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lniixk
|
What do the links that you get through those fraud texts, actually do to your phone if clicked?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go15rwz",
"go1itdt"
],
"text": [
"At the very least they tell the spammer that you click links in emails and texts and that they should continue to send you more as well as try to sell your details to someone else as a “live” target. At worst they can exploit your device, spy on you, steal your data and money, and much more.",
"Used to work in digital forensics. A lot. Clicking a link can send the other side your IP, location, personal information, internet service provider, web history, contact list.... A lot. Dont click links."
],
"score": [
10,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnil9w
|
How do stocks work on the other end? Example, if I buy a share of Apple stock does the money go into an account on their end?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go0jzli"
],
"text": [
"No, you aren't buying stocks from a company unless it's their IPO or they are issuing new stocks (rare). You are buying it from the person who currently owns it. Kinda like buying a used car. IF you are buying a used car, the dealership that originally sold the car doesn't get any money. Only the person who currently owns the car. Same with stocks. If you want to buy 100 stocks in any company, you have to buy them from someone who has them. Then when you send that person the money, you get the stocks."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lniquz
|
Why do allergy immunotherapies for pollens and dust work but not for food allergies like peanuts and fish?
|
I am allergic to both dusts and pollens as well as shellfish (which sucks balls because I love shellfish). I regularly receive immunotherapy shots for all of my allergies except my food allergies. I am deeply disappointed that there isn’t an allergy immunotherapy available for foods.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go0n08k"
],
"text": [
"MSc immunology here. After a bit of googling (allergies aren't my specific expertise and I wasn't sure if there was some fundamental difference between pollen and shellfish antigens I wasn't aware of), it seems to me like there's no real reason why these therapies couldn't be developed right now. It just hasn't been done (yet). You can probably blame big pharma for not seeing enough of a market in shellfish treatments, as opposed to hay fever which is pretty huge, and just not bothering to pump the necessary millions of funding into it."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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lnlgpb
|
Why can't we fall asleep on command?
|
Falling asleep is sort of like letting go and drifting away. Why can't we consciously do that?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go12yui",
"go105gj"
],
"text": [
"Because falling asleep isn't a conscious activity. We can create an environment where it's easier for it to happen or harder for it to happen, but ultimately we don't have all that much control over it. Hence why people fall asleep while driving or during sex. They don't want or plan to; it just happens. Its like... Vomiting. You have very little control over when you vomit and when you don't. Yeah, we can use drugs or techniques to try force it to happen or not happen, just like we do with sleep. But ultimately you probably can't just puke on command. And you almost certainly can't puke on command when you aren't even feeling the least bit sick.",
"someone asked that bevore here what i have taken away from that comment section is that in the process of getting sleepy a lot of things in our bodies change (some prozesses get switched on, some off, wildly different brain activity, cooler body temperature) and we would mess really hard with our biology and health if we could change that sudden by will"
],
"score": [
8,
5
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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lnli9o
|
it’s generally advised to not reheat rice due to the possibly of food borne illnesses. So why can we eat sushi with cold rice or frozen dinners with rice?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go105v4"
],
"text": [
"If you leave cooked rice out at room temperature for several hours the bacteria starts to grow. That’s the only situation in which you wouldn’t want to eat it, reheated or not. If you cook it and refrigerate/freeze it soon after, it’s safe to reheat later because you never gave the bacteria enough time to grow."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnlsgj
|
Why is prostitution illegal?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go11s9w"
],
"text": [
"Religion and stigmas about sex. Sex is considered a sacred act between two people of opposite sexes who love each other deeply, any deviation from that is a major taboo to the point homosexuality, prostitution and the like were illegal for a very long time in most of the world. It’s only recently that we’ve started seeing sex in a more casual light, but laws don’t change instantly."
],
"score": [
3
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
lnlszm
|
why is it that eyes don’t seem to get cold or even freeze.
|
Even when walking in -20 C weather the rest of my body will get cold and get numb, yet even though my eyes are exposed to such cold temperatures they always seem to stay warm and wet.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go1250u",
"go19vt0"
],
"text": [
"First of all tears and the film on our eyes are salty which lowers the freezing point slightly. Secondly, your head outputs a lot of heat compared to the rest of your body. ~35% of all heat the body produces is lost through the head. This means your eyes are relatively warm compared to other parts of your body continuously heating the film. Also, your brain is the last thing to stop getting energy when your body is shutting down. Your extremities may close their blood vessels but your brain will still be getting almost all the resources it wants. Third, your eyes blink regularly which agitates the film on your eyes breaking any crystals formed. It's like how a river can keep flowing if there's enough turbulence to keep breaking the ice crystals at a rate faster than they are forming.",
"Hahahaha laughs in Canadian. Oh yes they do. Just got out of a minus 52c cold snap and boy howdy they will freeze. Eyelashes will freeze together just from your breath, and dry them out fast."
],
"score": [
24,
8
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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lnmfuf
|
How does 3 phase power work?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go27bot",
"go17bpt"
],
"text": [
"Normal power is like pedalling a bike with two pedals; it's very hard at the instant when one of the pedals is all the way down and the other is all the way up. If you could have a bike with three evenly-spaced pedals (and three legs!) then that problem is solved and the power flows more efficiently and smoothly.",
"Think of it this way (ELI5 vast-oversimplification) power comes in cycles called waves where it goes from high to low to high to low. The high part is what we need to make electricity do something useful, the rest of the cycle doesn't help us (I know, I know, keeping it simple here). Let's say a single phase of power cycles once a second,- Single Phase: 0 seconds it's high, 0.25 its middle, 0.5 it's low, 0.75 its middle again, at 1 sec it's high. That's a lot of time where we can't use the electricity. A 2 phase system is has a second wave half a step out of sequence with the first. so at 0 seconds one phase is High and the other is low. at 0.5 seconds the first phase is low but the second is now high. This gives us 2x the Highs per second, so this system is 2x more useful than a single phase. A 3 phase is the same logic, now we have 3x the highs per second making the system 3x more powerful. The implication is that we can build systems 3x more powerful on a 3 phase BUT WE COULD ALSO use a machine with the same output as the single phase, but 3x smaller using 3 phase. Not the just the machine, we can use smaller wires, smaller *other complicated electrical stuff*, making a much cheaper device in 3 phase than the same output in 1 phase."
],
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8,
5
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[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
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|
lnnkpq
|
how Sunday can be the first day of the week but also part of the weekend? I must select a flair and my phone won’t let me scroll down far enough to select “other.”
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go1coci"
],
"text": [
"\"End\" doesn't necessarily mean at the back (e.g. the opposite of front). End can simply mean where something terminates. That is, Sunday is at the front end of the week and Saturday is at the back end."
],
"score": [
5
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnohcl
|
If I have myopia and rub/stretch my eyes, why do things become clearer? Is my eye temporarily "fixing" itself?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go1my6h"
],
"text": [
"The lens of your eye is designed to, let's say, *reposition* light so that it falls at the right spot on the back of your eyeball (retina), and the optic nerve where your brain then can interpret an image. With myopia (near-sightedness) the lens doesn't hit the right spot, resulting in an unclear image. Any change in the way the light enters your eye can have an effect on how the light ultimately lands in relation to your optic nerve, sometimes resulting in a slightly clearer image. It's the reason you subconsciously squint when you are straining to see something more clearly."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnojih
|
how does Uber lose so much money if it realistically doesnt do anything besides run an app, like the cost of depreciation, repairs, and fuel is all driver side and Uber just takes a cut from each transaction how can they be so in the red
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
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"go1jk63",
"go1jrgs",
"go1pdm9"
],
"text": [
"They’ve been investing a huge amount of money in driverless vehicle research. The eventual goal is to eliminate the Uber drivers. They also subsidize rides in new markets and take a loss there to edge out existing taxi competition.",
"So most cities regulate taxi service, and Uber just showed up and began operating outside those regulations. That meant lots of lawsuits, lots of government lobbying to get laws changed on local and state levels, etc. Additionally, the had to spend a ton to build up enough of a base of drivers and customers. Drivers don't want to drive unless they can make enough money, so things like new driver sign-on bonuses were offered. Additionally, to build up a customer base, they offered all sorts of discounts to customers. These expenditures made sure they could quickly build up enough drivers to supply customers a quick ride and enough passengers to make driving worthwhile for drivers. All these are expenses that are high up front, but will decline rather quickly once laws are settled, markets mature, etc.",
"They have servers, software engineers, customer support personnel, in other words, they have to pay a lot of salaries and hardware maintenance. They also have this ridiculous idea that they can lead the way in driverless car technology. They are wasting a lot of money on this research.",
"Sometimes, instead of taking a cut from the transaction, Uber will take a loss. Like, the customer will pay $7, and Uber will pay the driver $10. This happens a lot when Uber has special deals trying to get new riders or when Uber starts serving a new area. Uber will offers big discounts for new riders, or big pay bonuses for new drivers, so that Uber loses money with every ride for a while. This also sometimes happens when shared rides are happening. A rider asks for a shared ride, and Uber sets the cost at $7 and to pay the driver $10, expecting that another person will ask for a shared ride, and thus get put into this ride for another $7. But if no suitable ride is asked for, Uber just eats the loss and the rider gets a solo ride for below cost."
],
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17,
5,
4,
3
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[
"url"
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[
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|
lnpkbu
|
Why does soap mixed with water create pressure in a closed container?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go1ncc3"
],
"text": [
"Was it hot water? That could have made the air expand."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lnqz1i
|
How do robots that are outside earth send pictures to the earth? Is it the same system that allows us to send messages or phonecall each other inside the earth? Is it very difficult to send and receive stuff to/from outer space?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go1v12m",
"go1v98x"
],
"text": [
"They just use radio waves and broadcast the pictures, video, and information. Your cell phone does the same thing on other frequencies. Broadcast television works this way too. Radio in the car...etc.",
"The ELI5 answer is yes it is the same system. Radio waves. ELI10: This system you use for messages and phones are all based on different parts of the telecommunications system and they too use different radio wave frequencies to talk to each other. Some wired and others wireless. You can think of the photos sent back from Mars, in theory, similarly to a picture message. The data is broken down and transmitted via radio communication and them reassembled once received here on earth. This difference is distance. Here on earth is takes only seconds to send a picture to a friend, while to and from Mars the data travels at the same speed but takes nearly 22 minutes to be received due to the vast distance between planets."
],
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6,
4
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lnstc6
|
Why are lefty pitchers normally slower than righty pitchers in baseball?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go256xv",
"go26qen",
"go2inxr"
],
"text": [
"There's less competition, is the short answer. You don't need to throw 101 mph to get a roster spot as a left-handed pitcher. Plus, batters don't see lefties as often, so you already have a bit of an advantage and you don't need as much velocity. That being said, some lefties do still have high velocity. Clayton Kershaw's 4-seamer averages 94 mph and has touched 99.",
"Probably because they don’t have to rely on their power as much. Lefties are a lot more rare and are in high demand so as long as they have a solid fastball, they can spend their time learning specialty pitches. Left handed pitches tend to have a natural curve to them because of the way the ball spins coming out of their hands and their position on the mound. They have great curve balls and sliders. Plus a majority of batters are right handed and used to seeing right handed pitchers. A big and tall lefty is a scary force on the mound so they don’t really have to blast them by you. Then you have guys like Randy Johnson who could throw 100 and he’s like 6’7” and left handed. Scared batters silly.",
"Wasn’t randy Johnson a lefty? That dude was a speed baller. But I take your point about “most” lefties."
],
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130,
15,
9
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lntct2
|
what is Mandelbrot set ?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go33qbh",
"go2fgou"
],
"text": [
"Say you have a tabletop. You pick any spot on the table and you measure how far over your spot is (left to right) and how far up (bottom to top). That gives you two numbers. You \"do a math\" on these two numbers and that gives you two new numbers, and you can measure to find out where you are now on the tabletop. Then you \"turn the crank\" by doing the math thing again on the new spot, and so on, to get your next spot, and again, and again. Depending on where your starting spot is, as you keep \"turning the crank\", your sequence of next spots might: * Quickly end up off the table * Bounce around somewhat but stay on the table Most of the time, if you pick two starting spots that are very close to each other, as you \"turn the crank\" each starting spot leads to a very similar sequence of next spots. But the cool part is that there are some places where even a tiny change in where you place your spot can have a huge change in where you end up. We call those parts \"chaotic\". If you color each spot based on how many times you can turn the crank before the answer flies off the table, you get extremely beautiful color patterns and curls and wiggles around the chaotic parts. And if you could somehow zoom in, it would never get smooth, you would keep seeing ever tinier curls, forever. And all this beauty comes from some fairly simple looking math (not simple to a 5 year old, but lots of 12 year olds can grasp it).",
"To really understand the Mandelbrot set you've got to know a bit about complex arithmetic and complex algebra. The Mandelbrot set is a map of a certain property of how multiplication and addition affect each other in the complex numbers. Specifically, it asks \"If you start with a number and square it, then add the number, then square it, then add the number, then square it, then add it, etc etc etc, what happens?\" First you can consider this question using only the familiar set of \"real\" numbers. If we suppose our starting number is 0.2, then following this square-and-add process for a few steps, we get: 0.2^2 = 0.04 0.04 + 0.2 = 0.24 0.24^2 = 0.0572 0.0572 + 0.2 = 0.2572 and onward like that. Now, depending on your starting number, a couple of different things can happen. if a number is between 0 and 1, then squaring it gives you a smaller number than you started with. If you chose a very small number, then the squaring step will make the number even smaller, and this shrinking in the squaring step will keep the numbers quite small, *despite* the fact that the adding step makes it a bit bigger each time. Alternatively, you could choose a bigger starting number like 2. 2 squared is 4, then you add 2 which makes 6, and then 6 squared is 36, and... things blow up fast. Now, things act a little more strangely when you try using a negative number. -1 squared is 1, then you add -1 and get 0, then you square that and get 0, and then you add -1 and get -1, and you square that and get 1 again, and you're in a loop! So those are our options: things converge toward a small number, they blow up into increasingly large numbers, or they end up in a stable cycle. The Mandelbrot set is what happens when you allow your starting number to be positive, negative, *or complex*. Complex numbers are like 2-dimensional numbers. Where multiplying real numbers can be visualized as stretching or squashing the number line, multiplying complex numbers is like stretching or squashing *and rotating* the coordinate system. This can be pretty hard to visualize but there are a lot of great [videos]( URL_0 ) with animated diagrams that can help. It gets pretty, eheheh, complex."
],
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"https://www.khanacademy.org/math/precalculus/x9e81a4f98389efdf:complex/x9e81a4f98389efdf:complex-mul-div-polar/a/visualizing-complex-multiplication"
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lntmub
|
Dear homebrew developers why the original Xbox was able to emulate N64 games flawlessly and a twice faster CPU on a Raspberry Pi 3B/3B+/4 (and far more RAM) still can't?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go39uqu",
"go3g7gq",
"go3ri5c"
],
"text": [
"It's not just CPU & ram, it's the graphics card and software infrastructure. A video card is basically a second CPU, but specifically designed to do graphical calculations. They are especially important for doing full 3d graphics, which become amazingly slow without them. The Xbox has one while the rasberry pi doesn't. Software infrastructure referrers to all the code and resources required to do the stuff that you want the system to do. Historically, consoles provided almost no infrastructure to the developers. Their code almost directly access the hardware. Most rasberry pis are running a full linux distribution, both allowing it to more easily do more things, but consumes a relatively high amount of resources.",
"Point of order, N64 emulation on XBOX was kinda crap IIRC. Secondly while the clock speed on the Pi maybe be faster by a good bit, it runs on an ARM64 processor which is designed for power efficiency and cost savings over raw compute power. The XBOX is based on an x86 processor which can effectively do more per clock cycle, at the cost of using note transistors and therefore more power. Another problem is that ARM64 is a relatively new architecture. N64 emulation was more popular back in the OG XBOX days, and there was more effort put into optimization for that architecture. ARM64 coming up only fairly recently hasn't had the same amount of optimization/development put into it. Specifically dynarec comes to mind or dynamic recompiling which translates n64 specific code into x86 or ARM64 specific code. It's entirely possible that whatever emulator you used just didn't come with this as a feature by default. (Though it's probably doable with some configuration, seems like someone did manage to write something about 3 years ago.)",
"Mainly because the CPU clockspeed isn't the only factor to consider. E.g A bus and a motorbike can both travel at 100kmh but at the end of the journey the bus will have transported 50 times more people and their luggage. It's the same with CPU's. Different designs (essentially known as architecures) can do more than others. They all perform various calculations on data (essentially known as instructions) but some can have more complex instructions to choose from and so can do more 'work' in less time. That's basically the difference between the Xbox CPU and the Raspberry Pi. It's the CISC (complex instruction set computer) architecture versus the RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architecture. The Xbox uses a Pentium III (CISC) and the Raspberry Pi 3b uses a Cortex A53 (RISC). If you want to get a bit more technical we can take the example of multiplying two numbers. One number is stored in memory location A, the other is stored in memory location B, we want to multiply A by B and store the result back in memory location A again. With the CISC architecture of the Pentium III we just have to tell the CPU to do something like : multiply a, b That's one complex instruction that takes one clock cycle to complete. The Xbox CPU runs at 733MHz so it can do 733 million of those multiplications in one second. (That's not exactly correct but it's ok to think of it that way for the sake of the example). With the RISC architecture of the Cortex A53 we have to tell the CPU to do something like : load a load b product a, b store a That's 4 simple instructions that take 4 clock cycles to complete. If the Raspberry Pi 3b CPU runs at roughly double the clockspeed of the Xbox CPU it would still take twice as long do that multiplication task. (Again that's not exactly correct but think of it that way for the sake of the example). It gets even more technical when you take other aspects of the different CPU architectures into consideration. You can get into things like how many instructions can each architecture execute at the same time (known as parallelism). That's not as simple as how many cores are available, it's to do with how each core schedules and arranges the instructions it's working on at any given moment. It does that because instructions and memory accesses take time to complete, and the CPU can be doing other work while it's waiting for those things to complete. The Pentium III has a superior design in that department compared to the Cortex A53 which further increases the amount of work it can do in each clock cycle. Or you can talk about the size and performance of the cache memory (very fast memory inside the CPU that stores the most recently used data and instructions). That is used to avoid having to load and store the same data from the relatively slow main memory (the RAM). That also allows work to be done more quickly and the Pentium III is better than the Cortex A53 in that regard too. So ... as you can imagine all that extra complexity in a Pentium III makes it more capable, and it also makes it larger and more expensive to manufacture. But that's basically why an Xbox CPU is better than a Raspberry Pi CPU even though it's clockspeed is half as fast, and also why a Raspberry Pi CPU is so much cheaper."
