So when we find an element (or compound) in an amount that we only see formed from organic life, then we can make a theory that maybe there is life there. That doesn't mean that there is, but it could be one of the ways that compound got there.",
"A lot of people have given some good comments here, but I also think it's important to note that this gas isn't just found in penguins. Phosphine is a toxic (to us) gas that smells of either garlic or decaying fish. It can be found during the decomposition of organic matter. In fact, that's the only way we know for this gas to exist on rocky planets. On planets like Jupiter and Saturn there's enough pressure deep in the core to form this gas, but on planets like Venus and Earth we aren't aware of any processes that create it that aren't organic."
],
"score": [
41,
15,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isw97j
|
If I am looking at someone in a mirror can they see me back 100% of the time?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5arh3i"
],
"text": [
"Yes. If you can see their eyes(or more), they can see your eyes(and maybe more). If you can see their something else like their mouth but not their eyes, you can’t tell if their eyes line up right to see part of you."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iswehe
|
Why does adrenaline constrict blood vessels?
|
Why do activation of sympathetic nervous system via adrenergic receptors induce vasoconstriction? Wouldn't vasodilation favor the body more in times of flight or fight situations because muscles need to be more perfused on strenous activities? I'd get that it is to prevent hypotension but the heart already compensates it through reflex tachycardia so there wont be any decrease in cardiac output. Someone help me clear this confusion.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5auedb"
],
"text": [
"It depends on what receptors it’s effecting. The alpha 1 receptor is responsible for construction and beta 2 for dilation. Vasoconstriction predominates in the skin and kidneys whereas vasodilation predominates in the liver and skeletal muscle. So obviously it’s beneficial during that fight or flight reaction, vasodilation occurs in the muscles in which we will want to work full on whereas vasoconstriction at the tissues we don’t require at that time"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iswp83
|
The “Duck Season, Rabbit Season” argument technique?
|
Bugs Bunny has had a big list of enemies, and one was Daffy Duck. They always have their iconic fight of [Duck Season, Wabbit Season”]( URL_0 ) at some point Bugs says “Wabbit Season” and prompts Daffy to say “Duck Season” and the latter gets shot. This trick seems to work irl, and I wonder why it happens and how our minds almost immediately say the opposite of what we are defending ?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5b766h"
],
"text": [
"I call this \"jackass momentum.\" You are falling into an action/reaction pattern, to the extent that your sensory input becomes limited and conscious thought and critical thinking fall away. Your centers of higher-level thinking are shutting down and/or focusing on other things (like simply summoning the energy to just continue this pattern). So when a variable changes, you may not notice it right away. Duck season follows rabbit season, but you didn't notice that the pattern skipped and now you're on the wrong side. But dammit, duck season follows rabbit season, and your brain -- that jackass -- wants to just keep continuing that pattern."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iswpfe
|
What was that dial up noise? Why was it always the same and why was it necessary?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5atw36",
"g5aus4v"
],
"text": [
"Dial up modems communicated using sound waves to represent digital data. The dial up noise was the \"handshake\" used between the two modems to establish a connection, determine the communication protocols in use at both ends, and conduct other tasks to set up the connection. The dial up sound is what that data sounds like to human ears",
"> What was that dial up noise? Modems (modulator-demodulators) > Why was it always the same It wasn't. Every conversation was a unique binary negotiation. If your ears were capable of distinguising sounds at up to 56,000 samples per second and comparing one sequence of 100,000+ tones to another sequence, you'd be able to tell they were not always the same. > why was it necessary? Before cable modems, DSL and fiber optic connections, all we had for \"getting online\" was the plain old telephone system (POTS) network. You want your computer to talk to another computer over the phone lines? Then your computer will literally need to \"talk\"--i.e. send audible signals--over the phone line, and the computer on the other end will listen and decode your computer's sounds."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iswyp2
|
If life begins from chemistry "spontaneously", why hasn't it happened again since LUCA?
|
So my Dad and I were talking about the news of Phosphine on Venus today and got into that age old question. How did life begin on Earth? Well we are both pretty familiar with some of the general theories, everything from asteroid impact to spontaneous assembly of RNA from other molecules. But the old man hit me with a damn good point. If life did begin through spontaneous assembly or something similar.. all those years ago.. why have we never observed it happening again? Thanks all
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5avp53",
"g5ay4zq"
],
"text": [
"Biologist here! Because earth isn't covered in a goo made from amino acids constantly being stuck by lightning with a methane dominate atmosphere anymore. Life happened on earth because a million different events came together just right. Its odds of happening are astronomical, and need very specific conditions of an early, rocky planet with an atmosphere We don't have that since the great oxygenation event some 2 billion years ago, and we haven't found another planet just yet with those same requirements that we know of",
"Along with the rest of the answers, life has probably evolved a few times in the early history of the planet and maybe even has recently. The problem is that they are in competition with the current far more developed forms of life. We have a billion year headstart in current times, and we likely killed off most other life that evolved independantly from before."
],
"score": [
29,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
iswzuj
|
why lox is safer to eat uncooked than fresh salmon, but they're both considered raw?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5avytr"
],
"text": [
"Because it has either been cured (with salt brine) or cold smoked - or both. It's basically been preserved or cooked already."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isx7ax
|
How does mist, fog, and clouds form if the water never reaches the boiling point to escape the liquid phase and enter the gas phase?
