q_id
stringlengths 6
6
| title
stringlengths 3
299
| selftext
stringlengths 0
4.44k
| category
stringclasses 12
values | subreddit
stringclasses 1
value | answers
dict | title_urls
listlengths 1
1
| selftext_urls
listlengths 1
1
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
lruoot
|
why do some foods have to be refrigerated but only after opening?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gonpqp5"
],
"text": [
"Some foods are vacuum packed, or sealed with no oxygen, but nitrogen gas. When they are opened, their shelf life substantially shortens by exposing them to the air. With that clock ticking, you refrigerate it to retard the food going bad quicker."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lrush8
|
Why are SSDs soo much costlier than a MicroSD Card if they both work with the same technology
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gonpiq4"
],
"text": [
"The basic answer; sd cards can read or write pictures and videos fast, but typically only reading or writing at one time. This makes them good for cameras. But ssd hard drives can read and write at the same time at high speeds. This makes it better for computers. And sd cards want to write data and read data in a sequence. Where as ssd hard drives are better at accessing random data from random areas faster. Basically the difference is intended function. Sd cards can function just like ssd hard drives and many small form factor computers or computer like devices use sd cards as their storage form, but this is chosen for its small size and low voltage requirements rather than performance. Edit: there is also a lot more technology in ssd hard drives used to monitor and maintain the drive."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lrvoak
|
Is a hypothesis, in the scientific method, an explanation or a prediction?
|
Howdy folks. I'm confused about the nature of a hypothesis in the scientific method. I can't tell if it's supposed to be about "I think X is going to happen" or if it's more "We see that X happens, and here's why." If it's a prediction, I guess I'm not 100% what the point of it is. Like, if you're forming a solution out of so many milligrams of substance Z and so many milligrams of substance Y, doesn't it make more sense just to see what happens, rather than trying to guess ahead of time "It will turn purple" or "It will explode." Help me out here folks, I appreciate the help.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gont6pq",
"gonta1i",
"gontmsc",
"gonsy47"
],
"text": [
"A hypothesis is a prediction of a law. Then that law is used to make a prediction. For example gravity. My hypothesis is that things will fall according to F=mg. Then I use that formula to calculate the speed at which something will fall. Then I drop the thing and see how fast it falls. If it falls at the speed I predicted then it means I'm probably right. If it falls at a different speed then it means that the formula is probably wrong.",
"Hypothesis is an educated guess/prediction that you set out to confirm or reject. If you made this cool vaccine that has this new technique that you believe wll increase immunity and you want to see if its better than other cavvines, your hypothesis may be that Vaccine A will show greater efficacy than Vaccine B at 30 days. Then you go and describe how you define efficacy and how you will design an experiment to test that prediction. You are describing a simple chemical reaction, hypothesis are for experiments where you alter a variable and measure the outcome. Experiments are done to answer a specific question and often involves comparing different things or one thing v placebo. To add on to that, a hypothesis shows the reader that you know what you are doing and have a hunch what could happen as opposed to just shooting in the dark for something. The hypothesis has to be supported with prior reseach on the topic. For the above example, you need to show the reader WHY you think vaccine A will be better so that your hypothesis or prediction is convincing. If a hypothesis is rejected, it doesnt mean you are stupid or wrong. It just means that that particular phenomenon doesnt work. Experiments are essentially using prior knowledge of science in order to discover NEW knowledge. We can make educated guesses and see if it works, but often times it doesnt.",
"It’s an idea to test. You can call it a prediction, but it doesn’t mean the prediction is correct.",
"The point of making the hypothesis beforehand is to test your understanding. Based on your hypothesis, you expect it to turn purple. Instead it explodes! Woah, that was unexpected, your hypothesis was wrong and you need to come up with a new one."
],
"score": [
5,
5,
4,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lrwe4u
|
What is the difference between Saas(Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)?
|
I tried looking up the most simplest of explanations to these services but it just bamboozles the crap out of me. * SaaS, if am understanding the definition correctly, is what you can use on some centralized cloud platform that doesn't require you to install that software it on your system, e.g: Office suite, zendesk, dropbox. * I don't get the different from SaaS with PaaS. * IaaS is like gaining access to the full system, from your own system, and doing with it as you please? I know I'm like out of the ballpark with these terms, can you someone please dumbify it for me.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gonxw0l",
"gonzing"
],
"text": [
"SaaS - a company has software that it created that you can use on a subscription basis. You are paying just to use their program. They host it and you access it in most cases. PaaS - a company has a virtual machine network for you to use to create and test your software. You can interact with the system indirectly, using set commands. The company maintains the OS of the virtual machines and often maintains run environments and other utilities. This allows you to focus just on app development and not worry about the VM hierarchy. IaaS - a company has hardware capable of running virtual machine networks. They let you use it and set up your own virtual machine network with your own hierarchy, OS, utilities, etc. You have a lot of freedom to do things how you want, but you may not get much support from the company if it isn't working right. PaaS and IaaS are similar, and there are some cases where it's not clear where the exact line between them is. But the general idea is that with PaaS there is a lot being maintained and done for you by the provider, while with IaaS you are more in your own with more freedom but less support.",
"Computer services run in several \"layers\" built on top of each other. At the bottom is hardware, and on the top is a user-facing application like Reddit or Netflix. Rather than managing the entire stack top-to-bottom, you can go to a Cloud Provider company and rent from them the \"lower\" layers, and you only need to interact on the \"upper\" layers. The difference between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS is *how many layers* are managed by the Cloud Provider company. Classic software, not as a service: You get your own computer, and install software on it. It's your computer, you're responsible for it. At scale, you might rent rack space in a datacenter or operate your own datacenter. But the physical computers are yours. Infrastructure as as service: Someone else (like Google or Amazon) manages the physical computers. You rent access to a computer. You cannot physically access the computer, but you can remotely manage the computer. The computer starts as a basic Windows or Unix box, and you install your own software on it. Nowadays the computers you rent are actually virtual machines, not physical machines. The provider will have one beeftank server acting like a hundred regular-size machines, rented out to different clients. Software as a Service: The Cloud Provider is not renting out access to a computer. They are renting out access to *a program* running on their computer. The program is not installed on your machine, it's installed on theirs, and they manage the configuration and installation and update stuff. There are a lot of programs that are SaaS-only, like Reddit and Netflix and GMail. There are also programs that can be classic or SaaS, depending on which you want. This is more common for business software, like Atlassian (JIRA, Confluence) or Tableau. The best consumer example is probably the Microsoft Office suite: you can have Excel running on your computer, or you can use an Office365 account and access the SaaS version of Excel through the browser. Platform-as-a-Service is basically a SaaS product for creating SaaS products. Google App Engine is an example of PaaS. You can create SaaS software using Google App Engine. While you rent VMs from Google, you don't generally remote into them and manage them like you would a regular computer. You write software, but you don't deploy it onto something that looks like Windows or Unix. You hand it to Google, and it makes calls out to Google services that are part of App Engine, which handles all the lower-layer stuff for you."
],
"score": [
9,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lrx3wt
|
How does sleep deprivation cause brain damage?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goo7a38",
"goo8kjb"
],
"text": [
"Sleep actually lets your brain flush out a bunch of toxic stuff that builds up over the course of a day. If you go too long without sleeping, you get too much of those toxins and they start hurting the parts of your brain that they're stuck inside.",
"Your brain is similar to other muscles in your body. If you work out your legs a ton, but never rest them or stretch, they cannot repair themselves and you risk hurting yourself. Same with the brain. It is constantly working out to keep you awake, thinking, moving etc. If you do not rest it, it cannot repair itself and your will hurt yourself (brain damage)."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lrxffc
|
- How big does a man made body of water need to be to significantly impact local weather patterns?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"good7y8",
"goozy8b",
"goqgi9z"
],
"text": [
"Depends how big of weather you’re thinking. For radiation cooling on a clear night just a small pond can form fog since water stays warm longer, the temp difference can cause water vapor to condense. On a larger scale like thunderstorms you need enough water to saturate the air which takes a massive amount of evaporation. In warm air, it’d have to be something at least as big as lake mead in nevada",
"That's a \"butterfly flaps its wings\" sort of question that can't truly be answered. One little pond won't affect weather patterns but a bunch of ponds will. For example, there was a big building boom in Las Vegas and a bunch of swimming pools were built. The result was that the humidity it Las Vegas increased significantly because of the evaporation from the newly built swimming pools.",
"I actually have personal, if not professional, experience with this, as I live next to the largest lake (completely) in Colorado, the manmade [Blue Mesa Reservoir.]( URL_3 ) Anecdotally, the building of the reservoir caused a significant cooling effect in the nearby town of Gunnison, generally believed to be caused by blocking the traditional venting path for descending cold air coming down the various side-valleys. The result, once again anecdotally because I can't for the life of me find ANY weather impact studies on Colorado reservoirs [(there's plenty of stuff about the damage to the river systems though)]( URL_2 ). Anyway, THE RESULT according to the old timers is a dryer, colder up-river valley where all the pooled cold and dry air sits until the sun heats it enough to escape upwards, or until the afternoon/evening winds come up-river and stir things up a bit. Basically, a large body of water can disrupt local air currents by creating an area that has a different heat capacity and reflection/absorption factor that the surrounding area, and after that's it's all chaos-theory or whatever term the modern meteorologists use. As a final note(s), if you want to look into how the land/water/wind interaction works, there are tons of scholarly and layman articles about [Sea Breezes]( URL_0 ), which is an excellent starting point on the topic. And if you really want to get your teeth into the subject, consider visiting the [Bureau of Reclamation's Library]( URL_1 ). Despite the name, they're the folks who manage most of the water in the more-federal states west of the Mississippi river, and honestly have some absolutely amazing people working for them (their project-testing building is like a cross between a water park, a science museum, and a factory, it was great wandering it though it on my lunch breaks back when I contracted there)."
],
"score": [
96,
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_breeze",
"https://www.usbr.gov/library/index.html",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Storage_Project#Environmental_Impact",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Mesa_Reservoir"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lryedj
|
How do genes function? I'm not asking about the process, I'm asking about the actual mechanics. For instance, how does a seed/seedling/tree "know" what, how and when to grow and make each part? How does the genetic code get interpreted, given there is no intelligence to interpret it?
|
A tiny apple seed contains all the genetic information to sprout under very specific conditions and grow into a tree, differentiated by many, many parts, including trunk, xylem, branches, leaves, and of course fruit and new seeds, among countless other details. Every article that explains genetics describes the process of transcription and differentiation, but no one seems to explain how it is possible for that code to be translated into biological activity, apparently automatically.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooq064",
"goo8f9k",
"goor7zn",
"goobwc4"
],
"text": [
"From the other comments, I believe what you're curious about is signalling pathways that activate/deactivate genes. I'll start at the DNA level. To start, a quick primer on how DNA is stored: You usually see pictures of DNA as a loose double-helix of two strands. In practice, most DNA is actually packed up and filed away. First it's wrapped around these chunky bead-like proteins called Histones, then those DNA-wrapped beads are stacked up into a kind of coil, and *then* that coil is again wrapped up and packed away. It looks like [this]( URL_0 ). When DNA is 'read', it's latched on to by a type of cellular machine - an enzyme - called a Polymerase. Polymerases use the DNA strands like a train track, and copy out the DNA in a gene into a molecule called RNA. RNA contains the same information (more or less), but it's much much smaller, so it's like a working copy. It's also temporary - it tends to disintegrate between 5-30 minutes after it was made. RNA gets taken out into the cell, where it's read and used to do whatever it's supposed to. The fully packed up DNA is basically turned off. The polymerases in your cells that read DNA physically can't access it, so it doesn't get read. That said, there are other little machines in your cells whose whole job is to maintain the tidyness of your DNA, and pack, or unpack, whatever they need to. We call these 'Transcription Factors'. These are machines that patrol your DNA looking for specific sequences of your genetic code. When they find one, they latch on. Depending on the Transcription Factor and the sequence they find, they'll do different things. Sometimes they'll help pack up that bit of DNA a bit more tightly, silencing the gene. Sometimes they'll unpack it. And sometimes they'll directly latch on to a Polymerase to ensure that a bit of DNA gets read. The instructions that they're responding to are all on the DNA itself though. We often describe the genome as like a recipe book for all the different tiny machines a cell might need to build. In practice, it works more like a choose-your-own-adventure book. About 20% of the genome (depending on the species) is what we call 'non-coding DNA'. There's lots of different types of non-coding DNA, and I won't explain all of it because that would take days. Instead, I'll explain the most important ones for your question: promoters, enhancers, and silencers. These are DNA sequences that are recognised by the Transcription Factors I mentioned, which respond in different ways. From the names you can probably guess what these do. Promoters are needed to turn on their gene. Silencers are for turning a gene off. Enhancers don't turn on or off activity, but they do fine tune how frequently it gets read. Transcription factors tend be fairly specific to a sequence. However, the same promoter, silencer, or enhancer can be in many many different genes. This means that one transcription factor can turn on or off hundreds of different genes. Transcription factors are themselves proteins, and a lot of DNA is instructions for making different proteins. This means each transcription factor has a gene that must itself be turned on or off. This is how our cells coordinate lots of genetic activity at once: one signal turns on one gene for a transcription factor. That factor then turns on or off all the other genes needed, basically giving the cell new marching orders. To see how this might work in practice, let's look at a hypothetical infection. Cells have a bunch of different built in tools to detect if they've been infected by a virus - like a built in security system. Say one of these systems gets tripped, and the cell needs to respond. Typically, what that means is a transcription factor that was held away from the DNA (like those 'break in case of emergency' units in a building) is released. We'll call this the alarm factor. This alarm factor probably only unlocks the gene for a single other transcription factor, which we'll call the emergency factor, and it probably does this quite weakly. This means that the alarm needs to be raised multiple times before the emergency factor is effectively turned on. This prevents the cell from overreacting when nothing is wrong. The emergency factor, however, is quickly produced once it's turned on, and it very strongly turns on all the cell's self-defense genes, and turns off a bunch of the cell's 'business as usual' genes. Suddenly the cell shifts into war mode, simultaneously making stuff to fight the virus, while also making alarm signals that get sent out of the cell. These alarm signals are chemicals. Our immune cells have machines on their surfaces called receptors which specifically latch on to these alarm signals. Latching on to an alarm signal causes the receptors to release their own transcription factors. These new factors cause another cascade of genetic activity, turning on or off genes that help the immune cells respond. We call this whole process a signalling cascade, and it's how our cells do pretty much everything.",
"Basically, every three letters (A, C, G, T) in a DNA sequence (gene) is code for an amino acid. Amino acids chain together to build proteins. All life on earth has the same rules* for which amino acid to add to a chain given three letters. This process of building proteins happens in the ribosomes. The seed just starts processing the genes once you add water. The interesting thing is that the proteins built from DNA can temporarily block other proteins being built from DNA. Its a very simple yet complex behavior. *IIRC, fauna (animals) and flora (plants) have slightly different rules, but for sure all life is built from the same amino acids. Edit: maybe its prokaryote vs eukaryote? Its been a while.",
"The data on the DNA does not need to be “interpreted”. You can think of it like a [music box]( URL_0 ): while the nubs on the drum technically hold the information of the music piece, this information does not need to be interpreted, the physical interaction of the nubs and the rest of the mechanism directly produces the music. In the same way, the chemical reactions between the DNA and other molecules in the cell “automatically” produce other chemicals in varying quantities and the complex interactions between these millions of chemicals is what ultimately leads to all these observable biological processes.",
"The translation of genetic code into biological activity is indeed 'automatic' in the same way as adding baking soda and vinegar make a kindergarten volcano demo. There is no interpreter of the translation the way that Italian recipes would be translated to English...it's all chemical reactions, just more complex than the baking-soda/vinegar example. Ultimately, the chemical reactions create concentration gradients of chemicals, which fundamentally result in the biological structures we see forming living organisms. The organization unfolding in time and space seems impossible but is just very complex as a result of literally millions of years of evolution. We have traced fundamental development fates of cells: [ URL_1 ]( URL_2 ) and in some cases know how every cell contributes in development. Fundamentally, there is a lot of conservation in early development stages. Tons of really cool work is done in fruit flies, where you can easily control eye color or grow eyes at the knees by crossbreeding simple genetic mutants. If you think of biology as just complicated chemistry, I find it helps. Molecules diffuse through solution, bind, and interact. The variation of those interactions is what builds an oganism: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )"
],
"score": [
35,
27,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kevin-Verstrepen/publication/51196608/figure/fig1/AS:276923784679429@1443035183356/Chromatin-structure-DNA-is-wrapped-around-a-histone-octamer-to-form-nucleosomes.png"
],
[],
[
"https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/musical-box-inside-mechanism-2444179.jpg"
],
[
"https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-342-how-to-build-an-animal-cell-fate-and-identity-in-development-and-disease-fall-2017/lecture-summaries/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell\\_fate\\_determination",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_fate_determination"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lrz2qm
|
Someone with huge muscular arms is likely to be stronger than someone with thin arms. Why can someone with thin legs be faster than someone with more muscle in their legs?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goobhnm",
"goofk0w",
"goqv2xs",
"goobk93",
"goob1ix"
],
"text": [
"The types of muscle fibers also come into play. Fast twitch fibers are better for explosive movements (speed), while slow twitch fibers are better for sustained movement (endurance).",
"A semitruck has a way bigger engine than a motorcycle, which is faster. Not only is the semitruck bigger and heavier, but it's not geared for speed the same way a motorcycle is.",
"Because running fast is not just about the strength of large muscles in your quads and hamstrings. A good example is bodybuilders vs powerlifters. Bodybuilding is about looking big and proportional, and so bodybuilders do exercises that are focused only on this. Powerlifting is a sport about doing complex, compound lifts that require a ton of technique AND support from small muscle groups to balance and stabilize the weight. In powerlifting, even if your legs and back are strong, if your grip strength isn’t good enough to hold on to the weight, you fail the entire lift. Effectively, your larger muscle development is held back by needing to keep up small muscle development. In bodybuilding, when you can’t grip the weight anymore, you just strap your hands to it so you can keep working the big muscles. Running is technique, power, strength, and strength from all varieties of muscles. Visual size is about large big muscle groups only.",
"Moving quickly is not about strength. It's about being able to shake your legs quickly forward and backward. Heavier legs makes this more difficult. So, heavier legs require more strength to offset them. It's more of a question of strength to weight ratios.",
"Because having less dense mass to move makes it easier to move, and our movement is about 80% gravity."
