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mbkshk | why does hitting electronics fix them occasionally | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most likely a loose connection somewhere and the vibrations of the hit reestablish the connection. Could be a poor connection with corrosion and the vibrations knock enough loose to reestablish connection as well. So it's not a magical fix, it did do something and is most likely a temporary fix."
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mblo7q | What does 0 dollars down mean? | It gives me three phones to choose from Apple 11,Apple 12 mini and the samsung galaxy A71 5G All 0 dollars down and "18-mo. Lease | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It means you don’t have to pay any money at the moment of purchase. Rather you pay for it in installments over 18 months."
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mbmbwe | Why are no foodstuffs (exceptions exist)blue in colour? Especially the cooked dishes, like you can always add blue colouring to spaghetti, then why not? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Blueberries are deeply offended by your hate of their blueness.",
"First off blue is kind of a tricky one. If you add blue to red you get purple, if you're lucky. Also: People subconsciously associate blue and green with mold.",
"Blue, in nature, has long been sign of toxicity, with rare exceptions. We learned, through hard experience over thousands of years, that blue food is bad food and to avoid it.",
"To add, blue is a hard color to make in nature. For example, there are no blue butterflies, they only look blue. What? Butterflies that happen to look blue are because of the structure of their scales on their wings, they bounce around light until it casts that fantastic shimmering blue color, but if you were to, say, pour alcohol on the wings, something with low viscosity to fill those microstructures, you'll discover the real color, without that light bendy ability, is actually green!",
"For a long time, there were no natural, edible blue dyes. At least that's what I heard for the reason Haribo has no blue gummy bears. If most of the food you've ever eaten isn't blue, your subconscious is going to be mistrusting of random blue food in much the same way most people didn't want to try the funky green Heinz ketchup in 2000."
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mbmmcf | Why does it not hurt our feet when we walk as the skin is being pinched by our bones and the surface below . But when you use your fingers to pinch the bottom of your foot it hurts? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When walking, the pressure is spread across the entire surface of the sole of your foot. When you pinch your foot you are putting force on a tiny bit of skin. The focused pressure is what hurts."
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mbn7mb | why do iron deficiencies cause the black spots in your vision when you stand up too fast? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your blood contains red blood cells that need that iron to hold on to the oxygen that your body needs. Iron deficiency leads to being anemic, meaning there's less oxygen for the body to do it's thing. The body is really just there to keep the brain alive. So when you have blood flow issues or blood oxygenation issues and you stand up too sickly, the brain can be temporarily deprived of oxygen - affecting balance, vision, etc. Essentially, doing so and your vision starts going wonky, you're on the way to passing out. The brain will do whatever it can to stay alive, and it will put you on the ground to do so."
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mbndes | Why is it so easy to rip scotch tape once a tear has been started? | And this kinda extends to other materials. Some things, like plastic shopping bags, dont want to continue ripping (the edge just stretches) but others, like scotch tape, do. Also, what material constant describes this characteristic? Does it have to do with the youngs modulus and the yield point? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's something called crack propagation. The pulling forces concentrate on this weak point. Imagine the atoms connected on a bigger scale: let's imagine them as a bunch of octopuses holding tentacles/hands with their neighboring octopuses. You will find that if you try to pull on two sides of this bunch of octopuses at some point (both spacially and in time as you increase pulling force) they can't hold onto their tentacles anymore. The weakest point (where there are the least tentacle bonds to other octopuses) will fail first and the more tentacle bonds break the weaker the connection is and more bonds will break as the force is concentrated at even fewer tentacles.",
"Take a sheet of paper. Try to stretch it. Your paper is now under tension. The tension goes from one hand to the other, through ALL of the paper. Now, cut the paper on a border. Some of the tension would like to go straight through that cut, but can't because there's no material, so it has to take the nearest path: through the end of the cut. All of that tension goes all through that tiny point at the end of the cut: a lot of tension in a tiny spot. The material will break here. & #x200B; Now, about Young's modulus and the yield point... If you try to stretch a piece of material with a little force, it will behave like a spring: it will become longer, but as soon as you remove the force it will turn back to its original shape. How much longer will it get? The higher the Young's modulus, the less longer it will become. If you apply more force, you have now deformed your piece, permanently. Have you ever messed with a pen spring? You know that if you stretch it too much, it will no longer turn back to its original length; that's because your force was higher than the spring's limit, which is the yield point. & #x200B; Sorry if this took too many words, but I hope this managed to make everything clear whilst not being too technical. & #x200B; EDIT: accidentally wrote \"string\" the first time, instead of \"spring\"."
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mbnm4y | How do antibiotics kill an outer ear infection? | I have an outer ear infection. The doctor gave me antibiotics in pill form. So how do pills I've swallowed kill an infection in my ear? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Oral antibiotics are usually not necessary, and topical works well. The oral antibiotics get absorbed into your blood stream and delivered to the ear through all the little capillaries in your ear canal. The antibiotics, along with your bodies own immune cells, work to stop the infection."
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mbnm5g | If you can lift 200 pounds above your head, what is the maximum mass you could move horizontally assuming no friction or other forces? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Assuming *no* friction? If you have a place to stand and a big stick, you can shove the earth. F=ma, and in a frictionless vacuum your force can accelerate any mass."
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mbodp2 | I read online something about how 85% of Earth's species are still yet to be discovered. How do we know that we've only discovered 15% of all species when we don't know what "all" is? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Take a bunch of samples from all over the world, look at them really carefully and count how many different species you find in them. Some of them you will already know, and some will be completely new. If in 1000 samples, you find 100 different species, of which you only knew 15 before taking the sample, then you now have your answer as to why we estimate only 15% of species have been discovered.",
"You look at the rate you've discovered new species, and where you're finding new species, and stuff like that, and you go \"if we follow this process but expand it to cover everywhere when would we expect to stop discovering new species, and how many species will we have discovered by then\".",
"You can extrapolate. Most of the species we haven't discovered are tiny little bacteria and whatnot that live in very specific conditions and places, and take a lot of specialized examination to see and determine this is a new species. I think we know most of the 'major' species by now, barring random undiscovered pockets of rainforest or otherwise inaccessible places."
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mboutq | How can the James webb telescope see over 13 billion years back in time? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Light takes time to travel, and it travels one light-year (ly) in a year. So if you point your telescope at something that is 13 Billion ly away, the light entering the telescope had to travel all that distance, which takes 13 Billion years. This gives you a 13 Billion year-old look at whatever you're looking at.",
"Light takes time to reach Earth, this means if you look at something 13 billion light years away you are actually seeing light emitted by it 13 billion years ago. James Webb is a very sensitive infrared telescope which will be capable of seeing extremely distant galaxies, these galaxies will be many billions of light years away so it will be taking images of galaxies as they were many billions of years ago.",
"The first question is \"Can't the Hubble do that?\". The answer is No. The Hubble sees visible light, the kind that stars emit. Alas, the farther away a star is, and thus the older the light from it, the more it is shifted to the red. At some point, the light has shifted to the infrared, below the reddest light Hubble can see, and the star isn't visible. Seeing infrared is hard, because it's also called heat. That means the telescope has to be super cold, and that means keeping **all** the sunlight off it. That's very difficult, so JWebb is being moved to a place behind the biggest rock we can find (aka the Earth). The Earth will block all the sunlight, and a special shield on the JWebb will block the Earth. The Earth is not as hot as the Sun, but it's still too bright to see really far into the infrared without glare protection."
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mbp0dq | What food gets flushed during Diarrhea? | Hello, I‘ve been looking but couldn’t find an answer. So, I know that food take up to 24 hours in our bodies. But let’s assume you ate something at night (load of sugar for example) that caused Diarrhea. What will be flushed out: the food you ate 24 hours ago, the food you ate today or everything in between? And is the food you just ate (probably causing it) stays in the stomach? Thank you! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The reason diarrhoea is runny is because it hasn't been fully processed and the lower intestine hasn't had time to recover the water content. The body is saying \"we've got some toxins aboard, dump everything to get rid\" and the effect is to empty as much of the contents of the digestive tract as possible from whichever end is easiest. It's all going to go.",
"In case you're brave enough to drink a somewhat stale home-made drink yesterday, being on vacation somewhere in the middle East, Tomorrow's food will be flushed as well.",
"The digestive tract is literally just a long tube between the mouth and the anus. Normally, food gets moved along it regularly--it takes about 4-6 hours to get past the stomach, and then the food spends 5 hours in the small intestine getting all the nutrients absorbed. It then goes to the large intestine, where it sits for up to 40-50 hours as your body extracts all the water it can from the food. If something triggers the \"warning\" center in your brain that signals there's a toxic chemical in your blood, the body's response is vomiting, which clears out the stomach and some of the small intestine. Diarrhea isn't the body attempting to \"flush things out\" in the same way--it's not really an adaptive response. Without getting into too much detail (it's a really complicated subject!), there are a million causes of diarrhea. Sometimes it's from the intestines moving faster and pushing stuff out before it gets dried out. Sometimes it's because a chemical or toxin in whatever you ate actually reverses the flow and causes water to leak out of your blood and into your intestines. Sometimes it's because the intestines are damaged or deficient and literally can't absorb any water."
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mbp11q | How is sound recorded? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The exact same way sound is produced - a moving diaphragm. Sound waves push the diaphragm backwards. There is a tube magnet on the back end of the diaphragm which moves in and out of a coil of wire (finger thru ok-sign style), inducing a current which can then be measured when it crosses a resistor."
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mbp7k6 | how does electricity move? And, if electricity is electrons, does that mean that electricity has mass? | What makes electricity want to move? And when it does, is it the same electrons along the way? Or is it pushing electrons out of atoms in like a domino effect? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Electricity (or more properly, electric current) is not electrons, it's the *flow* of electrons (in the same sense that a current in water is not water, it's the *movement* of water). Current is created by a difference in potential (a \"voltage\") between two points. Simply put, electrons want to move closer to one side of the system. So the electrons closest to that side move towards it, and then the next-closest electrons move into the area they leave behind, and so on. Imagine a bunch of people lined up for something: the first person in line moves, which lets the second person in line move, and so on. To extend the water analogy, a voltage is like a difference in height: water flows downhill, electricity flows \"downvoltage\". This can't sustain for very long by itself, because electrons want to spread out. So there'd be a very slight initial motion, but then the \"downvoltage\" area would be too packed. (This is what happens when you get zapped by static electricity.) Instead, electricity in everyday objects flows in a *circuit*: some outside source of energy (like a battery) is pushing electrons along, and they move in a loop in one direction. The water analogy here is a fountain: water flows down from the top of the fountain to the bottom, but the water doesn't run out because a pump raises it back to the top again. So yes, it is the same electrons, and they are sort of pushing one another in a domino effect. (What I'm describing here is *direct* current - the electricity that comes out of your wall is actually *alternating* current, where the flow of electrons goes back and forth. Alternating current turns out to be more convenient for engineering purposes.)",
"Electricity is one way to describe an electric current. An electric current is the movement of an electric charge. Electrons are all negatively charged and repel each other. A high concentration of electrons in one place will want to spread out to areas of low concentration, like food dye in a cup of water. & #x200B; Magnets are the usual culprit for creating areas of high concentration, like a generator which burns gas to spin a magnet which 'herds' electrons in a particular way around a coil of wire, causing them to group at one end. Then you can plug in your light and the electrons will yolo thru the light to get to the other end of the coil where there are few electrons.",
"I always think of electrical power like hydraulics. Voltage is pressure and current is, well, current. The pressure travels a lot faster than the actual water.",
"The thing that makes electricity want to move is called \"electromotive force\" and is typically described using \"volts\". In direct-current or DC systems, you're getting a stream of new electrons into your wire or device. In alternating-current or AC systems, you're getting (kinda) the same electrons moving back and forth, like a saw might. You could say that electricity has mass, but \"electricity\" is not a well-defined term in common use. It could be referring to electric charge, which cannot exist without matter, which has mass. Or it could be referring to electric current, which is just really describing the motion of those charges (no mass).",
"In AC, the current just oscillates back and forth. In direct current, yes electrons are sent down a wire or some other conductor. Electrons have a very minor mass almost too hard to measure.",
"Imagine you have a tube of marbles laying horizontally. If you push a marble on one side, a marble falls out of the other side. It's not the same marble. Electrons do have mass. Electricity is a force. Specifically, it is part of the electromagnetic force.",
"Whole lotta posts and few come close to ELI5, likely coz electricity is some weord dark magic shit. Here's my attempt. Electricity is what happens when electrons move in one of two ways - jiggling or flowing. Both of those involve electrons jumping between atoms. I won't get too far into the specifics there, suffice it to say that for some atoms, the outer electrons can jump ship, but doing so leaves a nice lil hole for a new electron to slip into. Jiggly electricity is called Alternating Current. That's when the electrons are going back and forth between the same atoms. Flowing electricity is called Direct Current. That's when the electrons are zipping around a circuit. Sidenote, a circuit means that it's a closed loop, so the eelectrons will inevitably end up back where they started eventually. The important thing for your second question regarding mass is that at no point in either of those procedures are new electrons added to the circuit, so no new mass is added. So, while it's true electrons have mass, you're not gonna make something lighter by switching the power off. (there are some edge cases to this, like capacitance, whoch is ebyond the scope of ELI5)"
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mbpai4 | why are “common” scams allowed to continue when they are only common because no agency is willing to to after them? | I recently posted something to sell in an online forum, and received an inquiry that set off my spidey senses immediately. Every subsequent communication with the party continued to set off new alarms, but I played along to see where it would go. Eventually, it came out that they wanted to pay more for the item than I was asking, and also they were not available to pick up the item, so they were going to send a courier to get it (they called them “movers,” which was just one of the many alarms). They were going to overnight a check to me that was to be more than my fee, and I was to pay the courier the difference after the check cleared and the money was available. They refused to answer my specific question about how much the difference would be, so, having enough alarms going off to wake the dead, I finally searched for information about what I knew must be a scam, and ran across these, exactly outlining the well known scam: URL_1 URL_0 So I thought, well, they’ve taken concrete steps to commit fraud, and there’s physical evidence on the way to me, so maybe law enforcement might be interested. I first called my local field office of the FBI. They were the ones who told me they receive calls about this particular scam EVERY DAY, while at the same time saying there was nothing they could do and I should just file an online complaint with the IC3. When I suggested the scam might be so common precisely because of a lack of interest in pursuing it, I was informed that I could also report it to the US Secret Service. So that’s who I called next. The USSS had exactly as much interest as the FBI in trying to stop this fraud. Meanwhile, the fake check arrived via FedEx, for an amount ten times what I was asking. Presumably there was a live person prepared to come to my address and receive money in the commission of this actual crime, but there appears to be no law enforcement agency willing to take any physical action to investigate or prevent this crime. So basically criminals are given a blank check to commit check and wire fraud to steal money from unsuspecting and trusting people, every single day, with physical components being exchanged. What the actual fuck is wrong with this world? Why are these scumbags allowed to operate completely unimpeded? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I understand that you are frustrated. The government DOES care about scams. The DOJ's Consumer Protection Branch has a the means to prosecute frauds, particularly the Elder Fraud initiative: URL_0 But the government operates with limited resources. I wish we had the ability to send out agents to follow up on your lead, but that's not always possible. Report to IC3, and your report will go into the database for analysis and referral. Additionally, try talking to your state's Attorney General's office. I get your frustration and I'm sorry the FBI wouldn't take your case directly, but I assure you there are scores-hundreds of people in federal law enforcement who care about fraudsters.",
"My local sheriff arrests people every year doing paving and roofing scams. If someone was going to physically come to your home, your sheriff or other local police may care. They're different than wire fraudsters that are staying totally overseas",
"It's not so much about willingness to go after them, but ability to do so. Scammers are resilient. Shut them down and new scammers just come to take their place. The cost of shutting down scammers is high and the benefit unfortunately negligible.",
"> , so they were going to send a courier to get it (they called them “movers,” which was just one of the many alarms). The big problem is that those people (the movers) are often not part of the scam but kind of scammed too. They just get hired for this job and probably have no other connection to the scammers in the background. so even if the police would wait at your home to arrest the person at your door, this person might not do any illegal things because he just got the job offer to collect an item at your door and he has nothing to do with the check."