|
How does water exist in this “gaseous” state if the temperature doesn’t allow it to overcome atmospheric pressure? Is the water in clouds, mist, fog, and humidity actually in the liquid phase?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5azw6i"
],
"text": [
"No and yes. Water doesn't need to boil in order to evaporate. The water in clouds, mist and fog *is* in the liquid phase, though, and that's why you can see it. That's the very short explanation. Here it is in a little more detail: Water is *always* losing some molecules into its surrounding environment. The water's temperature tells you the average speed that its molecules are bumping around, but the average speed isn't the speed limit; there are outliers, because brownian motion is very chaotic and random. Every so often, a molecule on the surface picks up enough momentum to overcome the force of surface tension, and is kicked out into the surrounding air. The hotter it is, the more frequently this happens, but the water doesn't even need to be liquid for this to happen. When ice loses molecules to the air, it's commonly called sublimation. Did you ever make rock candy by adding sugar to hot water and then cooling it to form a 'supersaturated' solution? ([try it - it's fun!]( URL_0 ))Just like water has a certain maximum capacity for dissolved solids like sugar or salt, air has a certain maximum capacity for humidity (you can think of air humidity kinda like water 'dissolved' in air!) And hot air can hold more humidity than cold air. So if hot, humid air cools down, it's possible that the air becomes \"supersaturated\" with moisture. In this condition, the airborne water molecules, if they meet each other, no longer have enough kinetic energy to bounce - they stick. And this is how droplets can spontaneously start to form (or \"precipitate\") in the air, creating clouds. When you open your freezer and see visible wisps of moisture, that's what's happening. The cold freezer air is mixing with the warm humid air outside and making the vapor temporarily cold enough to stick together into droplets you can see."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpOU0Fo7QfU"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isxhp0
|
What is rent price optimization?
|
Saw a new charge on my rent bill of about $730 for “unit price optimization.” What doesn’t this mean? Thanks everyone! My roommate and I have decided to leave the apartment.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ayoul",
"g5b0qwd",
"g5b5vhh"
],
"text": [
"Means you should find a new place to rent. With rent prices going down all over the places. There is less demand than supplies so no reason to have a price increase.",
"'Optimizing Unit Price' is them setting prices at the point where they believe total price of the rented units exactly balances with vacancy rate in a way that produces the most money. So if they can go for $2000 with 95% occupancy, or $2500 with 90% occupancy, then they'd profit more from higher pricing and less occupancy than lower pricing and being more full. I've never seen a company just straight up write that on a rent bill though, is this a commercial lease?",
"This reads like your landlord is trying to dodge the coronavirus emergency relief order which includes a rent freeze (on all rentals, not just rent-controlled units) by creating a new line item on your bill."
],
"score": [
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
isxojy
|
Why are babies not afraid of the dark but children are?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5b0mza",
"g5azugh",
"g5b03zm",
"g5b1ffr"
],
"text": [
"Babies dont have a conception of what they might be afraid of. To be afraid, you need to know why at least to a small degree. The dark itself isnt scary, it's what we think lurks in it.",
"Because babies brains aren’t fully developed and children start to get an over active imagination",
"Imagination and creativity don't really become sophisticated enough in the human brain until they get to be child aged.",
"Babies only have an awareness of existence, not of themselves as a separate being in a world with other beings. As long as their needs are met, they can have a sense of oneness with all that is around them. As you get past the beginning of life, you begin to develop the sense of self or ego, that your parents are other beings and you are separate from them. As that happens, it opens up the possibility that beings can have conflicting desires and might harm each other. So I would think that it's related to that - you don't know what is there in the dark that is separate from you. The baby doesn't yet even think to conceive of there being anything separate."
],
"score": [
22,
9,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
isze7y
|
why are clouds flat on the bottom and lumpy in the top?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5be8fv"
],
"text": [
"The shape of the clouds is caused by the way clouds form. Why are they flat on the bottom? Warm air rising in the atmosphere contains water vapour, which is invisible. As the air goes up from the ground into the sky, the air temperature decreases by about 3 degrees Celsius per 1000 feet. Once the air is high enough and has cooled significantly, it can no longer hold the water as vapour. The water turns into liquid form, which is visible. The height where it is cool enough for the water to become liquid is the flat bottom of the cloud is. Why are they lumpy on top? Well, the process of water turning from vapour form to liquid form releases heat, which powers the air to continue rising. The bundles of air that are pushed upwards form the lumpy, fluffy top."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iszscj
|
Why do eyeballs feel so much better when rubbed with our fists? (relieved/not itchy/less sleepy or sandy, etc)
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bhe1q",
"g5bjjd1"
],
"text": [
"[Do not rub your eyes!]( URL_0 ) You can develop a condition called keratoconus, in which your cornea becomes misshapen. Use eye drops for relief from dry or itchy eyes. Edit: For my fellow keratoconus sufferers, find support at /r/keratoconus!",
"Your eyelid is sticking to your eye cause it's so dry. You're relubricating it by pushing around the water, redistributing it more evenly so all of your tears arent just in the corner of ur eye, and unsticking it, too"
],
"score": [
18,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6848869/"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iszzh3
|
What are liberals and conservatives?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bfn4m",
"g5biai8",
"g5bphn2"
],
"text": [
"It varies from country to country. Generally it refers to people who are the social left and social right of the median political perspective of a country, and strongly correlates with economic left and economic right as well.",
"That's the million dollar question, isn't it? A *lot* of political discourse/bickering boils down to who counts as a liberal or who counts as a conservative. The definition of both liberals and conservatives varies by country so there's no single overarching definition that works for all of them. You would have to specify the country first to even start getting a workable answer. That, and both camps have a lot of different subsets who aren't necessarily concerned about the same issues, or even have completely antithetical views on the same issue. Since I'm a conservative and am more familiar with the subsets of conservatism, the best example I can think of is paleoconservatism vs. neoconservatism, which is a *very* heated yelling match that centers on foreign policy, and in particular using war and the military as a foreign policy tool. It's not even really all that easy to describe the different subsets of conservatism or liberalism without the descriptions being tainted by the bias of the describer. So rather than thinking of liberals and conservatives as single \"thing\", it may be more accurate to think of both as large, informal coalitions of different ideologies that are held together, if not by their similarity to each other, at least by disliking the ideologies in the other coalition more than they dislike each other.",
"Strictly and universally speaking: * A conservative is someone who wants to conserve the current or near past political, social, or economic order. * A liberal is one who is for liberty. Rights and freedoms to do as one please. Equal treatment by the law. Consent and say in government. They both change with the time period, the location, and who's viewing it. What those liberties are and how they are implemented obviously leaves some room for interpretation. US was about the first modern liberal leaning nation, but also half assed it and had slaves. The parties or people that use these name for themselves or other, often bastardize them. A liberal is NOT the opposite of a conservative. That would be a progressive, for change. Progressive is not liberal. The opposite of liberal would be someone against personal liberty. Totalitarian dictatorship with no defined rule of law or rights. 200 years ago, a conservative was an absolute authoritarian divine monarchist. This is obviously not what a conservative is near anywhere today. A conservative today in a western nation is actually pretty much a liberal. Democracy, free market, property rights, free speech, equal treatment under law. Although often a little short on the civil side of liberty. A \"conservative\" might go so far as to be a fascist, but liberalism is so entrenched really they're a progressive, in a certain direction, not a conservative. Modern use of liberal tends to lean a little bit more towards socialism, which is actually not liberalism. Most nations in the west already are liberal at their heart, so it's more so shades of liberal than who is and is not one. Most \"liberal\", as in name, parties in countries tend to be moderate, taking democracy, civil rights of all kinds, free market, but with an understanding there needs to be some supports and checks on that. It ultimately dates back to the French revolution, were it was the conservative monarchy against the liberals (free market, democracy, free speech, defined rule of law and right, all that fun stuff). In the French national convention (I think that was the name, it changed on a whim), the more conservative politicians were on the right of it. Literally, they sat on the right side of the building. The more progressive and radical liberal were on the left. Hence, conservative right, liberal left being used as an overly simplified slider to for (progressive) and against (conservative) change even to this day. Liberal is bastardized at times in modern usage from this, with liberal meaning more left or progressive regardless if it is accurate or not. A communist or socialist isn't liberal, but it's often see as the same left side, especially in the US. Communist were actually opposed to the liberals, who were bourgeoisie for the free or liberal market."