],
"score": [
61,
22,
9,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lrzlfs
|
why does insulin sensitivity make people fat and why is too much sugar in blood bad?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooe5qy"
],
"text": [
"Insulin sensitivity is good, insensitivity or resistance is bad. Insulin lets glucose into cells so that they can use it for energy. Without it, cells cannot make energy and thats obviously not good Insulin resistance doesnt make people fat, becoming fat makes you insulin resistant. Its called metabolic syndrome and it can lead to things like high cholesterol, triglycerides and diabetes. Sugar in blood is bad because it can damage the blood vessels. This can lead to kidney failure (binds to blood vessels in kidneys) or the eye (blood vessels in the eye) and overall reduces the integrity of the blood vessel to cause things like heart attacks and strokes. It can also damage nerves and cause numbness in the feet."
],
"score": [
24
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lrzqt8
|
How can we "trick" our brain into doing/thinking something?
|
Aren't we essentially the brain? I mean, any and every thought of ours is done by the brain itself. So how can we sometimes "trick" our brains even though we clearly realize we're doing the tricking ourselves?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooeqx4"
],
"text": [
"Because we are our brains. So it would be easy to convince ourselves that what we think is true. Anxiety disorders are a perfect example of this. Anxiety attacks start with an anxious thought. Next a physiological response happens in reaction to that thought, such as a release of adrenaline which you then take notice of. Now, that thought has something to confirm it’s true and build it up further which then repeats the cycle. All this is happening while there is no actual threat or harmful event happening. But because we are our brains, we interpret this as truth. This is also why the inverse to anxiety attacks works. Cognitive behavioural therapy techniques such as challenging your anxious thoughts and forcing your mind to break the cycle and think rationally is you convincing yourself that there is no harm and that you are ok. Because you are your brain, this technique can work as you will believe yourself. Note: this is a simple generalization of an anxiety disorder. There are many other dynamics and depths to an anxiety disorder, but on the surface this gives you sort of an idea."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lrzwqb
|
I had knee surgery two weeks ago and just had the sutures taken out and had steri-strips put over the incisions. I was told that they should stay on for a week, but if they fall off tomorrow it's no big deal. What difference do those extra 5-6 days make to the healing process?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goohhhe"
],
"text": [
"if its an open wound it needs to be covered or it can get infected as stuff can get in there (fluid,gas,bits) ,healing takes time. IF the wound is completey sealed and the skinned gripped properly its less likely to get infected.The steri-strips keep it sterile and covered to prevent it getting contaminated and infected until its properly healed."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls0cdf
|
- Why if we have immune cells specifically made to find and kill cancer cells, we can die of cancer?
|
This is what I don't really understand. If a cancer cell is a defective cell which replicate out of control and steal nutrients, with no offensive power against other cells, and we have immune cells which are specifically made to seek and destroy cancerous cells, how it's possible die of cancer?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goosh9v",
"gooknxs",
"goojcsd"
],
"text": [
"There is so much misinformation in this thread. /u/fraid_so has the right idea, god bless anime. Cancer *does not* outgrow your ability to kill it unless you're massively immunocompromised due to some other condition. What cancer does do is *evade detection* by immune cells. Regulatory T cells can prevent cytotoxic T cells from killing them. The tumor itself can display regulatory molecules like PDL-1 and CTLA-4 that act as \"you're not allowed to kill me\" flags. Cells around the tumor can also contribute to this tumor microenvironment by releasing compounds that discourage immune cells from taking action against the tumor. It's very complicated. But not having enough killing ability in your immune system is not the problem. It's about correctly orchestrating that. Cancer thrives on miscommunication between elements of the immune system that are normally very helpful in not making you explode into a dozen autoimmune diseases every other week. Source: MSc immunology",
"Watch the current episodes of anime Cells at Work. It’ll tell you all you need to know. In addition to replicating fast and without oversight, the immune system itself can prevent the system from removing cancerous cells. Cancer cells originate **in** your body, and as they are discovering at the moment in Cells at Work, the Regulatory T Cell is preventing the destruction of Cancer cell because the Regulatory T Cell is correctly identifying the Cancer cell as *not* being a *foreign* cell. So technically, both sides of the immune system are doing their jobs, but their jobs keep them at a stalemate, which allows cancer to proliferate freely.",
"cancer is, kind of by definition, faulty cells that multiply beyond what your system can normally take care of. Your immune system is only built to handle a normal rate of cells going faulty."
],
"score": [
11,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls0elt
|
What's the difference between religion and cults?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooje7q"
],
"text": [
"Honestly, in a lot of ways there really aren't a lot of huge distinctions. Cults and Religions both rely on a faith-based belief system that people must adhere to regardless of, and contrary to, common sense, reason, and Scientific evidence. Religions become \"Cults\" when their controlling behavior starts isolating people from non-believers, controls their income, life choices, dress, and drastically demands perfect obedience to the authority of the Church or Leader. Usually they have some fantastical belief that varies from that of traditional organized religions. Good examples would be Scientology, Cell factions of radical Muslim terror groups, pretty much any Fundamentalist church (lol), Snake handlers, Nation of Islam, et cetera, et cetera."
],
"score": [
10
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls1ux6
|
Why is your tongue so good at finding things in your mouth
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooq7uw"
],
"text": [
"TL;DR your tongue has a crazy number of sensitive nerves in it, which can determine, size, shape, texture, temperature, and chemical makeup, comparable to your fingertips. This is why babies out things in their mouths - to explore them. Needless to say, finding a foreign object in your mouth is, uh, *child's play*, for your tongue."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls2d0j
|
How does the thermal conductivity of a metal affect the heat spread? Does the whole metal heat up to the same temperature eventually or does it decrease gradually depending on distance from the hot point?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goorko1"
],
"text": [
"Metal will heat up from the contact point but won't heat up throughout the object. I work in a glass manufacturing industry. We use a pair of tweezers to pick up the gobs of glass. I can use the tweezers with bare hands because they don't heat up fully. But the tip touching the glass will become red if I hold it for long periods of time. It's also different per metal. Some heat up way quicker and further than others. I don't have the charts with specific heat for all the metals nearby so I can't tell you right now. But it basically tells you how much heat (in J/kg*K) it needs to heat up an object."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls2hi6
|
- Why are some LEDs unsuitable for use with dimmers?
|
When I build a simple circuit with an LED in series with some kind of variable resistor, then, as expected, changing the resistance varies the brightness of the LED, and I can't notice any flickering or anything like that. So why do LED light bulbs need to be specifically designed to work correctly with a dimmer switch? What happens if I put a "non-dimmable" bulb on a dimmer?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gootxy1",
"goou3gy",
"goouc48"
],
"text": [
"Dimmer switches don't work by changing resistance. They essentially work by PWM, chopping the voltage on and off. And the PWM frequency is quite low because it's synced to the mains frequency st 60Hz which makes the electronics super cheap to make. The thing with LED lights is that they respond very quickly to changes in voltage. AC power runs at 60Hz so in order to not have a 60Hz blinking LED the voltage needs smoothed out. Generally one does this with a rectifier (turns ac to dc) and a capacitor filter. Unfortunately this also tends to render dimmer switches useless for a basic LED light. Dimmable LED lights have some smarts built in that look at the incoming voltage, determine if it's being dimmed, then adjust the brightness of the LED output. Using a non dimmable led bulb can have any number of results from flickering, just staying off, to being damaged.",
"LEDs in household lights don't just have a resistor in series because that wouldn't work very well with a higher power light that uses AC power. Instead they have a more complex electronic driver circuit that turns the incoming AC into lower voltage DC, while keeping the output current constant. These driver circuits contain relatively complex chips that need a certain voltage to function, and that often need a small fraction of a second to start working properly. If you just put one of those lights on a dimmer, the driver chip can't do its job properly. At higher dimmer settings like 90% or 80%, the chip will usually just ignore the dimmer and still keep the LEDs at a constant brightness. At lower settings the driver chip will still attempt to do that, run out of power and turn off until there's enough voltage to start working again, resulting in a LED that flashes on and off. To make an LED light dimmable you need a smarter driver chip that basically looks at power coming in, recognizes that someone is trying to dim the light and then instead of trying to keep the output to the LED constant, adjusts its output to match the dimmed input. So you're not dimming the driver directly, but the driver is taking the dimmed input as a clue to figure out what it should do with the LED.",
"Dimmers that are intended for mains voltage AC is not based on a simple variable resistor as this resistor would quickly burn out if you apply the full current of a lamp through it. Even LED lamps that use resistors due to the lower currents spread them around a bit to prevent any hot spots. Instead a regular dimmer circuit will reduce the current through it with other means, for example by reducing the cycle length of the AC cycle. But this assumes the load is a simple resistive load which is not the case for LED lights. The effect is that depending on the circuit used to power the LED and what power curve the dimmer outputs you either get full power all the time or the LED light will flicker with the cycles of the AC current. There are a few ways around this but it requires that you find a dimmer and an LED driver which are compatible with each other. For example a dimmer based on a capacitive dropper is more expensive but will be able to reduce the current to a lot of simple LED drivers. You also have LED drivers with active circuitry to monitor the input to detect the precense of a dimmer and then regulate the output to emulate the dimmer settings. And if you were to design a completely new system from the grounds up without any existing wireing or compatability issues then you would put the dimmer on the output of the LED driver or as a controll for the LED driver directly."
],
"score": [
9,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls2sb9
|
how do rams not get whiplash when fighting each other?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gooyce9",
"goou570"
],
"text": [
"Because humans evolved to have puny, weak virgin necks with a big range of motion and allowing us to walk upright like some comical buffoon. Sheep evolved to have chad necks with reinforced muscle and cartiledge, useful for headbutting and carrying impressive horns. (Edit: also the human skull is \"rotated forward\" as compared to four-legged animals, and whiplash happens from a force that makes our head rock back and forth, sending the impact force perpendicular to your spine. If you look at sheep butting heads you see them lowering their head forward, so that the impact hits the crown of their head, seding the force parallell i.e along the spine instead of across it).",
"They have reinforced muscles around their necks and they got more fluid surrounding their brains inside their skull It's kinda like they have built in motorcycle helmets and spring shock absorbers, imagine two pogo sticks colliding... They'd both have a little springy recoil."
],
"score": [
16,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls2t7x
|
Why our eyes moves to the top right or left when thinking?
|
Hey, I always wondered why when we are trying to solving logical problem, or when we're trying to remember old events, our eyes moves top-right or top-left like if they are visually looking for the information in the brain. I heard different stories like that looking one side or the other may be because we're using that (or the opposite) side of the brain; or another one about the left side of the brain creating a story for the right side to explain him what to do. Those stories seems unlikable but are still fascinating and i'd love to know more
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goovf1e",
"goougke",
"goow1hb",
"gopebfc"
],
"text": [
"I see it as looking away. You can concentrate better when your vision is not focused on something.",
"It is not currently known why people make nonvisual eye movements when we think. They're called \"nonvisual\" because we not moving our eyes to see anything, we're moving them in response to thinking or as a consequence of thinking. Plenty of myths persist about them, like \"people looking to the left are lying\" or \"looking to the left indicates people using their imagination/creative processes\", but there isn't much rigorous evidence for it.",
"No one knows for sure, though i heared an interesting theorie that sais its a social signal to let others know you are thinking. Admiditly, we'd think someone was pretty odd if they were staring blankly ahead, the eye movement avoids confusion.",
"Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. You're thinking as you type, but your eye is staring straight at the screen. You're typing out your question and feelings, and staring straight at the screen. You now recall or remember something and notice that you look up or to the left or right. These movements are called *saccades* , and they are automatic movements which bring information to the fovea. The *fovea* (edit: it is part of the eye) is responsible for *foveal vision* and this is our primary vision. We need this to read, walk, see the world around us. These automatic saccadic eye movements take place when we think because our memory often requires a visual thought. *What does that girl look like again?* While we are trying to remember something, we are simultaneously moving our eyes because that's how the brain responds to trying to remember or retrieve information. Edit: It's literally part of the process. It's like when you tear up when you yawn, or how you close your eyes when you sneeze. It's automatic. However, our eyes don't just move if we are trying to remember what something looks like. Our eyes make these saccadic movements because most of our memory is perceived by our eyes. Information we read, things we watch on tv. So even trying to retrieve that kind of memory makes our eyes move automatically because it is literally part of the retrieving or remembering process. Edited in: Your fovea was used to help make that memory. What about when we try to remember what someone said to us at yesterday's dinner. That doesn't involve seeing, right? That involves hearing. Well, memory making is such an important thing for our brain that we use all of our senses. So when we try to remember someone's voice, our eyes were used to create that memory, so they move while we think. I hope I explained it well. I studied neuropsychology and this was something my professor explained because someone asked \"is it true that you move your eyes when you lie?\" question Edited in: whoever gave me that award 🥺🥺🥺 thank you"
],
"score": [
29,
20,
13,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls4esg
|
Reading words wrong
|
For example I read powerful as beautiful. Why does this happen?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gop1lx5"
],
"text": [
"Not an expert on the subject, but from what I know and understand, when we read, we usually take in the whole word as a singular image instead of breaking it down and taking it in letter by letter. It is a method our minds develop to recognise words as a whole to read things faster Usually it's quite accurate, but at times when we aren't paying much attention or are mentally tired etc, our mind offloads some of this work to an \"autopilot\" which picks up words which we subconsciously expect to be there (based on our memory of language and linguistics), or looks similar in shape, such as the ending \"ful\" in beautiful and powerful (not to mention both words being almost equal in width) This is also the case when you have written something yourself; you can expect to find tiny mistakes (like a missing comma) even at the 6th read through. Even more so since you've written the text yourself and your mind already knows what comes next, making it much easier to go into \"autopilot\" and missing smaller mistakes that you may have already overlooked previously (the best method is to get a friend or coworker read it through, or put it in a reading application so that you can audibly hear the mistakes)"
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls4qnk
|
Why do large explosions cause mushroom clouds?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gop1yzm"
],
"text": [
"Hot air rises. A large explosion releases a lot of heat, and can create a jetstream of air going upwards. It carries dust and smoke with it creating the stem of the mushroom. At a certain height the stream collapses and expands sidewards because pressure is so low that the material cooled down enough that it can't rise further. (Low pressure means gasses expand and lose temperature)"
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls518j
|
Temperature and refuelling
|
Can anyone explain relation between outside temperature and fuel, more precisely when its better to refuel car, when it is hot or cold weather? Can we save money if we refuel at nights when its fresher temperature and then expect with the expansion of fuel due to temperature increase that we will have bigger volume, more liters in our tank?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gop4x2u"
],
"text": [
"Fluids are generally difficult to compress and don’t change in volume very much with temperature. However there is a bigger issue with your plan. Do you ever see giant tanks at the gas station where they store all their gasoline? No? Well that is because all their tanks are buried underground! The ground tends to have a narrow range of temperature once you get a few feet down. This is something very useful in winter because pipes of water can be buried under the “frost line”, the depth expected to freeze in the winter. Otherwise your water mains would freeze solid and likely break. So when you are pumping gasoline it is going to come out at the steady ground temperature anyway, no matter how hot or cold the day. It is a pointless effort anyway!"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls581a
|
Since your body doesn’t digest fibre, what does it come at as when you take a dump?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gop4g1f",
"gop79d9",
"gop82hc"
],
"text": [
"When you eat fibres, you don't digest them as you said. So they are still there when you take a dump (in your poop). Their use in our body is to help your feces to have a more soft texture as they absorb humidity. They also add more volume to your bolus (what go through your digestive system) which 1: reduce the hunger sensation, 2: help your digestive system works (it works better with greater load than with little loads)",
"Some of fiber is eaten by bacteria in your guts. Large percentage of your feces is actually dead bacteria. By number you have higher number of bacteria than your own cells.",
"Most of the undigested fiber is structural support for poop. Think of it like an ice cube or a rice krispie treat filled with varying degrees of sawdust."
