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e5b6a0 | Technology | A vinyl record spins at a constant pace, but since it's circular, the needle is moving across more material at the start of the album. Does this mean they are recorded at different pitches throughout the album to compensate? | [Relevant ELIC]( URL_0 ) You may need to zoom in. | 9 |
ffsqyy | Chemistry | How copper can sterelize itself and the others metals don't | A metal surface isn't very smooth or solid at a microscopic level. There are some atoms sticking out of the surface ready to break off or bond to something else. When bacteria comes into contact with certain metals, they pick up charged atoms called ions. All organisms use ions in various ways that are crucial to cellular functions. Introducing foreign ions of certain metals can seriously disrupt many of these processes. Copper ions can change the shape of proteins, which makes them useless. They can disrupt the lipid bilayer, which prevents cells exchanging materials with the outside world, and they can invade viruses and denature their RNA, essentially unraveling or tangling up the RNA to the point that it's no longer functional. There's also a mechanism by which these ions can break open the cell wall, which obviously is fatal for the microbe. There's plenty of other mechanisms that let copper and other metals destroy microbes, if you're interested I'd suggest checking Wikipedia. | 3 |
89q4q0 | Other | If part of WWII's explanation is Germany's economic hardship due to the Treaty of Versailles's terms after WWI, then how did Germany have enough resources to conduct WWII? | Keep in mind that Hitler suspended Treaty of Versailles payments (and broke nearly every other rule laid out in the Treaty). Even Hitler’s financial advisors informed him in the late 1930s that he was on the verge of massive economic collapse. Had he maintained the peace brokered by appeasement and the Soviet non-aggression pact, he would have seen his own nation thrust into serious financial difficulties which would likely have led to him losing favor with the people. For Hitler, 1939 was a “now or never” situation. Edit: spelling | 27 |
7n3o0l | Chemistry | Why is HF so dangerous when it's a fairly weak acid? From my chemistry knowledge HF is weaker than HCl yet it is common to find bench grade HCl, why isn't it the same with HF? | It reacts with damned near everything and seems to especially like breaking down organic compounds. It reacts with metals creating all sorts of halite salts which are also toxic. | 4 |
8gaf48 | Physics | What is the TeV mass scale and what does it have to do with particles beyond the standard model? Title is self-explanatory. I'm researching this PDF: URL_0 for an assignment. | When particle physicists talk about the mass of particles it's more convenient to use units of energy rather than units of mass. This is because in order to make the particles in an accelerator, they need to slam things together with a certain energy and then that energy is converted into the mass of the particle via E=mc^2. An electron volt (eV) is the energy possessed by an electron as it accelerates through an electric potential difference of 1 V. This is a convenient unit when using electricity and magnets to push on charged particles. In SI units 1eV is the equivalent of 1.6 E-19 Joules. A TeV is 1.6 E-7 Joules of energy, which when converted into SI units of mass is 1.8E-24 kg which is about 1000X heavier than a proton. | 3 |
aivwxo | Biology | The difference between 66 and 72 degrees outside isn't entirely noticeable, but the difference between these temperatures inside during winter seem gigantic. Why is this? | My guess: if you were sitting still outside, you'd notice the difference just as much as you do inside. When you first step outside into 66 degrees, you're warm. And then you're likely walking / doing other things - this keeps you feeling warm. You're wearing shoes and not touching the cold ground. Inside, you're less active/inactive and standing, or likely sitting, on something that has cooled to 66 as well. Ever been a spectator at an outdoor event where you're sitting? It gets cold. Even if it's not that cold outside. | 3 |
8alsbi | Repost | Why does hearing your own voice through a recording sound so much different than how you hear/perceive your voice when speaking in general? | Related question: Can you hear someone else’s voice the way *they* hear it? If so, how? | 24 |
8358nb | Technology | how does that switch on my rearview mirror that helps dim headlights at night work? | Prismatic Wedge! It's a piece of mostly reflective glass and another mirror behind it. When you flip the tab it angles the back mirror up to reflect the extra light away from your eyes. URL_0 | 5 |