],
"score": [
4,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it0009
|
How can light apply pressure where photons are only energy and doesn’t exhibit mass?
|
I was surfing on the internet where I came across acronym called “Radiation Pressure”. Can’t seem to get it. Always thought pressure is related to force which relates to mass where there are no physical construct of matter, there will not be a pressure to occur.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bgj8z",
"g5bgk0b"
],
"text": [
"According to relativity, photons don't have mass, but they *do* have momentum, proportional to their energy. > P = E/c",
"Photons have no mass, but they do have momentum. Forces are ultimately exchanges of momentum - when an object absorbs a photon, it also absorbs its momentum, and this happening continuously with a constant stream of photons is radiation pressure."
],
"score": [
5,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it07d7
|
Why is the weather reported as actual temperature and what it feels like?
|
I get it when it’s windy and it makes it feel colder, but it also happens on warm, not windy days. Shouldn’t the temperature we feel be the real one? And how are the two of them measured?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bh9wv",
"g5bkie8",
"g5bhxmq",
"g5bltg3"
],
"text": [
"Humidity and wind alter how you interpret temperature. So, a more humid day may _feel_ hotter than a dry day of the same temperature",
"This is actually a relatively new thing. I'm only 40 and for half of my life I never saw the convenient reporting of 'feels like'. Humid air doesn't take heat away from your body as much as drier air does, but a breeze will enhance how quickly your body sheds heat to it's environment. A (I'm going metric here, numbers aren't the important thing here) 30 degree day with a nice breeze can feel cooler than a 27 degree day with high humidity. The feels like goes through all of the factors that aren't raw temperature (as we measure it) and normalizes them.",
"Many major factors effect the temperature vs the real feel. Wind chill - lowers the real feel. High Humidity - increases the real feel. Higher UV index/very sunny days - increases the amount of infrared and ultra violent light you experience leading to higher Temps due to induction and radiation of the light as heat. Even things such as air quality can effect the real feel temperature. I'm sure there is some kind of math that they use to calculate everything but idk what it is. Mainly here in the Midwest where I live. Humid sunny summer days have a temperature somewhere in the high 90's too 100 range and a real feel up in the 110 115 range due to the humid air holding onto more heat and the more direct sun light. Not so humid winter days when the wind is blowing it'll be 0 outside but the wind and lack of humidity will cause the real feel to be -15, -20 due to more cold air molecules running into you more often due to the wind stealing all of your heat.",
"Because you don’t feel temperature, you feel changes in temperature. If you put a copper ball and a rubber ball in the freezer for a day and then pull both of them out, the copper ball will feel colder than the rubber one even though they’re both actually the same temperature (the temperature in your freezer). The reason is that copper conducts heat better than rubber, so you’ll feel the copper pulling the heat from your hand faster than the rubber ball does. (This is also why metal objects in general tend to feel cool even if they’re just at the same room temperature everything else is). The same is true with temperature outside. The bigger the temperature difference between two objects the faster they’ll transfer heat between one another. So if there’s no wind or anything, your body will lose heat faster at 30°F than at 50°F. But if it’s really windy, the wind can help pull heat away from your body faster too. So on a windy day when the temperature is actually 50°F, the wind might pull heat off hour body just as as quickly as it would if it were 30°F and there was no wind. Obviously there will be other sensations that make a windy 50°F feel different than a calm 30°F, but just from a ‘how quickly does it pull heat off your body’ perspective they’ll feel similar."
],
"score": [
6,
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it0ru5
|
why every time I sneeze, I sneeze multiple times in a row
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bpvig"
],
"text": [
"I have the same thing. I call them \"sneezures\". What I've noticed is that there are several triggers for my sneezures. For instance, sudden exposure to a bright light can do it. So can an uncomfortably full stomach, or a bowel movement. Even, strangely enough, the post-orgasmic state can set it off. My hypothesis is that what all these triggers have in common is stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system. Why that should set off a sneezure, I'm not sure, but there it is."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it14wh
|
Why is there a coin shortage? Where did they go? Who has them? Why are they keeping them?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bqppy",
"g5bms18",
"g5bmsyo"
],
"text": [
"Okay so this is directly related to my job! I can answer this! Roughly mid-March several mint and Federal reserve branches shut down entirely due to COVID-19 outbreaks at those sites. That means that suddenly a lot of money wasn't being made or distributed out from those places to banks and other financial institutions. On top of that, people became suddenly wary of handling coin cuz they didn't know where it came from and were afraid the money was transmitting the virus. And just to make things worse, right before the outbreak in the mints and reserves, a metric crap ton of money was taken out by people from their accounts to be held as cash cuz they suddenly feared that the Apocalypse was upon us and people were hoarding their cash like it could save their life. Source- I work in a financial institution that works directly with the Federal Reserve and have been dealing with all this bullshit since it started.",
"There's a pandemic right now. So less people are using money, especially coins. More people are going cashless.",
"Because of pandemic measures, people are avoiding spending coins and banks are discouraging in person branch visits, so many coins handed out as change aren't re-entering circulation. This significantly amplifies the need for coin production to meet businesses'/banks' needs, and that increase in production hasn't happened."