],
"score": [
14,
6,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls67zq
|
Why, when looking in a mirror, is the image flipped horizontally but not vertically?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gop9jk8",
"gop9kbl",
"gop9n5k"
],
"text": [
"Because it's not flipped horizontally, it's flipped *back to front.* Your front is facing the mirror and the \"front\" of your reflection is now facing you. Because people tend to define their left and their right with respect to how they are facing (\"your right or my right\") this has the consequence of also flipping our perception of left/right in the mirror. If you place an object in the mirror that doesn't have a distinguishable \"front\" (something symmetrical or round) then this left/right phenomenon disappears.",
"The image is flipped front-to-back. What is furthest behind you is now furthest in front of you in the reflected image. The image isn’t flipped horizontally, if you raise your left hand, the image raises the hand on your left.",
"It has nothing to do with horizontal and vertical actually. If you lie down on your side and look into the mirror, the image will look flipped vertically. So it is about the symmetry of your body and the fact that you imagine your reflection as a copy of you standing behind the mirror."
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls6l8g
|
How do companies that provide interest free credit on things make any money? Such as Paypal.
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopcr70",
"gopf02s"
],
"text": [
"When you put $5 into your PayPal, that $5 doesn't just sit around. That $5 is invested in other things until it's withdrawn. Effectively, you gave PayPal an interest free $5 loan that they can use for whatever they want.",
"There's another avenue. Item costs $100, and you use PayPal credit to pay the seller $100 for it abd you pay PayPal back later. You pay $100 but the seller only gets say $90 of it. This is also why PayPal has a friends and family payment option where the sender rather than the receiver takes on the burden of fees, and it's in addition to the total sent rather than a portion of the original total."
],
"score": [
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls771r
|
What makes younger people (infants, toddlers, etc) so able to grasp the language that's spoken to them? Why is it so much harder to learn a new language or skill as an adult when you have more maturity and brain development?
|
We've all seen younger kids being spoken to in full sentences, and they can seemingly understand things very well when they don't have a good grasp of the language themselves. How is this?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopfjef",
"gopkslb",
"gopf5ul"
],
"text": [
"There are two types of memory. One of these is developed through actually *doing* things (think, muscle memory - like they say, you never forget how to ride a bike. Or, painting and drawing. The more you do it, the better you become at it). This is how children predominantly learn. As we age, we start to develop that second type of memory which is based on just memorizing facts and connecting pieces of information. Great for the challenges of living in a 21st century where so many jobs require that kind of technical knowledge and experience. That's also how they tend to teach most subjects in school - you learn dates in history class, maybe some important factoids, and that's about it. Saaaame with language learning courses - they give you the grammar rules and some vocabulary and say \"OK put this into a sentence. Now repeat this phrase. Good job.\" Well, that's just not a very effective way of learning language. But because we get so used to applying that style of learning to many things, and language would *seem* to lend itself more to that style of learning because it's just symbols and sounds, older people tend to ... just apply really ineffective methods to acquiring a new language. Children are still relying on that mechanical muscle memory to process information, they're not worried so much about rules, they're more open minded. edit: Also want to point out that this isn't a hard fast rule, as there are many adults who can pick up languages with relative ease. It's just a matter of changing your mentality and approaching the language differently than how they try to teach it in school.",
"Along with the biological difference in their brains it's their circumstances. If you completely surround yourself with people talking one language reguardless of if you understand it you will start to pick up bits and pieces of what they say and what they mean. It's also helps that young children can focus completely on learning and don't have any pre-existing notion of how a language should work that conflicts with what they are learning.",
"Specialization. Over time, as people learn things, their brain change its train of thought. Basically it mean our brain change the way it think over time. The brain usually change depending on our hobby, our interest and action we repeat often (the same way that doing basic math often allow you to make math faster). It makes things we do often faster to do. On the other hand, It also mean that our brain lose flexibility. It become specialized for certain tasks and thus has a harder time understanding things that aren't within its domain of expertise."
],
"score": [
8,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ls7jgg
|
Why does newly formed skin on a wound feels more sensitive?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gophk23"
],
"text": [
"New skin is actually thinner then old skin, so the nerve endings beneath it are closer to the surface and thus more sensitive to the touch."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls7ljt
|
Why can multiple apps use a mic at a time, yet only one app can use a webcam at once?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopsryw"
],
"text": [
"The biggest reason is that different programs encode the camera feed using different softwares behind the scenes. Generally speaking, making a computer translate a single feed into multiple simultaneous computer languages and output to different video-chat softwares is too taxing to be useful. There are some 3rd party softwares that do it though, you just need some computer savviness. Audio feeds are A. easier from a computational power standpoint, and B. were standardized in computing languages so the inter-operability is less of a issue at the start. EDIT - some platforms will allow multiple camera use simultaneously, for example a cell phone using the front and rear cameras at the same time. I also neglected to point out the privacy and security implications of allowing overly liberal access to your devices camera feed."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls7rsr
|
Why do some animals have a shorter lifespan than humans, and some have longer lifespans?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopk11g",
"goplrr0",
"gopqmbr"
],
"text": [
"You know how when you colour with crayons if you push hard and scribble really fast the crayon doesnt last as long? But if you press lightly and and draw long strokes you can cover more paper and the crayon doesnt wear out as fast? Well the crayon is a bit like our body parts. Some animals like humming birds have to go really fast all the time and they, \"Wear out,\" quickly. Other animals like the tortoises in the Galapagos go really slowly. It's a lot more complicated than that though. Bodies have to fix themselves like cars or houses. When you think about the things that can damage a car or a house and how much fixing they need you can see how long things last. Bad weather, for example, can wear out a house or a car and if nothing fixes them, they fall apart. If you're someone with a lot of energy and tools you can keep fixing, but eventually you might get tired or too old to keep up. Our bodies have little, \"fixers,\" but they also get, \"tired and old,\" different animals have different types of, \"fixers,\" and energy levels so they might live longer or shorter. For a better explanation you could go to r/askscience but this is how I would explain it to a five year old. EDIT: What a befitting award; thank you!",
"To explain it like you're 5. Hearts have a finite number of beats before they stop. Hummingbirds have exceptionally high heartbeats and very low lifespans. Turtles have stupid slow heartbeats and even longer lifespans.",
"Genetics determines life expectancy, at least when other factors such as disease, predation, etc are accounted for. So, the question becomes, why are we genetically predisposed to die? And the answer is, we aren’t sure. The best guess is that we die so that evolution can produce the best possible species. Things which do not change become extinct - so at some point, a lifespan limit must have given an organism a survival advantage - its genetic line continued, while the lines of organism that did not have defined lifespans perished. And it must have been a very successful strategy, because today, most lifeforms have finite lifespans. Why would this be helpful? Perhaps because older, established organisms use resources and block younger, newer organisms from using them. So, if a superior design arises, it cannot compete with the established and perhaps more experienced elders, and thus as things change, there are no better adapted individuals around to handle it. Rapid adaptation requires the old to make way for the new. It’s a theory. In organisms where adults invest a considerable amount of effort and time into raising offspring (cetaceans, humans, great apes), or in which reproduction occurs infrequently and infant mortality is VERY high (sea turtles and tortoises), it makes sense to live longer. You must produce enough offspring to replace yourself and your mate, and get ahead, to be successful. So those traits select for longer lifespans. But in cases where adult mortality is very high, and offspring are produced very quickly and in great numbers (mice, rabbits) it provides no advantage to live longer. The problem with your chart is that it’s inaccurate. I have no idea what whale species they were looking at, but many whales have a lifespan comparable to that of humans. If you adjust for medical care, they’re really about the same. Their elephant life expectancy is also completely wrong. I’m not sure if they were taking averages - which would include infant mortality and predation - or maximum natural lifespan, but I suspect it was the former (which would be meaningless). Many whales and all elephants live around 60 to 80 years (or longer). So, quite on par with humans."
],
"score": [
46,
13,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls7wba
|
How can there be motion with Newton’s third law?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopjh8q",
"gopk6dm",
"gopjrwg",
"gopkc8b",
"gopkzdy",
"gopkm0r"
],
"text": [
"because not all force is motion. the force applied to your body is reflected in the energy it takes your muscles to move that thing. the force applied to a glass stopped in its motion by hitting the floor is applied to the chemical bonds within the glass structure, etc.",
"Think about it in space first. If you threw a baseball in deep space, the ball moves forward quickly and you start moving backwards (and probably spinning too) Since F=ma and you’re much more massive than the ball, the ball moves very quickly from the force and you move backwards only slightly from the equivalent reaction force. When you bring it down to earth things get sloppier. The ever-present action of friction and gravity usually conspire to absorb the reaction force on you and halt any movement. You can push the box because the reaction force is traveling down to your feet and being applied to the earth, where frictional forces are preventing your feet from sliding. Try to push a building instead and you’ll overwhelm that friction and just start slipping.",
"When you push on the box, the box pushes back. The box pushes on the table and the table pushes back. However, the table can't push back with infinite force. The weight of the box and the coefficient of friction between them defines the maximum force the table can apply to the box. If you exceed that, then forces are unbalanced and the box accelerates.",
"The opposite force in your box scenario is definetly being applied: through your feet and into the ground. But the earth is big and heavy so you're not really going to move it much. Go up in space and try to shove something of equal mass and both of you will fly away with equal force. The answer to your broader premise is energy. The universe still has a lot of energy kicking around and being converted into other types of energy. One of which is kinetic energy, which makes things move around (such as a sun emitting radiation that heats up some gas out there and makes it move around).",
"No, you don’t outbalance the force that the box applies to your finger. It’s still the same force as the force applied to the box by your finger. The thing is, your translate that force into earth through friction. If both you and the box had been suspended in zero gravity (i.e. no gravity to help you push into earth and thus negate the force applied to your finger through friction), then you would be making the box fly away in one direction and yourself fly away in the opposite direction. So pushing something on a space station is always pushing it away from you and at the same time pushing yourself away from it. It’s the same on Earth where friction does not apply the usual way, e.g. on an ice rink, or in/on water.",
"Let's start with an example in outer space. If there is a box floating in front of you, and you push on it, both you and the box will begin moving away from each other. The difference in velocity (also depending on how long you were in contact) that you and the box end up with depend on F=ma. Now let's take that situation and move it down to the surface of Earth. In this situation, your feet are firmly planted on the ground, while the box, despite having some friction with the surface it's resting on, is not. When you push on the box, it still is applying the force to your hand (that's why you feel the pressure) but you're no longer free to move in the opposite direction because your feet are steady on the ground. So, the equal and opposite force is actually applied via your feet to the ground - and the entire Earth! The mass of the Earth is incredibly large though, so its acceleration is negligable compared to that of the box."
],
"score": [
13,
13,
6,
5,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ls9qsc
|
Hoe can E. Coli and other dangerous bacteria live in our body and digestive system but if we ingest them we get very ill?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopvqfh",
"goqe1ip"
],
"text": [
"Your digestive tract is like a bacterial zoo. There’s a huge population of various bacteria in there that break down a lot of what you eat. They assist your digestion, you provide them food and shelter. It’s a great deal as long as they don’t escape. They’re not allowed to wander the rest of your body and digest whatever they feel like, and you don’t want strangers from other zoos coming in and disrupting the carefully managed ecosystem either.",
"The type in your gut isn't the type that make you sick. It's like going out to play with a dog in your backyard vs doing the same with a wild timberwolf. One of them can play nice but the other one won't."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsa1a3
|
When your nose is runny for hours, how do we have a seemingly endless supply of mucus?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopwrbh"
],
"text": [
"Mucus is almost entirely water, which you’re filled with. The simple gelatinous proteins in it don’t require much input so you can make them almost indefinitely. Think about when you make jello, there’s barely any solids and a vast volume of liquid - then it all solidifies."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsa5za
|
why is acid rain not on the environmental radar anymore?
|
Firstly, I want to thank this subcommunity - peeking in and just checking the first few awarded posts is great, mostly confirming knowledge I have, and/or offering additional views that weren't well-known to me. Taking the sub title so literally is a rare criticism I have. So, like the title says, I'm curious why acid rain is not on the radar as far as environmentalism goes. Is the direct threat gone? I'm of an age that the language of the time suggested that this was the number one issue in the world of the day - was this hyperbole? The last-best answer that I found here, *removed*, but like with other sources, there is a few points that just never got the treatment I've come to expect. One specific point of interest is the steam output of energy and industry in the first world vs. the 2nd and 3rd worlds. I appreciate any additions to the discussion. Thanks
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gopy1to",
"gopy2bw",
"goqb9i3"
],
"text": [
"Acid rain comes from Sulfur Dioxide emitted into the air, it mixes with the water and turns into sulfuric acid in the rain. Reducing the amount of sulfur dioxide emitted will reduce the acidity of the rain Sulfur dioxide mainly comes from dirty fuels like coal, bunker fuel on ships, and general oil power plants while natural gas doesn't bring much sulfur to the table. The shift away from coal helped bring down a great many pollutants. The US started implementing restrictions on Sulfur Dioxide emissions of power plants in the 80s and 90s, Canada and Europe enacted similar restrictions to great effect. In 1970, the US emitted around 30 million tons of sulfur dioxide, by 2010 it was down to just 7 million and is now somewhere around 2 million. That reduction in production has made acid rain pretty much a non-issue in highly developed countries, but regions of China where coal power still dominants are subject to acid rain but that will subside as they start retiring coal plants and enacting pollution regulations.",
"Because we imposed regulations on the emissions that were causing it. For example, a coal burning power plant will have to react their exhaust with something like calcium carbonate(limestone), to scrub the sulfur from the exhaust before it's released.",
"Acid rain is primarily formed by oxides of sulfur and nitrogen that are emitted from the exhaust of any sort of combustion-based engine or reactor. Sulfur oxides were solved by removing the sulfur from the fuel sources and/or capturing as much of it as possible from the exhaust. Nitrogen is trickier as you can't feasibly remove nitrogen from the combustion process, but more advanced exhaust aftertreatment technologies have gone a long way towards reducing NO and NO2 emissions."
],
"score": [
16,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsalig
|
Please explain chance to me.
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goq0cjp",
"goq2u7n"
],
"text": [
"The more flips you make, the bigger the dataset and the less likely small random variations are to skew your data away from the \"truth\". The percentage of flips doesn't change in your examples but the probability of getting that percentage does scale with the number of flips (because you have more opportunities for the random variations to cancel each other out). The probability of 7 heads in 10 on a fair coin is about 17%. The probability of 70 in 100 is 0.005% (34 times less likely).",
"> The explanation is probably quite simple and it feels like I'm asking kind of a dumb question, but my brain really isn't wired for numbers.. The explanation is not simple. > You could attribute this outcome on chance and with this information alone, you could never be sure that the coin isn't 'fair' (meaning that it has a predisposition to land on heads). However, if you got heads on 70 out of 100 flips (or 700 out of 1,000), you would be justified in thinking the coin isn't fair. The goal is not to decide whether or not the coin is fair / not fair. The goal is to come up with a percentage showing how fair you think the coin is. (I'm Bayesian, fight me.) In other word, what is the chance that the coin is fair. Like /u/tdscanuck said, > The probability of 7 heads in 10 on a fair coin is about 17%. > The probability of 70 in 100 is 0.005% (34 times less likely). 17% vs 0.005%. Those are the chances/probability that the coin is fair. (I can get more formal using conditional probability, but this is ELI5) So both are probably not fair. 1st coin, you are 83% sure that it is not fair. 2nd coin, you are 99.995% sure it is not fair. The goal is to get a number to measure how sure you are."
],
"score": [
16,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsalka
|
If there's no air in space, why is our speed limited?
|
On earth drag is a big factor of speed. Cars and planes have to be aerodynamic to move faster and more efficiently. Boats have to be more efficient in water. So in space where there's no air, why can't we just keep accelerating faster and faster? Is there a counter force?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goq02p3",
"goq0ynw",
"gopzmbr"
],
"text": [
"You can just keep accelerating faster and faster in space. The limiting factor for most practical purposes is your fuel supply. You need more fuel to go faster, and more fuel adds more weight that you have to move around. The more fuel you have, the less fuel efficient you are spending all your effort dragging fuel tanks around. It’s a vicious cycle. Assuming none of that matters, you can keep accelerating until you get close to the speed of light. At these “relativistic” speeds, some additional non-classical physics start to kick in and the energy demand grows rapidly. It would take infinite energy to actually reach the speed of light.",
"Fuel. The rocket equation. If you want to double the speed you can reach you would think you just need to bring double the fuel, but that is not true. The amount of fuel you need increases exponentially with the amount of delta v or speed you want. Why? Because to reach speed = v you need x fuel. If you want to reach speed 2v, you need a lot more fuel because you now also have to accelerate the fuel you need from v to 2v, up to v.",
"You can keep accelerating forever. There is no counterforce. However...the universe has an absolute speed limit (the speed of light). As you get closer to lightspeed weird things start to happen. Crucially for our purposes, your mass starts to go up, which means it gets harder and harder to accelerate. Your mass asymptotically approaches inifinity so your acceleration approaches zero and you can never actually get to light speed if you're a massive object, like us or our spaceships."
],
"score": [
32,
8,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsap5f
|
when we sniff strong smells like that of rubbing alcohol, why do we get a burning sensation also at the back of our heads?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goq3jfx"
],
"text": [
"[Here's a side view of the sinuses]( URL_0 ). They go way deeper into your head than you'd think - you're inhaling those vapors which start irritating the sensitive tissue in your sinuses."