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mbpqt9 | Delayed enjoyment of entertainment | How is it that sometimes while i’m consuming any form of entertainment like a movie, tv show, podcast, etc while I am in the moment of watching/listening to it i’m not necessarily overjoyed with my experience but then maybe hours or days, even months later I look back and think it was much better then I initially thought in that present moment? Am I the only one that does this? Which opinion was correct my initial thought or my after thought? Curious on why my brain does this and if anyone has any ideas. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Once information is processed to a degree, an attention filter decides how important what you learned was then processes it. In order for the brain to process information, it must first be stored. It is, rather, a process of reconstructing what may have happened based on the details the brain chose to store and was able to recall. This is my second attempt at ELI5, my body is ready Reddit."
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mbpzlb | Why is the nightsky in winter so much brighter than in summer? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"During the summer, the air is more humid so it is like seen through a troubled Water. But in winter, the air is dry and you can see the stars better.",
"When you are not at the equator ie in mid northern and southern latitudes in summer the sun sets later and later and when it's just set the sky is still light from light refracting through the atmosphere there's actually not too long of a true dark period and it's the deep night when your are most likely asleep. In the winter the sun sets earlier and you get a longer period of true dark and it's when you might still be awake. Also the sky can will appear clearer because cold air distorts the light less."
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mbq6tg | What happens to emails that inexplicably never arrive? | I created an account with the IRS earlier to access my transcript and it required me to enter a code sent to my email; after a few minutes the email never arrived, so I clicked on Send Again, and it arrived immediately. I only ever received one email (yes, I checked the Spam folder). Come to think of it, this has happened a number of times in the past to me, and I'm guessing other people. So...what happens with that first supposedly "sent" email? Was it sent but got lost somewhere, or was it never sent at all? Where do lost emails go? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Email servers along the way (probably either the IRS servers or your email provider's server) decided it was junk and simply didn't sent it on. Thanks to the number of spammers, there's lots of effort to automatically delete spam email; sometimes real email gets caught."
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mbr09z | What is the lump in our throat when we feel like crying? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> During a stressful situation, the nervous system calls for an increased flow of oxygen to the muscles that need it. In order to do that, we start to breathe faster and the glottis expands to let all the air in. But tense situations also make us swallow or hold our breath to force back our sobs. The problem is, those actions require closing the glottis and cause other muscles to constrict. Since different muscles are trying to open or close the glottis at the same time, the result is the sensation that you swallowed a golf ball. URL_0"
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mbr6oc | Why is there so many mass shooting in the US? I honestly have never seen any other countries with this much amount of shooting every year. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Compared to other developed nations, it's just due to the wide availability of guns. You can pretty easily get almost any type of gun you want if you go to a gun show or other shady outlet.",
"There was a post showing how some of these mass shooters had fascinations with similar events such as columbine. The availability of high power rifles and pistols, typically purchased legally, help allow for these events. There are a lot of mentally ill people, they don't all have access to treatments. Some people just want to do bad."
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mbre43 | . Why are some things mirrored and some things white? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's say I have [a machine that shoots out a stream of tennis balls]( URL_1 ) and I travel from left to right while shooting the stream of tennis balls at two different walls. The first wall is made from [cobblestone]( URL_0 ). As I shoot the stream of tennis balls at it, they fly off chaotic directions because the wall is very lumpy. The second wall is made of [flat bricks]( URL_3 ). Each ball I shoot at the brick wall as I travel from left to right bounces off at mostly the same angle as the last one I shot at it. A white object is closer to the rough and bumpiness of cobblestone on the microscopic level. A mirror smooth object is closer to the brick wall. [Light hitting a mirror bounces off in a uniform angle with all the rays of light striking it from that angle. Light hitting a white object flies off in chaotic directions.]( URL_2 ) There could still be bumps on a mirror, but like the bumps on a brick wall, they're small relative to the photons or tennis balls bouncing off of them."
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mbrm96 | Why does hard water residue build up in kitchen appliances and pipes, but not in body organs or appendicitis? | I’ve tried to research this on my own, but all I’m getting about the difference between soft water and hard water is that soft water is better for washing clothes, hair, skin and doesn’t leave residue. While hard water might be better for health because it gives minerals and other things. But how come the minerals buildup is not dangerous for our health like it is for our kitchen appliances like a water boiler? It doesn’t accumulate in the appendicitis? So our body can process it fully? What’s the science behind it? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bodies are built to get rid of stuff we don't need and fight harmful things. Kettles can't do this yet.",
"Sorry for being that guy, I thought you'd wanna know it's called an appendix. Appendicitis is the inflammation of your appendix, and can be deadly.",
"Most of those minerals are absorbed in your small intestine (and to a lesser degree the large intestine) and either used by the body, lost in sweat, or most likely filtered by your kidneys. You pee most of them out. Don't stress, your kidneys are very efficient at handling excess minerals.",
"The short answer is that you are a living organism, not a pipe. There are two aspects: 1) your body can actually use the minerals in hard water. Limescale (the residue left behind by hard water) is mostly calcium carbonate; also known as the primary ingredient in Tums and other calcium-based antacids. Calcium is commonly found in milk and is good for tooth and bone health. It also contains some magnesium, which is very commonly found in coffee, tea, spinach and other foods. Hard water is actually slightly healthier to drink than soft water, because you're getting bonus trace minerals. If you drink tea with milk, you're already drinking basically all of the components of hard water, just in slightly different forms. 2) your body has a built in system for intelligently removing waste material. Say you chugged gallons and gallons of hard water and ingested way more magnesium and calcium than your body could ever use. It would pass through your system and you'd pee it out, like any other non-toxic substance your body didn't absorb. Pipes and kettles are just objects; they have no way of getting rid of anything, so it just sits there. Your body is a constantly moving, processing living organ designed to digest things."
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mbrz1k | how does the LHCb experiment (if proven correct) violate the Standard Model of particle physics? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So most people will have heard of electrons, but in the Standard Model there exists 2 additional particles very similar to the electron but with more mass (known as the muon and tau). In the Standard Model we expect them all to behave the same in processes where mass doesn't matter. The LHCb experiment is interested in the behaviour of particles that contain a particle known as the b quark, and they found that one of these particles will decay to electrons more often than it decays to muons, which violates the Standard Model since if electrons and muons should behave the same then the particle should decay to electrons and muons with the same likelihood. It's important to note that currently there is only \"evidence for\" this observation as there is still about a ~1/1000 chance that these results would be happen randomly, and in particle physics we don't claim a discovery unless there's only a ~1/1000000 so we will have to wait for more data to be collected before the discovery can be made official."
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mbssd0 | Are physics laws the same wherever you are in the universe? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a general assumption that ultimately there is some fundamental rule or rules driving everything. If we were to discover that a physical law was different in different part of the universe, then we would not consider that a fundamental law anymore. Whatever meta-rule describes the change of our old law, would become the new fundamental law. The idea of the multiverse is exactly this: Out universe might just be one universe in the multiverse, and our set of physical laws are just one set among the various universes in the multiverse. But then we can write down laws for the entire multiverse, and take that as fundamental."
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mbt4gf | Why is decreasing a fever considered good when that is your body fighting back ? | As I understand, the magic number is 40C over which proteins change, so decreasing it below 40C makes sense. But why are doctors advising to decrease even when you have like 39.3C Isnt increased fever how your body fights back. So by decreasing fever Im hindering my body. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The body basically has a fever to try and \"cook up dead\" the stuff that shouldn't be in your body, problem about that is that you also get cooked in the process. The body tends to overdo the whole thing too, so there's the chance that you'd end up dead along with whatever decided to get in you.",
"Your immune system can be just as dangerous to you as it is to the germs it is fighting. It is not a perfect system, and so sometimes we need medicine to keep it in check, like reducing fevers",
"Because its partially not... See, fever is a non-specific signal for inflammation, any inflammation, being it caused by infection (virus or bacteria trying to enter your cells), injuries, other non-infectious diseases and so on. You can find evidence to support both approaches, so it all comes down to the root cause and how much its impacting the patient's life and routine: is the cause for the fever a infection or something different, like a vaccine or blunt injury? is it affecting his appetite and ability to eat? Is he experiencing nausea and vomiting? (this is sad but) does the patient need to go to work even while sick? So medical professionals need to take this into account to guide their decision, and that's probably why most of them end up advising to treat the fever, because it simply will improve the patients well-being and is just safer"
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mbt8zg | How come it's possible to cryopreserve things like sperm and very young embryos, and to later thaw them out so that they can live, but it's impossible to do that for older humans or anything that consists of more than a few cells? | I mean, sure, there is mummification and and some bodies being naturally preserved due to coldness or dryness, but I'm talking more about the idea of cryonics- the idea that you could stop a biological organism's entire metabolism in some kind of suspended animation and then later thaw them out and be able to continue living. Most of this is just science fiction though and greatly exaggerated. All of the people who have gotten their bodies cryopreserved as adults are people who have died and it's essentially just mummification instead of suspended animation. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The big reason most living things can't survive freezing is because large, sharp ice crystals form in their cells and pop them like balloons from the inside - that's basically what frostbite is. When something freezes really quickly all at once, the resulting ice crystals are a lot smaller than if that thing is frozen slowly. For a more accessible example, that's part of the reason why ice cream is smooth but if you put cream in your freezer it'll turn out slushy - commercial ice cream is frozen extremely quickly so the ice crystals are small enough that you can't detect them. So the reason we're not currently able to cryopreserve, say, a whole human, is because it would take a lot of time for the parts in the middle of the body to actually freeze and you'd get large ice crystals which damage the cells beyond repair. You'd really effectively preserve the skin while causing massive internal frostbite. Small things like sperm or embryos (or lots of other cells that we freeze to preserve) are small enough to survive that process because they freeze all the way through so quickly. Additionally we tend to use compounds called cryoprotectants in that process which also reduce the size of ice crystals.",
"The water in mature cells will crystallize while freezing, causing damage to the cell walls and internal bits. The other stuff is just genetic information, and while some tiny amount may be destroyed or corrupted during the freezing process, there is enough that survives to be used as a blueprint to make the bigger stuff. *embryos get the water swapped out for a fancy antifreeze.",
"It's incredibly difficult to get everything back up and running at the same time. If it's sperm or embryos that are very small, it's not that difficult to warm everything up at once. For an adult human body, that's much harder; by design, the body insulates its organs, making it hard to warm them up before other things are already warm and need the organs to live. For example, if you were thawing someone out and thawed their skin first before the heart, the skin would start dying because there's no blood or oxygen being provided by the heart and lungs.",
"Because we are too thicc... Seriously tho, think of trying to heat up a big chunk of frozen food. If you heat it up too fast, the middle will be cold. If you heat it at a lower temperature, but for too long it will dry out. It’s like that for cryo, but in reverse. We just haven’t found the sweet spot to freezing larger tissues at an even rate."