],
"score": [
14,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it19d9
|
How do routing numbers work?
|
Are they decided by the banks themselves? Is there some sort of intermediary who does the routing? Do they only specify the banking institution - if yes, are that many digits really required to specify all institutions? If not, what else is contained in the routing number?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bnxei"
],
"text": [
"They are determined by the Fed. It's just a numerical designation to identify each institution. There a a bunch of distinct institutions bin the US. Nothing beyond the institution is in the routing number. That's why you have to give an account number at that institution as well with instructions."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it19yi
|
What does "dropping the soap" mean in prison terms?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bnjfh",
"g5bnk4c",
"g5bnjzi",
"g5bnj1b",
"g5bnn88"
],
"text": [
"It means you'd have to bend over and pick it up in a group shower, which would make someone extremely vulnerable. It's used as a euphemism for getting raped in prison",
"When you drop a bar of soap in the shower, you have to bend down to pick it up. This makes you vulnerable to sexual assault, which happens often in prison.",
"When someone “drops the soap” it usually means they literally dropped the soap and now have to bend over to pick it up. This usually leaves them vulnerable to sexual actions that they either do or don’t consent to depending on the circumstances",
"Well, it's while you're nude in the shower. Why do you think it is not recommended to drop the soap and go to pick it up?",
"To drop the soap refers to the action of bending over in order to pick up your soap, exposing your ass to the world, in an attempt to get another inmate to 'stick it in'"
],
"score": [
7,
5,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it1o4i
|
How do dryer sheets work?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cuc0z"
],
"text": [
"Dryer sheets basically have an acid or fat (sometimes animal fats, check your label) that when combined with the moisture in your clothes and the heat of the dryer tumble and coat the surfaces of your clothes with the fat/acid. This has the softening effect, as well as preventing static electricity from the other rubbing against each other."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it23bj
|
Why pennyfarthings? Why were bicycles so silly when invented?
|
Pennyfarthings are the old giant front wheel bicycles: [example pic]( URL_0 ) So for starters how the hell do you get on the thing? I remember reading before that they were dangerous which seems like no surprise. I just don’t get how bike design started here. I don’t know if it’s just from the perspective of a “modern eye” but they look so ludicrous it seems like you would just *know* there is a better way to do this. Especially because in searching for pictures I saw one where a pennyfarthing was next to a motorcycle which indicates that vehicles with wheels of a matching size were (maybe?) contemporaneously produced. So, please, explain like I’m five why pennyfarthings were a thing.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5btf8g",
"g5bt4oq",
"g5cbhji"
],
"text": [
"Bicycles such as the Penny-farthing were built before chain gears and pneumatic tires where invented/developed. Back then, the pedals connected directly the wheel. The best way to get good speed was to make that wheel as big as possible. Also, the large wheel made ridding more comfortable when you did not have a pneumatic air filled tire on your wheel.",
"No gears and no chains, think of a direct turntable or electric car. It had power right to the wheel. Second it was basically a unicycle with a bit of guidance in the back, and finally a big wheel giving better ground covering, bit faster, softer ride. That said, it really did make no sense. It was highly irregular, and as you mentioned hard to get on.",
"Most (at least modern recreations) include a step at the back, so you can push the bike along (to gain a little momentum and keep it upright) and step up onto it - exactly like you might walk alongside a bike, put one foot on the closest pedal then swing your leg over while the bike moves along. It isn't perfect, but with a bit or practise fairly seamless and safe. As for why, the layout of the penny farthing was just one solution to the technology of the time. The size of the wheel is due to the fact that the pedals are fixed directly to the wheel. The size of the wheel results in you being able to cycle at a reasonable speed at a reasonable cadence. You could shrink the wheel down, but this would leave you pedalling madly to maintain a useful speed (just watch a kid riding a big wheel trike for an example of that). The second small wheel is then used as a balance - you can easily make it bigger, but then your bike also gets much bigger too. So the small wheel was a practical balance of not making the bike too big, but being just big enough to stop it flipping over. The direct drive pedals also determine the seating position - to be able to push down on the pedals, it is easiest to place the cyclist above them, which means a strange high seating position. When chains and gearing became practical to manufacture on a smaller bike scale that rapidly took over - by adding the ability to hear up out pedal strokes we eliminated the need for the big wheel, and by moving the pedals away from the wheels we could sit separately in a more reasonable position. The smaller wheels also meant a second wheel of a larger size became more practical which aided stability and helped form the more central seating position we use now. Penny farthings were only one of many early bikes that were trialled, but through good marketing and popularity at the time, and inadvertently creating a very iconic image they have stuck around in our conscious while most of the alternatives have been largely forgotten."
],
"score": [
32,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it23zz
|
Why are people saying they found life in Venus?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bto2x",
"g5bstsi",
"g5budgi"
],
"text": [
"They found phosphine gas which only is known to be produced by organisms on earth. Jupiter has phosphine too but it is produced from the crazy stuff which happen in the extremely hot interior of that gas giant. Venus does not have that super hot interior. So it's either produced by life (organisms) or another unknown feature of the Venusian geology. My money is on the second one but a lot of scientists are excited about this finding.",
"They aren’t saying they found life on Venus, they found stuff in the clouds that suggests life could exist. But it could be very early stages of evolution. Could be billions of years if any life actually comes of it.",
"Scientist found some evidence that a gas called phosphine may exist in the atmosphere on Venus. They believe that this may indicate that living organisms exist on Venus that create that gas. The do believe that because on world like our own or Venus there aren't really any natural origins for that substance that don't involve living things. The actively went looking for traces of phosphine on Venus because they thought it would indicate live on Venus if they found any. The scientist involved in the discovery are planning to hold an ama here on reddit on Wednesday."