],
"score": [
8
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://images.medicinenet.com/images/featured/detail_sinuses2.jpg"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsc5oq
|
How can the NYSE put a freeze on buying stocks but not on selling? Are there not 2 sides to every transaction?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goqb8bb",
"goqaqgg",
"gotdxdb"
],
"text": [
"The NYSE doesn't put holds on one side of the transaction - as you suspect, for every buyer you must also have a seller. They do sometimes flip the 'circuit breakers' and stop _all_ trading for a few minutes (to give a cool down and help prevent panic behavior). Individual brokerages or clearing houses, however, can stop processing orders for specific transactions. In the case of Robinhood, they stopped allowing people to buy, but still allowed sales. The main market still allowed buying, which is why the sale orders placed by RH could still be processed.",
"The NYSE seems unlikely to have ever proposed such a thing, that's not how circuit breakers work. It sounds like what RobinHood did a few weeks back to clamp down on the GameStop short squeeze.",
"The NYSE will not freeze just one side of a transaction. **However, brokerages like Robinhood might be** ***forced*** **to restrict stock purchases.** A couple of background points: 1. When trading shares, the trades don't actually complete until two business days later, at the \"T+2 settlement\" date. Historically, two days was required because it takes time to actually transfer the money & share certificates, and do all the accounting paperwork between the various parties involved in the trade (buyer, seller, brokerage firms, clearinghouse, depository, etc.) 2. Many people will buy shares on credit (margin) instead of paying all cash. These two points create a big risk. Two days is a long time in the financial world. In particular, **a prospective** ***buyer*** **can go bankrupt before the trade can be settled**, especially if buying on margin and the price of the stock tanks in those two days. Very bad things happen if trades can't be settled. To reduce this risk, there are rules demanding that **the** ***buyer's*** **broker must put up enough cash collateral to cover unsettled trades.** With GME, Robinhood must put up enough cash as collateral to \"cover\" all the GME and other stock purchases made on the platform, in case things go badly. The required collateral is calculated daily and determined by a probability-based formula. The more volatile a stock is, the more cash collateral will be required to cover it. Because Robinhood users bought so much GME stock on speculation (at very volatile pricing), and many did so on credit margin, [Robinhood was required to put a $3 billion collateral deposit]( URL_0 ) to cover estimated trades on the platform. **That's $3 billion they didn't have at the time, so Robinhood had to restrict further** ***stock buys*** **on the most volatile stocks (including GME)**. By restricting stock buys, Robinhood was able to reduce the required collateral from $3 billion to $700 million. Robinhood didn't have to put up collateral on *stock sells* so that was allowed to continue."
],
"score": [
35,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/robinhood-asked-billion-cover-trading-risks-tenev-elon-musk-clubhouse-2021-2-1030028468"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lscb54
|
Why is liquid metal like NaK used instead of water for cooling computers when water has > 4 times the heat capacitance?
|
Maybe it's not NaK, maybe another alloy; but anything short of liquid helium is nothing compared to water, deuterated or not, right? So why use NaK?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goqah05",
"goqay24",
"gorcvd0",
"goqarq9"
],
"text": [
"Water has too low a boiling point. When it boils, the pressure increases significantly, making the required walls of the container much thicker, making the heat transfer less effective.",
"It would appear that NaK is used as a coolant in situations where it must remain liquid at a large temperature range and where it must absorb minimal neutrons. So, nuclear fast reactors. Some reasons to use non-water coolants despite the difference in specific heat capacity is that water is corrosive, boils at 100 c, is relatively viscous, and evaporates a lot.",
"Cooling isn't just about how much heat your coolant can hold but rather how quickly it transfers that heat. You want it to be able to absorb the heat off your device as quickly as possible, then expel that heat somewhere else just as quickly. The rate at which heat is transferred is called thermal conductivity. Imagine emptying a tub full of water by scooping out one cup at a time. A bigger cup can empty the tub in fewer trips but each of those trips is going to take some time. A smaller cup will need more trips but if it can complete those trips fast enough, it can potentially remove more water per minute than the larger cup. In this example, heat capacity is the size of the cup and thermal conductivity is the duration of the trips. NaK has a higher thermal conductivity relative to its heat capacity than water does, which means NaK can remove more heat in the same amount of time.",
"NaK have a higher thermal conductivity which means that you do not get as much issue with parts of the liquid being hot and part of it being cold. Its freezing point is also much lower then that of water so you can run it in freezing environments."
],
"score": [
11,
9,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsdqv7
|
Ultra Fast Charging in Smartphones, what is it and why does it took so long for us to achieve this?
|
Smartphones has been around for a decade now. The performance of today's chipsets has improved by maybe hundreds-thousands times compared to the first android phone. However, 65 Watt charging was less then 1-2 year ago (0-100% 4000mAh in 30 minute). . The public clearly demanded better battery life and charging, so the fact that it doesn't improved significantly was because it was either impossible or not profitable enough for manufacturers. So the question is, why/how? Why are we not able to charge things safely in minutes many years ago?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goqlsce"
],
"text": [
"It's a limitation of Li-ion batteries. The full chemistry is pretty complicated and not my field, but in general, all lithium batteries like to be charged at a slow pace or they start to degrade (they degrade with charge cycles anyway, but a faster charge worsens this). Even still, 30min charging *does* reduce the lifespan of your battery, but since the tech has vastly improved over the years, it's now at an acceptably low level. Plus the manufacturers figured out that if your phone only holds half the charge after 2 years and you can't easily get a new battery, you'll probably just buy a new phone. So that's also a plus. Edit: forgot to mention, charging isn't 100% efficient, so it produces heat which needs to be dissipated or it, again, degrades the battery. Faster charging means this heat is produced faster and doesn't have as much time to dissipate."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsfjmv
|
why is it that we get so used to white noise?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goqygkt",
"goqytdl"
],
"text": [
"Humans are freakishly good at detecting two things from our senses: patterns and changes. White noise, by definition, has neither. It's constant volume (no changes) and random frequency distribution (no patterns). Our brain really quickly realizes there's no \"there\" there and ignores it. If it changes (louder, softer, frequency shift) you'll very quickly notice that. It's roughly similar to how the whole world looks tinted when you put sunglasses on but you really rapidly stop noticing and colours look normal again.",
"Your brain tunes out most unchanging stimulus. The hum of a fan. The faint oniony smell from your garbage can. The pressure of your clothes. Useless information. There’s no benefit to wasting brain power constantly alerting your conscious thought process about something that hasn’t changed, and so that signal gets buried."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsg06t
|
What exactly is polymerization?
|
I've encountered this chemistry term twice now. First time when I was reading on burning in your cast iron pans where you *polymerize* oil onto the iron to create the nonstick coating, second time when I was reading about aeriating red wine and wine aging where the tannic phenols *polymerize* into longer chains, often creating smoother tannins because the chains become too long to bind to the bitter receptors on the tongue. Just to state some examples so you know where I'm coming from.
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goqzlka"
],
"text": [
"Polymers are big molecules made by sticking many identical smaller molecules together. Think of the base units like individual lego blocks (all the same) and the polymer as a stack of blocks. Most polymerization reactions need some kind of catalyst or activation energy to get started, they don't usually start spontaneously. For seasoning cast iron, it's heat...the heat breaks some of the oil down into smaller units that can they polymerize into much larger molecules (basically a type of plastic). For aerating wine it's oxygen and agitation. For epoxy glue it's literally a chemical catalyst (and sometimes heat). In kid's play slime it's usually boron. Spontanous polymerization is a thing and it can release incredible amounts of heat if it happens in an uncontrolled way. It's a significant industrial hazard when you store a lot of monomers (the polymer building blocks) in one place."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsgg5x
|
If germs are responsible for making us sick, why do we sometimes fall ill after staying in the cold?
|
I have learned that we can't just get sick out of the blue, we have to be infected with some sort of germ. But in my personal experience, being exposed to cold is a safe and solid way of getting sick. So what is the relation between germs and cold and sickness? Is cold alone enough to make us sick or is there something else in play here?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gor2ma4",
"gor37f7",
"gor35oi",
"gor34pu"
],
"text": [
"Because cold weather creates excellent conditions for pathogens to successfully infect us. It brings us together into warm spaces where we share the air, and it dries out our mucous membranes that act as the first line of defense against invaders. Additionally, cold temperatures can allow a pathogen to survive much longer on a surface or in the air than it could otherwise, further increasing the risk of exposure. So no, we can't get sick out of the blue. But our environment is absolutely full of pathogens that cause diseases, they just need the right conditions to successfully infect us.",
"There's a couple factors that make illnesses become more prevalent in winter months. Firstly, when you are inside 90% of the time because it is freezing cold out, you are way more likely to breath in pathogens than if you're outside taking walks in the park every day. Secondly, lower sun exposure decreases vitamin D, and that may lower your immune system. Thirdly, a lower humidity dries out your nasal cavities, which is a large defender against pathogens. And last, some viruses just do better in cold weather, so there are more of them around.",
"When we \"stay inside\" in the cold, we are usually in an area with not much exchange of air with the outside, which is cold. So any germs there aren't sent away and we continue to be exposed to them. While there are conditions which cold itself can cause, like hypothermia, germs are still the major cause. BTW, hypothermia means that you are so cold that your body can't maintain your core temperature, i.e., the temperature for your heart, lungs and other internal organs. Plus the brain.",
"I could be way off but this is what I was taught: cold doesn't kill germs, just slows them down. Also, when we are cold, our bodies burn calories/energy to stay warm. This makes our bodies less effective at fighting off things like germs. So, it's cold and you come into contact with a germ that's really sluggish. Your body warms it up so it can start doing germy things. Your body is too busy staying warm to fight the germ. You are now sick."
],
"score": [
14,
7,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsgo3a
|
What is an isotope?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gor44ca",
"gor4s30"
],
"text": [
"So you have atoms, made of 3 parts, protons, (positive charges), neutrons, (neutral charges), and electrons, (negative charges). Each atom is defined by the number of protons it has. So every atom of Carbon had exactly 6 protons. Anything that doesn't have 6 protons is not Carbon. However, you can vary the number of neutrons, and each number of neutrons in an atom gives a different isotope. So in our carbon example, you have to have 6 protons, then, you can choose between 6, 7, and 8 neutrons, giving the isotopes C12 (6+6), C13 (6+7), and C14 (6+8). Each isotope has the exact same chemistry, but has different rates of radioactive decay. (For posterity, if you vary the number of electrons, then you get ions, that has nothing to do with isotopes, but I mentioned what happens when you vary the other two)",
"Most of the qualities of an elemental substance are determined by how many protons the atoms have. If there are 6 protons, it's carbon. If there are 26 protons, it's iron. Electrons and neutrons are a little more variable. If you add electrons or take them away, you get an ion of the same element. It's strongly electrically charged, so it wants to bond with another ion that can give or take away its imbalance. If you add or take away neutrons, you get an isotope of the same element that is heavier or lighter. One of the most important consequences is that an element that is stable at one weight may be unstable at a heavier weight and undergo radioactive decay. So, for example, Carbon-12 and Carbon-14 are two isotopes of carbon with different weights. Carbon-14 is unstable and eventually breaks down into smaller atoms, while Carbon-12 is stable. We can use this property to determine how old biological matter is, since it stopped getting new C-14 when it stopped breathing, and we know the ratio of C-12 to C-14 in the air that the living matter was using to obtain carbon."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsh5zu
|
How do they film shootout scenes in churches? Are they allowed to "rent" a church like that?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gor6o7s",
"gorb0i9"
],
"text": [
"Not every church is still operating, and not every church building is owned by a church, and not every \"church\" in a movie is a real church. They can build sets, rent buildings and make them look like churches, buy old churches, there's a lot of ways around that.",
"Churches rent out their facilities for all sorts of things. Anyone who has a wedding reception at a church is renting their facilities. that said, as others have pointed out, it may also be a set, or a building no longer in use as a church, redecorate another building to look like a church, etc"
],
"score": [
28,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsi2jb
|
Why Should We Not Wash A Cast Iron Skillet With Soap?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorcrn6",
"gorjp47"
],
"text": [
"That's fake news, or at least outdated. This dates back to when soap was basically lye and wound destroy everything in its path, including the seasoning on a cast iron pan. Cast iron pans have nonstick properties because over time polymerised grease builds up on the surface due to the high cooking temperatures, and it fills in the pores making the surface really smooth and nonstick. This buildup of polymer layers from grease is called the seasoning and its extremely durable, although it can chip because its so hard so don't go hitting your cast iron with a hammer. Old soap used to be strong enough to destroy the seasoning, but modern dish soap is all good to use on a cast iron skillet. Just remember to dry it carefully so it doesn't rust Edit: More specific that the grease polymerises into a plastic sort of hard layer, instead of being vaguely \"hardened grease\"",
"Modern is soap is fine to use on cast iron. Just don’t scrub the living shit out of it with a Brillo pad."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsi363
|
Why do we hold our "stomachs" when eating too much or hungry, but that's actually where intestine is?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorfvoi"
],
"text": [
"because it's an common misconception that the stomach is down lower, kids always say when their intestines ache that they have pain in their stomach and that just kinda stucks with adults."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsile1
|
What does improve in ones body when training cardio ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorhfc2"
],
"text": [
"Cardiovascular exercise improves the heart's ability to pump blood efficiently. The body wants to expend the least amount of energy to meet its own metabolic needs, and the heart takes a lot of energy to pump rapidly. Repeated cardiovascular exercise has the effect of stretching out and strengthening the heart tissue, enabling it to pump more blood in less time with less beats while still meeting the body's metabolic demands."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsj1oo
|
What happens when servers ‘go down’, for example Xbox servers right now, and what do they do to fix them?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorjp1e"
],
"text": [
"Take your laptop for instance , if there are too many things open you hear the fan to start working. Keep opening applications and your computer will freeze up and you can't do anything because your ram is full and it can't complete the processes. Well this is likely what is happening. Their \"servers\" (you can think of them as computers) are locking up and they can't scale up fast enough to share the amount of processes that are taking place. Therefore no new process can be taken on. This or they need to fix a bug across their systems and they haven't gotten a good strategy in place. Either way they need to stop these requests from coming in so that they can fix the problem or else it will just keep happening at an exponential rate."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsj7w7
|
How do we go from hating food/drinks as kids but growing to like them when we get older, even tho we know they taste the same to us (like beer, coffee, mustard...)?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorkfas",
"gory54a",
"gorn1zg",
"got1s16",
"gosbrp1",
"goswpk3",
"gorlt7t",
"gorobmb"
],
"text": [
"Taste buds mature over time. Things like vegetables taste bitter to children (as a poisonous plant defence iirc) which is why they often make a fuss about not liking broccoli etc. Somethings I think we have to train ourselves to like eg. Beer / coffee. No one really likes the taste, but you drink it out of nesecity until the taste doesn't really bother you any more. I say I can't be old yet because I don't like red wine, coffee or olives.",
"One possibility people haven't touched on here is that part of it may be down to how food was prepared when they were younger. I love well prepared broc, but I still hate it the way my mum cooked it as a child (boiled for so long it becomes a tasteless chewy mass).",
"Some things are taste and some things are texture based. I can eat tomatoes and mushrooms now. Still waiting on those eggs and oatmeal.... any day now please?",
"Apart from preferences, culture, expectation, etc. Some vegetables have actually gotten better recently. For example in the 90's commercial cultivation of Brussels sprouts changed from an older plant that was very bitter to the much more palatable Brussels sprout we have today. So people change but so does food.",
"The thing is, your taste buds, and your brain on the other end of the nerves, both go through some changees as you age ... so some things literally WON'T taste the same to you. My example: As a child I liked sweets, and would happily munch candy or donuts for extended periods of time. (I also liked spinach, and Spaghettios, and Filet-o-Fish, so this wasn't a narrow obsession or anything.) Around 25 or 30, that started to shift; sweets still taste sweet to me, but I don't crave them as I did, the taste doesn't give me that extra zing. Salt has to some extent taken its place - I would never have eaten salt & vinegar potato chips when young, but now yum! Still the same tartness & acidity, but it tastes good to me now. Another thing can be that some things you grow to like, not with age, but with exposure; you don't like it at first but it grows on you the second or third time. Beer is often cited as being like this. (I can taste alcohol, and don't like that, so nearly all alcoholic drinks are not for me; that, at least, has stayed the same.) --Dave, Subway also taught me to appreciate pepper, green peppers, and a little mustard, eventually",
"They don't taste the same. Most people's tastebuds continue to change well into their twenties IIRC.",
"I don’t believe children generally hate fruit and veg. I think it’s the ‘ I don’t want to do what they tell me’ that makes them not like the food.",
"I think some of these we acquire a taste not only for the actual food/drink, but also the culture surrounding it. Adult culture that as kids we wouldn't understand - going to bars (alcohol), trying to stay awake under pressure (coffee), etc. Then they become normalized behaviour in us including them in our routine."