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4,
4
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lntp0f
|
Horrible and Terrible both mean bad. Horrific means bad, but terrific means good? Why is this?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2aet9",
"go2abg1",
"go2uck4"
],
"text": [
"The answer to this is quite fascinating! A few hundred years ago the words **did** mean exactly what you would expect. Terrific meant a negative in the same way that horrific was a negative. [Here]( URL_0 ) is a great article explaining all the details, but to pull out the relevant portion: > This happened through a slow reshaping of the connections and connotations of terrific. First it acquired the sense, not just of terror-inducing but of general intensity. You could talk about a “terrific clamor,” meaning a whole lot of clamor. This was a bit of hyperbole—“so much noise it was terror-inducing!”—that eventually got reduced to a general sense of “more intense than usual.” Once a word like that gets established as a general intensifier, it may also be applied to positive experiences—terrific beauty, terrific joy—and from there the jump to a fully positive “terrific!” isn’t so unexpected.",
"Simply because the usage has changed. \"Terrific\" did, in fact, mean \"terrifying\", in much the same way that \"awesome\" meant \"causing terrifying awe\". However, definitions of words describe how they *are* being used. If people use the words in a different context, and that catches on, and spreads enough for long enough, then it becomes what that word means now.",
"I like the sarcastic use of terrible when tone alone means 'youre a kinda mean person but I love that about you'"
],
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44,
5
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"https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56865/why-does-terrible-mean-bad-and-terrific-mean-good"
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
lntrhe
|
Why do people get dizzy while reading in the car? Is there any way to avoid the dizziness while still being able to read in the car?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2c4wa",
"go2cdgp"
],
"text": [
"a ) Not everyone gets dizzy. b ) This would be your brain being confused trying to process conflicting information. Your eyes are telling your brain that you're still, quietly reading while stationary. Your inner ear (sense of balance) is telling your brain it is moving, because it sense the car movement. The result is your brain not knowing if it is still or moving and getting confused and sick.",
"When reading, your eyes are telling your brain you're sitting still, but your inner ear can feel the motion of that car and is telling your brain that you're moving. Dizziness/motion sickness can happen for some people when these things don't match up. That's why normally you can look up at the road/horizon while riding in a car without feeling dizzy, since your eyes and inner ear are both telling your brain you are moving. Motion sickness remedies in general might help with reading in the car, but nothing works for everyone 100% of the time. It may be worth looking into \"motion sickness glasses\" which give your eyes a sort of artificial horizon to see when moving. Though I think the most common advice for motion sickness symptoms when reading in the car is unfortunately to just stop reading."
],
"score": [
22,
8
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnu2ff
|
why is it that so many animals have their brains in their head, rather than anywhere else in their body?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2ctbd",
"go2d4s6",
"go2tzce",
"go2ofs1",
"go32x1s"
],
"text": [
"Simply, the speed of transmitting information from the senses to the brain and back encourages a central nervous system that is focused on the primary sense gathering organs. Eyes, Ears, Nose. From there it's an evolutionary advantage having those in an optimal position to gather data, or a head. Different species have different locations of not only their heads, but also their sense organs. Fish and horses for example have eyes on the sides of their heads, while most mammals have forward facing eyes. That's a bit of an aside, but it does go to show that their are evolutionary advantages to different configurations.",
"Eyes probably evolved before the brain - after all you don't need much brain power if you can't see. The brain then evolved alongside eyes to process all that visual information. The retina is effectively an extension of the brain, they both develop from the same tissue. It would be quite an evolutionary step for the brain to move elsewhere.",
"What does (almost) every animal have? A butt and a mouth. They're even the first things you grow as a little blastula. So if you're going to put sensory organs (ears, eyes, nose, etc.) on that animal then it makes sense to put those near the mouth because you want to sense the things you're eating. and as others have explained, it makes sense to have what's processing those senses be as close to them as possible.",
"The head contains the eyes, nose and ears having a short distance to the brain allows the animal to process this information rapidly to run away or chase what they notice.",
"Animals evolved from common ancestors that had brains there. Since the brain has lots of extra protection and other evolutionary adaptations around it (like short connections to eyes, ears, mouth, etc), it's hard to move. So it generally stayed where it was in our very distant (200+ million years ago) ancestors."
],
"score": [
57,
13,
13,
8,
6
],
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[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnvsis
|
How come weight is affected by calories, and not the weight of the food? If I eat a bag of candy, I will gain weight, but if I eat 4 apples, I won't gain as much?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2mck3",
"go2mrsb"
],
"text": [
"You excrete the mass of the object after you consume it. When you drink a litre/kilogram of water, you will initially show a kilogram heavier on the scale. However, you will eventually piss out, sweat, exhale, etc. that water and return to the weight that you were at before. Drinking water isn't \"true\" weight gain because it is a temporary change. Body mass is gain from calories, and calories alone. If you eat more calories than you burn, those calories convert to fat and store within your body for use at a later time. Apples have less calories per weight than candy. When you eat apples, you will end up excrete most of that weight right back out.",
"A bag of candy is refined and processed sugar that has an energy density ratio that is off the charts. Sugar in general is very easily digested, often before it reaches even the stomach. An apple on the other hand is mostly indigestible fiber. The bulk and majority will pass through your system and be expelled."
],
"score": [
23,
11
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnw5nu
|
Why is it that a new television costs about 1000 dollars, it has android, a chipset, wifi etc, while a phone wich is much smaller, but has also a chipset etc, also costs 1000 dollars ?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2o83c",
"go2t364",
"go2v2s5",
"go3m0bt"
],
"text": [
"Smaller, more intrinsic technology to fit in to the space. The quality of the housing, the function. Tiny technology is more expensive to produce than something 20 times its size.",
"For smartphones you are paying for all of the miniaturized tech in a very compact package. Every component of the device is usually cutting edge or groundbreaking in some way, whether it be double the megapixels on the camera over the last generation, a faster SoC that is able to dissipate heat better, a longer battery life, greater pixel density on the screen, wireless charging, the latest wireless radio technology, etc. For televisions you are basically paying for the screen per inch. Some more expensive televisions have some features like localized dimming, better color accuracy, low latency mode for gaming, etc. Sometimes you see new technology like vibrating the screen to produce audio, but mainly it's the screen size that you're paying for. The smart device features that come in your television are usually really low-powered budget android (or other OS) chips from years ago.",
"The short answer: because it's smaller. A slightly more complex answer is because the phone has more components, like front and rear cameras, video and audio encoders, cellular broadcast/receiving hardware, a battery that can power the device for a couple of days, protective glass, touch screen, and more. All that has to be packed into something that fits in your pocket. TVs have a plastic chassis, no space or power limitations. Then there are market reasons. There is less competition in the phone market. There are a gazillion people making TVs.",
"There are several things: * Smaller components are more expensive and it takes a lot more development and engineering to fit them all into a small space * Phones have more components (multiple cameras, bigger storage and RAM, battery, face/touch ID, ...) * $1k phone has the latest high-end components (processor, wifi module, ...), TVs usually use older versions which are way cheaper * Software development (TVs usually have very simple software) * Phones have to be more robust (waterproof, able to withstand a fall, ...)"
],
"score": [
111,
22,
10,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnwb0u
|
Why do mammals have endoskeletons rather than exoskeletons when it makes them vulnerable to attack?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2p8yy",
"go2s0fv"
],
"text": [
"Really really simple answer, exoskeletons can only get so big before they aren't structurally sound anymore And endoskeletons are actually much better at holding all our organs in while increasing movement and flexibility So we were able to grow bigger and dodge attacks at that bigger size with endoskeletons",
"Because they did evolve from creatures that do not have exoskeletons. Exoskeletons might have advantages in some situations but they have a lot of disadvantages. One is that it cant grow so you need to shed it (molt) and then a new large has to be formed. The creature is very vulnerable then because that can move around. The exoskeleton is also heavy and when you scale them put the weight them will increase faster than the animal's muscle strenght. & #x200B; The joins are also a problem. Exoceleton needs to use a hinge joint that bends in only one direction so you need more, they are also quite limited in strength because of the small contact area. The ball and socket joint that we have can move in more direct and is stronger. The result is especially for land animals you can get a lot larger and faster if you have an internal skeleton compared to an external. The largest land animal with an exoskeleton is the coconut crab with a weight of 4.1 kg (9.0 lb). You will not get anything much larger because of the scaling problem"
],
"score": [
33,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnx95a
|
Pixar movie 3D modeling elements
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2w1dp",
"go3ccrn"
],
"text": [
"Yes they animate it and model it all. In combination with some high tech animation tech. (Like algorithms that animate the hair moving). There’s a reason big hero 6 cost 150 million dollars to make, millions of dollars is spent on computing tech and paying a team of two dozen animators to work on it for months on end. Yes, there’s tech to help make it easier, a lot of it is proprietary and a trade secret, like we know there’s an algorithm to animate hair, but we don’t know exactly what that algorithm is because Pixar keeps it secret. But there’s also a team of people working on it 8 hours a day for several months.",
"The models from previous films are saved and reused, often with some tweaking. Many of the models created for the original Toy Story have been used in multiple Pixar films after being rescaled or retextured. Every film that requires new assets adds to the library of objects. One of the best examples of reuse is the ravine from Bugs Life being reused as the extraterrestrial canyon that Buzz Lightyear flies through in Toy Story 2. The floating rocks were initially a glitch when the ravine was rescaled but the rocks didn't move down to the new level of the ravine's floor. The CG artists were showing the initial rescale to the director and apologetically said they would fix the rocks. The director liked the look and jokingly said he would fire them if they fixed it. Thus, the floating rock space canyon came to be."
],
"score": [
9,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnxq7e
|
Why and how do we get goosebumps on our skin whenever we are cold or scared?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2y651",
"go3abzx"
],
"text": [
"Goosebumps are the hair follicles standing our hair up a bit. We used to have much more hair. When cold, it would help warm us up. When scared, it would make us look bigger.",
"It also helps signal to others that you are scared, back when we were hairier apes you could see on your fellow apes that they were feeling scared without them even thinking of telling you. That kind of honest signal is potentially very valuable in survival situations, before we lived in huge tribes and safe houses."
],
"score": [
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnxsry
|
how does a high demand for power equate to a $10K power bill for either wholesale or civilian accounts? (TX)
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go2ys07",
"go335iw"
],
"text": [
"Some of the billing in Texas are either fixed rate or variable rate, depending on the power company and the customers choice. If you had the variable rate plan, your power cost is based on supply and demand. If there is a very large supply (very sunny and windy) and not much demand (mid 60s temp), then power costs would go down and you would save money compared to a fixed rate. But when the temp really dropped, everyone was trying to use power to heat their homes (High demand) and power generation plants went offline due to freezing problems (very low supply). So that drove the cost extremely high for the given power available. If you were on a fixed plan, you made out great. If you were on a variable plan, well, it cost you a lot for a very short amount of time. The guy being used for the 10k example is an extreme but he did use 600 dollars worth a month normally. So he is a big consumer of power for his 3 different meters. He played the gambling game of variable rates. And got burned at it.",
"I was looking at this all wrong. Googled what you're talking about. So the people that have those ridiculous bills are on a wholesaler group provider, not a standard power company deal. So the wholesaler buys power, then sells it at market rate. But with the increased demand, from lack of insulation, and the abnormally cold for the last few years weather. The price per unit of electricity has skyrocketed. The news story gave one example of $9000 per unit on that market with a usual seasonal price of $50 per unit. This happened from the removal of all extra energy from the market to run heaters and what not, creating a scarcity of supply. Electrical prices paid from regular utility companies will probably double or more, but not get that ridiculous. There may also be some form of government help out in this situation. From what I've seen people on that system are urged to get off of it immediately even by that company itself. The guy that is in the story had his bill go from $150 to over $3200 for a month. Short version, his supplier buys power at wholesale rates and resells to customers at a fixed percentage over market. Usually saving quite a bit of money. However, with unprecedented demand, the market rate shot up, and the company is working like normal, just with highly elevated prices. Think of it like the egg shortage we had a while back if you want. You want three fried eggs, usually the price of a carton of 6 eggs is 50 cents. Someone buys the carton and gives you three, gives someone else three. Then they charge each of you 30 cents. They make a little money, and each of you customers get your eggs at least price than buying a whole carton and wasting the other three eggs. Now there is a shortage, that same carton now costs $5, same deal happens automatically. Now you pay them $3 for the same thing you used to get for 30 cents because the price shot up."
],
"score": [
8,
6
],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnxsui
|
bomb defusal. How do they now which wires to cut and all of that?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go30za6",
"go2y23y",
"go2ypso",
"go455ia"
],
"text": [
"They rarely actually go and defuse it. Though, when they do they don't rely on colors, they examine the actual mechanism and figure out what each wire etc would do. But most of the time they use other methods, like a water cannon. Use an X-ray or some other method to figure out where the detonator is then it blasts a slug of water through the electronics so fast they don't have a chance to detonate. Other times, depending on the mechanism, they just take it somewhere safe and blow it up.",
"In nearly all cases now, there is no cutting of any wires. They just go in and freeze it so that it can't explode and then deal with it at a safe distance.",
"The wire color is only important on standardized munitions. On a homemade bomb it is meaningless and you would have to look at what is connected",
"Bombs are not defused like in the movies. They are either detonated in place, or moved to a safe place and then detonated. If the bomb has to be moved they will build a small dam around the bomb and flood it with nitrous oxide to freeze the bomb. This stabalizes the bomb and slows down the reaction if it explodes. Then it is put inside an explosive resistant container and taken to a safe place. Then the bomb is detonated with a smaller explosive. Edit: Liquid nitrogen, not nitrous oxide."
],
"score": [
24,
20,
7,
4
],
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[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lny060
|
- Why does that first coffee in the morning trigger a bowel movement?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3297m",
"go3a5jb",
"go3jb85",
"go3ftaf",
"go3gmk4",
"go3mts6",
"go3nmtz"
],
"text": [
"When we sleep, everything in our body is slowed down and our digestion is pretty much on pause. (That's why you aren't supposed to eat heavy food before bed.) Your brain will suppress urges like going to the toilet. Once you wake up, your body slowly resumes all those functions. Coffee just speeds up the process. Caffeine stimulates your nervous system: it increases your pulse, breathing frequency and blood pressure. It works like an alarm bell for your entire body to go into overdrive. That also includes your bowel functions. There are plenty of muscles in your stomach and intestines that will react to the caffeine and work harder to get the excrement to its final destination. Another explanation is simply that your body has gotten into the habit of pooping after you had your breakfast coffee after you've been doing it for a long time. It can be seen like a ritual that your body goes through every morning. Just like night time means sleeping, morning time means pooping.",
"In addition to the other great answers already submitted there is something called the gastrocolic reflex triggered by warm liquids entering the stomach. Will get things moving if anything is in the chamber.",
"Nicotine too... Coffee and a cigarette in the morning and evacuation within a couple minutes. I miss cigarettes. I know everything bad about them, but I still miss them, kind of like a crazy ex. Life’s healthier but significantly less interesting without them. Nicotine addiction was the perfect 10 minute meditation. Forced me to get up every couple hours whether writing a paper at university or working as a young adult. Walk outside, get some air & smoke, and it’s just you away from everything chasing the dragon for a few minutes. Then back to work/school for another couple hours.",
"Chemicals in coffee (not caffeine) are sigmoid colon constriction agonists. They cause the end of the gastrointestinal tract to constrict, and therefore push their contents forward (towards the anus). The same effect was found in decaffeinated coffee (and so its not the caffeine that causes the effect). & #x200B; eli5: coffee (not caffeine) causes the last section of the poop pipe (sigmoid colon) to squeeze. It does not cause other parts of the poop pipe to squeeze.",
"Former opioid addict here: This also happened when 'breaking my fast' on opiates in the morning. Can't tell you why.",
"Medical student here. It's called the gastrocolic reflex. It's a reflex that helps make way for new food by moving food already in your gut towards your anus. The coffee (or food) stretches your stomach, and this sends signals down to your colon to start contracting it's muscles in waves, moving its contents forward. You then feel like you need to poop. It's the same reflex that happens when we eat, especially in the morning. Coffee just happens to be one of the first things we ingest in the day.",
"I must have a stronger stomach or something than most because coffee doesn’t do this to me at all."