],
"score": [
10,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it2bxs
|
Why are adjectives so commonly used in place of the correct adverb?
|
It happens so often (and from respectable sources that you'd think would know better) that I've begun to question my understanding of grammar. Is this a real thing that bothers others or am I misunderstanding how to use adverbs/adjectives?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bu6p8",
"g5budky"
],
"text": [
"Could you provide us with an example? Do you mean that instead of using an adverb with a proper inflection, they use an adjective instead?",
"Would you give an example? Something like \"He ran fast\" instead of \"He ran quickly?\" It's probably because unless you have a deep understanding of grammar (how the adverb modifies the verb rather than an adjective imposing itself on the entire thought) you might genuinely not know the difference, or just laziness of leaving off the -ly ending where applicable. I hope you get a good answer though, because speculation is against the sub rules and I really doubt there's an authoritative reason behind this."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it2fp2
|
If any object with mass, pulls on other objects through gravity. Then how come galaxies are moving away from eachother?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bvmba",
"g5c84m7"
],
"text": [
"Space is expanding faster than gravity can pull the galaxies together. Eventually there will be no stars in the sky because all the galaxies have moved too far for us to see. However before that happens we still will have a collision with the Andromeda galaxy and our galaxies will merge.",
"Gravity weakens at range, forever becoming weaker without ever disappearing. At a certain distance, gravity can't overpower the momentum of the galaxies fast enough for us to observe it in the universes lifetime. Inflation of the universe also overpowers gravity given enough range. And sometimes there's more gravity pulling a galaxy one way than the other."
],
"score": [
19,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it2i52
|
What is the acceleration due to gravity at the center of the Earth?
|
I know that it is less at higher altitudes, but how would being inside the Earth affect it?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bv0bm",
"g5bvf1j"
],
"text": [
"At the exact center you wouldn't have any acceleration at all because the pull from the mass all around you would cancel each other out. Addendum. If all the earths mass were to be concentrated into a single point so that you could get closer than ground level to that point without having some of the mass above you, gravity would increase the further down you went. You are currently about 6371 km from the center of the planet (give or take a few km for altitude and the earth being not a perfect sphere). Gravity decreases with the square of the distance. Going up or down a few km barely makes a noticeable distance. If you go halfway down (3185 km) to the center of this point mass earth gravity would be 4 times as strong as it is on the surface. If you went 3/4 of the way down it would be 16 times as strong. The closer you get the stronger gravity would get. At about 1 cm distance from the center you would encounter the event horizon of that hypothetical point mass, at which point gravity would be too strong for anything to escape.",
"At the center of the earth, matter is being pulled in all directions equally by all parts of the surrounding, so the net force due to gravity is zero. As you move away from the center of the earth, it scales up gradually until it reaches 1 g at the surface, and then starts to scale down again further out. A corollary of Newton's [shell theorem]( URL_0 ) tells us that if the Earth were of uniform density, the strength of gravity inside the planet would be a linear function of distance from the center, but that doesn't apply because in real life, Earth is densest in the middle."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it2wap
|
Why are humans the only organism that need to wipe after shitting?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bxbnk",
"g5bx4eb",
"g5c29gi"
],
"text": [
"Because we are the only animal that cares that we still have poop stuck to our butts. Other animals could really do with wiping their butts but they don't have hands or the hygienic sensibilities to do so, so sucks to be them. Some animals have dangle berries (poop stuck to hair) which usually fall off eventually.",
"Because we're the only ones that sit down to poo. A more natural stance (squat or similar) extends your prolapse and detaches the poop from the inner wall of your colon, leaving all the mess inside when you get up and walk away.",
"Another factor is the fact that our diet is heavily grain/sugar based, so our shits are a lot less 'solid' than our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This is also why we're the only animal that brushes our teeth, and a major reason for the ubiquity of braces/orthodontic issues in the developed world."
],
"score": [
29,
15,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it300x
|
Does color actually exist?
|
So I was watching the new Netflix movie I’m Thinking of Ending Things and there’s a point where one of the characters says “there’s no such thing as color in the universe, it’s all a part of your brain” and this really caught me off guard. Is it true things don’t actually have color, it’s all just a perception of your brain?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5bxu2h",
"g5ccnkn"
],
"text": [
"You know the question \"If a tree falls down in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, is there a sound\"? that question actually has no correct answer, or rather, it has two *contradictory* correct answers... depending on who is being asked. A psychologist will say that sound is fundamentally perceived and if there is nobody around to perceive it, then the sound is not real. A physicist, on the other hand, will say that sound is a wave and, as a physical phenomenon, will happen regardless of whether someone is around to perceive it. The point of this question is to highlight the fact that *different disciplines define concepts in different ways*. The same thing happens with the concept of color. To a psychologist, color, as we perceive it, is rendered entirely within the brain. To a physicist, there are very real physical phenomena that our brain is receiving as signals that then get converted into those colors we perceive.",
"There are colors that don't correspond to a specific wavelength (black, white, magenta...) . On the other hand there are wavelenghts that don't correspond to any color as they are not visible. The light itself is the same for everyone yet some people have some level of daltonism and experience colors differenlty. There are also the so called impossible colors that happen when you see a different color through each eye and other optical illusions that can affect color perception to some degree. All those facts reinforce the idea that color is just a perception."