],
"score": [
86,
58,
17,
15,
10,
8,
6,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsj97f
|
What are you doing to a game when you port it, besides changing the button mapping?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gork3qk"
],
"text": [
"Some of the programming gets changed. Because each port is going to be running on different hardware/operating systems, some of the programming has to get tweaked/altered to make the game run just as well on the new platform."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsk5c0
|
Why do so many book covers have the author's name huge and the actual title so small?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorrj82",
"gorpzkw",
"gorupe7",
"gorvsp1"
],
"text": [
"It went from being the title that catches your attention to the popularity of the author. BEST SELLING author BLAH BLAH wrote a new book.... when you go look for it you'll see their name first.",
"It's quite simple - people are more likely to pick up a book by an author they've read before. If you see an author's name larger than the title, it means that author has sold a significant number of books... whether or not you've heard of them.",
"There's 2 reasons: 1. Famous writer 2. To many words And theres this one that's both [The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams]( URL_0 )",
"You kinda answered your own question tbf. > If it's a name like Stephen King, I understand; you see a Stephen King and go \"oh, I love his works!\" Because you recognise Stephen King's name. The other Authors you may not recognise, but others do. Believe it or not there will likely also be those who don't know Stephen King so to them, it's just as random as the others are to you. It's a symptom of when Art becomes commercialised. I'm reminded of when Banksy got a random street vendor to sell some of his original pieces. Nobody bought them and even laughed at the asking prices (which were in the region of a couple hundred quid if I recall correctly). As soon as he acknowledged them as his, the price jumped up into the tens of thousands. Demonstrating that people bought them for the name, not because they thought the piece was good. The same principle applies to books. For better or worse people will be drawn towards a recognised name because it's associated with \"good quality\" even if something considerably better is readily available."
],
"score": [
5,
4,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://ibb.co/Db6Dh6P"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lske7i
|
What is the basis for early education systems to adopt a "zero-tolerance" policy with anti-bullying.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gortcrq"
],
"text": [
"The advantage of \"Zero-tolerance\" is that it takes away any of the decision making work from the teachers/staff. The fact that you only need to worry about actions ,and not intent, makes doling out punishments a lot easier. It also generally causes a lot fewer headaches from upset parents, as having a policy clearly stated before hand (hopefully) cuts down on arguments, and having uniform punishments reduces the risk of a lawsuit. Also, beyond all that: The public tends to really like zero tolerance policies."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsks4u
|
why does inflation need to happen and why so dramatically. Why did two dollar things used to cost a nickel? Why did the Golden Gate Bridge cost 27 million but would now cost billions? Will a bridge like that in 100 years cost trillions. I mean what is the point of that?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos20jb",
"gorswqx",
"gosgmcd",
"gosv0rz",
"gortmxc",
"gotc4m3",
"got70vx",
"got91yv",
"got76a2",
"gosxovj",
"got4w9m"
],
"text": [
"Here is a very, very over-simplified answer: **a growing society increases economic growth and that creates inflation because it causes a bunch of things to happen.** With that quick answer out of the way, this is a great question and it is well-studied area of economics. Unfortunately, the answer is super complex and depends on a number of things. Here are a few factors that may drive inflation with some of the key names bolded below. **What is Inflation?** First, let's look at the definition of inflation. Inflation is just the general rise in the price level of goods in an economy over time. If we want to measure inflation, we can take a basket of say 200 goods (milk, 1lb of steel, etc.) in say 1950 and take the average price of those goods in the market that uses that currency at that time (e.g., the U.S.). This establishes a baseline for what those 200 goods cost and gives us what economists call a \"consumer price index\" (CPI). **Demand-Pull Inflation** But we know that populations tend to grow exponentially (i.e., people have more and more babies). The more people there are, the higher overall demand goes for certain staple products like milk, steel, and so on. Companies react by trying to grow larger to meet this demand. This spurs investment in the company, increased hiring to meet demand, increased consumption of goods used in production, and so on. This decreases things like unemployment, which increases demand for goods since people have more money to spend, which increases hiring, etc. But supply is not a simple line. Increasing the average output of a company (i.e., the supply) takes time, so when demand for a product increases and supply has yet to grow sufficiently, we have a period of time where demand cannot be met. In an over-simplified market, if we have a limited supply and demand cannot be met, the equilibrium price goes up because people are generally more willing to pay a higher price for those goods. This example is referred to as **\"Demand-pull inflation\"** and is generally a Keynesian view. **Cost-Push Inflation** This is only one small piece of the puzzle. Imagine you own a dairy farm in 1950 and you need to meet this increased demand for milk. One way to increase your output is to make better technologies that increase your output. Fortunately, there is a company that just made such a machine. They spent years in R & D to make this new device and they want to make back their investment, so initially the price is high. The farmer calculates that if he puts out 100K now he can recoup his costs over 3 years and actually make more money in the long-run. So the farmer makes the purchase and hedges his investment by increasing the price of milk. Thus the price goes up from that factor as well. This is an example of **\"Cost-push inflation\"**, which is also a typically Keynesian view. **Built-In Inflation** Additionally, as price goes up, the purchasing power of each dollar goes down. When the purchasing power of each dollar goes down, people will demand more money for services and goods to either maintain their purchasing power or as a way to predict future inflation based on their past experiences (the latter of which is part of **\"rational expectations theory\"**). This is an example of **\"Built-in inflation\"**, which is also a typically Keynesian view, and is related to the **\"price/wage spiral\"**. **Velocity of Money, Money Supply, and the Quantity Theory of Money** To continue on, the actions above all may increase the \"velocity of money\" (i.e., the amount of times that a unit of currency is used in commerce in a given period of time). If the government does not increase the overall amount of money in a society, then trade may slow down because the demand for more money for services and goods is not being met initially. Think of the economy like an engine. The more activity that takes place in the engine, the more oil we need to keep the processes (i.e., commerce) moving smoothly. So the government may increase the money supply to keep things running smoothly. But let's say that we view the government as increasing money supply too soon. Perhaps they are trying to stay ahead of the curve. In this case, the demand for money can be viewed as relatively stable in the short term and depends on nominal income, interest rates, etc. and that there is an inherent interest rate to the market (i.e., a \"real interest\" rate determined by things like productivity, time preferences, etc.). In this case, our view might be that money velocity is relatively stable in the short run and prices move easily, so the government's increase in the money supply is responsible for the inflation. This is generally a **Monetarist view** that relates to the **\"quantity theory of money\"** (MV = PQ), but I'm oversimplifying it in a number of ways. **Conclusion** These are all different, intertwined mechanisms and they are not necessarily exclusive from one another. It just depends on what assumptions you make about the economy and how you view certain aspects. If you think prices are sticky and that the velocity of money is not stable in the short run, then you might adopt a Keynesian view of which factors play a larger role. On the other hand, if you think the opposite, you might adopt a Monetarist view [This wikipedia article]( URL_0 ) gives a great overview of some of the main drivers if you want to read further. It also discusses some Austrian views that are more tied to ideal markets. For a deeper dive on that, Hayek has a decent book called \"Good Money\". This is all from my economics undergrad work and some additional work in grad school so I'm sure a number of people with more advanced econ degrees can correct me or add to it. That being said, I think this covers some of the key areas in this field.",
"A little inflation is actually a good thing. It causes people to take money that would be sitting on the sidelines and invest it. Generally, inflation transfers wealth from those who have money to those who are earning wages through labor. If inflation reverses, creating deflation, then bad things happen. People hold onto money with the expectation that stuff gets cheaper. This causes recessions and unemployment, causing more deflation. But also, too much inflation is bad. It erodes wealth and harms people who live on fixed incomes. It’s best to have a small positive value of inflation, something like 2% per year. Over time this causes what you’re describing.",
"saw a lecture which said that inflation is a tax on savings which makes sense to me! let's say that one egg costs $1, after the inflation rate increases it's now $2 but the money supply has also doubled so it doesn't really matter... right? now let's say you saved $100 before inflation went up, well you still just have $100 even after the money supply has doubled, so you basically lost 50% of your savings, which is really bad for retirement accounts & college savings iirc",
"So other posters have gotten you the inflation part, but that isn't why the golden gate bridge would cost billions. Permitting, acquiring the land, environmental impact study, safety, and labor costs have driven the cost of construction way high. To give you some perspective on it, I used to work for a highway that went through not very terribly valuable land. Each bridge we built cost a minimum of $400,000 in 1998 money. We are talking a bridge that is about 5 meters high that crosses over a small stream. People also, somehow, missed the historic events of disjoining us from the gold standard (1933-1973) and the historic inflation of the 1970s, partly caused by leaving the gold standard, which saw inflation around 20%. Most of the \"gosh this thing used to cost a nickel and now it is $1.99\" or whatever came from around that period. We also see inflation tend to increase when the cost of commodities rise quickly, which happened in the 70s and the mid-2000s, specifically oil. If you look at a graph of inflation in the USA it tracks with prices of energy nice and neatly - but that isn't the only indicator of inflation. If something you need to buy gets much more expensive you will likely have inflation. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) Also, as women entered the workforce in the 70s, people bid up the prices for goods and services since they could now afford them in dual income households. This is why a good daycare costs an astronomical amount of money and a family car that cost $18000 in 1994 now costs damn near $38,000. The key to remember is that this is part inflation but part consumer preference, with dual income and the ability to bid up prices that family car is a fundamentally different product than the one was in 1994. Inflation alone would make that car $32,000; and it costs Honda less to build and distribute it today! Now you want airbags all over the place, auto-braking, radar controlled cruise control, 33 speed automatics, power windows all around, voice activated whatever, GPS, smartphone integration, 33 mpg, 0-60 in 5.whatever seconds. So remember, consumer preference, getting rid of the gold standard, women entering the workforce, monetary policy. When those things don't change much (we are past the gold standard, women have been working for a generations now, we are all cool with imports, energy prices are generally going down) inflation is minimal. You still see inflation in specific markets, like houses, but the CPI inflation remains pretty low. Groceries are expensive, sure, but they have always been an expensive part of the family budget. This is one reason why the fed isn't really all the worried about runaway inflation ala 1970s, nothing has really fundamentally changed. We could be worried about an innovation gap, or some truly stupid monetary moves like creating a liquidity trap, which could drive stagnant growth, which could cause inflation - but there aren't a ton of indicators that those are huge risks right now.",
"Currency is just a representation of wealth in an easier form to trade. Wealth is stuff that have value for human, so natural ressources, manufactured product and services. There is a relation of supply and demand here. The demand is the wealth, because the more you have wealth the more you want to trade it. The supply is the currency, because you need currency to trade wealth. Wealth generally tend to increase over time. There is more population to work, technology improve productivity, etc. So if your wealth increase, but the amount of currency available in your economy stay the same, then the value of that currency will go up and that's deflation. Deflation is not good for economic growth over medium to long period of time. So you want to add more currency as your wealth increase. The optimal situation would be increase the amount of currency slightly faster than the amount of wealth, which create inflation. The target for most countries is around 2% of inflation. Why not target 0% inflation? Well that would be imposible, trying to eastimate the increase of wealth and then inject in your economy the exact right amount of new currency is not really feasable. There is always variation so if you target 0% inflation, it will move around the target swinging between a bit of deflation and a bit of inflation. So it's better to target 2% since that way you don't go into deflation on a regular basis and this also incentivize people to invest their money, which help the economy growth. Because money invested to build a factory, or a new highway will improve the economy more than money hidden in a safe somewhere.",
"Fractional reserve banking has turned the world into a ponzi scheme that must grow exponentially or collapse. The system automatically creates exponentially more debt and money and transfers wealth to the financial sector like a money vacuum. Inflation is a hidden tax to the capitalist class. The new money gets into their hands first. As they make us work for it it loses value. The banks need inflation to cover the exponentially growing debt. It's pretty much a scam. Borrow one dollar in the fractional reserve banking system and you are looking at an endless exponentially growing debt. So endless more money needs to be made. Lest the banks repossess the whole world. Check out fractional reserve banking and work it out on a piece of paper. Most economists either ignore banking or make excuses but the only reason for this system is to make the capitalist class as wealthy and powerful as possible.",
"Imagine you live on an isolated island with its own self-sustaining agricultural economy. The average person has $1,000 in cash and other assets such as houses, fishing boats, farm tools, horses and horse-drawn carts. Now imagine the village betting syndicate wins $1 million on a foreign lottery and everyone on the island suddenly receives an extra $1,000. Suddenly everyone has twice as much money to spend on the nicest houses and carts, the fastest horses and fishing boats, the sharpest farm tools, etc. But the number of houses, horses, carts, boats and farm tools on the island is still the same as before. In a short amount of time, the flood of money into the island causes the prices of the best houses, horses, carts, boats and farm tools to shoot up, since everyone has twice as much money to bid for them. The second-best items naturally follow, as do the third-best, fourth-best, etc. Soon the prices of everything on the island has doubled, because the supply of money has doubled while the supply of goods has stayed the same. This is what happens when governments print money to pay for government spending. Nobody is actually richer, because there aren't any more goods in the economy. Instead, by expanding the money supply by 5%, the government causes 5% inflation, which is a tax of 5% on the value of every dollar held by citizens. When money was linked to the value of gold and silver, significant inflation was rare, and limited to rare events when a new supply of gold or silver was discovered. But in the age of paper money, there is no theoretical limit to the amount of money that the government can create.",
"The top rated comment is an example of not really understanding anything and standing behind stupid studies to hide their stupidity. The real reason for inflation is that increases risk of saving money which in turn increases risk taking with capital, which drives economic growth. So eli5: if holding money would make you rich theres no point taking risks and thus the economy stagnates and you lose. So by evolution only systems that encourage risk taking remain.",
"The above answers are nice and all that but deflation is not as bad as it's often portrayed to be. Even if there's deflation people would still invest because there's still money to be made relative to not investing in the first place. Also, it's often said that people don't spend when there's deflation, yeah I guess they just starve to death or wait buying a nice car until they get old thought to not see further than a meter.",
"From a purely mathematical standpoint, even a low inflation rate will lead to dramatic devaluation in a relatively short period of time. For example, with a 2% annual inflation rate, one dollar will be worth only fifty cents in just 35 years! There are other factors at play as well, but this is one of the big reasons that inflation seems to happen so quickly.",
"Instead of considering inflation as rising prices, try to think of it as money itself getting cheaper. As governments and banks inject more money into the market, either by printing more currency or via stimuli the value of individual units of money goes down. Why? Simply because its supply has increased. Why do governments and banks print money and deliberately increase prices then? Well a token amount of inflation is necessary to keep driving economic growth, otherwise if prices decrease, industries won't have the capacity to pay their workers with what they earn off off their produce, since workers won't get paid, they will buy even less and further decrease demand for products thus perpetuating a cycle wherein industries and economic capacity will actually degrade with time. To avoid this governments and central banks try to maintain a token level of inflation in the economy. Add to that the simple fact that more people will ultimately need more money to spend so inflation is just a natural consequence of population growth. And yes, mathematically, we might reach a point where it costs trillions to paint the golden gate bridge, but not because it is now using any more resources or manpower, but because the individual dollar is worth much less than what it was."
],
"score": [
1583,
159,
20,
16,
11,
10,
10,
5,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.macrotrends.net/2497/historical-inflation-rate-by-year"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsktha
|
what are rational functions?
|
In essence what are rational functions (more so what do they mean on their own), What is their importance in real life?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gortiy7"
],
"text": [
"Rational functions are those which are defined by dividing one polynomial by another. (ax^2 + bx + c)/(dx^3 + ex^2 ), that kind of thing. Some things you'd want to do math on are polynomial functions (lots of things in physics, for instance). Sometimes they relate to other things in proportion to one another. Those two things combined are rational functions."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsl72y
|
Why is it hard to breath while wind is blowing in your face?
|
Thought of this cause I was sticking my head out of the window due to car sickness? I am probably dumb but like I somehow thought maybe it would be easier to breath because the air is already like being pushed into you? Hahaha idk.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gorxvmp",
"goss3fd"
],
"text": [
"Its instinct left over from infancy. Babies wont breath underwater, they hold their breath as soon as their face is submerged. The pressure from the wind makes your brain thinks your face is in water, so it wont let you take a breath.",
"In order to breathe in, your diaphragm has to make your lungs large enough to lower the air pressure in them enough to make the higher pressure air outside your body want to flow in. But the faster a fluid (including air) moves, the lower pressure it has. So trying to breathe in wind is trying to get air to move from low pressure to low pressure, which is a lot harder than trying to get it to move from high pressure to low pressure."
],
"score": [
23,
13
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lslbyo
|
If we get mitochondrial DNA from our mother, and it is said that we all share a female ancestor like eve or something. Wouldn’t that mean that all humans would have the same mitochondrial DNA?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos00zz",
"gos15bo",
"gos2mlz"
],
"text": [
"Not necessarily. DNA mutates over generations. That’s how all of evolution works. The only way everyone would have the exact same Mitochondrial DNA is if any mutation kills you before you have kids.",
"Well, by definition all humans *do* have a common ancestor. Every living thing that reproduces sexually has a birth mother because, well...they were born. Species don't evolve into existence twice, so at some point there was the \"first\" human (not really because distinctions between closely related species are pretty blurred) that all humans are descended from. In fact, *all* living things must necessarily share a common ancestor, called the [Last Universal Common Ancestor]( URL_1 ) or LUCA. It's also not *entirely* true that humans only inherit mitochondrial DNA from their mothers. It was recently demonstrated that in rare cases mitochondria can be inherited from the father. That's mostly just a side-note, though, since it does come from the mother the vast majority of the time. Regardless, like any other DNA, mitochondrial DNA does mutate occasionally. As long as those mutations don't negatively impact the ability of the mitochondria to function, they will be passed along to that person's children. Another side-note, mitochondrial genetic disorders [do exist]( URL_2 ) and TIL while doing some basic research for this comment that they're being seriously considered as [one cause or trigger for Autism]( URL_0 ). Harmless mutations accumulate over time, which creates a sort of [molecular clock]( URL_3 ). Since mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from one parent (\\*most of the time) and doesn't reproduce sexually like our normal cellular DNA, it's a lot more stable than our cellular DNA. It mutates slower and the mutations happen at a more predictable pace. This molecular clock has allowed scientists to study the migrations and connections of our ancestors, by looking at which populations have particular mutations. Since the DNA is so stable, those mutations stick around for a very long time. All of that to say, no, not everyone has identical mitochondrial DNA because mutations *do* occur, albeit slowly. However, the changes are very slow so it's likely to be very similar.",
"No. When a cell makes a new mitochondria, it copies the DNA. Sometime it makes a mistake, and sometimes that mistake doesn't do anything bad. Overtime these mistakes add up."