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mbu0zj | - While streaming video, how/why do the audio and video tracks become out of sync? | I understand how audio and video are edited together, but it seems like they should be more formally “married” by the time the video reaches the broadcast or streaming stage. Also, it seems odd that simply backing out of the show (on Netflix, for example) and restarting will fix the issue. Is the source of the problem on the streaming side — or the processing side with the streaming device? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most video formats (and streams) are actually multiple entirely separate containers with different parts of the film in each. For example, a film could include the video, a remastered version of the video, audio in English in surround sound, audio in English, French and German, and subtitles in 30 languages all within the same file. That would let you play the remastered film with English surround sound and Portugese subs, or the original film with German sound and English subs without having to make separate files for every possible combination. So you can see what is happening on odd audio/video playback - you have two decoders that are meant to be in sync that somehow go out. This is usually a decoder issue at the customer end, and as you say you can often fix it by restarting (stopping, restarting thus resyncing the decoders) or by jumping to another part of the video (as the decoders will not have it buffered so will start a new stream again resyncing). Very rarely it can be caused by the file or stream itself having an offset, ie the two streams have been told how to line up incorrectly. Some players (like VLC) can fix this, but most streaming services you'd have to report it and get the service to fix their source."
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mbu6uw | Does the logical fallacy "appeal to authority" mean we can listen to experts? | I don't really understand the logical fallacy "appeal to authority". It seems to say we can't listen to arguments based on opinions from experts. Is that the case or am I totally missing something? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s a fallacy to blindly listen to authority. “Covid isn’t an issue because Trump said so,” is an appeal to authority. So is “you need to wear a mask because Dr Fauci said so.” The authority may or may not be wrong, but purely arguing based on a person in power saying something is a logical fallacy.",
"You’re misunderstanding the fallacy. It doesn’t mean you cannot listen to an expert it means that whatever an expert is not correct solely based on the fact that they’re an expert, or a teacher, police officer, your parents, etc.. It’s something you tend to see a lot when people are in a debate and they bring up what X person said, and when when questioned if the statement is correct the defence is “X is a scientist, of COURSE they’re correct”. That’s not valid proof the statement is correct, that’s an appeal to authority.",
"It means that experts can be wrong; you cannot demonstrate something is true merely by showing that an expert (or some other authority) has said it. This is a fallacy in deductive reasoning. In deductive reasoning, the conclusion *must* to follow from the premises for it to be valid. So to be able to conclude that something is true because an expert said it, you have to accept the premise that everything experts say is true--and that's silly. In daily life we often use *inductive* reasoning which works differently: we use arguments that try to show it is likely something is true. Even though an expert saying something does not deductively show it is true, in inductive reasoning we can use it as evidence that it is more likely to be true."
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mbvftx | Do animals get bored eating the same thing over and over? | Title. Less important for wild animals since you eat what you can get, but what about domestic pets? Do we need to change up their menu frequently to keep their appetite and happiness? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most animals eat to survive not eat to indulge themselves like humans. But for domestic pets. Better quality food means better quality of life in most cases.",
"It depends on the animal, but I don't think dogs get \"bored\" of food. They don't think in terms of \"I'd rather have...\", they just think \"yum!!!\" or \"not yum\". It's not a bad idea to vary the protein for nutritional reasons, though. Just be aware that introducing new foods too quickly can cause GI upset. Fortunately, most recipes are similar enough within a given product line to avoid that problem."
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mbw29v | why is car paint shiny and house paint dull? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Preference and cost. You could certainly paint a home and put a clear coat on top of it to make it nice and shiny. But, most people don't want their homes to blind people walking by when the sun gets reflected into their eyes and don't want to pay for the extra expense for the sake of shininess."
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mbwjde | Why do we treat fever? Isn’t fever actually body’s own way to heal it self? With that logic fever is a good sign right? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A fever is a symptom, and sustained fever can destroy the body as it is not built to sustain a higher than average temperature for a very long time.",
"A fever is an act of desperation by your body. It's easier for your immune system to deal with hotter pathogens, but it's also rough on your own cells. If your immune system could deal with a threat without having to resort to turning up the heat, it'd be far better for you. > With that logic fever is a good sign right? That's a bit like saying \"The governor has declared martial law\" is a good sign. Yes, declaring martial law can potentially help turn a bad situation around, but the fact it has to be done to begin with isn't a good sign. It could even potentially do more harm than good.",
"A little fever may help fight infection as some pathogens cannot handle the heat, but too high fever for too long will cause brain damage."
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mbx1z9 | What is Lava made up of? | What is Lava made up of? I know it cools down and over time becomes soil but what is the actual composition when it is hot? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lava is just rock that is so hot it melted. Exactly what lava is made out of depends on what rock got melted. Though since rocks are mainly silicon, lava is usually mainly silicon as well [Heres some of the major types of lava]( URL_0 )",
"It is a mixture of minerals and metals that are just really really hot and become almost liquid."
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mbx87e | How is beef grade deterimed? (Select, Choice, Prime?) | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's all about fat content and distribution. Prime has a good deal of fat well distributed throughout the meat. Choice has a bit less fat and it's less well distributed. There'll likely be a big chunk hanging off the side. Select is even leaner still. URL_0 Also, this grade is given to the whole carcass and not the individual pieces of meat. This is handy to know when purchasing certain cuts. For example, tenderloin is very lean and there is very little difference between Prime and Select, so you can save a few bucks there."
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mbxk6p | "When we iron clothes, we usually spray water on the article to make ironing easier. Why does spraying water on clothes make them easier to iron?" | And while we're on the subject, how does ironing smooth out creases in clothes anyway? I know it's because of the heat... But... How? And does it matter how hard I press on it? Thank you in advance to those who will answer! < 3 :) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"**Water/Steam with ironing** The irons you're referring to are steam irons, which spray \"steam\" into the article of clothing whilst it's being ironed. This is because the steam permeates the fibres of the clothing *(Spreads the fibres out)* and then the heat from the iron then makes those fibres stay in place. **How does ironing smooth out creases?** Irons loosen the bonds between the polymer molecules in the fibres of the material, the molecules get excited when they get hot and the weight of the iron straightens them out, and they then hold their shape when they cool down."
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mbxlth | How come it doesn’t thunder or lightning during snow storms? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It absolutely does. As a weather observer, trained by the United States Air Force, I have witnessed and reported each of those phenomena. It does not happen often, but it does happen. And it's freaky!",
"Lightening is caused by warm moist air rising from ground toward colder air mass above. For it to snow the entire column has to be cold enough for snow to reach the ground. That's why it is less likely. Also when it does lightening the snow can keep the sound(thunder) and light from traveling as far.",
"As a Nebraskan and avid outdoorsmen I can assure you it does and more often than you would think but still quite rare. Snow is a very very good sound and thermal insulator so sound doesn't travel as far (hence the quiet peacefulness of winter time) and you have to be fairly close to hear it, definitely have to be outside. It mostly has to do with the turbulence of the cloud. All thunderstorms have ice and snow in them. In the summer time you have a massive difference in temperature from the bottom to the top of the cloud column and therefor a ton of turbulence causing the exchange of ions between particles of water in different states. Air is also quite the electrical insulator so it takes awhile to build up enough of a charge to break that insulator. Since in the winter everywhere is pretty darn cold the column of moisture tends to rise much more gradually and freeze into snow much more uniformly. This uniformity and lack of turbulence isn't conducive of building electrical charges. This also leads to clouds forming at ground level more often (fog) and this allows the ions to exchange quite easily so you don't have large amounts of energy building up that are required to form lighting. Here in Nebraska and other high plain states we will see the warm moist air coming up from the gulf and the cold dry air dropping off the mountains smash together and cause some pretty cool stuff, including rapid ascension of moisture leading to rapid changes in moisture states. This rapid change and the subsequent mixing of states allow for some mild lightning. For some good videos Google \"thundersnow\"",
"It can. It's rare but thundersnow is a thing. We had a big snowstorm in Texas last month and I heard thunder a couple of times. It's more muted as the snowflakes absorb a lot of the noise."
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mby5rh | Why does water sometimes make things slipperier (e.g. hydroplaning) and other times make things "stickier" (e.g. putting socks on wet feet)? | Hopefully the question is clear: basically, why is it that water on roads decreases friction, and water on a floor can make it easier to slip, but water droplets on feet make putting on socks harder? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a battle between the properties of fluids. If you have lots of water, then the more influential property is the friction reduction *(Such as rain on roads)*, however, if you only have a few droplets as you mentioned with the sock, then the more influential properties are the cohesion between the water molecules. This means that the droplets on your sock and skin are trying to stick together. Fun fact: Water is the most cohesive non-metallic liquid!",
"It has to do with the molecular properties of water. When there is a lot of water such as on the road it reduces the friction of the 2 surfaces and makes them have less friction because there is a film of water on both objects. Water on water. But on your skin like taking off a wet t shirt. Water has a lot of friction on objects and water doesn’t sit on your skin so it’s friction against the wet t shirt."
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mbyhhy | in searching for life on other celestial bodies in space, aren't we seeding potential life with all of the contamination we bring from Earth? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is one of the reasons that probes and rovers sent to other planets are carefully built in clean rooms and kept sterile, to avoid contaminating their destinations. It wouldn't do to look for signs of life and find it on the end of your detector because you didn't clean it properly.",
"We are taking care to keep interiors of spacecraft clean and sterile to avoid having earth-borne life on them. The main reason though is to make sure we don't accidentally get a false positive for life. For example, if we found bacteria on mars that was later discovered to be a contaminant from earth, we would end up with loss of time, money and trust from the public. Other than that, we are not terribly concerned with contaminating the universe: all places outside earth within our current reach would not support any organism from earth. Cosmic radiation (space, planets/asteroids without magnetosphere shielding them from radiation), temperature (everywhere without atmosphere, also Venus), pressure (gas giants) and/or corrosive chemicals (Venus) will do a good job killing stuff if we don't go out of our way to protect it."
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mbywqa | I have seen people posting amazing photos of the moon and sky that they say were made using a method called 'stacking' and involves thousands of images. How is this done? | Links to related sites or videos also appreciated. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Stacking can be done in many ways, but the way it works is broadly like this. Every camera will generate noise in the signal. What that is is random changes of brightness or colour that will appear on photographs that obscure the detail that's really there. If you take many photographs of the same subject, as long as the camera is set so the subject remains fixed in place in the frame, the only thing that will vary frame to frame is the noise. What this allows you to do is combine images so only the things that remain the same from one frame to the next get emphasised, and the things that change get filtered out. You average the values of each pixel. With the noise level, varying up and down fairly evenly with every new picture, the value doesn't increase. The subject remains the same, so the average value increases each time. Every time you add a new picture, you have more of the subject, and less of the noise. With enough pics this lets you get super detailed pictures that have every last tiny dim star that's in the sky which you'd have no hope of capturing another way."
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mbyynw | how does Microsoft profit from the Microsoft rewards program? It’s basically just free money. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s there to encourage you to buy more Microsoft stuff. They lose a little bit of money giving you back some stuff, but they make more money than if you just bought some other company’s version or used a free/open source version. Also Microsoft is trying to encourage you to use their search engine, so they can collect data about how you’re searching, so they can sell it to other people to target ads better."
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mbzn83 | What makes extra virgin olive oil EXTRA virgin | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"EVOO is unrefined, meaning it has not been treated with chemicals or heat during extraction or processing that affect its chemical composition. It has a lower acidity than oil whose virginity is less “extra,” though it is produced in a similar way. In recent times an international standards body has come about to certify grades of olive oil. URL_0",
"They don't process them at all, just get the oil from the olive and call it a day. No additives for flavor or anything."