],
"score": [
16,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it32rg
|
If I was standing on a beach, what tell tale signs would there be of an oncoming tsunami?
|
Also, is there is like some sort of general rule of thumb when it comes to whether or not your in the safe zone from an coming tsunami? For example, they say when it comes to nuclear bombs, if you stick your thumb out and your thumb is able to cover the mushroom cloud, your in the safe zone.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5by5wg",
"g5byaus",
"g5c0ehe",
"g5c12xw"
],
"text": [
"If the tide keeps receeding, book it to higher ground immediately. Thats the only one i know",
"The water will recede so much so that fish will be left behind. Basically, if you see the water retract a hundred feet rapidly leaving behind the fish in the sand, get on top of the nearest high ground immediately. Or you’re gonna die.",
"The two signs of a tsunami hitting is first an earthquake and then the water receding away from the coast. However neither of these are reliable. Firstly you may not be able to feel an earthquake that creates a tsunami. It can be far enough away or the ground conditions are such that they dampen the shakes. And even if you feel an earthquake it is likely not one that creates a tsunami. And although rare there are tsunamis that are caused by other things then earthquakes. As for the second indicator this only applies for half the tsunamis. The water recedes due to a \"negative\" wave hitting first. But depending on where you are in relation to the movements of the faultline that creates the tsunami the wave can come before the water recedes. The best way to know if a tsunami is incoming is to listen to the early warning system where such have been installed. These systems use devices in the ocean to measure the sealevel. Short changes in levels are due to normal ocean swells, very long are due to the tidal waves, but tsunamis will be between these and will be detectable as huge swells lasting tens of seconds or even minutes. If these are detected in the ocean the tsunami alerts will be sounded so people can seek high ground (or even though not recomended some seek open ocean).",
"The tide will go further out than you have probably ever seen before. And faster than you could imagine. Animals in the area will start hauling ass for for higher ground. You should also."
],
"score": [
16,
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it49h6
|
Why can Lithium be used for both batteries and medication?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c4cux",
"g5c4gx5",
"g5c4iih"
],
"text": [
"Lithium is an element, and can be part of lots of different materials. Different materials have different properties, and can be used for different things. Batteries and medication are things.",
"For the same reason water can be used for drinking, making concrete and water jet cutting: there's no real connection between the uses. Litium ion batteries use ions (charged particles) to separate electric charges and lithium ions have some useful qualities that allow the battery to be better. Lithium medication uses lithium-based molecules that interact with other molecules in human body.",
"That's sorta like asking why carbon can be used both for fire, food and diamonds, or how chlorine can be used both for table salt and for bleach. Elements have different properties when they are combined with other elements."
],
"score": [
10,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it4p96
|
Why does a Bank transfer take 1-3 days and does not work on Sundays. Should not everything be automaticed and be instant?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c7ku5",
"g5c8mdq"
],
"text": [
"Banks batch all of their transactions together and send them all in one big lump at the end of the day. Banks batch transactions together like this because it helps to comply with banking regulations on how much cash they have to keep on hand. The Federal Government has some really strict regulations that force banks to keep a certain amount of cash available during the day. Billions of dollars changes hands every day and it would be difficult for banks to ensure that they have enough money available at any given point in time if their money is constantly flowing in and out. By batching everything together at the end of the day, banks have all night to figure out if they're low on cash and then arrange for a short term loan to cover any shortfall that may exist. The not working on Sunday thing is because most interbank transactions are processed by the Federal Reserve. As a government organization, the Federal Reserve is just closed on Sundays which means no transactions can process. If a transaction processes the day after you made it, then this is why that happened. When transactions take more than a day to process its because the bank is concerned about fraud. US banks are liable for most types of fraud that occurs with their accounts. IE, if someone skims your debit card info from you then the bank has to eat that loss and refund your money. Historically banks put a 3-7 day waiting period on transactions that had otherwise cleared as a way of giving you, the potential fraud victim, more time to realize that your checkbook/debit card had been stolen and report it to the bank. (And so, allowing the bank to be able to stop the fraud and avoid having to eat the loss from the transaction). More recently, most banks use an AI to scan all of your transactions. If the transaction appears to be routine then it gets processed asap. Transactions only take a few days to totally clear when the AI flags them as being suspicious. This all only applies to transactions that occur between accounts at different banks. If your transaction is with someone who uses the same bank as you, then the bank doesn't need to go through the Fed's clearing system. Such transfers typically do go through instantly nowadays, subject to verification by the anti-fraud AI. Also, if you want a transaction with someone who uses a different bank to go through instantly thats still possible to do. You \"wire\" the money to other person, which essentially means that your bank directly contacts the other bank without going through the Fed. This provides for an instant or near instant inter-bank transfer, but banks typically charge you to do this since it has the potential to screw with their cash reserve levels if the transfer is big enough.",
"The 'traditional' (or old) bank transfer process is done by batch runs. The sending bank records all the bank transfers initiated during the day, creates a file overnight, and sends it to their clearing house. The next day, the clearing house organises and collates all the transfers it's received from all the banks, and creates batches to send to the receiving banks. The next day, the receiving banks receive the instruction to credit the relevant accounts. It's slow but reliable. In the UK, Faster Payments are pretty much the default for most transfers up to reasonably high limits. This is 'instant' - they say to allow up to 2 hours but in my experience it's normally received within a few seconds. The older style transfers (e.g. BACS) do still exist, but tend to be used for specific purposes (e.g. payroll). Other transfer methods also still exist - CHAPS, for higher value instant payments."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it4q67
|
If someone consumes toxic substances or has an overdose, how do you know whether to call poison control or just call an ambulance?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c677c",
"g5c6bzu"
],
"text": [
"Is the person conscious? Breathing? Vomiting? Etc. if the person is in distress always call 911. If the person is sitting there happily then call poison control.",
"Call an ambulance. A hospital may be able to identify the substance and try and provide an antidote. Only if you know what the substance is, call poison control, who may be able to guide further action, which will most likely involve an ambulance anyway."
],
"score": [
14,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it4ux7
|
How are those stop motion videos that are meant to feel like tutorial videos made?