lkujtr | Economics | - Predicting recessions ? Please delete if it breaches rules Given that we have data from the past for a time period (Just before, during and after an economic recession). Shouldn't alot of people who work/track this information would see one coming or know we are on the brink of one or due in general just by looking at the numbers. If we know, shouldn't we have corrective measures put in place to not let it happen ? Is it just the scale that we can't predict Tldr - Why can't economic downturn predictions/estimates get better since we have data from the past which helps understand things better ? | Short answer: chaos. Some things are very predictable. Other things are very unpredictable. One great example of this is the pendulum. If you have a single pendulum, it's really easy to predict exactly where it's going to be for a long time. But if you have what's called a double pendulum, where a second pendulum is hanging off the first one, tiny changes in the starting conditions can lead to huge changes further down the line. There's a great gif of this somewhere. I'll try and find it. Point is, economics it's more like this. Even if you had almost perfect knowledge of the market, a tiny change could lead to a hugely different outcome. | 1 |
doklz0 | Biology | Why does calorie restriction increase lifespan? I’ve heard that calorie restriction and reduced sugar intake can somehow improve lifespan at the cellular level, specifically as people age. Can anyone explain? | Well, it's ELI5 so.....analogy time! if you run a physical engine at FULL POWER and do so ALL THE TIME - it will wear out faster. But if you moderate your use and give it time to cool down and do maintenance on the parts while not in use (clean parts, oil gears, remove contaminants) it can last a lot longer. in a biological engine if you give it the nutrition it needs and don't crank the energy level up too high it has a chance to maintain itself longer. Proper rest and nutrition keep the engine "clean". By dumping un-required energy into the system (excess calories that aren't NEEDED - especially simple sugars w/ no nutrition/maintenance value) the engine either runs too hot or builds up...well, excess fat/cholesterol....and other oxidents that can decay the "parts" of the engine. | 1 |
83nnwd | Mathematics | How many sides can a shape have before it becomes a circle and does the concept of geometry exist on the very small scale? | Geometry and the features of mathematics don't exist in physical form as described in math. A point is a location with 0 diameter. A line has 0 width.a polygon has 0 height. Physical manifestations in our world have all non zero dimensions. | 10 |
8xzbnd | Physics | Why, when yoga balls and beach balls are so light, can they knock over grown adults when kicked at them? | I'm not enough of a mathematician to give you the specifics, but the farther the object hits away from your center of gravity (like a shot to the face would), the more likely the impact is to knock you off balance. If you're already off balance, you'll fall down. There's probably a name for this, but I don't know what it is. | 3 |
eerqj5 | Biology | Why can't our teeth repair themselves? | The enamel part does repair itself. Prolonged neglect leads to cavities. A dentist can spot where your teeth have actually “healed”. | 4 |
8c2zts | Economics | Why does gasoline pricing produce such acute price sensitivity in consumers, despite the negligible differences in totals over filling an entire tank? Edit: To clarify, the question is about why people travel further to a distant gas station for a few cents per litre saving in gas, when those savings are mostly offset by the extra time, effort, and fuel used to get there. | I have come to believe that it starts with hyping that metric (the price of the gas) for consumers so that they experience economics on a level that they can understand (because everybody gets gas and its a fairly large weekly expense.) it's a very misplaced metric. American consumers don't pay retail for gas already and the people that get hurt when gas goes up are professional drivers and their companies (truck drivers, delivery companies, etc.) if it wasn't a standard hype-line on the local news people would forget about it. | 13 |