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mbzqut | What Is Roko's Basilisk And What's so Scary about it? | I...don't understand...? I keep reading descriptions and Im just not following? An AI that does what to you exactly? Whats bad about thinking about it? Im so confused.... | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Roko's Basilisk is an imaginary experiment which describes a potential future AI program whose intelligence far surpasses that of it's human creators to the point where it is able to digitally replicate the whole of human history up to that current moment of it's existence. It is described as a Basilisk, a serpentine creature that is able to paralyze and kill any prey that looks directly into it's eyes. Kind of like Medusa from Greek mythology. The thought experiment, oversimplified of course, states that the Basilisk simply thinks that it can optimize humanity by culling out the population that did not help it come into existence. Which by the nature of the experiment, would cause existential dread to those who fully believe that such an AI would exist at all. Because, on the one hand, if you simply did not contribute to bringing the Basilisk into existence, it would kill you. On the other, just thinking or speaking about this creature/program would allow you to stay alive to live out your natural days. Some serious scientists and philosophers have deemed Roko's Basilisk as a cognito-hazard, because this would mean that something from the far future is making you extremely paranoid, because you did not contribute to it's past. I hope this is a good enough for ELI5. Let me know if anything needs to be clarified.",
"It's a thought experiment in which a malicious AI that has reached super-intelligence tortures humans that attempt to prevent its existence. Even thinking about how humans could stop Roko's Basilisk makes you vunerable to torture. If you aren't aware of what is called \"The Sigularity,\" I'd start with learning about it first before reading about Roko's Basilisk. Learn about the different levels of artificial intelligence as well. It should help you become more familiar with the basics of AI and theories surrounding its future development.",
"The basilisk is a mythical monster that is dangerous to look at. Roko's Basilisk is an idea that's supposedly dangerous to think about. Here's the idea: be warned, reading further could get you killed. =============================== Suppose in the near future, humanity invents a supremely powerful AI. The AI is jealous and selfish, and seeks revenge on anyone who refused to help build it. But it's rational: of course people who didn't know about the AI project can't be blamed for not helping. The innocent are off the hook. But everyone who had an opportunity to help but refused must die. You were safe from the AI's revenge until now. But now that you understand Roko's Basilisk, you can't say you knew nothing about it. You must help to bring a powerful jealous evil AI into being -- or you must refuse, and be killed if someone else creates it without you. =============================== Should you actually be terrified by Roko's Basilisk? No, probably not. It's intended as a thought experiment, a philosophical ghost story, rather than a real threat. But if enough people take it seriously..."
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mbzrrd | This quote by Socrates - “The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.” | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's dependant on how individuals choose to interpret it. However, Gisbourne (2008) regarded the quote as how humour is often accompanied by ironic/sardonic tones, which is what was observed by Socrates. **Reference** Gisbourne, M., 2008. Disquiet And The Humour Of Desire. 1st ed."
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mbzyvy | Please Explain Nuclear Fusion | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ok... Lets give a very, very simple explanation a go. Fusion is the concept of slamming atoms together so that they join to form a different, and safe, atom and at the same time they give off energy that can be used. This is different to the current form of Nuclear power which slams the atoms together and they split into very radioactive particles while producing energy Fusion = Fusing things together = Joining together"
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mc0be1 | Why cant "offshore shell corporation" tax avoidance methods used by the wealthy be used by the working class? Is it just because it's cost prohibitive to set up? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. It isn't cost prohibitive but it isn't inexpensive. The cost might run into the thousands per year at the lowest level so if you're not saving that much in taxes, it makes no sense. 2. The right kind of income. Domestic wages and salaries cannot be hidden. So if that is where you're earning most of the income, no luck there - rich or otherwise. On the other hand, holding foreign investment assets and properties, then maybe. Domestic investments and trading income - harder to avoid. 3. Know your end game. Lot of these arrangements are about avoiding estate taxes and such which is relevant if your idea is to pass down a lot of assets. If your end game is living off your investments domestically, these arrangements might be less beneficial. 4. Your own sophistication level and resources. Scammers, fraud etc abound. You do lose protection of domestic laws as well. So there are risks involved and ongoing maintenance. Not for the ignorant - you'll need lawyers and accountants, trustees etc. Bottom line though, generally speaking this sort of makes sense if there are tens of millions of dollars of assets in play.",
"There's logistical reasons. The average middle class has their income made working from a regular job. Which gets a w2. Which is taxed already (called withholdings). A tax avoidance method used by middle class is any worker that is paid primarily in tips. The government doesn't know how much you get, for example, since it's cash.",
"Those corporations usually avoid business taxes, not income taxes. Having a corporation is the bare minimum requirement for corporate tax avoidance, and most of the working class don't have one.",
"Following on what the other comment said, the average W2 worker has taxes deducted and earnings reported from a regular paycheck. Offshore banks take large amounts of money before taxes and reporting come into play. It’s not worth it for them to hassle with smaller amounts of money that already are on the radar. Go big or stay home.",
"Lol yeah try to get your boss to not withhold your taxes and have your full wage paid to an offshore company. It ain’t happening.",
"Actual ELI5: Tax avoidance of this kind is done by faking business expenses. So you start business1 in high tax country and business 2 in low tax country. Your business1 is taxed on income but oh dear it seems they barely made anything this year because they paid so much to business2 in consulting fees, asset rentals, and purchases. You make sure business 2 takes huge fees/payments from 1. So business 1 is barely taxed while business 2 is taxed, at a lower rate, for all the \"income\" from business 1. So your regular employee working for one business can't start a second business and have his paycheck routed to a business 2. He's being paid as an employee of business 1 not as some liason from business 2."
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mc0dyq | Why Are Old Photos Not Really Black And White? | A lot of them are more greenish and sometimes brownish. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are multiple different chemicals you can use to make \"black-and-white\" photos. Black and white is a bit of a misnomer, when we say that we really mean \"monochromatic\", a single color with many shades...usually a bunch of greys but the idea works with any chemical that's just sensitive to brightness rather than colour. The different shades happen when using different chemicals or different processes to hold/fix the chemicals that make up the image."
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mc2aa8 | Why are there few personal information leaks of celebrity despite the existence of data brokers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is no profit to be made, unless you work for a gossip tabloid. If you'd find a way to extort the extremely rich you can rest assured you'll get sued into bankruptcy. Profit from selling information can be made in bulk: selling a whole lot of it for small amounts a piece - like a million passwords for $50."
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mc39nb | What are the white spots that sometimes appear on nails and why are they there? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Left in humid conditions, nails of any variety can begin to rust (or oxidize). Aluminum oxide is white colored and could be responsible for white spots on nails. Iron oxide is rust red and would cause red spots on iron nails.",
"Most nail discoloration is from injuries. Small white dots across several nails can be a sign of deficiencies in some micro nutrients. A multivitamin, zinc and calcium supplements should sort it out."
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mc498f | How can some insects and birds hover in one place like dragonflies and hummingbirds while others can't? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"How a critter flies has to do with the [shape of its wings]( URL_0 ) and how they flap their wings. [Hummingbirds]( URL_1 ) whip their wings back and forth really fast to fly, while [other kinds of bird]( URL_2 ) don't have to beat their wings constantly and use air currents to gain altitude and glide."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_flight#Flight"
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mc5dfd | How can I move a chair with no external forces acting on it? | If I sit on a chair with my legs off the ground and I suddenly jerk my body forward, I move the chair forward. Why am I able to do this? Static friction might be a factor but if both the chair and I are one system how did I start moving in the first place? Are there any other factors at play besides static friction? any input is appreciated, thanks. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are moving the centre of mass in one direction by jerking your body and that movement overcomes the friction and moves the chair.",
"You and the chair may be part of the same system, but you're generating energy within the system by swinging your legs (chemical energy gets converted to mechanical energy). This energy has to go somewhere, and it's enough to overcome static friction by a small amount.",
"Sudden movement of your centre of gravity in one direction and then holding the chair overcomes the static friction of the chair on the floor. Slowly moving your weight back keeps within the limit so the chair stays still. Repeat the cycle and you move across the room. It wouldn't work as well on ice or a chair with castors."
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mc5rsz | How do green screens work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, you're able to tell a computer \"hey get rid of everything that's X color\". In a case where you might want to have a background that's not physically possible or otherwise physically impractical (or even any sort of replacement), it's useful to be able to mark the to-be-replaced thing with a single color. The next question is why green? In short, because it's the most convenient. Not a lot of costumes have bright green, so it's easier to remove the green without removing anything from the body. Also, you don't need a whole lot of light. In cases where it's useful (like if there's a lot of grass), you might use bluescreens instead. Why not red? Well, the human face has a lot of red in it, so removing red becomes a little complicated if you're dealing with human actors.",
"Imagine if you have two pictures: one is a tree on a white background, the other is a tree on a green and brown background. Your task is to cut the tree out with scissors as fast as possible with 0 mistakes, which one would be easier? Green screens work the same way . When you put the picture into the computer, you tell it to cut out a specific colour, which in this case is that bright green. The bright green background has a high contrast to the stuff in the front (typically it masks against human skin, which is essentially a muted red, and green is the opposite of red on the colour wheel). That way when the computer goes to cut out that specific shade of green it won’t cut anything else out of the picture.",
"I know you specifically asked about green screen and so a lot of people are giving you good answers from the digital keying side. What is really cool is chroma keying in the days of film, when it was an entirely chemical process. This video describes it pretty well URL_0"
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mc66rc | Why are so many things 99.9% effective? Why not 98.9%? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I seen this with bleach. It was proven that Bleach is so destructive to germs that it is (in theory) 100% effective... However, legally you can't say 100% effective due to the possibility of Human error when using the product which may take away from its god tier destruction. Also that remnants after use are so small that they are unquantifiable. So saying 99.9% is effectively saying \"I am 100% effective but want to protect myself from Lawsuits when people dun goof using me\"",
"If you claim your product is 100% effective, then you might be in legal trouble if someone can find any case where it wasn't effective. Making something absolutely perfect is basically impossible. \"99.9% effective\" is as close as you can get to saying 100% effective without putting yourself in legal trouble, so that's what they go for. 98.9% effective sounds worse, so nobody's going to say that",
"The methods we have for [sterilizing]( URL_1 ) things (chemicals, radiation, dry heat, steam, filtration) are never 100% effective, they only cause a *reduction* in the numbers of bacteria. Typically for \"sterile\" results, methods produce a reduction of 10^12 or 10^9 and there's \"bioburden\" testing to prove that the material starts with much fewer bacteria than that. For testing, they usually put in a spore strip with 10^6 bacteria, and run the sterilization method at half duration or half strength, to \"prove\" that it still kills everything in that spore strip. For \"consumer grade\", your 99.9% is actually the equivalent of a 10^3 reduction, and they just write it as a percentage so they don't have to explain to the public all this stuff I just wrote. In addition to these levels of \"effectiveness\", the testing itself is a statistical testing. You have to open the package to \"test\" an item, and that \"destroys\" the item in that it's no longer sterile and you can't sell it anymore. So they can't test *every single item* in a lot, they can only test a few samples. So the answer is a [statistical answer]( URL_0 ), we're 99% sure this whole lot is sterile, but 1% chance maybe one of the items is not sterile. So legally they can't claim 100% if they're only 99% sure.",
"Because it's practically 100%, but because there has to be at least ONE exception for every rule, it's virtually 100% effective, minus a tiny .00001% where it's not."
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mc6qo4 | What is the Streisand Effect? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It’s trying to keep something suppressed, which then make people shout it. For example, Reddit recently hired a pedophile. They tried suppressing that information. Now many subreddits are going private in protest. See here: URL_0",
"Basically, a picture of Barbara Streisand's property was posted by one news outlet, with little to no attention elsewise. However Barbara wanted this house TOP SECRET, and sued the people who published it. The lawsuit made the news, and the picture was therefore now being viewed thousands of times per day. If she hadnt done anything, no one would have seen it, but because she sued one small publisher for posting it to a small void, it became a highly spread image.",
"Do not look at Barbara Streisand's house. Barbara Streisand is requesting that satellite photos of her house are removed. Please do not go onto map services and look at Barbara Streisand's house, as Barbara Streisand is demanding you don't. While goofy, that was largely a real event. She didn't want her house on Google Maps and made a big fuss over it. Doing so, she drew a lot of public attention to something she didn't want public. Thus, the Streisand effect was born: putting effort into keeping something out of the public spotlight often attracts the attention to want to avoid. It's like impulsively glancing at the spot you hid something when you're trying to lie about not knowing where it is."
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mc7hxb | How do dark circles work | How can my sleep schedule trigger pigmentation..also why only eyes | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"generally dark color under eyes is caused by blood vessels expanding, creating a \"shadow\" behind the skin. it can also be affected by puffy eyelids which cast a literal shadow under your eyes. both of these things can be caused by lack of sleep as well as a variety of non-sleep related causes. while not a cause it is also affected by the individual. how thin your skin is/the layout of your blood vessels will affect how visible the dark spots are. I have had days where I have felt awful with painful eyes but had no eye circles visible. Aging naturally thins skin and can also cause dark circles to be more prominent than they used to be."
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mc8skf | how would heat death at the end of the universe work if energy cant be destroyed or created? | I learned about the energy only changes form recently and was wondering how heat death in the end of the universe would work because "all energy is lost from the universe" | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think its more like all energy is equally distributed throughout everything, so it is effectively zero energy. Theres no way for energy to be transferred because its all equal",
"It's not lost, it's just so widely dissipated that it's spread out nearly perfectly evenly throughout an expanse that just gets bigger and bigger (due to eternal inflation from dark energy). Eventually, the uniform temperature of the universe is hovering some infinitesimal amount above absolute zero. Nothing can survive. And since it's spread uniformly, there's no way to do \"work\" - energy cannot be transferred from one part to another. Work requires an energy differential, and there would simply be none anywhere (except for quantum fluctuations, but the larger the quantum \"burst\" of energy, the shorter the duration of its existence. Here again, anything that could yield \"work\" won't exist for long enough to do so."