],
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882,
125,
72,
35,
6,
6,
4
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lny1vg
|
Why does opening new tabs make me forget in the same way when you walk into a room?
|
Whenever I walked into a new room, sometimes I forget what I'm going to do. This also happens with me when I open a new tab in Chrome. Does anyone know why?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go39fol"
],
"text": [
"When your brain is doing a specific task, sometimes it gets caught up in the smaller tasks it has to do to get there and accidentally erases the original task while in “Complete!” mode. It has something to do with short-term memory transitioning into long-term memory, where there’s apparently some kind of blind spot between the two that makes it hard to functionally recall the idea in your mind until much later. It also has something to do with the brain taking in a new environment. Every time you walk into a room, your brain has to take a moment to process your surroundings and recall the information about said room. Sometimes, this is so powerful of an instinct that it erases the task it had in memory in order to recall the other memory about the environment, but it happens so fast that we just blank out. Since surfing the web is a similar process as exploring terrain, this problem sometimes overlaps with our internet habits."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lnyvdw
|
How do audio feedback loops work?
|
When using an external speaker and another separate microphone you often get audio feedback loops. From my understanding it's because the microphone picks up the audio from the speaker. Seems simple enough. What I don't understand is how they never occur when the speaker and microphone are connected (like using the built in mic and speaker of a laptop). At first I thought that it was just due to the mic stopping whenever the speaker played, but after some testing I found that the microphone was still able to pick up the audio. Is there some software like noise canceling where it makes "anti noise" to get rid of the feedback loop? Or is it something simple that I'm missing?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go38n46"
],
"text": [
"> What I don't understand is how they never occur when the speaker and microphone are connected (like using the built in mic and speaker of a laptop). The laptop \"knows\" what sounds the speaker is playing. So it \"knows\" what the feedback sounds like (roughly). Therefore it can subtract the feedback from the microphone input. > Is there some software like noise canceling where it makes \"anti noise\" to get rid of the feedback loop? Often yes. It's called acoustic echo cancellation. > Or is it something simple that I'm missing? The concept is simple, but the implementation isn't. I don't know the algorithms, but I'm pretty sure there's no ELY5 for them."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lnzik3
|
If I don't eat or drink anything during the night then why should I brush my teethin the morning if I brush before bed? Shouldn't my teeth be clean of the bad stuffs?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go38bln",
"go3c6mh",
"go38bcy",
"go3awx8"
],
"text": [
"You're never going to get even close to 100% of the bacteria in your mouth eliminated/removed. Any survivors from your nighttime brushing are going to happily reproduce, expel waste materials, and die en masse overnight.",
"The issue with sleep is stasis, movement of chewing and swallowing throughout the day keeps a certain flow of saliva in the mouth that helps clear bacteria. When you sleeopyour mouth is ajar and unmoving which lets bacteria grow as there is nothing to disturb them or flush them away.",
"Well with the dry environment that your mouth has for the 8 hours that you sleep, bad bacteria can grow (which is why a lot of people have bad breath in the morning).",
"Brushing isn't perfect. You inevitably leave behind some food for the germs, which they happily eat. They don't need much. If morning breath bothers you, dental probiotics might help. The good germs will eat the food, starving the bad germs."
],
"score": [
18,
7,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lnzw1w
|
Why do phones take so long to charge enough to turn on after dying?
|
I don’t know if this is exclusively an iPhone thing or not, but every smart phone I’ve had takes a ridiculous amount of time to charge to the point of powering up after it dies. Anyone know why?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3b8ws",
"go3blm1"
],
"text": [
"Rechargeable batteries do not like being completely discharged. If the battery is discharged enough that the phone has to power itself off, the phone is designed to charge up to a certain percent above \"dead\" before it allows itself to be powered back on. That way, if the phone is unplugged, it does not have to shut down right away. Also, forcing the phone to stay off allows it to charge up to the \"power on\" threshold more quickly, since all the power from the charger can go to the battery, and not be split with running the phone as well.",
"Well for one, lithium batteries can't charge as fast when they are super low. It's just a quirk of the battery chemistry. Below 10% and above 90% (ish) they need to charge slower. The other part is that your phone will wait till you get at least a couple percent so that it doesn't just die halfway through, or immediately after booting up. Even when it's plugged in to an adapter if the adapter is, say, just plugged into an old 100mA USB port it's entirety possible that your phone is using more power than the charger can supply and is still draining battery. Most phones will also save a bit of reserve below 0% where it has enough power to safety show you a quick low battery image before blinking off several times. Then below that it will just not respond to the power button press, but this can make people think the phone is bricked when they might just have a bad charger."
],
"score": [
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo02p0
|
why is Texas having such extreme weather this year ?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3cdg7",
"go3drbt"
],
"text": [
"Climate change does play a role as it makes weather on both ends of the spectrum more extreme. In this instance there was a huge winter storm from Canada(?) that came down and hit most of the US. The weather Texas got was unusual for them, but not different from what other states got, it’s bad for them because they don’t have the infrastructure to deal with winter weather like northern states do like snow plow and salt trucks, etc. House also aren’t built for snow, people don’t know how to drive on ice and snow, things like that make it worse",
"So there’s an ongoing debate on if it’s climate change or if we are entering a stage where the poles are shifting. Scientific evidence has shown it’s happened several times (including wiping out the Neanderthal). What happens during winter is there is a concentrated polar vortex that can shift downward. There’s lots of science nonsense that someone more capable would have to explain, but for the past 20 years it’s been coming down farther and farther. It’s also been staying longer. Theories around climate change being the cause exist, though several other competing theories also exist. Hard evidence exists to support several theories, but nothing enough to be conclusive."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo0gq5
|
- Why does checking your credit score damage your credit score?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3e63d",
"go3e4tp",
"go3hmyc",
"go3eiix",
"go3ecb8"
],
"text": [
"YOU checking it through the three reporting bureaus doesn't impact it, but outside organizations checking it does. Now, if you're searching for a home loan and they see that four companies have checked your credit, lenders will probably understand and the impact will be minimal or not appear until you've already obtained the loan. But a wide range of checks or several checks a year might indicate that you are a credit risk as you appear to be seeking lines of credit from a range of institutions and needing to get multiple companies to check to get a line of credit. This might indicate that you are overly stressed with debt or unable to get credit easily when you need it. It's one of many indicators of risk.",
"It doesn't necessarily damage it. There two kinds of checking; hard checks and soft checks. Hard checks are the ones that lower your score, at least temporarily. The reason is because this check is being done with the intention of taking on more debt. It also helps prevent from taking on too much new debt too quickly, because your score may be too low for the next loan. Again, this is usually temporary, like a few months or years (really depends on why the hard check was done.) A soft check won't do any harm. That's just checking your score for your own knowledge, like when you use Credit Karma.",
"It doesn't when you check it, yourself through the credit bureau directly or using something like Credit Karma. However when a company runs your credit say for a car or credit card, then it can drop it a couple of points. Unless you are trying to buy a lot of things on credit at the same time it shouldn't ever he a problem. Also, let's say you are trying to buy a car and the dealership has you apply for different financing (multiple banks) all at once, you won't get dinged for each one. The credit report companies understand you're looking for the best deal, so they combine them into one search. Hope this helped",
"What hurts your credit score are \"hard pulls,\" which are what companies do when they're deciding whether or not to loan you money (e.g. when you apply for a loan). The idea is that if a lot of people are evaluating you for a loan, it might mean you plan on taking on a lot of debt beyond what you currently owe. Credit checks that aren't associated with a loan, like when an employer runs a background check on your or when you check your own credit, are called \"soft pulls\" and don't hurt your credit, since they aren't an indication you plan on taking on more debt.",
"There is a difference between checking your score and running it. You can check it everyday from a service at no consequence. However, if a bank runs your credit it means you applying for credit. Presumably this means you are taking on debt or need to. If you have five or six credit checks by banks in a short period this presents a picture to lenders that you are over extended financially and cannot find anyone to lend you money. This makes someone a risky customer and lowers their credits score."
],
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464,
53,
18,
7,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo187b
|
What does people mean when they say that a computer system runs on different architecture from another computer? Like when somebody says that an emulator can run N64 games faster theoretically but because of different architecture in practicality it cant?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Processors each have their own language. In technical terms it's what's called an \"Instruction Set Architecture\". It defines the words that that a computer uses to do things. For instance one computer might have use \"ADD 2 2\" to compute 2+2. While another computer might use \"SUM 2 2\". When someone writes a piece of software like a video game, it gets compiled for a specific instruction set architecture based on the platform it's going to be used on. When a program is compiled, it gets turned from the programming language (C/C++ for instance) into the language of the processor. You might hear this called \"machine language\". So code that's been compiled for one processor type can't run in a different processor because the machines use different languages. Another way to think of it is you want to tell someone hello. You could chose to say it in either Russian or English. If you say it in Russian, the English speakers won't understand it, but if you say it in English, the Russian speakers won't understand it. Your choice of language is like compiling the software.",
"I'll expand on the language metaphor that others have used. An \"architecture\" determines how the hardware works at a very basic level. It's the language that the computer thinks in. When you emulate another kind of computer, there's basically one level of indirection going on. The emulator is creating a digital version of a different computer, for example a nintendo 64, that has to have all the different hardware of that computer in digital form. The languages that the two computers think in might not have a 1-1 mapping for words though. If I translate english to spanish, I can't just go word by word. I have to consider the different grammar and adjust accordingly. That translation process takes time. Similarly, the digital hardware being emulated has to actually be running on the physical hardware of your actual computer. So the instructions are essentially being interpreted twice. First, they are interpreted by the emulated computer, and then translated to your computers language after.",
"To really get down to five year old level: the actual hardware, the computer chips inside the game consoles, is different. It's designed different, it uses different codes, and it behaves different. Some of those \"cpu architecture\" terminologies are ARM, x86, x64, PowerPC, MIPS, RISC, and more. Less five-year-old stuff: The same programmed source code may sometimes be capable of working on multiple architectures, but once it's compiled for a certain one it's quite hard to decompile or recompile it for another without having access to the source code (which is usually something companies keep closely guarded.) Also it often takes a lot of work to write code that runs well without bugs on different architectures: for example x86 is a \"32 bit\" architecture which means that 4,294,967,295 (about four billion) is the largest number that that architecture can easily handle without lots of ugly workarounds. (If you tell a 32-bit computer to do 4294967295+1 it'll say the answer is 0, and if you tell it to do 0-1 it'll say the answer is 4294967295... unless you have negative numbers turned on but I won't go into that right now.) A 64-bit architecture like x64 however can handle numbers as big as 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (18 quintillion or 18 million billions) so a lot more math and detail can be handled. In other words, architecture matters and newer architectures help games look good and be fast. One other big reason 64 bit architecture is increasingly popular is because programmers like to store dates and times as the number of seconds before or since January 1, 1970 GMT. (It can be negative to easily talk about dates before then too.) But as of this writing, it's been 1,613,808,415 seconds since 1970. Since it can also be negative, that cuts our available numbers in half, to 2,147,483,647. So we only have 533,675,232 seconds left until we run out, which is just under seventeen years from now. This is called the \"year 2038 problem,\" much like Y2K, so we've got until then to upgrade or patch every single digital device that cares about what year it is. Fortunately with 64 bits, we can count up seconds for the next 292 billion years, so we shouldn't have to worry about that anymore.",
"It's like building a car out of Duplo blocks or Lego blocks. They are both cars made from similar blocks but are entirely incompatible.",
"Hmmm. Architecture is basically how that computer runs at the most basic level. All a computer is, is a bunch of really high tech light switches, on and off. Where it gets complicated is to figure out how they should be flipped and how to convert that into lets say a document, or a picture, or even a fully functioning video game. So to do that we have to give the computer instructions. We would call that a program or a programming language. The catch is, it's really freaking hard to actually tell the computer which switches to flip exactly when. What we do instead is tell it on a more human understandable level what we'd like it to do (do some addition here, print a message here.) When we write those instructions for the actual game, the computer then converts it into what is called machine language, which is basically telling it what switches to flip when. Now here's the catch. In the same way that every car and vacuum cleaner brand are different, so is every model of computer. And in the case of computers, it REALLY effects what order the switches will be flipped in. In some cases, it can be a big enough difference that you can't get old programs to run on new computers. Now this is really a bigger problem with older programs running on newer things, because they were written for older computers which ran on older computer parts that used different machine language. So when we update them for new computers, even though the human readable part of the code works, when it gets translated to the machine code, the newer computer is essentially speaking a completely different language and can't understand the program. So to get it to work we have to make significant and difficult changes to either the program that emulates the software or the software (game) itself. Most people, unless they are the original company who owned the game, don't have access to the human readable code, because companies only sell the games in machine readable form to protect their product from pirates and other reasons. So when you're emulating an old game and it's not working because of the system architecture, it can be a really difficult problem to solve, because you don't always know exactly what part of the program is causing the issue",
"Consider different architectures as different creatures. One (let say it is A-creature) with strong 6 legs and strong 2 arms, specialized to live in forests and climb trees, another one (B-creature) with 2 legs and 8 arms, specialized to live in flatlands. Consider a game is a dance. If a dance invented in B-creatures tribe and is performed heels over head, A-creature may perform this dance, but it will be slower and a bit clumsy, than if this dance will be performed by a B-creature.",
"If you are emulating a cpu that has similar cpu instruction set and functionality as a modern computer then at worst you just map the game instruction to a modern cpu instruction. Some of the late 90s consoles had weird chips and weird ways of communicating between them. Just means you have times where too much happens at once to do all the processes necessary to simulate the state of the chips faithfully. Jon burton that lead sonic the hedgehog game development at one point has some awesome videos explaining some of the weird hardware they had to support in the 90s. URL_0",
"When you were a kid you probably played with some \"construction\" toys, such as Lego, K'nex or Meccano. The idea of the toys is that you have some basic parts that you can combine to build something, like a small vehicle. You can make whatever you like, so long as you can build it with the parts you have and some kind of blueprint to follow. Now, let's say you have a blueprint for a Lego model helicopter, but you and your friends only have K'nex. The Lego blueprint is mostly worthless, but you *could* design something that looks very similar and has the same functioning spinning blade. In order to do this, you need to know how lego works and probably be pretty good with K'nex too, there's no simple way to convert the blueprint. The result might be pretty good, but sometimes, some parts just won't be the same because it's physically not possible. You also need to design and print the new blueprints and instructions for your friends, which takes a lot of time. This would be called \"porting\" the blueprint, it's tedious and you need to do it once per blueprint you want to play with. Hopefully, at the end of the day, you can throw the old Lego blueprint away and everyone can use the new K'nex blueprint to this helicopter without needing the Lego. However, when I said there was no simple way, I lied. What you could also do instead is to figure out how to *build Lego bricks out of K'nex*. Think about it, if you came up with a K'nex blueprint for all of the basic Lego bricks, then you'd be able to build *any* Lego blueprint without needing to port it. Genius! You just need to build the bricks you need from K'nex and then fit them together according to the Lego blueprint directly. However, there's a huge drawback, you need a *lot* more K'nex than you needed lego and therefore it takes a *lot* longer to build. The same would also be true if you were to try the process in reverse: converting K'nex blueprints to Lego by building K'nex pieces out of Lego bricks. This is an unavoidable problem with the method: emulating one \"architecture\" in another by simulating the smallest parts is a very easy way to accurately cover all blueprints, but it is also very inefficient. You may be able to take shortcuts that let you use a lot fewer pieces, sacrificing the ability to accurately build some models, but it's still not anywhere near as fast. For the sake of this analogy though, you need to assume that kids are now thousands of times faster at building stuff than they were before but that the process of porting blueprints manually is *very* difficult. Glossary: * Kids with their K'nex/Lego: gamers with computers. * Blueprints: games. * Building a blueprint: running a game. * K'nex/Lego: architecture. * Blueprints for Lego blocks in K'nex: emulator.",
"Also extremely simply put, N64 for example was speaking japanese, your current intel PC is speaking american english, AMD is speaking british english, most android phone chips are speaking scottish, apple chips are speaking a specific dialect of irish, etc. To run a program that was built for the N64 on an intel PC, you need something (emulator) to interpret from japanese to american english on the fly. It is not very efficient, but it can be done. Same if you make a phone app that you want to run on a PC. You need something to emulate a phone environment for the app to be able to run. There are also other factors. For example the N64 was like an old japanese man, speaking slowly, and the games were based on that speed. New PCs are speaking like super fast on crack english, and they can translate japanese to english very fast, but the game isn't built to be read and show that fast, so it basically slows things down on the emulator in order to time things as they were on the N64. And with that, it also slows down the translation. You can in theory translate the game and then show it on the time it needs to, but it makes emulators much harder and difficult to make, so they are rarely being made like that.",
"There are two levels of architecture: The Set of instructions that a processor can understand, and the micro-architecture (the implementation of those instructions, how the circuit is wired) The set of instructions, for a 32 bit processor, would be a list of binary numbers with 32 digits. Using the RISC-V as an example: The first 7 bits select the format of operation, and depending of the format, the other bits will select an operation (e.g. add, subtract, jump, branch, shift, etc), the memory address where are stored the operands, and where the result should be stored, etc. (That's what is machine code) The micro-architecture is how everything is wired so that if you send that if you input the instructions of a certain architecture, the output will be correct (think of it like a calculator. If you type in any calculator \"2 + 2 = \", the output will be 4, but how the calculator is wired changes between calculators. So, when people say that a computer runs on a different architecture, it generally means the machine code that a processor A understands is different from processor B. But in the case of the N64 emulation the rabbit hole goes furher. The issue isn't with the instruction set (actually, the MIPS is quite light to emulate), but with the separate chip that deals with graphics and audio (RSP). Some games had a microcode that changed the configuration of that chip, to optimize the graphic rendering (and those are the games that people have more headache to emulate). Also, for a long time, the development of n64 emulation was really messy.",
"A lot of good responses on what people mean by architecture on a general level. But a more specific level, why N64 emulation is so hard is down to simple hardware. The N64 had a special GPU, the \"[Reality Coprocessor]( URL_0 )\" which was like a dual core processor for graphics. No one makes a dual core GPU, it's not necessary for anything other than the N64 specific architecture. It being basically a two core meant that it could do 2 tasks at once and send the results of both at the same time for the console to display it in game, whereas a single core GPU like in a Retropie or your PC can only do one task at a time, sure it can do each task 10 times faster, but it still can not spit out the two tasks simultaneously, which means there's a delay in the result. That's why emulated N64 games come out all choppy.",
"Think of it like this... The engine drives your car, but each manufacturer has their own engine design. So you can take a Dodge Viper engine and put it in a PT Cruiser because they're the same manufacturer: URL_0 While it's technically possible to put a Ford engine in a Chevrolet, it's a lot harder and requires re-routing and re-engineering. So computer code designed to run on a particular kind of chip may require extensive re-working to work on a different class of chip. This is why PS4 games can run on the PS5, they have chips of a similar class, but PS3 games cannot, the Cell processor is too different from the later machines."