|
This is an example of one: URL_0 They're stop motion videos but they're different in the sense that it has a human in it. And they seem to flow much smoother than other stop motion videos. They're usually done with legos from what I've seen but I've seen ones with dice before. I just don't understand how it's done. Do they just painstakingly keep changing up the objects while also reposing themselves each shot like with regular stop motion? Or is there a trick that I'm missing? Edit:added a phrase
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c6vrt"
],
"text": [
"> Do they just painstakingly keep changing up the objects while also reposing themselves each shot? Yes, that’s literally what stop motion is It’s up to the artist to move them in a way that looks natural and feels smooth, and it’s not super easy to do"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it4wyk
|
what exactly is the Commonwealth?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c7as8",
"g5c81hr"
],
"text": [
"The full name is the Commonwealth of Nations. It amounts to be a very loose club of nations. Almost all of them were part of the British Empire. So they have historical ties and speak English to a great degree. They don’t have any legal obligations to one another, but they do sometimes give extra rights to other Commonwealth nations. EG Singapore is a Commonwealth nation, if a Singaporean is working in the UK, they can vote in UK elections. The organization doesn’t do a whole lot, it’s supposed to encourage all sorts of good stuff like fighting poverty etc. But honestly nobody cares. Not like it can force anyone to do anything. They also hold a Commonwealth Games where they send athletes to compete in their own mini-olympics. Also hardly anyone cares. EDIT: There is also the Commonwealth Realm. Technically they're separate things, though all Commonwealth Realm members are also Commonwealth of Nations memebers. The Commonwealth Realm countries all recognize Queen Elizabeth as their head of state. She often shows up on the currency of the respective commonwealth realm countries. Which is why she showed up on Australian and Canadian money. As opposed to the rest of the Commonwealth of Nation members, who see her as the head of the club they're a part of, but have no particular obligation to.",
"It's basically a voluntary club for countries. Most of the countries in the Commonwealth were at one time in the British Empire, although there are a few Commonwealth countries which never had any association with Britain. Equally, there are plenty of former British colonies which have declined to join the Commonwealth. What does membership of the Commonwealth give a country? Nothing tangible -- there are no automatic trading benefits, no automatic preferential immigration policies, nothing like that. Really, it's just a group of broadly like-minded countries that have come together in a fairly informal way to share skills, knowledge, and ideas. It's kind of like joining a local community group in your neighbourhood -- you probably won't benefit financially from it, you might even have to give up some of your free time to be involved. But you'll make friends and you know that someone's there to look out for you. The Commonwealth is a similar concept, but for countries."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it527w
|
Why is the middle finger the “dirty” finger?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5c8dne",
"g5c7oug"
],
"text": [
"I had read, but cannot find the source, that it's supposed to be phallic and the hand makes up the whole junk.",
"I believe it’s something to do with archers using their middle finger to pull the bowstring and the enemy used to cut it off, so in defiance they showed the middle finger. I forgot where this is from though."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it5v8e
|
Why does your tongue feel super weird after eating/drinking something hot and how do you get rid of that sensation quickly?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cdb6p"
],
"text": [
"You're burning your tongue. It feels super weird and numb because you're damaging the tissue. The sensation won't go away until it heals. Be careful."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it5wsv
|
When you try to load a page, and it loads right as you press refresh, what happens there?
|
This may seem like a dumb question, as it could be purely out of coincidence, but could it have something to do with it cancelling the loading process to reload or something.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cbw38",
"g5ccer7",
"g5cnzrg"
],
"text": [
"It's not always coincidence! Sometimes when you see a part of the website flash just as you reload it's because the browser momentarily displays whatever it had already loaded, up until the point you hit refresh it was waiting for some data the website was supposed to provide but never did, so when you hit refresh this is aborted and the browser displays whatever it already has loaded, many times this is actually enough to make the website appear complete but maybe some functionality wasn't loaded yet.",
"Often times a browser will wait until images and other stuff within an element are fully loaded before it is displayed. Refresh button terminates the loading so it acts as though it is completed and shows the element anyway. That was more like 12yo explanation but oh well",
"If things are still loading your browser will often not display a page just so there aren't a bunch of bits popping up and moving around and being frustrating disorienting nonsense. When you tell it to give up, part of that routine goes \"oh things have stopped loading I guess we can show the page now\" but then the whole thing starts over right away."
],
"score": [
116,
21,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it60o4
|
How is it that even babies know if there is a wrong note in a song? How do we ALL intuitively know good pitch and bad pitch when we hear it, even if you are not musical?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cdge5"
],
"text": [
"Humans are really good at recognizing patterns in things. So in a song you have harmony and a general flow of things going on. A sour note breaks the pattern, breaks the harmony, and it stands out. From an evolutionary perspective most animals have some sort of warning cry that something is wrong, or there is danger. It breaks the norm. So the break in harmony may trigger a repressed instinct or response."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it64kv
|
Why do medical staff ask patients to say "ahhhhhh" when taking mouth swabs ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cccaq",
"g5ccfsv"
],
"text": [
"Making that sound tends to flatten the tongue against the bottom of the mouth, making it easier to reach the back of the oral cavity.",
"Your tongue makes it easier to reach the back of your throat by making a U shape. Try looking in the mirror with your mouth wide open and say ahhhhh! You'll see."
],
"score": [
15,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it69cf
|
Why would identical items in the same area of a freezer freeze at different rates?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ceplc"
],
"text": [
"When a liquid freezes and becomes a solid, it gives off the crystallization energy necessary to do so. With the tubes standing still in the fridge the temperature in the compound can drop below its freezing point without causing it to crystallize. This builds up an energy potential that when it suddenly freezes, the crystallization energy is set free which causes the temperature to rise a bit and radiate the energy away to the neighboring tubes, slowing their cooling process. Thus if a tube suddenly freezes, it hinders nearby tubes to freeze until the excess heat is cooled down again. The temperature raise is miniscule, but not neglegible."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it69js
|
What causes acne?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cf4n8"
],
"text": [
"Mostly? Bacteria. Specifically, Propionibacterium acnes. But different species and variances in bacterial communities on the skin, can influence how much acne you get hit with. Acne is really inflammation on the skin due to infection (small, non-lethal infections). Think of everything that happens when you get a cut or an infection. The area becomes red, a bit swollen, and can sometimes be painful. A lot of factors contribute to the skin becoming inflamed and infected by bacteria. Scratches/picking making little tears in the skin for bacteria to skip through. Touching, transferring the bacteria/oils/other cells, to those spots on your skin to clog up pores and become infected.Hormones can be a big contributer. A lot of hormone changes lead to changes in oils in the skin, which can make the skin more susceptible to bacterial infection. Like, if our skin (our outermost protective barrier) gets breached. A lot of white blood cells rush to the area to fight the invading pathogen (bacteria). After a while, they die and begin to build up. Forming the white spots we usually, but really shouldn't, squeeze out. Interesting note about the P. Acnes bacteria mentioned above. A couple of labs have recently begun testing skin creams that contain bacteriophages, to try kill the acne producing species."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it7oy3
|
How does an Intra Uterine Device (IUD) stop pregnancy?
|
I have the IUD as my BC but to this day, I have no idea how an IUD actually stops me from getting pregnant and how different it is to the contraceptive implant (rod). Honestly, I also don't know how the rod works. Any help would be much appreciated!