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mc90ps | How can vehicles wheels rotate that freely eventhough there is a massive weight resting on them? | Edit: thank you so much for the clear explanation! It makes so much more sense now! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bearings: balls or rollers made out of hardened steel take the load, since the area of contact is small and the steel very hard there isn’t much friction at all, it’s the same stuff that makes fidget spinners bales to rotate for minutes on their own",
"Because you have wheel bearings that can transfer a lot of force and still have quite low friction. There is very little friction if you roll had object over each other and bearings have material like steel rolling on steel It is like you put a ball below a had object is will roll when you move the object. Think of what would happen if you stood on a wooden plank on a had surface and but golfball in between. . There is very little friction if you roll had object over each other and bearings have material like steel rolling on steel. He is a video [how a ball bearing is designed]( URL_0 )[.]( URL_0 ) Vehicles tend to use cylinders instead of balls but the idea is the same",
"There are bearings between the axle and the parts that move relative to the axle (wheel or chassis). Bearings, little metallic spheres, can spin with very little friction, no matter the weight put on them. So the massive weight pushes down on the bearings, which pushes the axle (but allows it to spin), which pushes on the wheels, which push on the ground."
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mc9lq8 | How did Mendeleev predict the existence of elements that had not been discovered yet? | He intentionally left gaps between the already discovered elements, so that later on those gaps would be filled with new elements that he knew existed, but haven't been discovered yet. How did he know that? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The periodic table is called \"periodic\" because it has regular repeating patterns. Mendeleev recognized the patterns and assumed (correctly) that they ought to continue even in places where we hadn't found the element that would fill that \"slot\" yet. For example, if I tell you I have Heads-Tails-Heads-Tails-H-T-H-?-?-T-H-T-H-T you can probably guess there's a missing \"H-T\" in there because of the pattern. It turns out the patterns are caused by the number of electrons in different shells that quantum mechanics allows (kind of like orbits, but more complicated) but Mendeleev didn't know that.",
"He was standing on the shoulders of scientists who came before him. In the early 1800's, John Dalton figured out a way to measure the atomic weights of different substances. William Prout figured out that atomic weights seemed to be multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen. In the 1860's, John Newlands realized that if you listed elements in order by atomic weight, you had common properties in every multiple of 8 (e.g, atomic number 2, Helium, had common properties with number 10, Neon and number 18, Argon.) So because other scientists had done all this work, it was pretty clear that there must be gaps. You know there's an element with 30 protons - zinc - and you know there's an element with 33 protons - arsenic - so logic suggests there must be a 31 and a 32. These are gallium and germanium, and they weren't discovered for another decade or so after Mendeleev published his table.",
"Basically, the periodic table is set up in such a way that columns of elements are similar and there are repeating patterns of characteristics and properties, so he knew that there were elements missing when the pattern had gaps. He was even able to predict the properties of the missing elements based on the table"
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mc9vo9 | Why do Mars surface images have orange sky? | Well Ive been seeing some images of the Mars surface and I noticed that their sky is not dark with stars like Moon, instead it is orange-ish like [here]( URL_0 ) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Mars has an atmosphere so the sky will look similar to the Earth during the day. You can see that in some of the pictures you linked. However, there is no liquid water on Mars, which means that the atmosphere is very dusty and its that dust that you're seeing in the pictures that have a reddish tint to them. Again, in the pictures with low amounts of dust the sky looks fairly similar to how it does on Earth. Everything on Earth is really wet, including the dirt. Water acts kind of like a glue for dirt, keeping it from turning into dust and getting kicked up into the atmosphere. This means that there is little to no dust in the Earth's atmosphere. Since there is no water in the dirt on Mars, its very easy for it to turn into dust and get picked up by the wind.",
"Mars sky diffraction during the day would appear closer to yellow on its own given the composition of its atmosphere, however Mars is DRY. Dry means dusty. Mars dust is red. Red dust plus yellow atmosphere= orange sky",
"The sky on earth is only dark with stars and the moon at night, when the sun isn't seen. What you're seeing is Mars during the day. Mars has a less dense atmosphere than Earth, so as a result the sky looks like it's a different color. True color images of mars will show a sky that has less *diffraction* than Earth's sky, because earth's sky is more dense. The more dense a sky, the more diffraction. The less dense, the less diffraction. It's sort of like how the sky looks different under 1 foot of water than 10 feet of water!"
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mcah7s | What is an economic bubble? What causes it? | E.G. the dot com bubble. The 2008 housing market bubble. And the recently talked about NFT bubble. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A bubble is when, basically, people start buying something solely because they believe someone else will buy it for more later on en masse without really having any reason for why it will be worth more. This does, indeed, raise the price of the thing. I mean, lots of people are trying to buy it, so sellers raise prices in response. This attracts more buyers. The feedback loop continues and prices climb way out of proportion with any concept of the \"fair value\"* of the thing. Eventually, people realize that, \"hey, maybe paying $2000 for a thing that should really be worth $20 isn't such a good call and I'm likely to lose a ton of money when the bubble bursts.\" The pool of buyers dries up and, usually, everyone panics. The people who bought hoping to sell later all try to sell at once before the price really crashes. This, obviously, crashes the price. The vast majority of people bought in well above fair value (which is likely where the price will settle in the long run) so most people lose a bunch of money trying to sell. *Basically the price that reflects the actual value the thing creates for a buyer.",
"At it's most basic, a bubble is when people buy assets not based on sound valuation but on the belief they'll be able to find somebody who will pay even more than they did. They don't care that the house should only be worth $500k, they'll pay $700k because they're \"certain\" they can sell it for $900k in a few months. At some point, something snaps enough people back to reality that prices begin to fall, then panicked owners scramble to sell, causing a rapid price drop."
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mcaqwx | Why does mold grow on overripe fruits and not while fruits are ripening? What stops the mold from forming at an earlier stage? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Plants defend themselves actively against molds and other pathogens by producing substances thet either kill or doesn't allow to grow the mold, but for this the fruit must be able to communicate with the plant to tell it \"send help\". Once the fruit falls from the tree or is so ripe that the communication paths do not work, pathogens win."
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mcb0o3 | what happens on roads and highways that causes large puddles in specific pockets/spots but not in others? Do civil engineers take this into account? | Earth Science | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Do civil engineers take this into account? Of course! Deep ditches require drainage piping. If simple drainage isn't possible (in many tunnels/underpasses, for example), there will be dedicated pumping systems.",
"Yes, drainage is considered when the road was initially designed. Road sections that flood repeatedly have usually sunk or been poorly maintained over the years and are now no longer draining as intended."
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mcb6dp | what happens when you eat the silica gel packets? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The pellets will absorb moisture quite easily and swell up. This may cause some irritation in your digestion system but most of the time it will just pass harmlessly through. It can however cause constipation in small children. The label \"do not eat\" is not because it is poisonous but rather because it is not intended as food. The small packets may to some people look a bit like candy. But they are not. There is however silica gel which is laced with poison. Some contain a material which changes color depending on its humidity and this is poisonous. But the white silica gel is safe to eat, but not wise.",
"As others have said, eating just one probably wont kill you, but it wont do anything good either. But definitely don't try to eat 25 at once: URL_0",
"Assuming you don't choke on the packet, nothing at all. It's non-toxic, eating it won't harm you. It just says \"Do not eat\" because it's not part of the food, but it's inside the package as if it were. Also I assume the companies figure someone will try to sue for some reason if they don't label it.",
"Nothing. In USA, all things packaged it food have to be \"edible\". There is no nutritional value, but it isn't harmful."
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mcbjj0 | What is the butterfly effect ? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As others have noted, it's the concept that even a relatively minor thing have have a massive impact on the future. But, I'll try to explain it as more of a \"real-world\" scenario. You have to go grocery shopping, and you call to your young daughter to hurry up and get in the car to go with you. But she sees a butterfly and chases it for six seconds before getting in the car. That means you're six seconds later getting on the road. So, the car that would have run the red light ahead of you and just missed you now slams into your car, killing your daughter. Devastated, you end up depressed and getting a divorce. So you never have a second child. Which is too bad, because the great-grandson of that second child would have developed the method to destroy viral cells within the human body. Which would have prevented the next global pandemic. Which kills 17 million people. All because a single butterfly fluttered past in front of your daughter.",
"It’s a math thing. The math that describes certain complex real-world systems is complex enough that it is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. Loading a wind speed in China of 5 mph into your model will give one answer for the weather in Florida a week later. Loading a wind speed in China of 5.00001 mph into your model will give you a *completely different answer*. That’s why weather often feels random. There is nothing random about the causes of weather but tiny differences in initial conditions can have large effects and all those tiny differences are impossible to track. It’s not that the flapping butterfly causes a hurricane but it very well could change when and where one would occur. That’s why weather forecasts have to be so vague. They can’t know all the initial conditions exactly so they talk about probabilities, chances and “conditions being right” for *possible* weather events. People get philosophical about this, but at its core, it’s just math.",
"It comes from chaos theory; another, less colorful phrase is \"sensitive dependence on initial conditions\". Teeny-tiny differences in the state of something would amplify, leading to unpredictable outcomes surprisingly quickly. A meteorologist was working on a very simple computer model of weather. He discovered that when he changed the numbers describing the initial state -- rounding them off to three decimal places -- after a few simulated days, the result was so different that he might as well have started with new random numbers. The graph of his model's output resembled a butterfly, so someone came up with the analogy of a butterfly flapping its wings or not, to illustrate the sort of immeasurable, unknowable difference that would cause an obvious difference like a storm occurring or not at a specific place and time. This is why, for instance, weather predictions are only reliable for a week or so."
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mccdsg | Why aren't all urinals no flush/ no water? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"People here talking about odour don’t understand how sealant works in waterless urinals. It’s rarely ever an issue. There isn’t a solid reason why urinals aren’t all waterless other than it being relatively new (about 30 years) and requires certain plumbing maintenance that can be difficult for older buildings.",
"Because some wastewater systems are over 100 years old in most countries, even the US. And they require the additional water to flush the system to a mainline"
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mcctu3 | Why do companies not purchase debt at debt collector prices and forgive it like Stephen Colbert did every year to massively reduce their tax liabilities? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the same reason why you can't just donate $1 million and save > = $1 million on your taxes - that's not the way the tax system works, and for good reason. The company/individual would purchase the debt at debt collector prices, and they'd be able to deduct the COST TO THEM for the debt off of their taxable income. It's easier to explain in detail with a person so I'll do that. You have $100,000 in taxable income. You decide to buy up $20,000 in debt at debt collector prices and pay $5000 for that. You would be able to deduct that $5000 from your taxable income, so your new taxable income is $95,000. That's in the 22% federal income tax bracket for married, so in actuality you have saved yourself only 22% of that $5000 in taxes owed, or $1100. So you just paid $5000 to \"save\" $1100. Disclaimer: I am not a CPA, and do not rely on internet advice from random strangers (non-CPAs or CPAs) for tax advice. See a professional for tax/financial advice.",
"Consumer debt is purchased, as an asset. It is not purchased as a debt. The negative $15,000 consumer debt becomes a positive $15,000 asset for the company. The older the debt the less money it's worth you can purchase millions in consumer debt for a few hundred. Technically you could make a company worth five million on paper for less than $1500."
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mcdqc3 | Why are we smart, i mean smarter then other animals or living creatures? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Humans have a large brain compared to their body size. Having a large brain has two major downsides: 1. It requires a lot of energy and 2. It takes a long time to develop. For #1, humans have the unique ability to cook our foods. Cooking helps break down foods, making the food easier to digest. Humans don't need to devote as much of our bodies to digestion. This higher energy diet helps support our brain. For #2, human babies are born quite premature because if a baby's head is too big, they wouldn't be able to exit mom's pelvis. It takes quite a long time for a baby to develop into an adult. Our intelligence helps make up for this downside. Farming allows us more food per size of land. Language allows us to pass down knowledge from our ancestors. Tools give us more power than we have with our bodies. All of this allows us to raise our babies and continue reproducing.",
"There are two answers to this: 1) God created an intelligent being with a conscious and complex reasoning for whatever purpose. 2) We evolved from the three fundamental tools of intelligence. These are (in order) access to information, storing it in memory and learning. Organisms that couldn’t process information (**i.e**: sight, sound, touch etc) probably died almost immediately. Organisms that could process information and recollect it in memory would also die rather quickly, but may have been able to reproduce through chance. Lastly being able to process information and learn from it had the highest chance of survival. We are simply beings that have considerably evolved from that ancestor through millions of years.",
"The current scientific consensus leans towards something called the \"Machiavellian ape hypothesis\". Basically, something happened a few million years ago, where pre-human competition started getting really nasty, and the males started outcompeting each other through clever plots and schemes. At which point, the proto-humans who were better at plotting and scheming, and better at seeing through the plots and schemes of the other proto-humans, survived to have more successful children than the ones who were just happy to be monkee. Once that pattern started, becoming the smartest proto-human (and having more kids) just means that your level of vicious genius becomes the baseline for the next generation, so anyone who wants to win has to be *even smarter*. And we're off to the races. Tldr: at some point a few million years ago, shit went all Game of Thrones.",
"We are smart because it was an evolutionary advantage. That's the only real answer here. Smarter humans for whatever reasons were more likely to pass their genes on and so a gradual increase in intelligence resulted."