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lo18hl
|
Asymmetric information what is it and why is it important?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"You sit down to play a game of chess. You know everything your opponent knows, and they know everything you know, about the state of the game. That's *symmetric* information. Chess also happens to be a game of *perfect* information, because you both know everything there is to know about the state of the game. Now, imagine we have a new form of chess. One square, at random, is a land mine trapped by a non-player (say, a judge in a tournament, or it's chosen at random). Neither player knows where it is, and both know when it blows up. This game still has *symmetric* information, but the information is no longer *perfect* (because the players don't know where the mine is). Both players are still basically playing a game of strategy on the board, not a psychological one with one another (except perhaps in ways the other player might cue things they \"know\" but haven't noticed yet). Now imagine that the player with the black pieces gets to set the land mine, and the player with the white pieces doesn't know where it is. Now the information is *asymmetric*: black has information white does not. Black can play mind games with white by conspicuously avoiding certain squares, while white can keep track of where black moves to narrow down the information available to them. White may have a guaranteed win but be unsure if it will be disrupted by the secret land mine. And so on. Now white's understanding *of black's psychology* becomes very important - is black bluffing? double-bluffing? triple-bluffing?"
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lo1k0a
|
Quantized Inertia
|
What is the mathematical basis of the theory, and how does it fall short in explaining the origin of inertia and the apparent effects of dark matter and dark energy, so significantly that some consider it pseudoscience?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"I'm just a graduate in physics, but from my understanding, the reason its classed as pseudoscience, rather unfairly by some is its connection with the EM drive that many have already dismissed as pseudoscience, this is popular opinion (not scientific opinion). Mike has now release several alternate methods of deriving QI which strengthens his case, i like his information theory derivations. Inertia as an aspect of physics hasn't really received much attention at all through scientific theories, outside of the equivalence principle, bar QI and similar derivatives, there is no current explanation for what the mechanisms behind inertia actually are. regarding dark matter and dark energy, these concepts are mass and energy gaps between what we see in real life, vs our current model of physics are. in QI as inertia breaks the equivalence principle, with possible verifiable experiments to be conducted it remodels the rest of our theories to align models with the actual data without the need for anything dark, doing so elegantly without any adjustable variables like every single dark matter model ever. the theory is testable and is being tested and peer reviewed, it is fringe physics and by no means pseudo, any physicist that calls it pseudo should no longer be called a physicist. the same people who call this kind of science pseudoscience, would have found themselves a fantastic home in church's of the 15th century."
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lo1qjr
|
Homo Economicus
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"*Homo Economicus* (the human who always makes the decision that they think will produce the highest economic return) is, for economists, a modeling tool, not a description or a prescription. It's like the old joke about asking a physicist to calculate how much milk can be obtained from a cow, and the physicist says, \"Well, first, assume a spherical cow in a vacuum radiating milk evenly in all directions ....\" It's not that the physicist thinks that any cows are spherical, are naturally found in a vacuum, or radiate milk evenly in all directions. It's that (if the joke were true) making those assumptions would simplify the math *while producing a good-enough estimate.* The caveat when it comes to economics, though, is that \"Austrian school\" economists *say* that they know that *homo economicus* is just a modeling tool, but in practice it's one that they take way too seriously. That creates an opening for politicians to (as usual) misunderstand the economists and believe that what the Austrian school economists are saying is that humans should aspire to be more like, maybe even to evolve into, *homo economicus.* Which is silly, and not what any economists are actually saying. (\"When a politician thinks he's being original, he's usually unconsciously quoting some long-dead economist. When an economist thinks he's being original, he's usually unconsciously quoting some long-dead poet. Give me control of a planet's metaphors and I don't have to care who makes the laws.\" -- Robert Anton Wilson)",
"Economists like to make a model where reality is made a little simpler so they can try to predict the future. They reduce humans to \"homo economicus\" who will only ever think rationally and will only try to become as rich as possible. For example: they can't predict that someone might not take that better paying job, just because their new boss would be their bully back in school. Economists will try to come up with more accurate and complex models, but it is too difficult to make a model that is exactly like reality. Just like a Barbie doll can be very detailed, it will still be just a doll. So yes, economists know that their model is never realistic enough, but as long as the predictions are realistic then they will be happy with their model."
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lo1tgz
|
What philosophical concept is Sartre alluding to?
|
There is a famous anecdote Sartre (I think it was Sartre) used to explain some philosophical concept. Roughly, he describes a person ordering a coffee without cream. The waiter explains that they don't have any cream, but they can make a coffee without milk. What exactly is this analogy alluding to? What is the philosophical idea behind it? Something about negatives or absence?
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Other
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explainlikeimfive
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"Sartre was into phenomenology, looking at ideas of conscious experience. In opposition to certain other philosophical schools that held \"being\" and \"existence\" as the absolute measure of something, Sartre held the perspective that negation and absence are also concrete realities and experiences in and of themselves. For example, if a loved one is absent and you miss them, their absence is not just a lack of presence, it is a separate and specific experience. He wrote a book called *Being and Nothingness* on this topic. The joke in question takes this philosophical position to an absurd extreme, proposing that the deliberate absence of cream is its own specific experience, distinguished from an involuntary absence of cream due to lack of availability. In this world, the absence of milk is a different experience than the absence of cream, so the waiter needs to ask if it is an acceptable substitute.",
"> The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: \"Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?\" Sartre replied, \"Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream\". Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, \"I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream -- how about with no milk?\" # # > Zizek often makes that joke in the context of consumption to highlight a paradox of capitalism. > Basically his idea is that the absence of something is a thing in itself. Nowadays you get products sold with \"sugar free\", \"Gluten free\", \"Salt free\", \"Additive or colorant free\", \"Casein-free\" labels. A \"sugar/gluten free\" product is pricier than its less healthy equivalent, meaning that the \"non-present\" ingredients becomes marketable goods, as much as the actual ingredients. \"Sugar-free\" is a product in itself that we pay for. We pay for an absence. > Soon the list of ingredients present (salt, sugar, wheat etc...) will be less long than the list of ingredients not present in the product (\"sugar free\", \"gluten-free\" etc...). > Maybe we'll soon pay $10 for a salad because it will be \"rubber-free\" \"petrol residue-free\" \"excrements-free\" \"mercury-free\"... in the end it's just some overpriced leaf. A trick to hyperinflate prices in other words. [source]( URL_0 ) I don't think the joke is relevant to satre, insofar as just a \"philosopher figure\". my interpretation would be it is commentary on capitalist consumerism and its increasing ridiculousness.",
"oh my fucking god im so dumb i finally realised the joke: it doesnt matter if the waiter is all out of cream because satre said he DIDNT WANT CREAM",
"If you’ve ever wondered what Existentialism is, I’m going to try and explain it (or at least the Sartrean variety) in about five minutes and then share a few thoughts about what Sartre got wrong. BTW, Sartre took many of his best ideas from his lifelong nonmonogamous partner Simone de Beauvoir, so when you read “Sartre” below, you can mentally substitute “s & b.” In The Transcendence of the Ego (1936), Sartre presents without acknowledgment an idea he cribbed from the philosopher Franz Brentano: consciousness is always consciousness OF something, of some object or objects—of the melody of an ice cream truck heading through the neighborhood, of the aroma of Lapsang Souchong tea, whatever. The technical term in philosophy for this aboutness of consciousness is intentionality. Sartre’s term for consciousness that is about something is “positional” consciousness. He then distinguishes between reflective positional consciousness and nonreflective positional consciousness. Suppose that you are working in a fast-food restaurant at rush hour. You are crazy busy—taking orders, bagging fries and burgers, making change. We say of such situations,“I didn’t have a moment to think.” But, of course, you were thinking—you were consciousness, but it was nonreflective positional consciousness—of the order slips, the customers, the fries, the burgers. Or suppose, Sartre says, you are running after a bus.You are thinking about the bus and catching it, but you aren’t thinking about the fact that you are thinking about this.You are focused entirely on catching up to the bus.This is non-reflective positional consciousness. Now, Sartre says, suppose that you strip away all the objects of consciousness. What you are left with, he says, is nothing. Your consciousness, in and of itself, is no object. It’s this weird non-object, this nothingness, that is at the center of your being. Thus the title of Sartre’s big book, Being and Nothingness (1943).Sartre explains this quite clearly in a little public lecture he gave called “Existentialism as a Humanism” (1946). In that lecture, he contrasts people with letter openers. A letter opener, he says, has a designer and a purpose. Its purpose, or essence, precedes its existence, in the mind of its designer. But humans, he says, have no designer and no set purpose (Sartre was an atheist). In them, existence precedes essence. You are born. You wake up. There you are, but at your core, there is not a preset self-definition, no pre-existing purpose. You want to be something, to have a purpose, but because you are, at the core of your being, a nothingness, there is no reason why you should choose any particular thing to define you. You are free to think or to do ANYTHING. You are so free that, Sartre says, you ARE freedom. In this respect, Sartre says, you are very different from stuff in the world. In Being and Nothingness, he cleaves the world into the being of things like rocks and car keys, which he calls being-in-itself (être-en-soi) and the being of people, which he calls being-for-itself (être-pour-soi). His basis for this distinction is the good-old-fashioned Aristotelian theory of natural kinds. According to this theory, things have essential or defining, qualities, and non-essential, or contingent ones. If it quacks like a duck and is living and has webbed feet and so on (all those things essential to duckiness), then it’s a duck. Things, like rocks and car keys, Sartre says, are essentially not free, and so their being is essentially different from ours, for our being, our consciousness, not being a thing, is not subject to material laws, and so we are absolutely and in an essential sense, free. You know that you are a freedom because you can make choices. Things are subject to external forces. Your conscious being is not. If I wish to dance the tango, you can restrain me. If I wish to dance the tango in my mind, nothing you do can stop this. So, my conscious being is a different sort of thing than is a thing. We’ll modify this formulation later, but that’s good enough for now. Suppose that you are having a really, really, really bad day. You are late to work. Your boss is sick of this and cans you. You put your things in a box and go to call an Uber to take you home, but in the trouble and confusion of losing your livelihood, you’ve misplaced your phone, on which you have your entire life. You find the phone. On it is a text message. You are being audited by the IRS. They think you owe them $10,000 due to an error made over several years by your former employer. Here’s the thing: because you are free, you could, absurdly, make the choice to feel, at that moment, joy. You are that free.Sartre’s pal Albert Camus puts it this way in The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is condemned by the Gods to roll a boulder up a hill in Tartarus. While he’s pushing the boulder, he’s not thinking about how much he hates this sh*t. It takes everything in him to push that boulder. Every time he gets to the top, the boulder rolls back down, and he has to start all over again. But here’s the thing, Camus says: at the top of the hill, Sisyphus is entirely free not to curse his fate but to feel, instead, absurd joy. Why? Because he is essentially free. He is not essentially contingent on external forces. This freedom has a price, though, according to Sartre. Because you are essentially free, there is no reason whatsoever for you to do any particular thing or be any particular thing, and for this reason, our kind of being is not only essentially free but also essentially absurd and, in the end, meaningless. He says, “Man is a useless passion.” Cheery guy, this Sartre. People’s freedom, Sartre says, frightens them because it puts all the responsibility on them to make choices. For example, he explains vertigo in this way: You stand at the top of the cliff and swoon. Why? Because you know that you could throw yourself off it. You are free to do this. And the fact that you could make that choice scares the beJesus out of you. People try hard to run away, Sartre says, from their freedom. In Being and Nothingness, he asks you to imagine that you are in a restaurant and have a waiter, Pierre. Now, Pierre is overly solicitous. He carries the tray just so. He tries really, really hard to be the perfect waiter. Why? Because he knows, deep down, that he is not a waiter, essentially, that he’s just putting this on. He could, if he wanted, sit down at your table and demand that you get up and go get him a glass of absinthe. Pierre is not any particular thing. But he wants to be a thing. In this place and time, he wants to be a waiter thing. It’s far, far easier than is taking the responsibility for the fact that he’s making the choice to behave as a waiter thing—something that he, essentially, is not.The Ego, Sartre says, is a result of magical thinking—of trying to fill the nothingness that is consciousness once you strip away from it all the objects of its attention. And by magic, of course, he means fake magic or tricks. The Ego is a pretense to ourselves, a trick we play on ourselves to fill that void. Sartre is absolutely correct about this, that the Ego is fake magic. It’s an illusion. Sartre calls this attempt to fool ourselves into believing that there is an I there with particular properties bad faith. We are attempting to fool others, most of all, ourselves, Sartre says. How does this fake magical thinking that creates the Ego work? Sartre gives this example: Pierre walks into the bar. You feel a momentary repugnance for him. That feeling you then elevate, in an act of generalization, to the status of an emotional state: I hate Pierre. And maybe you carry this even further: You become an object, a thing, that is a Pierre hater. So, to recap, the momentary feeling is elevated to a state which in turn is elevated to a quality of this you, the Ego. And by this means, by such magical thinking, you create this entirely illusory construct, the Ego, to fill the void, the nothingness, of consciousness, with an I. This is what I am, a hater of Pierre (among other things). Now Sartre thought that most people go through life acting in bad faith and fooling themselves into believing that they are Egos with these preset qualities when actually they are just making things up. And they do this because they are afraid of their own freedom and of the absurdity of their position in the world, which is the truly essential thing about them. A person, he says in Being and Nothingness, IS a freedom, and this is scary and disconcerting and can be overwhelming, creating what Sartre calls nausea (la nausée). We are, according to Sartre, condemned to be free. Most people, he says, do everything they can to run away from their freedom, from the fact that they are actually responsible for how they act and feel and think and believe and can’t blame their parents or their boss or their culture or any external circumstances. Now, you may be wondering why Sartre would have imagined that recognition of our essential freedom would lead to nausea. Shouldn’t he have thought, instead, that this recognition is liberating? Why nausea when you can choose to feel, however absurdly, pure bliss? And shouldn’t he have thought that the fact that there is no GIVEN Ego Self is an opportunity, for you get to construct one, on whatever model you would like? Why not see that constructed Ego Self as an artistic creation that you work on throughout your life?"