],
"score": [
9,
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352304220300854",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_common_ancestor",
"https://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/diseases/7048/mitochondrial-genetic-disorders",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_molecular_clock"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsm5ha
|
How does exposition to sun impact our skin? Why do some skins be less damaged by sun?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosaa4q",
"got88wh"
],
"text": [
"Basically, UV rays penetrate your cells and can strike through pieces of DNA (like a bullet), tearing it. Now, DNA has mechanisms to repair itself, like when you get sunburned, skin cells are repairing itself or dying (when you peel), but this process is not perfect. Continuous exposure to these \"bullets\" and damage will eventually cause mistakes in the repair mechanism which might cause mutations and posteriorly cancer. Edit: spelling",
"There's a lot of levels to this question but I'll try my best... The sun shoots light, LOTS of light. Some of it slow and big, some of it we can see, and a lot of it is fast, small, and angry. Now, lucky for us, the Earth has a lot of stuff in it. One of the important things it has is a spinning iron core, which creates a magnetic field that stops most of the fast, small, and angry light. And the stuff that gets past the magnetic field, might also get stopped by all the air above us (for more complicated reasons I won't explain). Words like ozone and scattering are relevant here. But, some of that angry light still gets through and eventually hits our skin. Why is the angry light bad for our skin? Because it's small enough to break through the cell walls that make up our body. Sometimes that light hits something important and kills the cell. When you get a sunburn, that's actually your body's immune system reacting to a bunch of cells that just died or are about to die. It gets warm and painful to touch because immune cells are cleaning up the burned area and preventing other intruders from taking over. Now, why are light-skinned people normally more likely to get burned than dark-skinned people? The melatonin which makes skin dark is actually a substance that absorbs light. It stops the angry light from penetrating much deeper than the outer layer of skin. Sunblock does the same thing, except that it's only dark if you view it from the perspective of the angry light. The light we can see isn't bothered by sunblock."
],
"score": [
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsm5r4
|
Why do the bottom halves of my legs feel sore after a stressful day, even if I wasn’t using them for most of it
|
After a long day of work I get home and lay in bed and my calves and feet feel sore. Like I had hiked all day. But I mostly just sat at a desk. I feel like it has something to do with stress
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos2plq"
],
"text": [
"If your calves feel sore, it could be due to: - Tensing your leg muscles without realizing due to the stress - Your chair height or position/angle - Poor circulation, blood pooling in your legs/feet (could be a warning of diabetes or other similar conditions, or just again due to your chair cutting off your circulation at your knees) - Can be dangerous due to potential clotting. I'd recommend getting up and walking around more, avoid sitting for hours and hours on end. Stretch your legs out while you walk around. Massage your calves. Elevating your feet while you sleep or sit may also help if it's the last one."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsmcu3
|
What are NTFs and how do people earn money from them?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gowje4e"
],
"text": [
"I think you're talking about Non Fungible Tokens in Cryptocurrencies. A fungible item is an item that is replaceable, we could swap two dollars and it wouldn't make any difference. In terms of Cryptocurrencies, each Bitcoin is the same as every other Bitcoin. These could be called a fungible tokens. People have been creating tokens with cryptocurrency that represent non fungible assets, such as artwork. A painting is non fungible as it will be unique and different to all other paintings. This means that an artist can create a token that represents a unique piece of art. So that people can trade/sell direct ownership of the art. They trade/sell them on sites such as [Rarible - create and sell digital collectibles secured with blockchain]( URL_0 ) If you're thinking about getting into it then don't do it right now on rarible, or any other Ethereum based site. Ethereum gas fees are very high and you could be paying around $100 just to get your art on the site. Wait for alternative NFT marketplaces on other blockchains in the near future."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://app.rarible.com/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsmcv0
|
Why do we get secondhand embarrassment when we see someone do something cringey, even if we don't know them?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos20lq",
"gos7z6c"
],
"text": [
"Empathy- you can imagine what the other person is feeling. Similar to when you see someone get hurt, and can imagine your own toe stubbed.",
"It's called empathy. We see ourselves in that person's situation and imagine how it would feel. I find it ridiculous, but that's what passes for comedy these days, I guess."
],
"score": [
24,
10
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsmj2e
|
How do biological processes at the cellular level happen so quickly?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos3n9t"
],
"text": [
"Atoms move really fast relative to their size. If you think of sound the fact that trillions of collisions happen between someone speaking and you hearing it shows that. Most gas atoms are moving around the speed of sound and are only limited by how often they bump into other atoms. It’s the same with the atoms in your body, but the bumps cause reactions to take place."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsn20y
|
the 3 phases of electricity, how des it work?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gos861x"
],
"text": [
"One phase is generated by a coil of wire spinning in a magnetic field, or a spinning magnetic field moving through a coil of wire. If you draw a circle on some graph paper(centered on 0,0), as you trace around the circle, the Y value is the voltage of this first phase, which is how you get a sine wave. To get 3 phase power, you add two more coils 120 degrees apart, so they're evenly spaced around the circle, so the current on one phase is balanced by the return current on the other two phases. It's more efficient than single phase because you can transmit 3x the power, but only have to add 1 wire compared to the two needed for a single phase. It's also relatively easy to make efficient 3 phase motors."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsnvgb
|
Why are are vikings looked up to so much as cool and manly while conquistadors, and other similar conquerors looked down as barbaric and uncivilized?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosedlw"
],
"text": [
"Vikings came for loot. They fought, took what they wanted and left. Most others showed up, fought, took what they wanted and stayed to colonize. Changing whole civilizations by doing this. That's my simple guess."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsoctr
|
Why is film grain generally considered good, but digital noise is considered ugly?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosedzn"
],
"text": [
"I'm not sure what you're talking about film grain being \"good\". Film grain (in modern context) is used a visual effect to portray it as an older-style film in which film grains were unfortunately more common. They were never good, people would love to have never had film grains in there ever. Its used a nostalgic effect in modern cinema representing another age and time of filmmaking. Digital noise can actually be used in the same manner to make it appear as an \"incomplete\" or damaged video missing parts. But both film grain and noise were never something people want in their film, its an unfortunate effect that exists in their medium that they cannot always control"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsopsx
|
Why Haven't Humans Gone Back to the Moon Since the Apollo Missions?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosgcxs"
],
"text": [
"Basically works out to a simple cost benefit analysis. We pretty well know everything we need to know about the moon, it’s super expensive to go there, and the real reason anyone really ever went there was to say they did it first (Cold War-space race tensions)"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsp7ct
|
What is a gnomic utterance?
|
For example in ancient greek plays, the chorus would offer gnomic utterances, what does that even mean?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gospf5l"
],
"text": [
"It means they're making a short, terse statement implying a general truth (such as \"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely\")."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsphxv
|
Mathematically, why does adding mass to the center of mass not change the location of CM?
|
To keep things simple, assume only in 1-D and 2 point masses: X\_cm = (x1\*m1 + x2\*m2 )/(m1 + m2) How come if I add a 3rd any size mass at the location of the center of mass, the CM value doesn't change? What is cancelling out in the equation? X\_cm = (x1\*m1 + x2\*m2 )/(m1 + m2) = (x1\*m1 + x2\*m2 + X\_cm\*m3)/(m1 + m2 + m3)
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gospgve"
],
"text": [
"Seems like you get why it doesn’t affect anything on a conceptual level. But to answer your question about the math, when you set your two equations for X_cm equal to each other and solve for “x3” you find that the m3s cancel out and x3 equals your original X_cm. Here’s the algebra URL_0"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://i.imgur.com/vaqsl0p.jpg"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lspy7y
|
What happens to all the melted candle over time? Are we just inhaling a whole candle while it burns?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosns1q",
"gosnrf7",
"got1z4h",
"gota0jb",
"gosnm2g",
"goth3uu",
"gothqkn",
"gotaftj",
"gotkggp",
"govqaux",
"gotlfkq",
"gothj9m",
"gou8utl",
"goualaq",
"goup1ay"
],
"text": [
"Pretty much, but the wax decomposes when burning into mostly water, carbon dioxide, some various carbon compounds and some other random compounds. Most of it just dissipates.",
"The wax reacts with the oxygen in the air to form water, carbon dioxide with a smattering of carbon monoxide and soot. So some of the carbon dioxide you breathe in will likely have come from the burning candle, but I wouldn't say that it is a candle anymore.",
"The wax is the fuel, the wick is just a ladder for the melted wax to climb up so that it can evaporate from the heat of the flame and burn more easily. The wax that drips down the sides is just wasted fuel, no different than if you spilled gasoline down the side of your car.",
"The stuff that melts is the stuff that burns. The wick isn't really the main thing that burns. It just transports melted wax to the flame. The wax then evaporates into fumes, which react with oxygen. As the wax is make of long chains of carbon with a load of hydrogen stuck on, burning it forms carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O), which goes in to the air. So yep, we'll inhale some of the stuff that was the candle, but in a form we inhale anyway!",
"Candle wax is the fuel burned off, any scent added is being inhaled. Any wick left too long burns and releases ash into the air.",
"This is perhaps the best explanation I have ever seen. [The Engineer Guy replicated *The Chemical History of a Candle* lectures by Michael Faraday]( URL_0 ) I think it's well suited for younger audiences who might also be interested in learning what science is really about... because the lecture really is more about \"How to Science\" and Faraday just used a candle to convey that.",
"I actually have the same question about when I lose weight. Where does the fat go and how does it go away?",
"Yes, kind of. Also, burning a lot of candles inside your home isn't too good. We once had a neighbor who really liked candles. Once I was looking after her pets when she was on holiday and I noticed a thin layer of black material on the windows and ceiling. I then browsed a bit and there are candles that aren't that bad for you.",
"I like this question! It would be cool to burn a candle on top of a precise digital scale that stays on and record a timelapse, so you could see the candle getting lighter as it burns.",
"...Should I stop burning candles so much? This thread makes me feel like I'm gonna get lung cancer.",
"It doesn’t have to be that way, but Big Wax, Big Wick, and Big Glass got together and made it that way so you’d have to buy more candles! Follow the money! /s",
"For a five year old: The wax melts from the heat, and then gets so hot that it turns into waxy air which catches fire. This is most of the flame you see, the waxy air burning. The string in the middle helps keep the flame going by letting the melted wax climb up it. We breathe a little bit of wax probably but very little is left after burning.",
"Don't forget that when burning paraffin candles you're also inhaling benzene and toluene and a recent study indicated that when you burn a scented candle indoors you're inhaling more pollutants than if you left a diesel engine running.",
"I own an apothecary company with my fiancé. Different types of wax can pose separate health risks. Paraffin wax for example can line your lungs with soot. 100% soy wax provides a much cleaner burn and is a healthier choice that’s pretty readily available today.",
"The top comments don't seem to have explicitly said this. The wax doesn't melt, it burns. It's what burns on the candle. The wick just holds it together and conducts it to the flame."
],
"score": [
8435,
1143,
249,
196,
41,
40,
20,
12,
9,
6,
6,
5,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrHnLXMTOWM&list=PL0INsTTU1k2UCpOfRuMDR-wlvWkLan1_r"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsrdjp
|
Did i win the sperm race by random luck?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"got121o",
"got46hs",
"got8a1h"
],
"text": [
"Which sperm actually fertilized your egg was random luck (don't forget- you're also the random egg that got yote into the fallopian tube than month!) but in another sense, as long as your dad was likely to be the same person, which sperm hit had about 50-50 odds of being one half of his DNA or the other. And in yet another sense, you're neither your egg nor sperm because once they fused, your DNA did a funky sort of musical chairs called Meiosis that shuffled all your genetic cards around, giving you a unique genetic arrangment that is not at all what you reccived from your parents. And in another sense still, genetics has really, really limited influence on who you are as a person, and you are not just your base genetics- if anything, personality is a matter of habit, and if you want to change who you are, all you have to change is your habits.",
"First, you were never a sperm. This is a pet peeve of mine. You are the result of the fusion of an egg and a sperm. If anything, you would be more egg than sperm, as all of your mitochondria come from the egg, as well as all the instructions for very early development. This idea of a sperm that holds a person inside, and a passive nurturing egg, is centuries old 'science', you might as well be talking about humours. Second, fertilization is a cooperative thing. It takes more than one sperm to break through the egg's wall. The first one to make it will fertilize the egg, but it won't be the first to arrive at the egg. There are so many factors at play that you could say it's a matter of chance.",
"You were the slowest laziest sperm, the ones that got there first paved the way for you to just swim in like king dingaling and latch on"
],
"score": [
26,
21,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsrk5m
|
why mosquitoes make noise?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosx0gr"
],
"text": [
"you might know already that sound is just vibrations in the air. we can hear from 20 - 20k Hertz, so you'd have to vibrate the air at least 20 times a second to create a noise that's audible to humans. Mosquitos can do that, since according to google they flap their wings \\~720 times a second."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsrxj9
|
Whats so great about LED headlights? I understand that they're energy efficient but if they're blinding everyone else on the road is it even worth it?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gosz738",
"got1ue0",
"got4zpd",
"gosz75u",
"gotfnj1"
],
"text": [
"Yes. When fitted by the manufacturer they shouldn't to blind you and in newer lights they can actively turn sections off to prevent blinding. But Old uncle Joe that goes and buys aftermarket bulbs and doesn't set them up on a beam setter will blind every oncoming car, but if led lights hadn't been invented uncle Joe would just buy 120watt off road xenon plus bulbs and blind you the old fasioned way. In certain countries its a legal requirement to have head lights calibrated and not blinding to oncoming drivers.",
"I get that they are more efficient, help the driver see further, and should be calibrated to the correct position. What about those of us who drive cars and are stuck in a land of trucks? Think Texas, where if you don’t own a truck you’re a California hippie. Congratulations! You can see the road beautifully! But I can’t use any of my mirrors because they’re at the height of your headlights.",
"Most blinding lights you see aren't LED, but are actually HID, and are installed aftermarket. Factory-installed LED's have to meet certain specs and will be pointed properly for safe driving.",
"> Whats so great about LED headlights? I understand that they're energy efficient but if they're blinding everyone else on the road is it even worth it? The brightness of headlights is completely secondary for whether or not other traffic participants are being blinded. If your high beams are blinding anyone, turn them off. You shouldn't use high beams if there are other people on the road in front of you. If your low beams are blinding anyone, they're angled incorrectly (possibly because your rear is overloaded) and should be adjusted.",
"I am so sick of these headlights! I live in a relatively rural area and drive a lot at night for work. Sometimes I flash my brights at people because it looks like theirs are on, but they're just LEDs."