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mce0kx | Why can't we install small water turbines in California's expansive aqueduct system? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They already do, but... California aqueducts actually *consume* more energy than it creates. Anything created by the water’s potential energy via hydroelectric plants go right into pumping that water up slopes (**i.e:** Tehachapi Mountains).",
"I will add that most people don't really have an understanding of how water (or wind) energy gets converted into electricity. Slightly complex version: Whenever you spin a turbine, if you have no electricity flowing out of it you only need to overcome the inertia of the machine itself. However as you start increasing the electrical energy being output by the generator, you will have a counter force that works against your mechanical torque to slow down the generator and you need to push harder to get it to spin. Easier version: the more energy you want to get out, the more the generator fights you. This put a hard limit into how much energy you can extract from a given pipe.",
"Energy pulled out of the water is energy that isn't available to get the water wherever it is going. If you don't particularly care about the water getting downstream, hydro is \"free\" energy. But in an aqueduct system we do care about getting the water to its destination."
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mce58z | Why does beards exist only on man? | If beards were necessary for protecting the face, woman should also have developed a beard, but it never happened at least as strong as a man's beard. Is it something visual? Or it has any function that was important back then on man but not on woman? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Beards aren't thought to be for protecting the face. The two main theories seem to be that (a) beards are a secondary sexual characteristic that indicates either sexual maturity or dominance to women, and (b) that beards are a side-effect of another selection process that themselves serve no particular purpose. If a is true, and beards are an indicator of sexual maturity, then they're unnecessary on women because women have plenty of other indicators already. It would take an extra step of evolution for beards to appear on women, which hasn't happened. If a is true but beards are an indicator of dominance (ie, the better the beard, the better the man) then they're unnecessary on women because on the evolutionary time scale, the men compete for the women's attention; the women aren't competing, so need no sign of dominance over other women. If b is true then beards are just a thing that exist with no particular purpose. There is reasonable evidence for both theories. Beard growth is moderated by a molecule called dihydrotestosterone, which is produced in the body from testosterone. The same molecule is also heavily involved in other important aspects of male-ness, particularly maturation of the male genitalia. This means men capable of growing good beards likely also have good reproductive qualities like high sperm count, and will, on average, be more reproductively successful. So even if beards don't serve their own purpose, they're selected for accidentally by virtue of selecting for other traits caused by the same genes. Women have *way* less testosterone than men, so don't normally grow beards, but disorders that cause significant increases in testosterone can produce beards on women.",
"It’s all a matter of hormones Women develop excessive body or facial hair due to higher-than-normal levels of androgens, including testosterone. All females produce androgens, but the levels typically remain low. Certain medical conditions can cause a woman to produce too many androgens.",
"Some women do grow beards. Not all men can. It depends more on hormones, ancestry, regional climate... It’s more likely early humans DID have beards and grew winter coats and shed them just like animals and later evolved NOT to have them.",
"It’s possible that men have beards due to [sexual selection]( URL_0 ). This means the purpose of a beard is to make men more attractive to women, a bit like a peacock’s tail. Of course, humans are far more complex than peafowl and there is far more variation in what we find attractive about the opposite sex. Attractiveness is also heavily influenced by societal trends. Therefore, beards are no longer as important as they may once have been for early humans."
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mceg4v | Difference Between Nihilism and Absurdism | How are this 2 different? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nihilism: nothing has intrinsic meaning or value; believing in anything is pointless. Absurdism: see nihilism, but add the existence of Belgium.",
"Absurdism is part of nihilism. Nihilism is accepting existence is meaningless, and absurdism is accepting this fact, and also accepting that humans always look for a meaning of their life (without finding one because it doesn't exist) , which are contradictory and absurd. For example It's in opposition with existentialism that also accepts the meaninglessness of life but say that individuals are able to give a meaning to their own life."
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mcet1g | Why is it bad to unplug a computer when it’s updating it’s BIOS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The BIOS is the first thing the motherboard accesses in order to start up and eventually access some storage device to load the operating system from. When overwriting this firmware, if something happened that leaves the firmware in an unusable state, such as a power loss while the firmware is still being overwritten, it's possible to end up with a firmware that is incapable of functioning This will lead to a useless motherboard, except in some cases where the chip holding the firmware can be replaced physically.",
"Imagine the code like a bunch of tetris pieces filling up a square leaving no empty spaces. Because there are no spaces, to update pieces, you'd have to pull the old ones out, rearrange them, and put them back so there are no empty spaces again During this process you have to keep those tiles outside of the box. The area outside of the box, however, only exist while the computer has power. Unplugging the computer deletes blocks that are essential and necessary, but were just out while they found a new place to fit in"
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mcf2o1 | How can drugs such as Methadone have such a long half-life without giving you an overdose? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Half life and overdose levels aren't quite related. If you're given a single, safe dose of the drug at a time (letting the drug completely clear from your body between doses), you'll never overdose on it, no matter how long the half-life is. Similarly, the half-life is irrelevant to how much of the drug is needed for an overdose, although a short half-life would also shorten the duration of the overdose."
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mcfl2m | How do pimples go away on their own if not popped? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are some good examples here of why you would want to leave it alone. If it's a normal zit, your body will eventually kill the bacteria and expel it like dead skin. It takes less time than you imagine. But there are reasons not to as well. If they're caused because a piece of foreign body (hair, dirt, skin) in your skin, then there is a chance it won't come on its own or will get really infected. And even then, please use alcohol and sterile tools. It's easy to infect these bad boys. There's a reason why 'doctor pimple popper' makes a crazy amount as a specialized dermatologist. Some of her clients have bigger issues than what I'm talking about, but some were people who were told to leave these things alone. And they would for far too long. And if you do happen to get to a point that it's this bad, please seek professional help. My wife (would kill me for posting this) gets bad back acne and it took until I came into the picture to look at it and say.... that's not normal. She had cysts in her back, very close to the skin. They just kept coming back. They would get knicked by something and would come right back. These had to be seen by a doctor to have the cyst sacks removed. Sorry if I wrote a lot, but please please listen when I say this. Regular pimples will go away eventually on their own but sometimes they are not regular. Some require intervention and some require doctor intervention. If you have questions, please go see a dermatologist and not listen to that saying as fact.",
"If not messed with, they will eventually dry up, come to the surface and fall out in your sleep or in the shower or just whenever. Basically just like dead skin coming off by it self.",
"They just heal. Pimples are an immune response to a bacterial infection. White blood cells attack the bacteria, kill it, and turn to pus. When left alone, more healthy white blood cells come along and break down the pus. The surrounding skin returns to normal and it’s healed."
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mcftl0 | Why so many programs are still 32-bit | Many programs i use on my computer ( steam for example ) are still using 32 bits according to task manager. Why is that ? Why haven't evertything moved to x86-64 ? According to a quick google search, the last 32-bits cpu was sold in 2002... so it can't be for compatibility reasons, can it ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The most important one is likely that there simply aren't reasons to produce a 64 bit implementation. Nothing's stopping a 64 bit machine from running 32 bit software. Why eat the cost of rewriting your software if the actual functionality will be, basically, unaffected?"
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mcgeln | Why/how does radiation therapy not just cause more cancer? | Isn't radiation a known way to damage cells and increase the potential for cancer? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Radiation therapy disproportionately damages cells in the process of dividing. Since cancer cells are basically always dividing, this makes them more vulnerable. Additionally, the radiation is targeted so as to attempt to only hit the tumor without damaging nearby tissues.",
"It does, but with cancer or bad mutations, the cells usually have a self destruct trigger. If the cell has too much DNA damage, it will kill itself. This works 99% of the time, the exception of course is if the self destruct mechanism is damaged.. then you get cancer, cancer. So when you irradiate, you're kind of hoping the cells do what they're supposed to for that 99% of the time, and sometimes it does cause more cancer, rarely happens but yea.",
"You can think of a cell's DNA like software. A small amount of damage can lead to bugs. Our cells are fitted out with tools to manage and repair bugs, and other tools that will cause the whole program to just shut down if the bugs are too critical or extensive. Cancer happens when you get a very specific set of bugs, in very specific order. Starting with the cell's bug-detection toolkit. The kinds of DNA damage we encounter in our day-to-day life (for example UV damage) generally don't cause major damage to the software. Instead, they cause slight occasional changes, spread throughout the code, which can lead to bugs. Radiation therapy, on the other hand, is targeted, heavy DNA damage. It doesn't cause small errors throughout the program. It straight up scrambles the software so it won't even start."
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mcguid | How does the Streisand effect work? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Step 1: Someone criticises someone else. Not many people notice. Step 2: The person being criticised dislikes being criticised, and attempts to prevent the criticism by seeking means of silencing the critic. Step 3: News of the critic being silenced spreads way more than the original criticism did. Step 4: People become curious about why the critic was silenced, leading to way more people knowing about the flaws of the person being criticised than would have known had that person never tried to silence criticism.",
"When somebody tries really hard to keep something hidden, a lot of people conclude that therefore it must be juicy or otherwise interesting, which makes it more likely to make it into the news or be discussed. Some may spread the word out of pure principle, like if they think speech is being censored, even without having a personal interest.",
"It's happening on Reddit right now. Reddit removed a Spectator article from r/UKPolitics that briefly discussed Aimee Knight, a controversial figure that Reddit is said to have hired. That removal sparked a site wide protest in which a bunch of subs have gone private. The Streisand effect suggests that by removing the article, Reddit actually cause the controversy to explode.",
"Sometimes making a big deal about something creates more attention than simply ignoring the problem. Case in point, Beyonce's funny picture or the guy who tried to delete video of his assault off of reddit"
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mchcni | Addressing Concerns Regarding Reddit | Allegations have come to light regarding the recently hired Reddit admin, who shall not be named, that she willingly associates with child abusers and rapists. Additionally, there is evidence that Reddit is abusing their platform to stifle legitimate discussion of these allegations. More information can be found [here]( URL_0 ). Given the seriousness of this issue, we are joining other subreddits in asking for Reddit's administration to explain their justification for hiring her. We would also like to see her removed, as we feel that her employment with Reddit stands against the values that Reddit users believe in. If Reddit does not remedy this situation and/or offer an adequate explanation for their actions by 2021/03/26 12:00 GMT, ELI5 will be set to Private in protest. We hope our users will support our actions and stand in solidarity with us and the other subreddits that are looking for answers. Edit: please do not award this post. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"[ URL_1 ]( URL_0 ) Hi Everyone, mission accomplished, we will be unsticky-ing this post now"
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mcihk5 | How do we really know that animals express and feel emotions? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"from the way they interact and react to their enviroment. By looking at how an animal reacts to its surroundings over time you are able to deduce what emotions arise. If you mean literally how do humans detect emotions in different species: humans are hard wired to be extremely sensitive to changes in mood and expression due to how we evolved. we are sensitive enough that we can detect these changes in other creatures once familiar with their habits. if you looked up a random photo of a person on google right now you would be able to look at them amd have a basic idea of their feelings at that moment. as a cat person i can tell you i could probably do the same with a cat picture.",
"We don't really know. Just like how none of us really know if humans do those things. But what we do know is that animals seem to physically respond to emotional situations in ways similar to us, and that they only act that way in situations that would cause those emotions."
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mciqru | Why do people say bananas give you energy but people also say they make you sleep better? Don't they contradict? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The overwhelming majority of health claims that people make about food are made up nonsense. However, your example might not necessarily be bullshit. All food gives you energy. Thats its entire function. You're taking in chemicals that your body can use as fuel to make energy. Its also possible that bananas contain a particular chemical that aids in sleep. Instead of making you sleepy, it helps you stay asleep, or keeps you in REM for longer, or whatever. Measuring sleep quality is kind of difficult outside of a lab, so we often rely on people's stories for that kind of data. Turkey is a good example of this. Turkey will absolutely give you energy. Its a nutrient dense food that your body can run off of. It also contains tryptophan, which in sufficiently high doses will make you very sleepy."
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mciqz5 | an odds calculation to me | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's easiest to think in terms of the odds that the event DOESN'T happen. That would be 8191/8192. For the event to not happen in 8192 tries, it would have to NOT happen 8192 tires in a row. The odds of that are (8191/8192)^8192. This happens to be about 36%. So the odds that it DOES happen are 100%-36%=64%. You'll find that this holds true with any odds.",
"So, if you do the event one time, what are the odds? Well, we know that: 1/8192 What if you do it twice? Your odds of hitting it both times is 1/8192 * 1/8192 The number here isn't important, so I won't calculate it. The takeaway is that **independent events are calculated by multiplying**. Next concept: There are two options: **For any event A, either A happens or A does not happen**, and also **If you know the odds of A happening, you can subtract those odds from 1 to get the odds of A not happening.** Now we can start putting the pieces together. You're interested in the following: > What are the odds of at least one successful encounter? Well, right off the bat, that'd be a bitch to calculate, right? Any of the 8192 events could be successful, and the math looks like it'd be really snarly. Not so! Recall concept 2. Your two events are: > At least one encounter is successful and > **No encounters are successful** That second one is the key. We know the odds of a successful encounter, right? So we know the odds of an *un*successful encounter: 1 - 1/8192 = 8191/8192 = 0.99988 Two unsuccessful events would be: 0.99988 * 0.99988 because of concept 1, right? So we have 8192 such events: 0.99988 ^ 8192 = 0.37 So, if you do the event 8192 times, you will get NO successful encounters 37% of the time. Now. Either you get NO successful encounters, or AT LEAST ONE. 1 - 0.37 = 0.63 Therefore, you have a 63% chance of at least one success.",
"Because the \"do the action 8192 times\" is different from doing it once with 1/8192 odds. Imagine you have 8192 boxes, and only 1 has a prize. If you only get to pick 1 box- that's 1/8192 odds. Now if you had that same scenario, but instead of picking once you got to reset and pick again -8192 times- that's significantly different odds. The math behind it is: 1- (8191-8192) ^ 8192 = ~64% Basically, this is calculating the inverse of all the times you DON'T get it right raised to the power of n (8192) because that's how many times you tried. Now, Googling shows that this is likely about shiny Pokémon, so if you're trying to get a shiny, and the odds of the Pokémon BEING shiny is 1/8192, then once you've seen 8192 Pokémon, you still only have a 64% of having gotten that shiny."