],
"score": [
86,
69,
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/83houj/can_someone_explain_to_me_this_joke_about_sartre/dvi620h/"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo1uqr
|
Why is Spinach Used In A Lot Of Odd Botany Experiments?
|
Why is Spinach used in such odd botany (study of plants) research projects (e.g., reconstructing a human heart, sending email, explosive sensors, etc.)? Is there anything special about the plant that makes I worth while in these projects? Something like how lab rats are used in a lot of research projects?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3nn92"
],
"text": [
"Unrelated reasons really. Plants in general are really good at chemical analysis. Essentially plants absorb all kinds of elements from the surrounding soil. And plants respond to those elements. Some are needed for the plant's growth, some will negatively impact the plant's growth, some will cause the plant to create certain chemical reactions in order to interact or respond to specific elements or chemicals. That also means that when you're aware of how a plant reacts to specific elements or chemicals, you can use that plant as an indicator for the presence of those chemicals. Essentially plants can be excellent sensors for telling you what's happening in the soil and groundwater. That said, some elements are more reactive catalysts than others. Iron and nitrogen are fantastic catalysts and spinach is very rich in them. Using the sensor metaphor, that means a spinach sensor is more sensitive and easier to read for chemical reactions in which nitrogen or iron is an important component. This happens to be the case for those experiments where plants were used to detect explosive compounds. Generally speaking, these experiments are easier to do when using subjects that we know a lot about, are easy to grow or raise, and widespread in their use. Like lab rats or common crops like spinach. The medical experiments you mentioned use spinach for completely unrelated reasons but it's still very helpful that spinach is extremely well researched and easily available."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo1y47
|
what’s the difference between Alzheimer’s and dementia?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3m0yk",
"go3x2rb"
],
"text": [
"Alzheimer is a disease, while dementia is a general term for loss of memory, language, problem-solving and other thinking abilities that are severe enough to interfere with daily life.",
"Alzheimer’s is a specific disease that causes about 65% of dementia cases. Dementia is the actual symptoms of memory loss etc. Other causes of dementia include things like strokes"
],
"score": [
30,
12
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo2adc
|
What determines how strongly caffeine, alcohol, and other drugs affect our bodies?
|
Aside from weight and tolerance, what other factors are involved in determining their effect on our bodies?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3nkjk"
],
"text": [
"There are many other factors than what you mentioned. One would be the altitude. We're more impacted by drugs and alcohol at a higher altitude due to the decrease in oxygen in the atmosphere. There are genetic components as well that play a role in how you respond to stimulants. Think of Adderal. For the person with ADD, it helps to focus them and calm them. For the person who does not have ADD, it has the opposite effect and is basically an illicit drug. One major impact is your body's prior exposure to the stimulant. The more you consume on a regular basis, the less of an impact it has on you. If you drink a cup of coffee a day for a month, the 32nd day will be less impactful than the first. Another factor is hydration and food already consumed. If you eat a good meal, caffeine and alcohol will absorb more slowly. If you're properly hydrated, the impaact will be slower, as well."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo2z73
|
- If I colored the exterior of a a ligh bulb red, the light becomes red too. How does the wavelength of light change due to it passing through a certain color!?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3qbmx",
"go3rccl",
"go3qfbr"
],
"text": [
"It doesn’t *change*, it’s that the only light that makes it through is red. The paint absorbs the rest of the wavelengths.",
"All the posts are accurate, so I'll try explaining it with an analogy. Lets assume the lightbulb has perfectly white light. That means it's made of all the colors of the rainbow mixed into white. So imagine that instead of colors, the light was made of coins. There are coin sorting machines that can seperate all the different pennies, dimes, quarters, and more into their own piles. Painting the bulb red is like putting tape on all of the coin slots except, say, dimes. The coins in the hopper are a mix of *all* the coin types, but only the dimes make it through the slot since you put a filter on the machine. So now, the machine looks like a dime producing machine I stead of one that sorts *all* the coins. Painting the bulb red is the filter on the machine. It stops all the coins (the colors of light) from getting through except the red ones. All the colors are still being made by the bulb just like all the coins were available in the hopper. Just like the filter only allowed dimes, the paint only allows red.",
"When you see red you are receiving a narrow band of the visible light spectrum and all other wavelengths (colours) are absorbed. Only red is reflected and hits your eye. In the case of the lightbulb you're receiving *transmitted* light. Not reflected. But in the same way all other wavelengths are absorbed and only red light is able to pass. Hence the light will appear red."
],
"score": [
19,
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo3bje
|
() Why are big Chinese companies like BeiGene and Baidu publicly traded on the NYSE when they are not even available to use in the US?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3rviq"
],
"text": [
"Use or sale of a product in the US is pretty irrelevant to ownership of stock. Imagine there's an airline that only operates in Australia, you think it's a good company, should you not be able to purchase stock simply because it doesn't operate where you live?"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo3ki5
|
Is it okay for a person to have an opinion over other individual's life choices ?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3ssl7",
"go3sszq"
],
"text": [
"Yes, we all have opinions about everything and everybody. It doesn't mean that you have to share your opinion, but it's totally okay and normal to have one.",
"It's okay for them to have an opinion. You don't have to agree with said opinion but it's okay for them to have the opinion. You can excuse yourself from the situation politely if they don't agree and it is making you uncomfortable."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo4x93
|
why do all cells in a body have to have a copy of the whole DNA?
|
For example why does a skin cell has a copy of how to make blood cells if their only job is just to do skin cell things?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go3z13n"
],
"text": [
"Because you began as just one cell, and all your cells are descended from that one cell. When the cells eventually specialize into one type of cell, they deactivate the genes they don't need. Actually removing the unneeded genes would be far more complicated, and not necessary."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo5k0b
|
How does the force needed to change momentum depend on the time rate at which momentum changes.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go41ydx"
],
"text": [
"Think about a car or bicycle, if you press on the brake slightly, you’ll slow down, but quite slowly, if you press really slam on the brakes, you slow down faster, so more force means your momentum changes faster"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo5t0q
|
Is PGP still perfect encryption? And is it still used?
|
I just finished reading Simon Singh's The Code Book, and I got the impression that PGP was basically uncrackable, and more or less always will be. However, the book was written 20 years ago, so, is this still true?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go43mtn",
"go4cnja",
"go43brw",
"go4d8y5"
],
"text": [
"I don't think there are any known serious attacks on PGP it self, but PGP is more \"a practical way of using asymmetric encryption\". It has to use some form of asymmetric encryption (e.g. RSA) to share secret keys - and the security of PGP can therefor never be stronger than the encryption used here. Usually when someone says \"perfect security\" it means that even with infinite computing power, you could never decrypt the message. Which is not the case for something like RSA - but we still believe it to be infeasible to break in practice for now.",
"The encryption itself is solid. But PGP is so hard to use correctly that almost nobody uses it nowadays (at least not for e-mail), and if they do, there's a good chance that they're making mistakes that mean they're not really as protected as they think they are. Nowadays, people tend to use e.g. Signal, which is secure *and* easy to use (and easy to use *correctly*). PGP (or rather the open source version, GPG) is still used in some places, especially for signatures, but the original use case (e-mail) ist almost dead.",
"When we design crypto systems like PGP and SSL we do so assuming that computers will get faster and vulnerabilities will get found. So we make them modular so that we can upgrade the modules one by one and still retain backwards compatibility. So the PGP version used 20 years ago is no longer considered uncrackable, although it does hold up very well. However the modern versions are using encryption algorithms that were not even invented back then and typically use key sizes that were unheard of back then. They still use the same principles and message formats but that is where the comparison ends.",
"PGP was never perfect encryption, it was never meant to be. PGP even stands for \"Pretty Good Privacy\" and is wayyyy better than unencrypted emails but nothing except a properly used One Time Pad is \"uncrackable\" PGP relies on the same stuff as HTTPS/SSL by using public/private key pairs. These key pairs are longggg so they're hard to crack, hard enough to ensure no casual script kiddy can do it. Modern systems are using 2048 bit or 4096 bit long keys which would take years even with the NSA or similar working on it, but 1024 bit and below keys are definitely crackable by any nation state, and 512 bit keys could be done on AWS in an afternoon which is why we use extra long keys now"
],
"score": [
6,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lo6l4f
|
Why does our hearing capacity reduce when we're stretching?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go4cpua"
],
"text": [
"It shouldn't reduce while you're just stretching, but if you're stretching and yawning that triggers the Tensor Typani muscles. These are a set of muscles in your ear that are responsible for dampening certain sounds, for example, the sounds of you chewing. They also respond to really loud noises to help prevent hearing damage if memory serves, but naturally can't overcome anything overly loud."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo73kr
|
Why when one of your headphones stops working does it feel so weird but when you take out one headphone it doesn’t sound weird at all?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go48tx7",
"go4cy8t"
],
"text": [
"Here are two of the possible explanations. Your dead earbud it blocking sound so it sounds really weird to be nearly completely deaf in that ear. You pull the earbud out and you get ambient noise back. Or it could be a pseudo effect that doesn't have a reason other than you think it sounds weird to have one sided sound unless you take an earbud out.",
"Because after your headphone dies it then acts as an earplug more than a headphone deafening that side of your head. Where as, when it falls out you can then hear ambient sounds naturally instead of plugged up."
],
"score": [
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo9h1s
|
Why do download bars show 100% for more than 0 seconds?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go4leoh",
"go4lke2",
"go5agcy",
"go4pjae",
"go6irqj"
],
"text": [
"Progress bars are never an exact science. There's no way to accurately calculate exactly how long something will take. Say you want to copy 100 files from one folder to another. You could go okay 100 files and each folder is 1% but obviously not all files are the same size. You could calculate the totally data size to transfer but disk read and write rates fluctuate sightly and there's also overhead to create a new file. There's always things like flushing file write caches etc. Basically it's just not an exact science",
"Could be a few reasons depending on the program. Maybe rounding up from 99.5%. Maybe after it’s downloaded it takes a bit to shut down or switch from download to installation mode. Maybe it does the entire installation during the 100%.",
"In addition to what others have mentioned about general inaccuracy in progress meters, once the file has been 100% received, your system kicks off a few processes to check if the file is safe. First, it will compute a signature (hash) of the file and send it to one or more public servers run by Google, Microsoft, etc. which check to see if the hash is a common one (a frequently downloaded file is more likely to be safe), or if it matches any known malware downloads. On desktop operating systems, your anti-virus software will also activate to analyze the file to look for any suspicious markers that could indicate malware. During these processes, the download is progress is locked at \"100% downloaded (but still not finished)\" so you can't accidentally run any malware before it has passed all the tests.",
"Usually the percentage is calculated based on the trending history, so if it pauses towards the end it could just be that the DL slowed down. Also at the very end it can pause because your virus scanner is checking the now complete file before the program signals that it's completed. If you have a slow disk, it can also be flushing part of the file from memory to the hard drive.",
"Once it's downloaded the app needs to do something with it and nobody thought it was worth the bother to add a \"_Doing something with what just downloaded_\" alert."
],
"score": [
26,
15,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lo9izu
|
Why do we grind our teeth when we're anxious?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go50nji",
"go5sfuc",
"go797lj",
"go6husq",
"go6do8s"
],
"text": [
"URL_0 URL_1 Stress of any type causes cortisol production, engaging one’s “fight or flight” mechanisms, increasing bloodflow and chemical energy in the area. In this particular case, jaw muscles.",
"To add onto the other comments, if you get punched in the face with a loose jaw you’ll get knocked out, if it’s clenched then you’ve got a better chance of staying conscious. It’s possible that jaw clenching is a natural fight or flight response due to this.",
"I’m a dentist who treats TMJ issues. The explanation for parafunctional habits, such as clenching or grinding, is a little complicated, but I’ll try to keep it simple. We have two tempromandibular joints (TMJs) just in front of each ear. Our lower jaw rotates smoothly in those joints in a way that is determined by the shape of the joints, the muscles that connect the upper and lower jaws together and the nerves that control those muscles. In a perfect world, when your jaw rotates in its physiologically ideal way, given your anatomy, at some point your upper and lower teeth will come into contact simultaneously, left and right, front and back. Touch sensitive fibers in the gums feel that contact and tell the brain to shut down the muscles. But, for various reasons, that simultaneous contact doesn’t happen for lots of people. A tooth on the back on the left side might hit just before the rest. It might be slightly tipped or rotated, either naturally or from having been moved from orthodontics. Maybe there’s a filling that’s too high. Lots of reasons. Your brain wants all your teeth maximally together, so chewing muscles on the other (right) side will continue to fire and your lower jaw will do a little adjustment in its closing path to make that happen. That’s usually OK, because there’s “wiggle room” built into the system to allow for small misalignments of teeth. We all have an adaptive capacity that keeps us symptom free most of the time. If, however, the mismatch between jaw movements and teeth contacts exceeds our ability to adapt, symptoms can occur. They might be teeth symptoms - excessive wear, sensitivity, looseness, chipping or fractures. They might be muscle symptoms - sore, tired chewing muscles, limitations of jaw movements, even temporal headaches. They might be joint symptoms - clicking, grinding or popping noises, jaws that lock open, painful opening or closing. Or they might be parafunctional habits - clenching or grinding. That’s you brain’s heavy-handed way of trying to grind down that high spot and find a comfortable resting position for your jaw. This usually happens when we’re either sleeping, or perhaps focusing deeply on a task and our unconscious mind takes control. Many patients have bite issues that normally fall within their adaptive capacity, and are usually just fine. But if something reduces that adaptive capacity, such as illness or stress, these symptoms can reveal themselves. People float in and out of symptoms based on apparent stress, when stress is simply uncovering the real issue. A generation ago, we believed that stress alone was the reason for teeth clenching and grinding. By the 1970s, we figured out that there was an underlying cause for these and other symptoms. And it doesn’t take much to create problems for many patients. Discrepancies as small as 50 microns (Saran Wrap thickness) can mean the difference between comfort and pain for some. That’s a lot of information, and there’s much more to it than this (how teeth behave in the function of chewing and treatment options, for example), but the main thing is that most TMJ issues, in the absence of trauma or degenerative conditions, such as arthritis, are fundamentally a mismatch between two systems that should be in harmony - the way the jaw moves, and the way teeth fit and work together.",
"Fight or flight response your body is trying to keep your teeth in your mouth and yourself from biting your tongue.",
"I grind the shit out of my teeth in my sleep. Also while i’m awake without noticing right away. I never knew I was doing it until my husband mentioned it & then my dentist of course. Lol Edit: Its actually more so clenching really hard when awake. I think the clenching is more painful honestly."
],
"score": [
152,
75,
11,
10,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/teeth-grinding-bruxism",
"https://www.premierhealth.com/your-health/articles/women-wisdom-wellness-/beware-high-levels-of-cortisol-the-stress-hormone"
],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loaccv
|
how does stress make us have physical reactions? If I’m worried about something how does it cause cardiovascular reactions or a rash?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go4pocd"
],
"text": [
"That's a long story, but hormones play a huge role. Find Robert Sapolski's lectures about it on YouTube (or elsewhere), you won't be disappointed."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lob8q6
|
What is the purpose of a nuclear power plant and is it good or bad for the environment? Why are they dangerous?
|
I legitimately have no idea and I live in a province where power is generated from water. And I suck at anything related to science. Explain it to me like I’m 5.
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go4vdgb",
"go4vx34",
"go4xh6d"
],
"text": [
"nuclear energy is far more efficient at generating energy compared to coal or oil. 1 gram of uranium is equivalent to around 3 tons of coal in terms of energy. it is also a zero carbon emission source of energy, so it is definitely better for the environment considering there is no carbon footprint and we can use less of it to get more than enough energy. there has only been a few nuclear reactor/power plant accidents within the past century and even though is has been getting a bad reputation for being dangerous, the regulations for nuclear energy are by far more secure than coal and oil safety regulations. nuclear energy can be dangerous if we are not careful, but if we follow the right procedures, it can provide us with a very viable energy source that is better than all perishable fuel sources we have now. edit: for a better understanding of the comparison between coal and uranium, according to URL_0 , uranium is 3 million times more efficient than coal. the 3 tons thing i said earlier may not be accurate.",
"The purpose is to generate electricity. Most power plants generate electricity by spinning a device that causes electricity to generate. With wind turbines, the wind causes the spinning. With hydroelectric, you store water behind a dam, then flow the water over the generator. With coal and gas, you burn coal/gas to create steam that you use to spin the generator. With nukes, you use a nuclear reaction to generate the heat to create the steam. [Here's a short video explanation.]( URL_1 ) Is it bad for the environment? It's different. All forms of electricity generation generate waste. For gas, it generates greenhouse gases. For coal, it burns dirtier than gas and mining it damages the environment. For wind, they take up a ton of space. For solar, you have to mine a lot of rare materials to make a solar panel. Nuclear \"burns\" cleanly. It generates no greenhouse gases and the only waste is small in size, but extremely toxic (radioactive). The other main danger of nukes is that, while it generates little waste in normal operation, if it fails, it can be catastrophic. E.g., the failure [of Chernobyl]( URL_0 ) has had long lasting environmental impacts.",
"Let me disclose first that I am a support of nuclear power and nuclear power plants, so if you detect any bias then at least you know this before hand. Nuclear power plants produce nuclear power, and nuclear power, simplified, is energy from the heat generated from a nuclear reaction. Now, just like a coal plant needs coal, a nuclear power plant needs something to create a nuclear reaction to release that energy in the first place, and those elements are (specific kinds of) Uranium and Plutonium. Among other reasons to use them is that their atoms can undergo induced fission, which is very handy (as opposed to other atoms where you can't induce a reaction and must wait for a spontaneous one). Technically, these aren't renewable sources, but environmentally they do not create pollution or carbon gasses, so pro-nuclear power people would tell you they are a source of clean energy. So what's the catch and why are they environmentally controversial? Well, the waste they produce is radioactive, which means you have to take care of it in a specialised way - often that minds storing it somewhere safe and secure. So naturally, that also means you'd have to get people to agree on where to store it, and that can be a big problem! Another reason that nuclear power tend to be controversial is because we (unfortunately) know from experience that catastrophe at a plant can lead to immense damage to nature and people alike. People have suffered the consequences of it going bad and that makes (a lot of) people hesitant or distrustful of nuclear power plants. Other considerations also include: they are expensive (building one, operating one, maintaining one, and disposing the waste), they take time to build (when e.g. you'd want to act against climate change as soon as possible), they usually require a lot of water to operate, and that you'd again have the issue of where to build them (as people might not want one in their communities)."