],
"score": [
67,
13,
8,
8,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lss4x9
|
how it's possible that an electron has a non-zero probability of being halfway across the universe away from its parent atom, and still be part of the atom's structure?
|
This is just mind-boggling. Are electron clouds as big as the universe? Electrons can be anywhere in the universe but there's just a much higher probability of it being found in a certain place around the atom?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"got2q5s",
"got3sdq",
"got2sq8",
"got5cak"
],
"text": [
"I'm not sure how ELI5 friendly this will be, but there's a difference between the technical truth and the practical application. Yes, *technically* the probability distribution of any quantum system extends through all of space, often with nonzero value. However, what you find is that the probability is usually only meaningfully large in a small region of space, like near the atom in your example, and falls off exponentially outside of that region. What does that mean? \"Exponential\" is one of those terms that people and the media love to use to just mean \"a lot\", when its really more specific than that. An exponential function falls off in such a way that it decreases by half after a certain scale (this is where the term \"half-life\" for radioactive atoms comes from). Coming back to your example, lets say that the typical scale is the size of the atom itself. 2 atomic radii away, and it would be half as likely to measure the electron there. Go another atomic radius away, and now its 1/4 as likely. If you're 5 atoms away, or 10 atomic radii (because a radius is half a diameter) then the probibility of finding your electron there is 1/2^10 or around 0.01%. That's only 10 atoms away, around 1 nanometer. I think you can see where this is going. Pull out your calculator, enter a \"1\", and then tell it to divide by 2 and just hit enter a bunch of times. You can only do this less than 100 times for most calculators before you get a decimal so small that the calculator can't store it and just rounds down to zero. In our example, that would mean you were only 50 atoms away before the probability was too small for a calculator to even represent. That's around the thickness of a single transistor in the most cutting edge computer processors. It only gets worse from there. By the time you're any macroscopic distance away the probability of finding an electron from an atom across the room is for all intents and purposes negligible, even if it might be *technically* nonzero.",
"In successful modern Quantum Field Theory (QFT), the word/concept \"particle\" has been redefined to refer to energy excitations in non-physical fully-space-occupying fundamental fields. There's a lot to unpack in the meanings of those words. In that sense, you're not representing the \"whereabouts\" of a classical \"particle\" like a tiny \"speck\" of matter, but rather representing the non-physical field. For an electron, a [Fermionic field]( URL_1 ) In the math of QFT, it's not possible to reduce the math to include only a description of an electron -- the math description [is linked to]( URL_0 ) the math description of the anti-particle. And it turns out that's the key point. QFT textbooks show mathematically that the \"electron\" part of the math description does indeed have non-zero values that *would appear at first blush* to violate laws of causality and would appear to allow faster-than-light transport across the universe... ...BUT when the *entire* solution of the fundamental field (including the anti-particle description) is considered, it turns out that ALL faster-than-light transport and information-transfer have an exactly ZERO probability. After all....",
"Technically yes, to everything you said. But those non-zero probabilities are so close to zero that it doesn't affect anything. It might be helpful to consider those \"extremely low chances of being halfway across the universe\" as \"*being* halfway across the universe, for extremely short time intervals\". So like, if one electron in one molecule is somewhere in the Crab Nebula for 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds every 100000000000000000000000 years... so what? Hell, even if your entire desk were to teleport out to the Kuiper belt all together at once for 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds, the effect would be...nothing. It would be gone for a million times less than the fastest reaction or process that could be affected by its absence. We have equations for electron density at radius r from the nucleus of all the different orbitals, so you can calculate the chances of an electron being at any given distance yourself! They drop off FAST, but you're right, never exactly zero at any distance. Science!",
"I think this is a loaded question based on a contradiction. If you find the electron halfway across the universe, that is, if you were to ever *observe* the electron being there, it would no longer - in any meaningful way - be considered part of the atom's structure. So the answer is \"it can't\". Quantum mechanics is a description of uncertainty. You don't know where exactly the electron is. It *could* be in a definite position, but you can't measure what that position is without disturbing the state of the system. So what this description is saying is that, essentially, there's a small chance that the electron was never there to begin with - its \"real\" position was elsewhere in the universe all along, and the atom just happened to behave as though there was an electron in it by sheer chance. (Of course, this is intuitively extremely unlikely, which is also exactly what the math says.)"
],
"score": [
623,
48,
15,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_spinor#Orthogonality",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermionic_field"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lssyuk
|
How does code even work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"got51a6",
"got5am1"
],
"text": [
"You write human readable code. The compiler or interpreter translates this into machine code. Machine commands are usually less powerful than those of higher languages, so a single function in your code might call many machine code instructions. These instructions are just binary numbers your CPU knows. So 00000001 is basically \"run instruction 1\" wich could be the adder for a specific CPU design. The ones and zeroes open and close switches, and with a cascade of switches called Multiplexer you can then open a channel to the correct calculation circuit (wich then adds numbers, compares numbers, jumps to a specific line in your code etc.)",
"First you write the code in whatever language you choose. Different languages have different syntax (grammar) and different features (strong type systems, function currying etc.). To run code there are basically 3 ways: 1. Compile it all the way down to machine code 2. Use an interpreter to execute it without compilation 3. Use something called just in time (JIT) compilation to execute it instantly but also compile it as you're going so its fast 1. Compilation is a very complicated process to do optimally, and an active field of research, but basically you make a program that scans the code you've written, and produces machine code that is \"correct\" in the sense that it produces exactly the same output as the program you wrote. Then you can execute the machine code, known as a binary, because the machine code instructions are known by your processor by design 2. Interpreting is when you don't compile the code but instead you have another program that reads the code, and does what the code says, in real time. Basically the interpreter itself is a machine code binary that has the possibility to perform any function the input code could say. Interpreting code is slower than executing binaries, but on the other hand you don't have to wait for compilation to happen, so it feels nice when your program executes just like that after changing the code. 3. JIT compilation is a bit newer, but its like a hybrid between the two. Basically here the compiler compiles your code as the execution goes along, only compiling the parts of it that are immediately needed, such that the execution can carry on smoothly. JIT compilers are pretty complicated and cutting edge, but this is very nice because it offers the instant feel of interpreting, while also having some of the speed of compiling"
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsth4q
|
Why do we see a 3-d object?
|
As our retina is a 2-d screen, why do we see a 3-d object?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"got73ir",
"got8k3o",
"gotajv8"
],
"text": [
"We have two eyeballs. Each offering a slightly different view, which the brain then blends together to give us a perception of 3 dimensions. 3d camera systems usually have two lenses to take two images from slightly different angles. Then using some device or trick one is viewed by one and and the other image by the other eye and our brian does its think...boom 3D.",
"Id say 2 things. 1. The world at the scale we live in is 3d. 2. Our brain learns the 3d-ness as we grow. So it processes the ratinal image in that way. A lot of optical illusions use this",
"This is all \"IIRC\".... Having 2 eyes only contributes a small percentage to our perception of depth. With only one eye we do still get some depth perception, this is because of something called parallax. Parallax is the perception of things at different distances changing in position relative to one another when your viewpoint moves. If you have ever leaned to one side to see around a corner you understand parallax. Our brain is able to compare the parallax from both eyes to composite a \"3d view\". With only one eye, we still get this parallax so our brain is still able to perceive that \"3d view\" even tho it's not quite as effective."
],
"score": [
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lstnda
|
Why does objects that are closer appear to move faster than the ones that are further when driving?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"got991d"
],
"text": [
"Because they're moving in a straight line (relative to you) but you're judging based on angles. Draw a circle on a sheet of paper. Now draw a line that cuts through the circle, but not through the centre. Now mark 2cm intervals along the line. Connect each 2cm marking with the centre of the circle. So, the centre represents you, the line represents something moving past you, and the 2cm markings show that object moving at a steady speed. Each wedge shows the angle the object moves through in your field of vision. When the object is far away, that 2cm is a small angle. But when it comes close to you, that 2cm is a much bigger angle. So, it feels faster."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsu2dr
|
how can parrots talk?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotb7ot",
"got9vz3",
"gou3su2"
],
"text": [
"The same way you can bark like a dog. You can replicate the sound of a dog, doesn't mean you know what he's saying.",
"They are good at imitating all sorts of sounds. So when presented with human speech, they will imitate speech. They don’t really understand it. Although some larger parrots can be trained to actually use speech sounds for (rather simple) communication.",
"About half of the bird species sing. They learn these songs from other birds. They can do this because of a part of their brain called the \"song system.\" Inside this song system is a part called the “inner core.” The inner core is essential or really important to helping these birds learn how to make sounds. Parrots also have an extra part of the song system called an “outer shell.” Parrots are social animals, which means they want to fit in with the rest of their friends. In the wild, parrots usually make bird sounds because they are surrounded by other birds. But around humans, parrots often imitate human words because they see their owners as part of their new family, or “flock.” They copy human sounds to fit in with their human flock."
],
"score": [
9,
6,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsu8p1
|
Why can all tablets not be made into those little capsules? They're much easier to swallow than large dry tablets!
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotvz04"
],
"text": [
"Capsules have their downsides. First, they are made to dissolve in water, so higher humidity can break them down over time. Second, they are more expensive to produce, as they need an assembly line to actually put the mixed drug in the capsules, compared to tablets which are typically just pressed from raw ingredients at once. Third, they typically cannot contain the same dose in the same size pill. Larger doses may require larger capsules. Fourth, pills can be split by the person taking them. It's not uncommon to be prescribed a medication that requires you taking half pills. It is very easy to split a tablet, and not so easy to split a capsule."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsuacp
|
Why do people enjoy watching sad movies?
|
I just can't warp my mind around it. I don't understand how one can enjoy watching sad movies. Why do some (many) people enjoy getting sad on purpose?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotavi0",
"gotamja",
"gotdgo5"
],
"text": [
"Can't speak for others, but i can say that for myself. Personally, I watch sad movies/shows because there are more than sadness to it. Straight up misery porn sucks, but if there are good characters, interesting thematical and philosophical topics, it's worth it, even if it sometimes can make you feel bad. There is also an element of sympathy. If the characters feel the same way you do, it makes you less.. lonely i guess? So yeah it can be even good for the mood at the end of the day.",
"Catharsis. Sometimes you just have to cry, and see something to *make* you cry. Think of it as a emotional cleansing.",
"I can tell you why I myself delve into tragedy. I love the conflict it creates. **Good** tragedy usually gives a lot to think about. I like to think about stuff. About the whats and why. About the ifs and otherwise. Bad tragedy is just boring. Like some teenagers complaining about there parents. Even better are the happy parts in tragedy. Most tragedy gives contrast with some happy time. You appreciate it more than in all-happy content. If it hasnt its just depressing. Ultimatve tragedy. Can make you think too. Or can be stupid. Which one is better? I dont know, you have to decide for yourself. Maybe all of tragedy is stupid to you. Maybe not. If we widen the focus to games it makes at least me very excited to make hard decisions. Easy decisions are ... easy. Hard decisions gives excitment when they are successful and gives excitement in form of desperation and even more hard decisions when you fail. This war of mine and fire emblem did a great job in good tragedy gameplay. Why exactly can only tell psychology. However I doubt its a topic with scientific consensus. So you probably get multiple scientific answers."
],
"score": [
8,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsuair
|
How can you "steal" source code of a program? If the program is already on your device, don't you already have access to it's code?
|
Thought about it when I've read news on how source code of the cyberpunk got stolen from CDPR.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotf6gc",
"gotatu8",
"gou9xwk"
],
"text": [
"How can you steal the recipe for a cake ? If I already bought the cake, don't I have access to its recipe ? Basically the same thing. Sure, you can guess parts of the recipe of a cake (like whether it uses chocolate, stuff like that), but you can't find the exact recipe just from the cake itself, because ingredients are too mixed up, and you can't really know the process (like order in which you put the ingredients together), etc... The source code has be \"compiled\" into an executable, the same way ingredients and recipe are \"cooked\" into a cake. You can't just reverse it.",
"Source code is what allow a human to write instructions for a computer. But, these instructions cannot be understood by the computer directly, as a computer only understand 1 and 0 (binary). So, for a computer to be able to understand code, it needs to be translated into 1 and 0. This stage is called \"compilation\". Compilated code is what you have on your computer, and in most case (if well done) it cannot be reverted to source code, so you never have direct access to source code, only to the Compilated version",
"Your computer doesn't read code directly as it's written in a language like C++. It is compiled into machine code that your processor can understand. C++ Code (stolen from [here]( URL_0 )): #include < string > #include < iostream > using namespace std; int main() { string name; cin > > name; string message(\"hi\"); cout < < name < < message; return 0; } Compiled Machine Code would be this madness: .LC0: .string \"hi\" main: push rbp mov rbp, rsp push rbx sub rsp, 88 lea rax, [rbp-64] mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::basic_string() [complete object constructor] lea rax, [rbp-64] mov rsi, rax mov edi, OFFSET FLAT:_ZSt3cin call std::basic_istream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & std::operator > > < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > (std::basic_istream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & , std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > & ) lea rax, [rbp-17] mov rdi, rax call std::allocator < char > ::allocator() [complete object constructor] lea rdx, [rbp-17] lea rax, [rbp-96] mov esi, OFFSET FLAT:.LC0 mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::basic_string(char const*, std::allocator < char > const & ) lea rax, [rbp-17] mov rdi, rax call std::allocator < char > ::~allocator() [complete object destructor] lea rax, [rbp-64] mov rsi, rax mov edi, OFFSET FLAT:_ZSt4cout call std::basic_ostream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & std::operator < < < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > (std::basic_ostream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & , std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > const & ) mov rdx, rax lea rax, [rbp-96] mov rsi, rax mov rdi, rdx call std::basic_ostream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & std::operator < < < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > (std::basic_ostream < char, std::char_traits < char > > & , std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > const & ) mov ebx, 0 lea rax, [rbp-96] mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::~basic_string() [complete object destructor] lea rax, [rbp-64] mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::~basic_string() [complete object destructor] mov eax, ebx jmp .L9 mov rbx, rax lea rax, [rbp-17] mov rdi, rax call std::allocator < char > ::~allocator() [complete object destructor] jmp .L4 mov rbx, rax lea rax, [rbp-96] mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::~basic_string() [complete object destructor] jmp .L4 mov rbx, rax .L4: lea rax, [rbp-64] mov rdi, rax call std::__cxx11::basic_string < char, std::char_traits < char > , std::allocator < char > > ::~basic_string() [complete object destructor] mov rax, rbx mov rdi, rax call _Unwind_Resume .L9: mov rbx, QWORD PTR [rbp-8] leave ret __static_initialization_and_destruction_0(int, int): push rbp mov rbp, rsp sub rsp, 16 mov DWORD PTR [rbp-4], edi mov DWORD PTR [rbp-8], esi cmp DWORD PTR [rbp-4], 1 jne .L12 cmp DWORD PTR [rbp-8], 65535 jne .L12 mov edi, OFFSET FLAT:_ZStL8__ioinit call std::ios_base::Init::Init() [complete object constructor] mov edx, OFFSET FLAT:__dso_handle mov esi, OFFSET FLAT:_ZStL8__ioinit mov edi, OFFSET FLAT:_ZNSt8ios_base4InitD1Ev call __cxa_atexit .L12: nop leave ret _GLOBAL__sub_I_main: push rbp mov rbp, rsp mov esi, 65535 mov edi, 1 call __static_initialization_and_destruction_0(int, int) pop rbp ret Programming such a huge game like Cyberpunk would be basically impossible if it was done entirely in machine code. That's why a programming language is used. The machine code is what the processor actually executes. The executable file that runs the game on your computer is machine code, not source code. The source code that is compiled into machine code is kept secret by CDPR, well, at least it has been."
],
"score": [
16,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5322216/how-to-print-a-string-in-c"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsurj6
|
What makes cheeses like mozzarella have those stretchy strands once melted?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotd0wn"
],
"text": [
"Mozarella is what is called in Italian a \"Pasta Fillata\" which means that instead of simply letting the milk ferment for months, you wait that your milk have tiny bits in it, you mix them with whey, heat and stretch it before molding it. It makes the cheese \"fibrous\" (not really fibres, but it looks like that) which cause the stechy stands once melted. It is mostly done in Italy, and most of the other countries that historically produce cheese don't do that. EDIT: got lost in the translation."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsuxp9
|
What determines our taste in music?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotnu8r",
"gou37pa",
"gothyk1"
],
"text": [
"\"Taste\" depends on the relationship between our external stimuli, our auditory cortex, our rewards system and our memories associated with previous positive interactions. So pretty much \"environmental factors\"",
"Someone's taste in genre is often determined by circumstantial factors, like socioeconomic background, where a person grew up or the kind of face they want to portray to the world. For example, upbeat and conventional listeners tend to be extroverted and agreeable, but have lower levels of emotional stability and less developed verbal abilities. While fans of reflective and complex music tend to be intelligent, tolerant and share liberal social ideals. But also, people lie. Because many people consider musical taste to be an accurate reflection of personality and values, many tailor their likes and dislikes to craft a certain persona.",
"The simple answer: it’s influenced by parents, friends, culture,and what we can relate to. The long answer: Artists of any form of art, creates for a single purpose. That purpose is to convey and induce a very specific emotion. Everything from sculpture to music, marching band to painting, wood working to movie making, they all have this purpose. The perfect example of this (excuse me for nerding out) is the sound track of the LOTR movie series. Our choice in music comes down to which artist can be most successful in conveying and inducing the intended emotion MOST successfully. We all have unique experiences, which influence which emotion we are more inclined towards, are more susceptible to, and relate to."
],
"score": [
3,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsvu62
|
what exactly is blue light and why is is so dangerous? Why is it more dangerous than the other colours of light within the spectrum? Also, if my phone background is black, would that reduce the amount of blue light taken in?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gothqx9",
"goti6r8"
],
"text": [
"Blue light tells the brain to produce the wake up chemical dopamine. It's not dangerous but can disrupt your sleep cycle if you are using a screen late at night. Using a dark screen will help as will turning on the eye comfort or whatever your chosen device calls it in the settings.",
"Blue light is not dangerous. It's just that light down that end of the spectrum is more like daylight and so it keeps you awake because your body is the end product of millions of years of evolution on a planet with a day night cycle. Sunrise, and more importantly sunset, have more red light and this is generally a trigger to your body that the day is ending and you should get tired and go to sleep. If you keep feeding your eyes blue light you will stay awake. There's actually a lot of internal body processes that rely on the day/night cycle. One relevant one is that daylight is what triggers your mitochondria to increase their energy production. So again if you keep feeding yourself blue light your body will keep producing energy and you won't feel tired."