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cm43h",
"g5cmhz4"
],
"text": [
"Ok so you get two different types of IUD’s, a copper one or a hormonal one. Hormonal IUD’s effectively work exactly the same as any other hormonal contraceptive implant (such as the rod). What they do is they generally slow-release the hormone progesterone (or a synthetic version of it such as progestin). And the presence of high concentrations of progesterone does one or both of two things. Progesterone can stop your eggs from leaving your ovaries (preventing you from ovulating) and it can also thicken the mucus lining in your cervix which makes it difficult for the sperm to travel inside or even enter into your cervix. A copper IUD helps prevent you from falling pregnant in a slightly similar manner. The copper releases copper ions into your uterus which also creates a inhospitable environment inside your uterus for sperm. It also causes the mucus inside the uterus to thicken and also creates a slightly toxic environment inside your uterus which further helps kill any sperm that get inside. However since it isn’t releasing any hormones, it will not prevent you from ovulating.",
"**Hormonal** Hormonal IUDs secrete hormones that inhibit ovulation by binding to specific cellular receptors in place of progesterone, a key sex hormone in the body. **Metallic** Metallic IUDs are made of copper or steel and create an inhospitable environment in the uterus for sperm, thus killing them before they can reach the uterus. Many modern IUDs utilize a combination of these methods, both hormonally inhibiting ovulation and killing sperm in the uterus."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it7rl8
|
What is happening to cucumbers as you pickle them?
|
Over the summer I have just got into Pickling. I have almost nailed down the recipe for myself. What I was wondering though is what is happening to the cucumbers that is reacting with I assume the Salt, Vinegar, and whatever else I put in there.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5clis5",
"g5dp1et"
],
"text": [
"Cucumbers become pickles due to them being preserved in the solution (called brine) you mentioned because of naturally occuring bacteria fermenting it. It preserves the cucumber by preventing other bacteria from decomposing it and causing it to gain its sour taste from the lactic acid being produced. Edit: Hot damn, thanks for the award. I never thought it would be over pickles.",
"There are two methods for pickling, an old school and a new school. Pickling is the process of preserving edible products in an acid solution, usually vinegar, or in salt solution (brine). In the latter case, the acid that does the preservative action (lactic acid mainly) is produced by fermentation. Dill pickles are generally vinegar nowadays, while things like kimchi are still done with the brining process. Old-school: What is “fermentation” and “preservation”? In the salty brine jar, a human-friendly bacteria (often lactobacillus) tolerates salt better than other bacteria. They quickly eat (metabolize) much of the sugars in the vegetable, and poop lactic acid, leaving behind a foodless, acidic, hostile living environment for the other bad bacteria. The cool thing is, because the bacteria only cares about the sugars, the pickled veggies retain all their nutritional value (fiber, vitamins) and their awesome crunch, which is what we need! The bacteria also add extra B vitamins and tang. This is what people mean by “fermentation” and “preservation”. New-school: Here, we use vinegar to add acetic acid, which performs the same function as the lactic acid in the old-school method: acetic acid prevents the growth of bad bacteria, thereby preserving the vegetable. Vinegar is also a fermentation byproduct, i.e. bacteria poop. In the old-school method, sugars in the veggie gotten digested by a friendly bacteria, yielding a tangy poop (lactic acid). In the new-school method, the tanginess comes from the vinegar, which just seeps into the veggie over time. We use salt here, too, but mainly just to affect the texture and taste of the veggie – probably by drawing out some of the water out of the vegetable. Let me know if you have any questions or want something clarified! And that’s how I met your mother"
],
"score": [
34,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
it7zq4
|
What makes us lose interest in a song that once propelled us through our day?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5cqmxo",
"g5d0sqm"
],
"text": [
"Over-familiarity. We like music because it gives us a dopamine rush, however a huge part of that is the novelty of the song. Like all types of dopamine rush, your brain can get used to the same thing over and over again, and learns to release less dopamine upon being stimulated by that thing. Once you form proper memories of a song, your response to that song will always be different to how it used to be, but if you keep on stimulating the same pathways over and over again they become numbed. If you want to keep liking the same music, then it's important to have a long and varied playlist so that your brain is never getting the opportunity to become numb to any one song. You'll also want quite a few relatively boring songs on that playlist too so that the unusually good ones are still a high amount of dopamine compared to the normal amount you're getting.",
"Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. Your brain gets used to it, and the satisfaction or the pleasure you derived, wanes as you hear it over and over again."
],
"score": [
173,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
it827b
|
Why is it that when you spin something in one direction fast, it looks like it is going the other way?
|
Not sure if this is physics or other
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5d6w70"
],
"text": [
"This effect does not happen when you view something in sunlight. The brain does not capture frames, as /u/domiran points out; they just get blurry. However, if you're watching a film or video, you can get this effect. Suppose the object has a regular pattern, like spokes on a wagon wheel (this is called the [Wagon Wheel Effect]( URL_0 ) because it's most apparent on wagon wheels in western movies.). You're filming it with a camera that records 24 frames per second. The wheel is turning at such a rate that in 1/24 second, each spoke has moved to a point 90% of the way to where the next spoke just was. I'll try to draw some crude ascii art: spoke frame: | | | | | | frame: | | | | | | frame: | | | | | | frame: | | | | | spoke While one particular spoke has travelled pretty far to the right, your eye can't really tell one spoke from another on a spinning wheel, so you see the illusion of individual spokes slowly moving to the left. The same effect also happens in person if you're viewing under a light source that's flickering at a constant rate. If the light source is a strobe, and you can control the rate at which it flashes, you can have a lot of fun. They used to have an [exhibit]( URL_1 ) at the Boston Museum of Science involving water jets and a strobe light. You could control the rate at which the strobe flashed and aim the water jets to a small extent."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon-wheel_effect",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlNOyxWWf8"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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