],
"score": [
15,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"euronuclear.org"
],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster",
"https://youtu.be/_UwexvaCMWA"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lobkmb
|
Why does the same company listed on two different stock exchanges trade so differently?
|
For example: Toyota (NYSE:TM) trades at twice the price of the Nikkei (7203.T): $153USD vs Y8065. And I've seen this with other foreign listings where it's not because of currency exchange fluctuations. Toyota just happened to be the most insane difference I've seen.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go50gvb"
],
"text": [
"Technically they’re different shares. The US one is called an American Depository Receipt (ADR). It’s a cheaper way for non-US companies to get access to US investors without having to go through all the steps and expense of listing on one of the US indices. There would be a different number of issued shares for each. For example 1 share of the Japanese listing might equal 4 ADRs etc. That’s why there’s such a difference. Slightly more advanced topic: Some people will try to trade an arbitrage between the two listings after adjusting for currency moves."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lobsm0
|
paretos law 80/20
|
I feel like the more I read about it the less I understand
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go4yqf8",
"go5p0q9"
],
"text": [
"It just means that 80% of outcomes are *generally* the result of 20% of the causes. So maybe you are the manager of a restaurant 80% of the complaints you get are about 20% of servers. Because most likely you just have one server that isn't very good at their job. And the rest of them are fine for the most part. It can also happen for good things as well. Like maybe you run a fundraiser at 80% of the money you raise is likely to come from 20% of the donors. And this isn't a Law, it's called the Pareto *Principle* because it's more just a general trend rather than something that *must* be true.",
"Case in point, you will understand 80% of the concept with 20% of the comments to this.* *roughly..."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lociuc
|
Why was purple pigment history difficult to produce? Couldn't ascestors have just mixed red and blue, instead of laboriously extracting it from sea snails?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go57qgm",
"go566t3",
"go53mnu",
"go6gb7q",
"go53770",
"go5o830",
"go52l1f",
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"go5swbu"
],
"text": [
"The blues they had access to were mostly bluish-greens. The reds they had access to were mostly reddish-oranges. When you mix those, you get sort of a baby-poop brown color instead of purple. The \\*REALLY\\* deep reds, deep blues, and deep purples almost all came from the same snails, just fermented differently. (There's one deep blue that came from the indigo plant, but it was almost as valuable as the snails).",
"In ancient times they didn't have access to nearly as many pigment sources as we do today. Mainly because they hadn't been discovered and mined yet, but also due to limits in trade networks. While some colors like Red and Black (Charcoal) and very easy to find because of the abundance of minerals and such of that color, other colors are very difficult to find. Blue pigment was historically even more difficult to produce than purple. The only available vibrant sources of blue were very expensive liked crushed gemstone (Lapis Lazuli) Speaking as as a painter you have to understand that mixing pigment doesn't always give great results. Mixing Red and Blue for example often results in a purple with a greyish tinge instead of being vibrant. So it's not as easy as it sounds. The particular pigment you are likely referring to is the sea snail purple dye that is referred to in the Bible. It was highly sought after because of it's vibrant color, but was so expensive that it was reserved for royalty. But there were other ways to get purple dyes. The Chinese for example had Han purple which was one of the first synthetic dyes. Exactly how it was made though has been lost to time.",
"> Couldn't ascestors have just mixed red and blue, instead of laboriously extracting it from sea snails? Yeah, but it looks like crap. It gets wet and the red runs more than the blue, and it comes out all splotchy, and your customer looks like a poor person pretending to be rich, which is worse than not looking rich at all. And even before that happens, the color is never quite right.",
"Up front, I dye fabrics, mostly wool, with plant materials as a hobby. I have read up on and tried variety of processes, mordants, modifiers and materials, ranging from madder root to avocado pits to lowly onion skins . The blue from woad and indigo is hard to extract, as it requires a more involved process than just soaking plant parts in cold or hot water and waiting. Modern chemical treatments can speed up the process, but preparing an indigo vat is still a pain in the butt. The hallmarks of Tyrian Purple, the color made from snails, was its richness and colorfastness (resistance to fading). Any peasant could stain their clothes purple with mashed beets, red grapes, berries etc, but it would fade to a faint pink after a matter of days to months, even with a strong mordant like alum or tannin from oak galls. Over-dyeing indigo on madder (the most common color-fast red dye in Antiquity) ends up with a color that is much too dark. Madder root treated with ammonia gives a nice purplish red, but its no Tyrian Purple. Punctelia lichen can give a vivid purple color, but its a time-intensive process, upwards of ten weeks. I've tried it twice and ended up with bupkis, probably due to my inexperience.",
"Blue was even harder to produce then purple. There are not many plants and minerals that have a lasting blue color. Of course its cost varied depending on region as some areas did have some sources of blue pigments. However if you had access to purple sea snails then it was much cheaper to make purple from that then to mix the very expensive blue dies with red dies.",
"Green is also hard to make. Arsenic is a green mineral that makes a vibrant colors. It had a period where it was used in fancy wallpapers and dresses. Took them awhile to realize it made people fucking crazy and sick.",
"Some purples were possible. When you hear that purple dye was hard to get, it was that a specific kind of purple dye was hard to get, and it was that colour in particular that was associated with royalty. Other purples were limited by the available red and blue dyes, so weren't able to produce something that looked like Tyrian Purple.",
"I don't mean to hijack this but I've found its very difficult to get opaque purple glass seed beads. I've been told they're difficult to make. Is this at all for similar reasons?",
"Another problem was a lot of pigments (especially anything with red in it) would fade very quickly with exposure to sun and/or water. Much worse than today. So it wasn't just about finding the right hue. Finding stable (dye-fast) pigments was tricky on its own."
],
"score": [
390,
203,
41,
41,
19,
10,
9,
7,
6
],
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[],
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[],
[],
[],
[],
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
locvzs
|
Why do liquids get even colder when shaken with ice? It seems even colder than the ice itself.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go57aea"
],
"text": [
"Shaking the mixture will pretty quickly bring it all into thermal equilibrium (bring the liquid down to ice temperature), since heat is exchanged by contact and circulation of the liquid and the ice. Shaking speeds that up. That's why the liquid is *as cold as* the ice. Why does it *feel* even colder? Well since it circulates, it can can also exchange heat with your body faster than a solid can. Your body doesn't really sense the temperature of things you touch, what it really senses is how fast heat is being transferred from you into them. A block of styrofoam that's been cooled in the freezer, doesn't feel as cold as a metal signpost that's just been outside in the shade on a cool day. The styrofoam might have a much lower temperature, but its very low thermal conductivity keeps it from feeling all that cold."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lod0ws
|
What do phone manufacturers mean when they talk about pixel binning and why do some some phones that uses just 16mp better than phone cameras that uses 108mp?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go58lrf",
"go55l1f"
],
"text": [
"Megapixel is measuring only resolution, more is better, but after 8 or so MP, it really makes no more difference, it’s useful because you can zoom and crop in more, but it won’t look any better Lens, sensor quality, sensor size, software used for processing the image have much better impact, in fact a 2 MP DSLR could look way better than a 100 MP phone because the phone can’t have the lens or size for as good a picture",
"The camera in your phone has a sensor that has tons of tiny little sensing elements on it. When light of the right color hits the sensing element(blue light to blue sensor) then it charges up a bit and gets read out when the \"shutter\" is closed (aka the time is up) A 108 MP camera in a phone is going to have a sensor that's roughly the same dimensions as the 16 MP one, you can't easily fit one that's 2.5x longer in each direction, so that means that each of the sensing elements is smaller. This is good because it gives you more pixels per mm^2, but bad because smaller sensors are more sensitive to noise like temperature variations, this isn't a huge problem in bright sunny conditions but becomes a big problem for low light operations when you don't have as many pixels hitting the sensors so having heat count as 1 hit could be a significant change if it only got 100 total hits. Low light photos with high density sensors are often not good because the noise overwhelms the actual image. Pixel binning takes the tiny sensor elements are pools them together to deal with the noise and simulate a lower MP sensor with bigger elements on it. Say you take 2x2 pixel squares, now you've got a 27 MP sensor, and since you're combining the results of those pixels the noise tends to cancel out (noise is a mix of ups and downs) so you can end up with a reasonably high pixel count image and a lower noise image when you need it, and an ultra high resolution image on bright sunny days when you don't need to bin"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lodsfm
|
Why do we gag or puke when smelling really bad odors?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5902j",
"go58unp",
"go5oua8",
"go5u98r",
"go5dj7q"
],
"text": [
"The reason we interpret bad odours as bad odours is because we've evolved to know that that thing is probably bad for our health. There's also quite a good chance we've already eaten some of it, so evolution went \"Actually yeah that's a good idea, let's make it so that if we smell something dangerous, we get rid of what we last ate, just in case\".",
"The human body has evolved to avoid dangerous chemicals often by making them smell bad ( ex. Farts smell bad because of hydrogen sulfide) the gagging and puking is basically an advancement of that evolution.",
"Your sense of smell is basically just your body's airborne chemical detector. The way to think of it is there's really no such thing as a 'good' or 'bad' smell. When you smell something, it's just microscopic molecules in the air coming into contact with the olfactory receptor neurons in your nose, this then sends a signal to your brain which decides whether it smells 'good' or 'bad' depending on what it is. It's not 'good' or 'bad' intrinsically, it's just a differently shaped molecule landing on a mucus membrane in your nose. So, why do some things smell good and some things smell bad? Because some things are harmless or good for us and some things are toxic or poisonous. You smell dinner cooking and it smells really good, and that's because your brain is basically detecting food nearby which is something you need to survive. When you smell a bad smell, it's because whatever you're smelling is toxic, harmful or could lead to disease. So, when something smells *really* bad, that's your body sounding the alarm that something incredible harmful is nearby, and if it smells bad enough, your body activates it's poison reflex. Basically something smells so incredibly awful that your body decides that something incredibly deadly could be in your system so decides to offload it.",
"Smells are not mystical, formless entities. When you smell something - be it someone else’s poop or mom’s pot roast - actual pieces of the thing you’re smelling are floating around & getting into your nose. Next time you smell something terrible, remember that you’re ingesting that stink.",
"its part d of our evolution, we learned early on that foul smells are a indication of a possibly dangerous agent, our brain interpret that, if we are close enough to smell it we may have ingested it and induces the gag reflex in an effort to prevent being poisoned."
],
"score": [
123,
25,
8,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lodwme
|
why do we have both Pre amps and power amps?
|
Can someone explain the difference between and pre amp and a power amp in a stereo system, or a phono pre to an amp to speakers. Like..why are they separate in both cases?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5ayl0",
"go5bcc9",
"go5mdbu"
],
"text": [
"A pre-amplifier is generally a \"voltage\" amplifier with a great deal of gain. It's typically a more sensitive amplifier, and is designed to handle physically smaller inputs. They're not very good or capable of driving speakers by themselves. Whereas, standard amplifiers are typically \"current\" amplifiers; they have a lot less in the way of gain, but instead can handle the power and 'oomph' needed to drive the speakers.",
"The preamp provides a proper signal to processing circuits like equalizers and can help reduce noise. It can also be used to accept multiple different sources with varying power levels, and bring them up to a proper level to get the desired sound. Different sources might provide a weak signal which can cause for more noise and distortion which isn't very desirable especially to an audiophile. Even if audio processing is bypassed, the power amp isn't really set up to handle weak signals without some audio quality loss. The power amp is the amp driving the speakers, it goes from \"enough power to go through any necessary processing\" and steps up to \"enough to bang these speakers.\"",
"An amplifier is a simple device - it takes a \"quiet\" input and makes it \"louder\". That's it. Hi Fi sources some in quite a variety, from weak phono signals, digital inputs, line level inputs and the like. They need resolving into a signal you want amplified, maybe by converting to analog, tweaking the bass/treble levels, raising to the same voltage etc. Then the amplifier makes them louder. The pre-amp does the tweaking whilst the signal is low power and hence components are cheap and create less heat, the amplifier raises the power level so it can drive the speakers. You can get integrated amplifiers that are one box solutions, but they still follow the same model."
],
"score": [
7,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
loesc5
|
If light colors reflect light and dark colors absorb it, why does light skin get more damage from sun than dark skin? Shouldn’t it be better protected because of this?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5f8fc",
"go5fkjw"
],
"text": [
"High energy light photons (UV - it’s almost always UV), can penetrate deeper into light skin. Which is the problem. Dark skin is better at absorbing those photons nearer the surface, so they don’t go as deep and don’t do as much damage. Dark skin DOES still get damaged by the light though, and having dark skin does not mean you won’t get something like skin cancer due to solar damage.",
"What's causing the damage to your skin is UV light, not visible light. Your skin absorbs 100% of that UV light regardless of its color. However, the location where the skin absorbs the UV light is important. The outer layer of your skin is completely dead. That outer layer is constantly shedding and being replaced by the middle layer of your skin, which is alive. People with darker skin have more melatonin in the outer layer of skin. That melatonin absorbs a greater percentage of the UV light hitting your skin, resulting in damage to the outer layer. But because that outer layer of skin is already dead, damage caused to it by UV light doesn't actually affect you. The lighter your skin, the more UV light is able to make it through to the living layers of skin, damaging them. The advantage of having lighter skin is that you need *some* UV light to hit the living parts of your skin to produce Vitamin D. If you live in a high latitude country where there is very little UV light during the winter then you need light skin to produce enough Vitamin D to avoid developing a deficiency. This isn't as much of a deal nowadays since the modern human diet contains a lot of Vitamin D and Vitamin D supplements are cheap and widely available. But it was a much bigger deal back in Ye Olde Days when nutrition was much poorer and supplements didn't exist."
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loeuqd
|
why is Griddy (the Texas electric company) charging people extremely high prices (~$5,000) this month, when people didnt even have electricity?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5fy0w",
"go5g6z6"
],
"text": [
"Some electric companies in Texas have fixed rates, others will charge variable rates based on supply/demand. This can be good if more power is produced than needed, price goes down and you get a lower price than fixed rate. But you get shafted if prices spike higher. Price jumped from $0.03 KWH to $9.00 KWH.",
"They did have power, at least some of the time. In at least one example I found on a news story, one of the customers reported that they had lost power for 35 hours over the span of the week, but that's still a lot of time with power. Griddy worked by charging customers a monthly base fee, and then charging customers only wholesale costs for electricity usage, which is usually going to be cheaper than plans you would get from most power companies, but it is a gamble because wholesale costs fluctuate. Also in the article I found someone else said he was saving $80-100 per month on that plan, but this month his bill is already at $13K. So Texas regulations allowed people to essentially gamble on electricity bills, and this week the wheel came up 00."
],
"score": [
13,
11
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loezla
|
How does jaw tension lead to ringing in your ears?
|
This may have a simple answer but I've always wondered lol
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5m233"
],
"text": [
"Clenching your teeth puts pressure on your Eustachian tubes, causing pressure to build up in your ear(s). That pressure can cause pain, or a ringing sound. If you yawn, the tubes get pulled straight and the pressure is relieved."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lofc8f
|
- Photo Image Fingerprint Effect
|
Why does [this effect]( URL_0 ) happen, especially when a photo is taken directly off a screen? In this case, when I save the same image file as a screenshot and by clicking into the file, the file quality changes significantly. I’d expect the screenshot to be the one with worse quality that is not the case.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5kjdm",
"go5kcyb"
],
"text": [
"This is called a moire pattern. It comes from the screen using tiny boxes to draw the photo and from the camera sensor also using tiny boxes. They don’t line up and create a weird effect. Funfact, this predates computers as you’ll sometimes see it if you photocopy a newspaper photo",
"[Moire pattern]( URL_1 ). It gets asked very regularly, but I guess not everybody knows the name. [Here's a previous discussion]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/gkxuzn/eli5_why_does_taking_a_photo_of_a_screen_cause/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lofkmq
|
Why are most reptiles carnivorous?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5irhx"
],
"text": [
"[Turtles and Iguanas]( URL_0 ) are herbivorous reptiles."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbivorous_animals"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lofo66
|
What change happens biologically that changes our taste buds as we age? I.e enjoying bitterness/sourness/dryness when older?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5ncsg"
],
"text": [
"It seems that as you age the taste buds on your tongue are more keen to taste that remind you of the dreadfulness actuality of life such as bitterness sourness and dryness. What your describing our tastebuds understanding the reality of the world"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lohdfb
|
What causes the sour aftertaste of sugar? I mean isn't sugar supposed to be sweet?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5ydny"
],
"text": [
"I’d never heard if this but searched and this is one answer given on Quora The answer to this question is really simple. After eating sweets or cakes, the some sugar or starch is left in your mouth and on your teeth. Well, your digestive system decides to release enzymes through your saliva, into your mouth. This breaks down the sugars, as well as making the bacteria in your mouth release malic acid. So, really all your tasting is the malic acid that is being created to destroy any leftover sugar and starch. Sometimes the sourness can be strong, while sometimes you won’t be able to taste it at all. The stronger it is, the more sugars you had left in your mouth. I hope this answered your question!!! Thanks for reading,"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loihoc
|
Why do touch screens and mousepads not work as well when your fingers are cold?
|
I've just noticed that the colder my fingers are, the more likely I am to have trouble with my touchscreen phone and my mousepad on my laptop. Is there a reason why or is that just something weird about me?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go5zh5b",
"go5zqpj"
],
"text": [
"As you know, calluses are dead skin, which means that they aren't very electrically conductive. So when your calloused fingers touch the surface of the screen, it can't detect the tiny disturbance in its electrical field that it needs to operate. Unfortunately that's kind of a normal behavior for capacitive touch screens. when your finger is cold it doesn't change the current on the screen in the same way as it does when everything is warm. I hope this helps.",
"So there are two types of touch screens. One uses pressure to detect a touch. The other uses voltage drops. Pressure seems obvious I think but the ones that use voltage will detect when an electrically conductive object touches the screen. Why your hand being cold would effect it I don’t know. It should conduct just as well either way."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lojwai
|
Why do our legs start to shake when put in a certain position when at rest?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6lw1i",
"go6rj3k",
"go6iaoj"
],
"text": [
"Because those positions are in fact not at rest. You have to expend energy to keep your leg where it is, and muscles (especially already tired ones) are not the best es exerting a constant force. Therefore the shaking.",
"I had the same question 1 week back and someone explained that it's because the muscle that support the position is not strong enough. So your leg start to shake.",
"If it's the bouncy thing when sitting (resting your feet on your toes), I've determined that it's just a loop of \"The leg falls, I'll push it up. Ok, it's pushed up, and this is uncomfortable, so I'll stop pushing. The leg falls.\". You want to keep your leg up but that's not a fully rested position, your toes have to keep it pushed."