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lswfsh
|
Can you explain why can we wheelie with a motorcycle?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotkwfl",
"goty8s6"
],
"text": [
"It is a matter of balance - you are distributing weight across a single point. This is the same reason you can balance a pencil on your finger. In this case, there is a little more complexity as the motorcycle is moving - that forward motion and the motion of the wheels assists in the balancing. This motion is the same principle that allows someone to balance a spinning ball on a finger. Combined, these two forces allow you to wheelie - you are balanced while moving - effectively falling forward at the same time as moving forward.",
"The force from the engine that causes the back wheel to spin is also pushing the motorcycle in the opposite direction. If you could hold the wheel motionless above the ground, the motorcycle would spin around the wheel. This force tends to be less than the force of gravity but when you wheelie a motorcycle, you increase the force until it overcomes gravity and then balance it with gravity to keep the front of the motorcycle up without going all the way around."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsxhmh
|
How does a pain relief pill (such as Advil) know you have a headache and that’s where it needs to do it’s magic?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotqmi5",
"gotqvip"
],
"text": [
"No pill just knows it nots magic what happens is certain chemicals have certain effects ie it’ll block the pain transmitters so you don’t feel that pain that’s there",
"I believe it has something to do with affecting pain receptors in your brain. It doesn't \"go to\" the affected region, it \"shuts off\"your brains ability to feel pain. Someone with a scientific background feel free to correct me."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lsxon3
|
If peacock feathers colouring is from iridescence due to diffraction microstructures, then why does this albino peacock not have iridescent feathers?
|
URL_0 I saw this earlier, surely the microstructures of the feathers are the same even if they're white instead of brown underneath?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotu5ds"
],
"text": [
"Maybe because it is in the shade so it's hard to tell. Or the micro structures are part of what give the color as well. I'll give it a Google and see if I find anything cool. Edit: a lot of the iridescence comes from the reflection of light off of the pigment under the micro structures and back through them. URL_0"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/15C.html"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsyikf
|
Why is bread said to be bad for feeding ducks and is the same true for all birds?
|
I’ve been feeding local crows but remember hearing this about ducks. I don’t want to hurt my crow friends.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gotxsy4",
"gotyk8i"
],
"text": [
"There is a lot of altering opinions on whether to feed ducks bread. In short, a little bread is fine in the short term. But, if it becomes a main part of their diet it can cause health issues. The biggest problem is that the ducks (etc) became so heavily reliant on being fed by people that they never learned to forage for themselves. So, when people suddenly stopped feeding them, a lot of the water birds started to starve. Bread isn’t ideal for water-birds, but they have grown to rely on it now. As the uneaten bread starts to rot rot in the water; it effects all the other parts of the ecosystem like the algae etx. Its all a bIt of a catch-22 now. As for normal birds, it seems that *in moderation* it’s fine. There’s an article [here]( URL_0 ) that explains it.",
"It's bad for them in the same way it is \"bad\" for you. Eating bread in moderation is fine, but you can't survive on just bread. You need to eat other stuff too. Problem is, people were feeding ducks just bread. Sure they ate other things in the wild too, but they have to forage for that whereas bread was plentiful and easy to obtain from people. These days, it has gone the other way. People heard about it being bad to feed ducks bread(a whole range of misinformation like it making them explode, to poisoning them etc) so they stopped bringing bread to the parks, but without bringing something else instead, like peas or sweetcorn or oats. All the birds were going hungry. So bring bread. Feed your crows and ducks bread. It is fine. Vary what you bring, just like you vary what you eat if you want to be healthy."
],
"score": [
12,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://birdfeederexpert.com/can-birds-eat-bread/"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lsyx5h
|
Why do we throw pennies in fountains?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gou00k4"
],
"text": [
"Copper and silver have antimicrobial effects - that's why water would often be stored in copper containers, for example, since that helped prevent bacterial growth. Combine \"making an offering to your local deity and asking for good health\" with unknowingly helping to stop bacteria and therefore keeping well water safe to drink, and there you go."
],
"score": [
16
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lszypm
|
What is imposter syndrome
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gou6pmx",
"gou6ki9"
],
"text": [
"When I started my PhD the orientation people explained it like this: most of you were probably always the best in your class. Thats why you are here in the first place. You have spent your life feeling that way. But now you have been put in a room where everyone was the best in their class. You are going to be faced with the reality that you are now average among your peers. Or even below average. You might feel like you don’t belong. You might think this whole thing is a mistake and you aren’t really special or good enough to be here. You feel like an imposter. A dumb person who accidentally got accepted into a program of smart people. Ignore that feeling. That’s imposter syndrome and it doesn’t help. something like that.",
"Feeling like you don't deserve the praise or admiration you have received. It's when you don't think of yourself as much of an expert, and think that you have somehow tricked people into thinking you are an expert."
],
"score": [
30,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt1hs5
|
Why you feel sometimes being drunk after just one beer and sometimes you feel sober after half the bottle of alcohol?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"goujw31"
],
"text": [
"How drunk you are depends mainly on two things. How quickly and how much your drink, and what else is in your body when you drink. If I skip breakfast and lunch and then chug two beers for dinner, I’ll probably get pretty drunk pretty quickly. But if I have a large meal, and then drink half a bottle of vodka over the next 4 hours, it will take a lot longer for me to get drunk, and I won’t get as drunk as if I hadn’t eaten."
],
"score": [
21
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt2rpe
|
When you are resting or sleeping, why does your tongue always tries to stick to your palate (upper portion of your mouth) instead of just ‘falling’ down or sideways due to gravity?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"govfjow",
"govr796"
],
"text": [
"The tongue has a default muscle tension to the roof of your mouth, as opposed to a default slack, because if you fall asleep with a floppyjobby tongue you'd choke on it and not pass on your awesome strong tongue genes to your children.",
"In addition to the previous answer, tongue to hard pallet forms a seal which causes all breathing to occur through the nose. This serves several purposes, chief among them being to keep critters out of our mouths. But it also prevents us from aspirating our own saliva, and forces all air to pass through our nose hair and sinuses which are much better suited to filter air than the giant gaping chasm that is our mouth."
],
"score": [
13,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt2t6h
|
Why do people stick their tongue out at the side of their mouth when concentrating or focusing on a complex task?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gouxt59"
],
"text": [
"I read one hypothesis that it was a social signal for \"don't bother me, I'm concentrating on something\". This page makes reference to that, and also that it can be an \"overflow movement\", an \"extraneous physical sign that develops while distracted with a particular motor task.\" URL_0 This page says it's to cut down on the stream of sensory input that comes from the tongue, making it easier to concentrate. Not sure if I buy that, but there it is. URL_2 And this one says it indicates disagreement or ambiguity. URL_1 In short, we don't really know. Or there are many reasons, which is entirely possible when the tongue is so deeply wired into our nervous systems."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/professional-opinion-column/article33600345.html",
"http://center-for-nonverbal-studies.org/htdocs/tonguesh.htm",
"https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/why-do-i-stick-out-my-tongue-when-i-concentrate/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt30f3
|
an ozone generator? How? Why?
|
We are temporarily staying with friends after our home burned down. We stay in a small, removed...hut? Shack?... behind the house. The house is old, railway origins, and has some reoccurring mold (not black, yet) in the bathroom. Friend comes to warn us that they set up an ozone generator overnight, they’re not sleeping there, just make sure we turn it off in the morning and let it air out for a while before using the facilities. So the mold part I get (sort of). Anyway. I’m using said facilities currently after fearfully airing out ozone which sounds like some sus villain-in-a-lair shit.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gourtfw"
],
"text": [
"Ozone is an oxygen molecule made up of 3 oxygen atoms instead of 2. It's naturally created by lightning strikes and UV radiation high in the atmosphere. It's kinda poisonous in large amounts because it oxidizes (rusts) shit *real* hard - harder than normal O2 molecules. Including living things. This also means it kills stuff like germs and mold in an enclosed space, so you can use it like that instead of chemical spraying."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lt3fcm
|
how do docking stations work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gouwhst"
],
"text": [
"Older docks have a connection on the bottom with a couple dozen wires. These are literally the same to the machine as if it had all the ports a dock has. The dock just connects the ports to these wires. Newer docks are a piece of hardware with all the chips and wiring for the ports with a thunderbolt connection feeding that all to the laptop. Thunderbolt 3 has enough capacity to handle all of that data with ease."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt3pev
|
Why do motion sensor nightlights sometimes turn on even when nothing is there to trigger it?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gov35l7",
"gouzihs",
"gov93gh",
"gov8ohi"
],
"text": [
"Wind, dust in the air, bits of leaf debris, small wildlife, bug on the sensor, if the sensor is particularly sensitive it could well pick any of these up.",
"Ive always thought static electricity? There are various opinions regarding the phenomenon.",
"Motion sensors are looking at the room in infrared. One of the most common reasons they would turn on is that the furnace kicks on and the room gets a blast of much warmer air coming in.",
"Motion sensors are usually \"PIR\", passive infrared. They look at heat, not an actual picture like a camera would take. If the sensor detects a sudden rise/drop in the voltage being made, it assumes that to be the motion of a warm object, and triggers the light. Dog, human, car, doesn't really matter. But, the obvious issue is that something like hot air from your dryer, exhaust from a car, or breeze over a hot asphalt driveway, will also cause a change in temperature, causing the light to trigger. So, when it goes on for no apparent reason, it's probably just a bit of hot air floating by."
],
"score": [
10,
5,
5,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt3sd9
|
What causes people to obsess over things?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gouzwo0"
],
"text": [
"Biochemical speaking, you're brain is most likely getting something from the activity or event, whether it's serotonin, acetylcholine, gaba, dopamine, or others; one or more is influencing your 'want' to some degree. Studies on vibrational effect on the brain, such as music, are very conclusive in saying music can alter brain activity. So, obsessing over a song could be a way of your brain seeking the right frequencies to balance itself or it releases a chemical that is perceived as 'good'."
],
"score": [
5
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt447k
|
Why does taking a band aid off quickly hurt less than taking it off slowly?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gov4hf4"
],
"text": [
"* Good old physics, Force = mass X acceleration. * Ripping it off quickly imparts a larger force than slowly. * This force is enough to overwhelm the gripping strength of the glue holding it on. * If you do it slowly, the force is not enough to overwhelm the glue so instead of it popping of, it stretches out the skin until the skin releases which is more painful."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt45nr
|
What is the difference between settler-colonialism and exploitation-colonialism?
|
I think I get settler-colonialism a bit, but the other I just can’t seem to understand, nor the differences between them.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gov5y6w",
"gov20xx",
"govjhm8"
],
"text": [
"Exploitation is more about extracting resources in a non-sustainable way to sent back to the home country, whereas settler colonialism is, at least in paper, about establishing long-term local communities in the colonized area. That said, plenty of people would say that capitalism is inherently extractive already, so settler colonialism as part of a capitalist economy is exploitative of resources too. People came to the US to settle and build lives here, but have extracted resources in a non-sustainable way that's destroyed a ton of the land and causes health problems for people today.",
"Settles Colonialism is when people go, and make a small community based on their country to live in. Exploitation Colonialism is when you use the land from a foreign country to extract resources and move those resources to your own land. Settler colonialism can also mean, That People from a country who colonized a piece of land, Move to that Colony and live there.",
"**Settler Colonialism:** Colonizing a place to send people there, build strong institutions, and potentially integrate it into your home country. - Examples: USA, Australia **Exploitation Colonialism:** Colonizing a place to extract its wealth or produce resources. Colonizers do not stay long term, build minimal institutions, and have no intention of integrating the colony. - Examples: British India, and basically all European colonies in Africa Tl;dr: \"This is my new home\" vs \"This is my new job\""
],
"score": [
9,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
lt4htj
|
Why can't cell phone manufacturers use carbon fibre to build phone body instead of plastic, ceramic, glass, etc. ?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gov55cr",
"gov6233",
"gpawvhe",
"gov5bzt"
],
"text": [
"They totally could. Why would they? Carbon fiber scratches fairly easily and can shatter. It's biggest advantage is being lightweight, which isn't super necessary for a tiny phone anyway. Plastic's way cheaper and plenty durable. Glass is scratch resistant. Aluminum is strong.",
"Carbon fiber is very strong and stiff, but it is also very brittle. It fails catastrophically as soon as you pass its breaking point. It's especially bad when a lot of stress is put on one small point of it, because then you're only stressing a small number of the fibers. The strength is also directional with the direction of the fibers. This is great for a mountain bike with known stress angles, but not great when you don't know exactly how a phone will drop. Plastic and metal can give a little bit before they break, and their strength is in all directions.",
"[Well at least one manufacturer is attempting to make a device out of carbon fibre ]( URL_0 ) I know this thread is a bit old but figured it was worth posting this.",
"They can. It's just not a a great material to build a cell phone case from. Cell phones need \\*extremely\\* tight tolerances for all the parts to fit properly (like single digit thousandths of an inch). The only way to get that from carbon composite is to mold it, which means you need to use chopped fiber, which doesn't have that cool \"carbon fiber weave\" look, which sort of defeats the point. If you do the woven carbon so you get the look, you need to post machine it to get the tolerances you need. That's not impossible, it's just an extra step that adds cost. Blackberry used to have a carbon back panel, and Dell uses carbon palmrests on their XPS laptops (I think Lenovo does too). And in order to be strong enough, it's needs to be thicker than you usually want for a cell phone case. And the plastic resin is relatively soft so it scratches easily...so to make a premium phone with the \"carbon look\", you need to make it thicker, then overcoat with something scratch resistant (glass or ceramic)...the end result isn't very premium anymore."
],
"score": [
51,
25,
15,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.carbonmobile.com/carbon1"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt517d
|
What would happen if i plug my headphones into an outlet?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"gov99sb",
"govh9w0",
"govagr7"
],
"text": [
"I'm assuming you're talking about connecting a USB headphone into a USB charger. If everything is built strictly to protocol specifications, nothing. If not, then anything from fried headphones to electric shock.",
"Nothing. The lines that carry data in USB are not the same lines that carry power. Your headphones would be powered up, but you would hear nothing since nothing would be connected to those data lines.",
"Nothing. Here's why. Theres 6 wires in USB. The outer two - one in each side Are a little longer than the others. These two are for power. Your charger only connects those two as it doesn't carry data. Just power. So if you have say an USB headset it is basically a sound card in itself. So it's powered. But nothing on the input pins. Thus no sound. Because there's not any data."
],
"score": [
6,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt601q
|
....If an automobile tire takes 50-80 years to decompose, what happens to all of the rubber that gets worn off the tire while driving? How come we don’t see rubber piled up along the roadways or streams?
|
Earth Science
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"govikp5",
"govkmhd",
"govhae9",
"gowqrlt"
],
"text": [
"When you run a stormwater treatment plant, you see tons of it, literally. Rain washs rubber powder into stormdrains and it washes into the plant all the time.",
"It is not uncommon to see rubber being piled up along highways just as you describe. The pieces are quite small and they mix in with the sand and soil but when you inspect it closely it is mostly rubber and asphalt. You can even see it sometimes as the ground just next to the highway is much darker, almost black, compared to the ground a bit further away. But most of the rubber is too small to be seen and will fly away as dust. And it will collect wherever dust collects, in streams, on plants, on filters and in lungs. With modern emission standards for engines requiring particulate filters on the exhaust most of the dangerous smog in cities comes from tyres, asphalt and brakes. In fact due to their added weight it can look as if modern electrical cars contribute more to local pollution then modern diesel cars (excluding trucks). This is something that is studied very actively at the moment. And when people are talking about increased levels of microplastics in nature and the oceans a large part of this is rubber from tyres which have been taken by the stream and washed out into the ocean.",
"What gets worn off the tire while driving are tiny, often microscopic particles - it's the same reason why your bathroom wall is disgustingly covered in trillions of bacteria but you can't see any of them.",
"As others have answered, it's a pretty fine dust so it's just not blindingly obvious (especially as it's basically the same colour as the asphalt) I wear a reusable face covering all day while I'm driving around delivering parcels and at the end of the day, the amount of black dust I wash out of the mask (and presumably would otherwise be breathing in) is quite sobering. Granted, that'll include a fair amount of soot from poorly tuned diesels and maybe brake pad dust, too, but I suspect a healthy (or rather an unhealthy) portion of it is tyre dust. Another source of discarded matter on roads that's interesting to learn of is platinum and other valuable metals from catalytic converters. It comes out in minuscule quantities, but it all ends up on or near roads. In areas with consistently dense traffic, such as inner city areas, it builds up enough that street sweepers are designed to actually harvest it for recycling! ([source]( URL_0 ) this company reckons it can get a million quid's worth from Britain's streets a year)"
],
"score": [
38,
22,
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.worldsweeper.com/Environmental/VeoliaEnvironmentalGleaning7.13.html"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
lt6c4i
|
Where does body heat come from? How does the body know what 97-99 F is and keep it there? Is there a body heat organ, or is it done everywhere?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"govmnvy",
"govo6hm"
],
"text": [
"Your cells 'burn' glucose and oxygen to power themselves. This produces heat. Your brain subconsciously knows that your cells will die outside a very narrow temperature range, so you sweat and breathe to regulate your temperature.",
"Mitochondria (the powerhouse of the cell) generate heat as part of metabolism. In the process of breaking down things like fat and performing the citric acid cycle, heat is produced as a byproduct in addition to usable units of energy (ATP, acetyl-CoA, etc). All cells with the exception of Red Blood Cells contain mitochondria and thus can generate heat. When we're cold, we can increase muscle activity and, thereby increase mitochondrial activity, to generate more heat. Muscle comprises a significant amount of body mass and thus, will generate more heat really than anything else in our body (except brown fat). This is where shivering comes from with a cold/fever as it generates heat. Additionally, you have two types of body fat. White fat is predominate in adults. Brown fat is predominately higher in babies and some peoples in extremely cold climates (the Inuit peoples). Brown fat almost exclusively generates heat with little usable energy generation from their mitochondria so its only function is essentially to waste energy. This is why babies run hotter. Temperature regulation is controlled in the brain (specifically the hypothalamus)."
],
"score": [
10,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.