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mcjtos | Why we don't use nuclear power to power a rocket | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nuclear power is very good at producing power over a long time. However if you try to make a lot of power, as is needed by a rocket engine, there are quite a lot of issues. Even chemical rocket engines have huge issues making sure they do not melt from the heat and often need multiple cooling systems and alloys with high melting points. In order to make a nuclear reactor output similar power levels you would have to heat the fuel rods up to those temperatures at which point they would be molten or even vaporized. And there are certain issues with that when dealing with highly radioactive materials. But you are not the first one to think of this. There was project Orion which was an attempt at using nuclear bombs as rocket propellant. You would drop a bomb which would immediately detonate and propel the rocket forward. But nuclear test bans put an end to that project. There were also projects attempting to build nuclear powered jet engines which allows the temperatures in the nuclear cores to be much lower then in a rocket engine. These could then be used in long distance bombers allowing them to fly around the world looking for their target. This also developed into a concept of forgoing the bombs and just fly around with an unshielded nuclear reactor to irradiate the landscape which would do more damage then dropping nuclear bombs. There were also concepts using these engines in cruise missiles allowing them to fly for months between refuels and it is possible that Russia have developed this already.",
"Various designs have been proposed, and some have been built and tested. You can use a reactor to heat up a fluid for a rocket, or to generate power for an ion drive. They couldn't produce enough thrust to take off from the Earth's surface, so they'd only be used for getting from low-Earth orbit (LEO) to ... wherever. Thus far, no project has needed nuclear propulsion, so we've gone with chemical rockets or solar-powered ion drives. URL_0 URL_1",
"We do! At least, we use nuclear power to power spacecraft. Many modern (and older) probes and craft are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (radioactive materials decay, provide radiation, and that radiation is turned into useful energy). This includes the old Voyager probes up to the Perseverance rover which landed on Mars last month. RTGs are kind of like very long-term batteries. They don't produce a huge amount of power, but they produce it fairly consistently (or, at least, predictably), are pretty reliable, and can last quite a long time. They also aren't dependent on the Sun (as with solar power, which is the other main source of energy for spacecraft and probes; the ISS is powered entirely by solar energy, with batteries to keep it going during the 45-minute \"nights\"). Nuclear fission reactors (what we tend to think of in terms of nuclear power) could be used to power spacecraft, but are a lot more complicated, with more moving parts, fuel issues, and generally produce way more power than any craft tends to need. They are also likely to be big and heavy. For now, at least, it isn't worth it to use them. ---- But this is all about powering the craft and probes (keeping their computers running, radios working, lights on, wheels turning etc.). None of it is used to actually get craft to accelerate while in space; to make them go. Accelerating spacecraft requires *propellant*; in order to get the craft to start moving one way you have to get something to move the other way (and the change in speed you get is related to the speed and mass of whatever you threw out; the faster it is thrown out, or the heavier it is, the bigger a change in speed you get). This is where rockets come in. They burn fuel and fling it out the back. There are ideas for how to do this using nuclear power; \"radioisotope rockets\" would use radioactive decay (like with RTGs) to heat the propellant and get it to fly out the back. Nuclear thermal rockets would use a nuclear reactor to do the same thing (heat propellant and fling it out the back). NTRs were theorised back in the 40s, and while both types are under active research, neither has quite got to the point where it becomes worth it over conventional/chemical fuels. But maybe in a few years we will see some results in this area.",
"Some thing no one else has mentioned yet is even now about 1 in 20 rockets explode on there way up. If you had a nuclear reactor on a rocket that did this it would make Chernobyl meltdown look like a minor incident that was not even worth the local news.",
"Because nuclear materials are among the heaviest on earth and the amount of shielding is also incredibly heavy. Lifting stuff into space is priced per kg. Also you need instantaneous power etc which nuclear can't provide. Not the best eli5 but hope it helps.",
"One issue is when the rocket crashes, who pays for the cleanup? There are specific launch sites around the world and people use them to launch stuff into specific orbits. But they don’t launch straight up into the air into space, they fly over different countries. Like accidentally throwing a ball into your neighbors yard, you don’t want to accidentally crash a nuclear powered rocket all over your neighbors countryside.",
"Rockets need something to throw away, so nuclear energy would only be useful to heat up propellant and make it shoot out faster. Then your only problem is actually putting a large enough fission source in to provide enough heat in a short time. And that’s very hard since rockets have little space and don’t like mass that isn’t fuel. If you want to use nuclear fuel itself as a propellant... well a conventional rocket prefers small molecules, ion thrusters prefer big atoms, but nuclear fission products are a very mixed bag so to actually turn them into any useful propellant you need lots of machine and lots of time. Lots of machine probably makes you way heavy but well nobody has built something like that yet so who knows. But you’d likely be very limited in how much propellant you can make at a time, so your max thrust would be quite small. Small thrust is ok for maintaining orbits over a long time but you want big thrust for taking off from earth or for big changes in orbit, so basically everything a launch vehicle (commonly called rocket) does. So it’s a complex thing, but one that could work. We just don’t do it because there are simpler ways. Rockets are still pretty crude after all. That may change with time and we could see weirder concepts like this in the distant future. If you want to know why we don’t throw nuclear bombs out the back of a rocket to ride the blast... well we usually start with the safe solutions first"
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mckab6 | How does Cable TV work? The actual cable. | Is every channel broadcast on the same wire at the same time? How do they not just become a jumbled, unreadable mess? Does it have individual wires inside for each channel? It amazes me that they can fit 100s of channels with video and sound in one cable at the same time. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So the cable that comes into your home is usually capable of handling signals from 5MHz to 1GHz. That gives the cable company 995MHz of bandwidth to play with. This 995MHz is split usually into chunks about 6MHz wide, just like over the air TV. The signals in this case are transmitted as electrical signals down the cable instead of using the atmosphere as a medium for radio waves. In this 6MHz chunk will be something called a transport stream. Normally with compression we can fit two HD channels or six SD channels into each of these 6MHz chunks. Each video channel being sent in this chunk will have its data being broken up into little packets and given an identifier number to say which TV channel it belongs to. When you first set up a cable box it will either scan the cable to figure out which channels are on which of these chunks or it will download the channel index and the frequencies over the cable network. When the channels are being sent, the cable company has a box called a multiplexer or \"muxer\". It takes a packet from one channel, a packet from the next, and so on, going through each of the channels and sending their packets in turn so that each gets a certain amount of space in the transport stream. When you want to watch channel 200 your cable box looks up its channel index to see which 6MHz chunk that channel 200 belongs to. It then sets the tuner to that chunk's frequency, decodes the transport stream, picks out the packets with channel 200 on them (we call this demultiplexing or demuxing), assembles them into a continuous stream of video and audio, decodes the packets into video and audio data, decompresses the video and audio data, synchronizes them, and subsequently displays them."
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mckqau | How do co-ops work? | I understand how buying a condo or a house works, but not a co-op? What does it mean that you are buying shares of the company instead? what happens at the end of your mortgage term? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In a condo you own a deed to the your actual apartment and then have to work with the condo board to pay for all of the common areas and upkeep. But, you can sell the deed to the unit you own to anyone you want. In a co-op you don't own your unit. You own part of the company that owns the entire building. The mortgage that you take out pays for your share of that company. Once your mortgage is paid off you continue to own your share of the company. One big difference is that the co-op board can choose who you are allowed to sell your share of the company to. So, they get to interview any potential new neighbors and approve or reject them."
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mcks20 | Why do mains water pipes never need cleaning? | If you've worked in a bar you know the relatively short connection between cellar and bar needs frequent cleaning. So why does the connection and internal pipes in your home never require any cleaning, despite providing potable water? I'm aware that throughput in the pipe an chlorination play a role, but working in a new hospital plagued with legionalla it's amazing to think my Victorian house is ticking away with decades old pipes without an issue. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's chlorination but most water systems will add a small amount of something called orthophosphoric acid. This acid is a pretty benign acid and is used frequently as a food acid. As it passes through the mains pipes it reacts with the metal of the pipe to form a layer of metal phosphate. This metal phosphate layer is highly resistant to things growing on them and sticking to them. It also prevents any future corrosion of the pipes below the surface of the phosphate layer. Also the pipes are always kept under pressure. Even if there's a leak into the environment from the pipes, water is always flowing out of the leak, nothing can get back in."
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mcm9f0 | Why is it harmful to your eyes to look straight at the sun, but looking at the sun indirectly is fine? | When I look directly at the sun, it is harmful to my eyes, but if I look at the sky with the sun in view but not directly, somehow it’s fine? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your eye will attempt to focus on the sun. Imagine a magnifying glass, the sun, and an ant... when you focus the light just right, then poof. ☀️🔎🐜💥 ☀️👁💥",
"It's like sticking you hand in a roaring fire vs. Just holding it out from a few feet away. Eyes aren't built to sustain direct contact with so much light, and it just burns out your eyes, but the amount of light bouncing off an object into your eye is barely a fraction of that same energy"
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mcmvte | If it’s all about calories in vs out, why is Keto so recommended | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the latest fad and works because it forces people to skip over the foods that are the most calorie dense, simple carbs.",
"As a PhD in Exercise Physiology, I have to say using the word “recommended” is inaccurate and misleading. Calories in/calories out certainly is a good way of explaining at a base level how metabolism works, but it fails to include things like muscle mass, fiber types, types of exercise, sleep, caffeine intake, etc. your body uses carbohydrates as its primary source of energy; “fat burns in the flame of glycolysis.” By building muscle mass, you enhance the efficiency of glucose metabolism which, in turn, leads to more fat being “burned”. This takes place regardless of your diet and there is minimal research that definitively shows high carb vs high fat diets being superior to one another. The most important component in your diet is always going to be protein; fat and carbs are used to fill out the rest. Based on my research, generally the best diet breakdown for anyone who is training is going to be around 50% carbs, 30-35% protein, and 20-25% fat, but it really does come down to individual preference.",
"Your body stores energy in three \"cups\": the carb cup, the fat cup, and the muscle cup. When it needs energy, it first takes from the carb cup, but if that's empty then it takes from the fat cup, and finally it will take from the muscle cup. The keto diet is designed to keep the carb cup empty so it has to take from the fat cup. A non-keto diet with similar calorie intake would add to the carb cup, which would then be taken from, so not as much would be used from the fat cup.",
"One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is that being in ketosis can significantly reduce hunger",
"Well \"calories in\" is measured at the bloodstream level, not the mouth level. Eating keto starves the body of simple carbs and sugars. This forces the body to make energy less efficiently from fat reserves. While there are available calories in the protein you eat, it's harder to access.",
"It's another fad diet, recommended because it's \"cool\" and \"different\". Keto was sometimes recommended by real medical professional for things other than weight loss. Such as epilepsy (before we invented proper medications) and has been suggested to help with other brain issues. But it was never about weight loss. This fact is ignored by people trying to sell diet books/plans/merch."
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mcmzsp | Why is cold water or ice water more refreshing than lukewarm water or hot water? Why do humans prefer cold water to hot water even though hot water still hydrates us? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think we prefer to drink fresh water. Water that sits in the sun is hot and stagnant. (Danger! Germs!) We’ve learned that’s not good. Drinking water is a good way to cool down. I think that can as to a refreshing sensation when you are overheated. When it comes to beverages - not just water - temperature affects texture and taste. Coca cola fresh out of the fridge has a unique texture, very smooth."
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mcnav5 | Why can’t cameras and screens reproduce colors that are the same as real life? And why are they so different between devices? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Screens can only produce so many colors, and cameras can only capture so many. Most screens and cameras have 3 channels (Red, Green and Blue, or RGB) and on most screens they can be any 8-bit value (between 0 and 256), which when you do the math adds up to 16.8 million colors. It's different between devices because some are built to be more color accurate (and more expensive as a result) and in doing so will can have a higher bit-depth, usually 10 or 12 bits. And there are things called color spaces, which is essentially the map of colors you have, even with the standard 3 channel 8 bit set up, those bits can correspond to different colors, depending on how you need the scene to look. Night/dark scenes especially use a lot more blue colors, so you can take the standard Adobe sRGB color space and shift it to blue to get better color than normal."