],
"score": [
55,
6,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loklzr
|
Do different drugs affect dopamine receptors differently?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7gpe4"
],
"text": [
"The other comment says this is a matter of semantics but it's *really* not. Drugs physically interact with their target receptors, and the shape + charge of the drug molecule determines how that interaction goes. Different drugs are very different molecules, and so their effect on a given receptor will be different too. Even drugs that are similar enough that they both target the dopamine receptor."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lolzhw
|
Why can’t you just re-cook spoiled food?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6iuyf",
"go6j0le",
"go70xvn"
],
"text": [
"The bacteria releases various waste products on the food that will make you sick. It won't be the same as getting a pathogen based food poisoning like e.coli or salmonella but it will still make you throw up and crap yourself for a while.",
"The microorganisms like bacteria and fungi and mold that took over and multiplied have left behind compounds that don’t get destroyed by being cooked. Botulinum toxin and Salmonella are two main ones.",
"There are different ways to get sick from microorganisms in food. One way is intoxication. This means bacteria created a poison as a byproduct of respiration that remains in the food or drink and negatively affects human physiology. Another food borne illness is infection transmission. That means the bacteria or viruses in food are able to continue multiplying in humans and negatively affect health. Cooked rice, for example, contains a lot of the same physical attributes of the human body like moisture content and pH levels. The bacteria that grows in it grows well in humans and makes a lot of people sick. The mold that grows on bread likes a certain acidity found in bread and doesn't make humans sick as much. Servsafe is a restsurant industry food safety course open to the public. For ten bucks you can get a study book for this test and never worry about food poisoning yourself."
],
"score": [
16,
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lom1ko
|
How was Pi discovered?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6jxah",
"go6k3r9",
"go6kpf4"
],
"text": [
"There’s no “hype”. π was just landed on as the ratio of a circle’s circumference and radius. It is “special” because it describes a constant relationship in our universe - every circle will have the same ratio.",
"There are lots of never ending numbers. There is a whole category of them called irrational numbers. The hype with pi is that it is a very specific number. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It just happens that that ratio is irrational.",
"I don't know the exact origins or how they got measuments accurate enough to determine it was an irrational number, but you can find it yourself. You can do a simple experiment using paper, ruler, & a writing utensil. Take a cylindrical object like a coffee can or Pringles container. Measure the diameter of the cylinder. It's best to make 3 measurements & take the average of the three since you're eyeballing it. Make a mark on the top edge of the cylinder. Measure the circumference by laying the cylinder down on the piece of paper with the mark touching the paper. Make a mark on the paper that lines up with the mark on the cylinder. Roll the cylinder one rotation & make another mark on the paper lining up with where the mark on the cylinder is. Measure the distance. Divide the distance measured from the paper by the diameter. You should get near 3.14. I have my students repeat this process 3 times to reduce error. I'm reasonably sure there are videos of this on YouTube if my instructions don't make sense. (Sorry for formatting- mobile user)"
],
"score": [
14,
9,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lom94x
|
When polishing metal, why do blacksmiths incrementally increase the grit of the sand paper disks instead of just starting at a higher grit paper?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6ks52",
"go6lc8x",
"go6loxn"
],
"text": [
"Deeper imperfections would take hours or days of polish with a high grit. The lower grits cut deeper and thus take less time to cut down and make all imperfections an equal depth. Each step up creates smaller and smaller imperfections until they are uniform in appearance.",
"You'd go through a whole case of the stuff before you had any noticeable impact on a deeper gouge, and it would take hours. A single piece of coarse grit will grind through all your deep gouges, while making a bunch of new medium gouges. Then s piece of medium grit will grind through all your medium gouges, whole making a bunch of new shallow scratches. Then some fine grit will grind through all your shallow scratches and give you a nice satin finish. Then if you want to polish it, you go with the polishing grit. Of course, if you don't have any deep gouges, it's fine to start with medium grit. Likewise if you don't have any deep or shallow gouges, you can just start with the fine grit. Or if you just need to polish, you can start with the polishing grit. But starting with the polishing grit on a deep gouge would take foreeeever",
"When you polish a surface you are looking to go from rough to super even. The first grains take out most of the roughness. At tiny level, rough surfaces have lots of small \"mountains\" that need to be flattened by mountains the same size in the sandpaper. And that's how it works, you crush those mountains into each other until they flatten out. So we start by sanding the bigger mountains and when we finish, smaller mountains remain, we change sand grain to fit that mountain size and so on. If the mountains on your sandpaper are too big they'll actually \"carve\" new mountains into the surface. But if we start with the tiny grain, it would take a lot of work, time and wear to sand the bigger mountains, and even if you get a smooth surface, it could still have lumps or shape irregularities."
],
"score": [
15,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lomwk2
|
Why does fire always burn upwards?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6oux2",
"go6pf8i"
],
"text": [
"Fire is composed of hot gas. When gases get hot, they expand (density gets lower). Under gravity, dense objects or volumes of fluid are collectively more attracted to the ground than less dense objects or volumes of fluid. This means that dense things go down and less dense things go up. The density of the hot gas in fire is lower than that of the surrounding cool air, so it rises.",
"Oxidation is a chemical reaction where (typically) oxygen binds to some other chemical element and releases heat and light. Fire is an oxidation reaction where the heat released by the reaction provides the energy to cause more oxygen to bond with more of the material (fuel) which releases more heat and light and so on until you run out of either oxygen or fuel to react with. The flame that you see is the area where the hot gas that is acting as a fuel is meeting and binding with the oxygen. The flame points up from the source because the hot gas being released is lighter than air and so travels upward. A fire in space, by contrast, burns in a sphere instead of a pointed flame."
],
"score": [
13,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lon2gg
|
why do rubber bands get hotter when stretched?
|
friction? potential energy?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go75aqa",
"go6rjhn"
],
"text": [
"When you stretch it you are doing work on the rubber. Some of that work becomes potential energy and some goes against friction which causes heat.",
"~~It gets compressed, so same heat in smaller area=hotter. Let it cool while stretched and then release it, it will be colder than ambient.~~ Edit: appears entropy plays a much larger part in it. Need someone more versed to bring it down to eli5 Edit 2: will try: Imagine a pool filled with unpowered frictionless bumper boats all traveling in random directions and speeds. (The average speed of these boats could be considered temperature) They will hit others and slow down and be hit and speed up. Now consider a series of some of the boats being roped into a strand (a polymer strand). Because everyone is heading in random directions the rope is quite tangled. If two people started pulling the ends of the rope from outside of the pool it would straighten the rope causing those on the rope to hit others quite hard (an increase in speed/temp). We added work that sped up the boats on the rope for a while until enough collisions happened to average out everyone's speed. (Notice how we did not change the rope itself just straightened it) Because we forced the boats into unnatural order by straightening them there will be force trying to pull the ends of the rope. If we release the rope the boats will want to get all tangled up again, but the only way they can do that is with their current momentum (temperature) and by getting hit hard by exterior boats (getting warmed up). So when you stretch a rubber band you take something disorganized and organize it without fundamentally changing anything, therefore the work you put in is released as heat. When you release a rubber band it snaps back and at a very small scale becomes disorganized, but it needs energy to do that so it uses it's molecular momentum (heat) to get back to it's original state. Because the heat gets used up it becomes cold. Here's a much better but still simple explanation: URL_0 This analogy can also be extrapolated further: If you add speed to all the boats (heat) it makes the rope harder to keep straight (rubber bands get tighter). If you reduce speed it becomes easier to stretch the rope/rubber band straight. Rubber bands really do paradoxical get tighter when hot and looser when cooled."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://pslc.ws/macrog/exp/rubber/sepisode/ent.htm"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lon67b
|
How do balloons slowly start to deflate?
|
Both air and helium balloons will slowly deflate after a week or two. If they are airtight where does the gas go?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6qcdg",
"go6qihn"
],
"text": [
"The surface of the material the balloons are made of (generally a thin rubber) are microporous, they have tiny little holes in them that allow gas to escape slowly over a period of time",
"The latex rubber that most balloons are made of is actually slightly porous to air. It literally leaks out through the walls of the balloon. Helium is a smaller molecule than what makes up air so helium filled ballons will deflate faster.l than air filled ones. Most places that fill helium balloons add a pump of a liquid that helps seal the walls a bit so the helium filled balloons last a bit longer. Also, you will notice those foil balloons last a very long time because the foil material is not porous. We have some of them that are years old and still holding."
],
"score": [
9,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lon9o5
|
Why does eating the same foods all the time get old/boring, but drinking the same liquids doesn't?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6ryru",
"go6r0c3"
],
"text": [
"The same food over and over gets boring because our bodies need a large variety of vitamins and nutrients. You can't get all the needed nutrition if you are only eating a few of the same foods over and over. Our bodies crave what they need. As far as drinking goes, water is all you really need for a drink. So our bodies don't get sick of always drinking it.",
"Liquids don’t get boring? Water and the same beer bores me to death"
],
"score": [
17,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lonmiw
|
Why does stuff not decompose in formaldehyde??
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6td7n",
"go6tba4",
"go6untu"
],
"text": [
"Decomposition is caused by microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and protazoa. Only very few microorganisms can survive in formaldehyde (it's a poison), so decomposition doesn't happen as fast.",
"decomposition is a product of bacteria eating away at our dead flesh. introduce a chemical (or environment, like everest or swamps) that kills any bacteria, and you have a preserved body, as long as there's no moisture in it.",
"Formaldehyde is a 'fixative' - it 'fixes' things in place kind of like glue. Specifically it's thought to stick bits of protein to nitrogen molecules in DNA or other proteins. These connections are double bonds that are really hard for bacteria to break down. You can imagine a dense web of zip ties sticking everything in your fridge together so it's harder to eat. In addition, it kills off bacteria. It's often mixed with alcohol for extra antibacterial action. The alcohol also causes a first wave of dehydration/breaking things up that makes it easier for the formaldehyde to get in and make its connections."
],
"score": [
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lonv2b
|
Debt vs. Funding
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6uudf",
"go6v4w5"
],
"text": [
"Treasury bonds mostly. A government issues bonds that say they will double in price in 20-30 years. This gives immediate revenue but also places them in debt. The debt is not instantly recoverable because the bond can’t be turned in to the government before it is mature. It can be sold to others... or banks. Taxes that come in are revenue that can be spent. Thus you can have a ton of debt and a ton of revenue at the same time. The same way you have a 30 year mortgage for 250,000 but an annual income of 80,000... they don’t offset each other or mean you have no disposable income.",
"The country makes money through a lot of sources but the most basic one is taxes like income tax or sales tax. Stuff like that. As long as trade is going on, the country is taking a cut and making money. Now debt works just the same as it would for a person. Say you owe bill 5 bucks. If you make 5 bucks you could pay that back to bill or you could spend it on something you want. If you choose to spend it you still owe bill. Now, for countries, this debt can be a good thing. If someone owes you money, or vice versa, you two want to be nice to each other so that you know they will pay you back. It strengthens political bonds between nations."
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
looel1
|
why is standing healthy and laying down not?
|
the way I see it laying is just standing vertically so whenever someone says that sitting and laying are unhealthy but standing is it confused me and
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6ydu3",
"go7zrq7"
],
"text": [
"Your muscles are active when you stand. Your heart is pumping blood a little harder to your legs, hips and back to keep you upright. They're fighting gravity! This helps your cardiovascular health, along with strengthening your muscles, which are at risk of atrophy if they're rarely used.",
"With the standing desk fad taking off in recent years, there has been some misconceptions about standing. My doctor talked to me about this a few months ago. When you sit, you are not moving at all usually. Being locked in place like that for long periods of time isn't great because our bodies are meant to move. Sitting isn't bad, but not moving enough is bad. When you stand, you are likely to shift your weight around and have more movement. But standing in place and not moving, like at a retail cashier job, is basically just as bad as sitting. Its the lack of movement that's bad. Even laying down, you are likely to roll over or stretch, which is some movement. The best way to use a standing desk for work is to switch between standing and sitting often so that you move more. And if you are feeling uncomfortable, your position should change."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
loogdg
|
Why aren’t conglomerates the same as monopolies?
|
I feel like they both serve the same purpose, if only conglomerates seem to be exponential monopolies.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go6zlob",
"go70990"
],
"text": [
"What do you mean by exponential monopolies? A company or conglomerate is a monopoly if it is overwhelmingly dominant in a certain market and potential rivals have little to no hope of effectively competing with it. Conglomerates do not have to be monopolies, because they may have other companies/corporstions/conglomerates to compete with in their field, such as food/drink or telecommunications. Pepsico is a conglomerate because it is made up of multiple different subsidiaries, like Frito-Lay and Quaker. It is not a monopoly, because it is not dominant in its market; The Coca-Cola Company and Keurig Dr. Pepper are both significant rivals in the beverage market, for example. Conglomerates can become monopolies in a region by absorbing/buying-out competitors, leaving them as the sole provider of a good or service in that region.",
"A monopoly has absolute control or close to it in a product category. Conglomerates have companies or divisions in many category segments, but don’t control all of one them. The total control and the ability to have such one-sided control over pricing is what defines a monopoly. A company that owns a cheese brand and a cracker brand and a candy division doesn’t have control over any one market as a company with 95% of the candy segment would. A conglomerate benefits from economies of scale, by combining, say dairy purchase for cheese and chocolate to get better pricing or having one finance and HR department overseeing all divisions. Not by using unfair control to manipulate consumers."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
looik3
|
How do people physically find and then capture/maintain certain strains of bacteria used for let’s say: dairy production?
|
Was learning about various dairy production and how different strains of bacteria are used to make different products. My question is, how do companies/people physically locate and capture certain strains of bacteria? Where exactly are they found/identified, and then how is it isolated to be used in production of goods (whether that be cheese, yogurt, or even antibiotics).
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go71p2w"
],
"text": [
"Although I use bacteria for a different end result(beer/wine) it’s essentially selective breeding with a good bit of luck thrown into the mix. At least at the home scale, and even back in history before microbiology was a known thing. Ex: when I want to get a new wild yeast for my brewing, I leave a sugar solution outside near the garden with cheesecloth on top for ~3 days. Then I bring it in and watch it. If nothing happens, I dump it and try again. If I get activity(bubbles, alcohol smell, mould) I let it grow and then check it to see if it’s something I want to keep. The history of Farmers Cheese is that a farmer was taking milk into town inside a fresher cow(or sheep/goat depending on location of story) stomach that still had some of what we now know is rennet. The warmth, plus the rennet and the jostling of the trip turned it into something cheese like."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lop0ch
|
Why do people say to put your open wound under cold water?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go71f4f",
"go7338j",
"go76289",
"go72b6y"
],
"text": [
"Cold water cause the blood vessels to contract and helps clot blood. Helps stop the bleeding",
"Your blood vessels shrink when they get cold, so the cold water makes them smaller, so less blood will come out",
"Cold water slows the bleeding and will wash out the wound. Alcohol and hydrogen peroxide are actually not good for cleaning out wounds as they will kill tissue that could potentially heal",
"...it also helps to remove and dirt/grit from the area.. lessening the risk if an infection."
],
"score": [
14,
9,
7,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lop15a
|
Why do diagrams say to sit upright but it’s so much more comfortable to sit like a Pretzel?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go74vvc"
],
"text": [
"Muscles flex when upright, keep spine in position it’s supposed to be. But muscle flex=tired, and we’re lazy, so we sit like pretzel."
],
"score": [
14
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lop6it
|
Why does Swiss cheese have holes in it? Is there a purpose to this or is it purely decorative?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go728e8",
"go72f0k"
],
"text": [
"What makes Swiss cheese “holey” is additional bacteria called Propionibacterium freudenrichii subspecies shermanii – P. shermanii for short. Under the specific conditions that Swiss cheese is made, the P. shermanii produce a gas: carbon dioxide. Because Swiss cheese is made at a warm temperature – around 70 degrees Fahrenheit – the cheese is soft and malleable. So as the bacteria grow, the gases they emit end up creating round openings. Think of blowing a bubble with chewing gum: As you blow air from your lungs, the pressure forces the gum into a circle. The bubble eventually pops, due to air pressure from your lungs or the atmosphere.",
"Neither, actually. It's caused by the natural process of making the cheese and the gasses produced. It's a cheese made at a warmer temperature, and the bacteria create gasses that leave holes in the cheese. Not for looks or for a purpose, just the gasses of the bacteria in the creation of the cheese."
],
"score": [
14,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lopod6
|
why people pass out on thrill rides like sling shots or roller coasters
|
Wish there was an anatomy flair but I imagine it would foster a lot of interesting posts lmao.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go779up"
],
"text": [
"The main reason is due to Vasovagal syncope, which is where your heart rate and blood pressure suddenly drops from certain triggers, and the anxiety/fear/excitement that comes with roller coasters tends to set it off. With the sudden drop in blood pressure, your brain gets less blood, and that leads to unconsciousness. G-force alone causing blood to rush to your feet doesn't usually do it (unless you aren't healthy in the first place), but it makes it so a smaller drop in blood pressure is needed for you to pass out."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lopsog
|
How come food boiled in water comes out wet but food fried in oil comes out dry?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go76lv1"
],
"text": [
"The heat of the oil causes the water to evaporate. However, at improper temperatures or if left too long it can absorb oil and that's icky."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lopxlw
|
What do you call it when you have a rocket and you need a certain amount of fuel to lift it to space, but then you need more fuel to lift that fuel to space, and then fuel to lift that fuel, etc? Also, how do you figure out how much fuel you need?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go76p0p"
],
"text": [
"It's called the \"tyranny of the rocket equation\". And that is also the answer to how much fuel you need. ([Tsiolkovsky rocket equation]( URL_0 )) In practice, a mission is planned around the total amount of *speed change* you need, called the \"[delta v budget]( URL_2 )\" in technical lingo. This is because orbital maneuvers require a certain amount of speed change, independent of what propellant or thrusters or how massive your space ship is, and so on. It always requires the same amount of speed change to, say, get from earth to mars. Or from mars to saturn. So if you know where you're going (saturn), you can plan a route, look up the amount of delta V required, then plug that into the rocket equation to figure out how much mass of fuel you'll need to pack onto your rocket (a number that increases exponentially with delta v). If you're interested in this I highly recommend checking out [Kerbal Space Program]( URL_1 )!"
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Program",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
loqbwe
|
Why does our body automatically shake our head side to side when we eat or taste something gross?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go8s3kh"
],
"text": [
"To get it out of our mouths and away from us. Shaking your head can make food fly out of your mouth, think like when you see a dog shake her head, drool and kibble can fly out easily. Similar concept. Might have influenced why we shake our head side to side when we say no, because we already have an automatic response that means \"no that's gross\" to one thing."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lorjkf
|
How come lightning strikes in the ocean but doesn't spread indefinitely? How is the radius of the electrically charged zone calculated?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7j82s",
"go7g258",
"go7fi7x"
],
"text": [
"Imagine that you have a big glob of peanut butter on a knife. When that peanut butter is confined to the tip of the knife its bunched up into a small area and so it looks like there is a lot of peanut butter. If you spread that peanut butter onto a small piece of bread then the peanut butter gets spread out over a larger area, so there isn't as much peanut butter at any given point as there is when its on the knife. Now say you spread that peanut butter over the entire planet. Now the peanut butter is spread so thin that you can't even see it - at any given point all that's there is maybe a molecule or two of peanut butter. Lightning works the same way. Lightning appears to be very energetic because all of the energy in that lightning is concentrated into an area the width of a piece of pencil lead. Because the energy contained in the lightning is confined to such a small area, it vaporizes anything within. But as soon as the lightning hits the ground it begins to spread out. Once you expand that pencil lead sized area to, say, 100 cubic feet (which is maybe the size of 3 or 4 bathroom stalls in a public restroom), the energy in the lightning has been spread out so much that there just isn't enough enough energy at any given point to be dangerous anymore. That's what happens when lightning hits anything connected to the ground - the energy contained in the lightning spreads out over the entire planet. If you happen to be right at the point where the lightning hit, the energy hasn't had enough time to spread out and so the lightning is dangerous. But once you've gotten any amount of distance away from that point, the energy disperses. So when lightning hits somewhere in the Pacific Ocean that causes the ground underneath you to heat up a bit, regardless of where on the planet you are. Its just that there is so little energy that makes it to you that the temperature increase is so small that you can't measure it.",
"First, I think you might have a bit of an opposite picture of what's going on. Lightning doesn't *spread* charge per se, lightning *equalizes* charge. So rather than the lightning bolt hitting the ground and creating a gradient of charge, the more accurate picture is that the gradient of charge came first and the lightning is what makes it go away. This means that lightning, no matter how powerful, could only spread as far as the electrical imbalance was there to begin with. Earth, on the whole, is electrically neutral - so the (electrically neutral) charge at the point of impact couldn't *possibly* spread indefinitely. As for the practical answer, to create an electric charge, you have to move charges - creating a current. Current flowing through ground causes it to heat up, which is why the voltage difference drops off rather than extending indefinitely. Technically speaking, the ground has a *resistance*, so the flow of current through this resistance creates a voltage drop. In practice, you care less about the radius of this region than about the *rate* at which the voltage decreases. A voltage difference of 1 V per meter is much less harmful than a voltage difference of 1000 V/m, since the latter means that even having your feet a meter apart puts 1000 V of potential difference across your body.",
"lightning is caused when a huge amount of electrical charge is accumulated, either on the ground or in clouds. so more simply it's just a bunch of electrons that want to get away from each other, and once a path is made they do that very fast. this doesn't spread indefinitely because eventually the electrons will spread out enough in the water. the repulsive force of the other electrons won't be enough to push them off of whatever atom they end up on."
],
"score": [
8,
7,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lorwux
|
two thoughts?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7h6zf",
"go9ahmq",
"go7hvsm"
],
"text": [
"Fun fact, some people do not have an internal monologue, they literally can’t have a conversation with themselves in their head, they have to have it out loud. So they don’t get to sing songs and have a separate train of thought running at the same time. Super fascinating.",
"Yeah mine does this too. It makes it really hard to meditate because I'm focusing on my breathing, fully present to it, while my brain is going full tilt all \"Are we doing it? Are we doing it?\" I meditate best with sound in the background (like a youtube video of thunder and rain sounds). So I can occupy both channels.",
"The physicist Richard Feynman wrote about some amateur psychology experiments he conducted with his friends: trying to count accurate time while doing something else at the same time. Some of his friends engaged verbal brain processing to keep counting, while others engaged a \"visual\" processing. This caused some combined tasks to be easy to \"pair up\" for some friends, but very hard to \"pair up\" for others. It all depended on the specific way their brain was engaged in the task. You'll notice that for some movies, we'll \"tune in\" our brain to analytically listen to characters talking, while we leave our brain to process the background music \"emotionally\". This dividing of brain resources can actually make soundtracks feel more emotionally powerful -- like sneaking into our subconscious while we're not attending to the music analytically."
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lorwz6
|
How is quicksand naturally formed and is it really that dangerous?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7khk2",
"go7h0or",
"go7j8jr"
],
"text": [
"Quicksand is basically really wet sandy soil. But there needs to be the right mixture of water and sand. If there's too much water it's just sandy water. And if there's too much sand it's just wet sand. It usually forms when there is an underground water spring pumping water into a sandy area but it also forms during earthquakes. And those two things contibute the other element required which is some kind of movement to mix the sand and water just right so that the sand particles are fully coated by the water and sliding or slipping across and around each other. It's that mixture and movement that makes quicksand dangerous. It's always changing between almost liquid and actually liquid. And when a person or animal falls into it they can push against it one second and fall further into it the next second. But it's not like what you see in cartoons. It's not impossible to escape from it. Like the other comment says, struggling makes things worse and that's because you're allowing more water to coat the sand and make it more liquid. Less movement is better and more surface area (by laying on your back) is best.",
"Only dangerous if you struggle. If you lay back you'll float and you can SLOWLY swim (or be pulled) out of it.",
"According to Molika Ashford of Live Science, > Quicksand is a sloshy mixture of sand and water that appears solid when viewed from above, but will collapse into a more liquid form if a heavy object, like a human or animal disturbs it. After liquefying, the mix tends to solidify, cementing said animal in gluey, thick wet sand. .... Nicholas Bakalar of National Geographic said, > If stumbling into quicksand ranks on your list of worries, don't panic. You won't sink in—at least not all the way. Real quicksand is certainly hard to get out of, but it doesn't suck people under the way it always seems to in the movies. & #x200B; > According to a study published in the current issue of the journal *Nature,* it is impossible for a person immersed in quicksand to be drawn completely under. The fact is, humans float in the stuff. & #x200B; Source 1: [ URL_1 ]( URL_1 ) Source 2: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
10,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/quicksand-science-why-it-traps-how-to-escape",
"https://www.livescience.com/33350-how-quicksand-works.html"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
losmk0
|
How does Febreze work?
|
Scientifically is it actually “eliminating” bad odors or is it masking or what?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7vwo4",
"go8ngjb",
"go9c4a8"
],
"text": [
"It's got enzymes (think little chemical scissors) that cut up compounds that smell a lot and turn them into smaller less smelly ones. Like some sort of poop knife",
"It uses cyclodextrin. The water that's mixed in with it releases the odor molecules which bond to the cyclodextrin. They are still there, but you can't smell them as they can no longer bind to your smell receptors. After that, they can be washed away with water. Fun fact, The reason Febreze has a scent is because people didn't believe it worked because it didn't smell floral. You can get the unscented which works just as well. It's actually pretty cool for dealing with things that can't be just thrown in the wash. Plus, you don't have to smell that horrible Febreze smell.",
"Tangential note: I can always smell Febreze, even unscented. Does it smell good to me? Nope. Does it neutralize the odors for me? No. When I walk into an area sprayed with it, it’s like an assault."
],
"score": [
58,
24,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
losnbn
|
How the origin of alcohol in different ancient societies became such a worldwide known beverage that cultures who have never met still brewed variants
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7k95m",
"go7kffy"
],
"text": [
"Alcohol is easy to make by accident. It's what you get if you leave anything with sugars or starches in it sitting somewhere for a while, because yeast is everywhere. It won't be particularly tasty or safe most of the time if you do it that way (because you didn't control the fermentation at all), but it'll still happen. Fermented drinks also have another benefit: they're generally safe(r) to drink even if the water isn't clean. Alcohol's pretty good at killing microbes. So there was a practical reason that ancient people made it - it was basically a form of water treatment. People along the eastern Mediterranean, for example, mixed about 1 part wine to 20 parts water for daily drinking. The wine was enough to kill nasties in the water, and you wouldn't get meaningfully drunk off of such a low concentration. (As a side note, this is the origin of the water-into-wine story from the Bible. It's not just \"woo, booze!\" - it was a metaphor for purification that made sense to the people at the time and that gets totally lost on a modern audience. It's turning something unclean [untreated water] into something so clean it purifies [wine], which fits neatly into other Christian symbolism.)",
"It is very easy to accidentally find out how to make alcohol. There are yeast spores all around us. And when we try to prevent food from getting infected by them we keep the oxygen away so if we store sweet food like fruits or porridge in a container but it have accidentally gotten infected with alcohol producing yeast then you get an alcoholic beverage. So it is very likely that brewing have been discovered thousands of times by independent means."
],
"score": [
11,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
losvd1
|
When people talk about “voice in their head” can they really hear it...?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7l4oi"
],
"text": [
"> ....Or is it just like thinking words? Because when people say not everyone has it I don’t know if I do or don’t because I don’t know exactly what an internal monologue is. Short answer: Everybody experiences reality in a different way. It's very hard to compare notes on and study the workings of consciousness. [Long answer]( URL_0 )."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lot0i6
|
Light slowing down in a medium
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7lqvy"
],
"text": [
"The \"light\" in a medium is not only \"light\" in the ordinary, vacuum sense of the word, it is a quantum superpositon of free photons and excited matter states. A photon travelling though a medium is repeatedly undergoes the following cycle: it is fleetingly absorbed by electrons in the medium, which re-emit a new photon in its place a fantastically short time afterwards (femtoseconds or less). The process is somewhat like fluorescence, aside from that energy, momentum and angular momentum are wholly transferred to the new photon, whereas in fluorescence, energy (as betokened by the Stokes shift), momentum and angular momentum (as betokened by direction and polarisation shifts) are all transferred to the medium. The delay arising from the absorption / re-emission is what makes the light seem to propagate slowly, but you can see that no energy is lost. Edit rephrased it and corrected Sry i told it wrong"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lot6o8
|
What makes countries follow Geneva Convention in war? Just because an action is deemed illegal, what’s the incentive for countries in war to abide by it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7mgdw",
"go8bg4i"
],
"text": [
"Because they want their opponents to also abide by the rules. While there is a slight advantage to, say, not looking after enemy POWs properly, there is a huge disadvantage to not having your own POWs not looked after by the enemy properly. So this provides an incentive for all combatants to abide by the rules regarding POWs (or at least, *be seen to* be abiding by those rules). This is also why verification organisations such as the Red Cross are so important.",
"Because if you don't follow it, neither do your enemies or your neighbors, and you make yourself look like someone who can't be trusted. Consider two nations, A and B. A and B both want Land C. Land C isn't a historical part of their lands, or a critical religious site, or anything A and B are really ready to go full bore to the mattresses over. If A and B have already agreed on rules for how this sort of thing is supposed to work, the whole operation runs smoother; regardless of who wins or loses, the overall damage to both sides is reduced. They know how prisoners are supposed to be treated, how to mark opened cities so they don't get bombed, how to flag their medics and chaplains, and generally how to keep things from getting out of hand. Now, let's say A and B have a rule that you can't have people out of uniform shooting at soldiers. You *have* to be in a uniform, period. Now, if Nation A starts blending in plain-clothed soldiers in civilian populations, that's a violation of the rules, and B no longer has an incentive to play by the rules. If B has weapons they've been holding in reserve because they were against the rules, or has POWs from A, things start getting interesting in ways that A's strategic planners may not have fully predicted, and a death spiral of both nations breaking more and more rules until the whole thing devolves into a nasty total war over a piece of land they really never cared that much for in the first place. Of course, A and B don't exist in a vacuum. Every other nation is watching the war over Land C, either directly (reports from their embassies, observers embedded with A and B field units, espionage) or indirectly (sitting at home and watching CNN), and if word gets out that A is breaking the rules, that damages their credibility. Any nation signed onto the same deal as A and B to ban plain-clothed fighters is now directly offended by this violation. Further, even the nations that didn't sign, even the ones who don't care about those sorts of tactics, *know that A can't be trusted*. When push comes to shove, A will break their word, and possibly get your people killed in the process, and that will color future political interactions."
],
"score": [
38,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lot6ve
|
Why is it that bacteria can readily decompose animal fat but not other lipids as say olive oil, butter or wax.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7n5ul"
],
"text": [
"Animal fat contains a relatively high concentration of water as well as fat. In addition it have a fair bit of protein and other nutrients. But the other forms of fat you mention does not contain much water if anything at all. This means that any bacteria that infects it is going to dehydrate quite rapidly and would need to extract water from the moisture of the air. This slows down decomposition quite a bit. You can see a similar effect in syrup such as tree saps and honey. It is also the main reason why fuel oil like diesel or gasoline can be stored, although if you mix the fuel oil with water it can get infected and will decompose over time."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lotdqp
|
why do we suddenly need to kneel or sit when told of bad news?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7nd1t",
"go7o7v7",
"go8t40z",
"go7n88e"
],
"text": [
"If I'm not mistaken, receiving an upsetting news can cause a drop in our blood pressure which sometimes make us faint.",
"Might be our bodies subconscious reaction to mitigate possible injury from fainting standing up",
"It's a combination different shock reactions, and an evolutionary response to them. When you receive bad news, your brain fires a 'panic' signal that opens up your blood vessals in preparation of an adrenaline rush should you need to run (someone tells you the volcano is erupting, flee). However, this can backfire if the adrenaline rush does not follow (either because there is nothing to run from or because your brain does not know how to process the information and goes into mild shock), because your blood pressure will drop dramatically for a moment. The result? You faint. After seeing/having this happen enough times, humans have learned to crouch or sit when they know they won't have to flee, so that in the scenario they do pass out the risk of injury from falling over is significantly decreased.",
"If a person is given bad news, it could cause a person to faint and fall to the ground. If a person is sitting down, that person will not fall to the ground which could cause another problem."
],
"score": [
19,
9,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lou30h
|
Why is electricity lethal to us, it's just a bunch of electrons flowing through our bodies?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"go7q86e",
"go7t8nh",
"go7qikp",
"go7qe4f"
],
"text": [
"All the nerve processes that control your muscles, including your heart, are just electrons flowing through your body. Having lots and lots of electrons suddenly flow through your body tends to upset these systems. Once they are upset, your body is not super great at restoring them to how they should be.",
"Two main reasons: 1. Your body uses electric signals to communicate instructions. A sudden muscle spasm due to a large electric shock can cause serious injuries - lethal injuries if that muscle happens to be the heart. 2. Resistance causes parts of an electric flow to be converted into heat. Your body has resistance. If the shock is large enough it will cause serious burns, internal and external.",
"Unfortunately, that body _uses_ electricity to function, if only tiny amoumts. Brain tells to heart to beat? a signal made (also) of electricity. Brain telling a muscle to contract? A signal made of electricity. While electricity from outside flows in our body, in any amount, nothing of that works anymore. Every muscles receives random signals (heart included). In addition, our body is not a perfect conductor of electricity, so electricity flowing through it dissipates into heat. Huge amounts of electricity (for example, high voltage, or a lighting strike) becomes huge amount of heat very quicly, and that can damage us a lot.",
"If they had just been passing through our bodies they would be harmless, this is the case with neutrinos for example. The problem with electrons is that they do not just pass through our bodies but end up crashing into atoms on their way like a drunk trying to get to the bar at the reception spilling everyone's drinks. This will create a lot of friction which generate a lot of heat. So you end up getting burned wherever the current passes through you. The biggest issue is the nervous system as this does work partially on electricity as well. So not only will the nerves provide an excellent conductor for the electricity so most of it flows through the nervous system but it will also generate electrical signals in the nerves which can disrupt a number of things like your heart rhythm and your motor controls."
],
"score": [
19,
15,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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