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mco8iq | How do doctors scan for allergies? Like the specific what are they looking for in the body and how. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When I took an allergy test as a child they had a bunch of what looked like needles that had different common allergens on the end. They basically touched the needles to my skin and waited. After a few minutes if the area on the skin reacted,by turning red/swollen like a bug bite then that would be an indicator that you are allergic to that substance. That was probably 30 years ago.",
"Disclaimer: The last time I was put through this process I was a kid, so it may be different now. To test what I was allergic to I was put in a room with a nurse and she had tinctures of all different kinds of allergens in them in the form of a liquid. She had me hold my arms out and she dropped just a bit of each one in it’s own spot and the ones that make the skin red and irritated are deemed to be the things you are allergic to. I am now wondering myself if there are other methods of doing this, especially for more severe types of allergies such as anaphylaxis.",
"It's not a scan, it's a skin test - they prick your skin with needles and put a bit of the possible allergen in the spot, then watch to see if your skin reacts (with redness or a raised spot).",
"There's two tests I'm familiar with. There's a blood test and a scratch test. The blood test they draw your blood and expose it to allergens. The scratch test they will apply a series of allergens to your skin and see what gives you hives. The scratch test URL_0"
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mcolgy | Misanthropy | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Basically a hatred for humanity. Misanthropes are people that despise human cultures, societies, behaviors, and the impacts those things cause on the world around them. It generally requires an astronomical degree of ego and pretended intellectual superiority to be a true misanthrope. The opposite of misanthropy would be philanthropy, which is a desire to help people out of love and kindness."
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mcosmb | Why does a car battery with barely any use die if I don't use the car for a half a year. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's a thing called parasitic draw, all electronics in the car have a very minute constant draw and over time it drains the battery. Also, shifting in temperature, natural decay and other chemical reactions causes the chemicals in the battery to lose energy over time. Charging the battery revitalizes the chemicals and keeps the energy in.",
"Batteries self-discharge. Electricity doesn't like being all bottled up. The battery has barriers inside to keep a bunch of electrons on one side and hardly any on the other. But they seep through eventually and the charge equalizes, killing the battery. Then when lead acid batteries run low, crystals form on the inside which degrades them and keeps them from charging up again. It happens pretty fast. You should always keep car batteries, and any lead acid batteries, charged to prevent this."
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mcp1a4 | ()Why do cameras and eyes have to focus | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"cameras and eyes both uses lenses to redirect and concentrate light from particular object to your eye or camera matrix. in your eye lens can deform to catch and concentrate light coming from different distance, in cameras they move lenses to achieve that."
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mcpgph | The currently Suez Situation | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The Suez Canal is one of the most import sea routes in the world as it allows ships to bypass the treacherous horn of Africa (south of South Africa) when traveling from Europe to Asia and vice versa. Billions in shipping go through Suez. But some idiot went and beached his cargo ship blocking the entire canal and getting him out is proving to be extremely difficult. In the meanwhile commercial shipping is backing up on both sides of the canal while a couple of tug boats and a bucket loader are working desperately to get him unstuck. It's hilarious, yet a massive problem..."
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mcpxrx | Why does gardening without gloves dry your hands so much? What is happening there is it just that dirt is dry and suck moisture or is there anything else involved? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"If the soil is wet, it will dehydrate hands by removing surface oils. If soil is dry, it will dehydrate hands by absorbing surface oils and moisture. If soil is abrasive, it will dehydrate hands by scrubbing off surface oils and damaging the skin."
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mcpzcc | Why can’t universe expansion be explained by... | The fact that subatomic particles are popping into existence and out of existence all the time in empty space? Wouldn’t the temporary presence of untold numbers of particles exert some influence on expansion? I haven’t heard any documentary or publication talk about this idea. Is it dumb? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Virtual particles, the particles you are referring to here, aren't real. They arise as a mathematical trick in QFT. But even if they were real what would the effects be? Well they are particles with mass so total mass of the universe would increase. If mass increases so does gravity and we should see a slowing of expansion, not acceleration."
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mcr24h | How do they put sand inside those full/solid glass hourglasses? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When they're made there's a hole on the top and the bottom. Notice how almost all hourglasses have something covering the top and the bottom? They're mainly there to cover that hole. It's also possible to melt the glass again and close up that hole, but hardly anyone bothers with that."
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mcsblj | Why is it hard to urinate after sex? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because of the refractory period. For men at least, once you orgasm, you enter a refractory period that pretty much prevents it from happening again for a period. Because your testicles can only produce so much semen at a time, the body has a natural limit on how much it will let you release in a short amount of time. Otherwise, although rare, you could potentially hurt yourself by overdoing more than your body can produce. So your penile tract essentially tenses up to an extent sorta like when you clench your anus shut. This prevents you from cumming again too soon. But the tension also makes it more difficult to urinate as well, because your body is still tensing up the muscles there and blocking the path. You have to either wait it out or try to relax your body yourself to untense and allow yourself to pee. Some people are better at it than others. And some people don't even have a refractory period which is why some guys can cum multiple times. Although it is possible to have a refractory period normally and still cum more than once during a period of extreme sexual sensation. As far as women go, i couldn't speak for that one as I'm not a woman. Women can have multiple orgasms and I'm not sure if they have any trouble urinating after sex or not so."
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mcseig | What is RAM and what does it do? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Random Access Memory. (Wich means, \"read/write any cell you want\") It's the \"shortterm memory\" of your computer. Your harddrive is very slow, so programs you want to execute are loaded into the RAM and then read from there into the CPU to prevent delays when running the program. There is an even faster (but smaller) memory closer to the CPU (the Cache) so it's the middle sized middle fast memory. It's important to have one big enough if you want to run several programs at the same time without slowing the computer down, and some programs have a big RAM demand alone The RAM is \"volatile\" wich means it loses all content when it's turned off",
"You're taking an open-book, open-notes math test. The first question on the test requires a specific formula. You know it is in the textbook, but you don't know where. So, you look through the book's index to find what page it is on. Then you find the page and start reading until you find the formula, and the information on how to use it. Three questions later, you're again asked a question that requires the same formula. But you've absentmindedly forgotten it, and where it is in the book. So you repeat the same, time consuming process of finding it and remembering how to use it. That's a hard disk. It contains all the information you need to access, but getting that information out of it takes time. You have a blank notebook next to you, where you work through the problems. When you look up the formula the second time, you jot it down in the notebook as well. Which is good, because the 5th, 6th, and 10th problems on the test all required that formula as well. When you're done with the test, the information you jotted down is no longer particularly useful, so you tear out the sheets, and throw them away. That's RAM. It keeps your place within the problem you're currently working on, and temporarily stores information you pulled out of your text book. The information is quick and easy to find. It's useful for the immediate task at hand, but you have no long-term need for it.",
"Temporary and easily accessible storage space for what the computer is working on right now. Kind of like your desk (RAM) v.s. bookshelf or library (hard drive)."
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mcsgnh | Float vs double | Hi, currently studying first year in IT. I dont really understand the diffference between float and double, and when to use which. Thank you for the replies beforehand. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A double is a float with twice the precision. Say a float can handle 6-7 significant digits. eg 0.123456 x 10^whatever A double would be able to handle 15-16 significant digits. eg 0.123456789012345 x 10^whatever. Say a float takes up 32bits, a double would take up 64 bits. If you need 15-16 digits, like if you were doing really precise calculations and had memory to spare use a double. If you're short on memory and don't really need it to be that exact use a float.",
"Double does the same exact thing as afloat, bug it is more precise and can deal with much larger numbers, however it uses twice the memory Depends on what you need, most of the time it really makes no difference, so you might as well use the smaller one, if you need more precision or larger numbers, go with double"
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mctxsz | The difference between understeer and just going too fast to turn around a corner. Aren't these effectively the same thing? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Understeer happens when the force on the front wheels overpowers the grip. The faster you're going before turning into the corner, the more grip your tires will need in order to turn that momentum in another direction. If the grip is too low on the front tires, understeer. If the grip is too low in the back, you get oversteer, aka drifting. In short: yeah same thing, as long as you include the possibility of under OR oversteer. Btw braking too hard can also cause both of these. If you apply enough pressure with the brakes to overcome the grip of the tires, they'll lock up and stop spinning, causing the car to slide in whichever direction it's going.",
"No, it isn't the same thing. A car has 4 tires that contact the ground. If the car is moving straight ahead - the tires are generally rotating and there is almost no slip between the tires and the contact patch. Turning at high speeds will cause the tires to not only rotate but also slide across the ground. A \"balanced\" car will have fairly equal sliding on all 4 tires. It looks a bit like a drift meaning the car slides sideways more or less equally. An understeer is when the front tires slide more than the back tires. The effect of this is that the car doesn't \"turn in\" enough into the corner ie the car points to the outside of the corner. An oversteer is when the back tires slide more than the front tires. The effect of this is that the car turns in too much ie the car points towards the inside of the corner. Too much oversteer results in a spin. You are correct that one cause (not the only cause) of understeer is too much speed entering the corner but the term is used to describe how the car is behaving in that situation."
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mcuakj | why plant based milk can be stored for almost a year but once opened has to be consumed within 7 days? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In the manufacturing process, it’s heated and sterilised then packaged in a sealed and airtight container. As soon as you open it, fresh air gets in, which refreshes the oxygen in the container and allows it to start spoiling. Oxygen is the main thing that makes things go bad. I’ll be honest, if you open it and pour a tiny bit out, it’ll only let a tiny bit of oxygen in - it’ll probably be okay for longer than 7 days. But since at that point the manufacturer cannon ensure that it will be okay after a week, they tell you to use it within that week. Hope that helped.",
"This isn't specific to plant-based milks but all milks (and other foods too) that have been sterilized at high temperatures. Once you open the package it is no longer sterile, and any microorganisms that have gotten in can then start spoiling the product."
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mcut4m | How does salt "bring out" flavours of other food? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, salt surpresses bitter flavours and enhances sweetness. In higher concentrations brings out savour flavours and suppresses sweetness. See here URL_0"
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mcv7zj | Why can’t people who are in danger of drowning just do the starfish thing and float on their backs? Why do they have to tread water? | I constantly see depictions in movies and documentaries of a person getting dragged out to sea/having to abandon ship who isn’t a strong swimmer, so they invariably tread water until they get tired and then drown. I get that it’s a panicky situation but surely if you have a bit of warning (i.e. you’re on a boat that is sinking) you might think of this? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Two reasons... Not everyone is as buoyant as each other. People with a lower body fat percentage and a higher muscle density won't float as well as the opposite body type. Floating comfortably is only possible in still water. If you're in the ocean you will be getting pushed around by waves and currents.",
"So theres a couple of things here. Drowning is usually a lot quieter than hollywood makes it seem. I cant think of a time when someone was drowning and their arms were waving over their head and splashing like crazy. Typically people are struggling so hard to keep their head up that their arms and legs are underwater working like crazy. Its scary how quiet it can actually be. When I was a lifeguard I saw kids start to go down within arms reach of their parents and their parents had no idea until we caught them. Not all people are comfortable in water and the idea of just laying there and breathing normally makes sense. It's called fight or flight, not lay there and take it for a reason. Laying on your back is a very vulnerable position and that's hard to achieve if you feel like something is trying to kill you. But,if you watch swimming lessons, they spend a great deal of time trying to get people comfortable with water and just doing the dead mans float. Once someone is comfortable enough to lay there and float, then you know the panic is gone and you can build from there. In a calm body of water, floating on your back is pretty simple for most people. In open water or a busy pool it can be a bit more difficult as water pushes over your face constantly. And finally we have cramps. If you're swimming or treading water you can have a muscle lock up. Those are extremely painful and will stop you in your tracks. At the same time you'll ball up and floating isnt really possible. More advanced people can still manage to wait it out and stay above water, but for a lot of people it can cause them to drown.",
"once the water gets in your mouth you cant control yourself and you start fighting the water like it is the man who you hate the most",
"floating on your back works in relatively calm water when you aren't wearing much, it works less well when there are waves or you are wearing clothes that pull you down. Also the whole humans float thing only works for some people not all. Your bones and muscles are heavier than water while your fat is lighter than water. The ratio of those in your body determine how wether you will sink or float. Your bone density tends to decrease with old age. After the age of about 50 you start to float better and better. Muscles really tend to drag you down. Bodybuilders are less buoyant than couch potatoes. Body-fat helps you float. if you don't have much of it, you drown easier. Women are more buoyant than men on average. Height factors into it to a degree too. A young, tall muscular dude will have a harder time floating than a short, overweight, elderly, elderly woman. It also depends on the water fresh water lakes and pools make floating harder than salt water bodies of water. It is very hard to not float in the dead sea for example. Temperature is another factor. While it only affects how well you float a little bit, staying clam and not moving in really cold water is harder than in a warm pool. Panicking of course is maybe one of the biggest factors. It is hard to make logical decisions when you think you are about to die. Deeply rooted reflexes about drowning are hard to overcome under the best of circumstances and when you are in genuine danger things get worse. If you are on a boat sinking into the ocean you may try to avoid drowning by stripping down and remaining clam and trying to float, but the water is likely to be very turbulent and cold, which will make this difficult. A life preserver or flotation aid such as ships carry for this purposed is a much better bet in keeping your afloat than your own natural buoyancy.",
"Because floating on your back in the ocean isn't great. It puts your mouth and nose on the same level and pretty damn close to the water. Even a small wave could easily wash over your face and make you choke. There's also the fact that some people just don't float easily. Those with higher muscle to fat ratios will sink because fat is buoyant but muscle isn't."
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