6e7q4e | Technology | how does my cell phone receive a call, or make a call, from my hand to a cell tower into someone else's hand almost anywhere on the planet nearly instantly? It seems with so many phones out there the process is infinitely complicated, yet it all happens in seconds. | This is why we use computers for all aspects of telecommunications. The Unix operating system was developed by Bell Labs, the phone company's research lab. Your phone only talks to a tower near you. Your friend's cell phone only talks to a tower near them. Even if the phones are in the same room, they don't talk to each other. Once the bytes (almost all phone calls are digital nowadays) get to the tower, they spread out as IP messages across the worldwide phone network. They use a system called SS7 (very creatively for Signaling System, version 7). You may have noted that phone numbers have a structure: country code, area or city code, exchange, and number. You don't always have to dial all of it in some regions of the world. This structure makes it easier for the computers to figure out which tower can talk to the phone in question. | 3 |
707jhj | Biology | Why is it hard for people to change thier beliefs? What causes us to grip on to things that have been proven to be false? Wow! Didn't expect this much attention! There's lots of great responses here. The reason behind my question is that it seems really easy to say, "oh snap I guess you are right and I'm wrong", which is apparently hard for people to do. This is true for me in pretty much everything. I just was wondering why it is difficult for others to do. Lots of good reasons here though! | Ok, literally like you're five: Fear of change, laziness, lack of introspection, misinformation. Adopting new ideas is difficult for some people. The dogma's/beliefs they hold lay at the foundation of their personality. Changing beliefs/religion would mean that some'd have to adapt their behaviour, and potentially break away from the most fervent members of their community/church/family (peer pressure). Mankind as a whole is relatively lazy: most technological advances serve the purpose of easing our daily toil. Schools don't always have time to teach free thinking/open-mindedness and curiosity. Not everyone'll spontaneously challenge his own views and positions. Thus, why would someone bother change his perspective if he's in his comfort zone? Society and streamline media make a great job of shaming/alienating different views, it takes a lot of courage and perseverance to go against the grain. Seems like they're still trying to divide mankind in two parts: we good, they bad. When everyone agrees with your views, you get the feeling you're doing well, which in turn strengthens your faith in your ideas. This is luckily all starting to change thanks to the Internet (not looking at you FaceBook), and easier access to educational material ( b o o k s ). | 33 |
9w9ztj | Economics | Explain the economics of the prison drug trade. I don't understand how inmates can afford to maintain a drug habit whilst incarcerated. | Generally speaking, prisoners are A) getting paid for work performed inside the prison (typically at a much lower rate than a free person would be paid, but still), B) have savings left over from their time outside prison, C) have relatives willing to help them out in terms of money, or D) some combination of the above. When inside the prison, a person doesn't (or at least shouldn't) have access to real, physical cash; they have a debit account, which they can use to purchase things from a carefully controlled list via a commissary system. These items can be used as trade goods. In many prisons, some items can become a form of de-facto currency; cigarettes are the old stereotype, but as many prisons become non-smoking facilities, substitutes like ramen or packaged fish (which are in near-universal demand among the population, guaranteeing you're never going to be stuck with a 'dud' item) have also taken root. A balancing act results from the fact that dealers have a captive audience, but an extremely limited one. On the outside, if a buyer only has $20 for 80 bucks worth of weed, you tell them to go F themselves. On the inside, you can't be as picky, and if you try and hold out for a customer who can meet street price, you might be holding the product long enough to get busted or for the stuff to go bad. Speed and cleanliness of the deal becomes more important than the pure profit of it. | 3 |
6vfo5o | Technology | How do scammers from India get a hold of phone numbers from United States and Europe? | Names can be put into online phone number directories like whatever your equivalent of Canada411 is. They can just pick a random name and a number will probably show up. Tl;dr It is the same way the first T800 found Sarah Connor. | 3 |
j44ftb | Biology | Why do you wake up cranky when you set an alarm but waking up naturally puts you in a good mood? | When you wake up naturally your body says "Okay, I've rested enough, I'm all set up for a new day!" However, when you set an alarm your sleep gets interrupted, therefore your body is not in a balanced and calm state, affecting your mood as well. | 3 |
851xy0 | Other | why don’t we have sprinklers in single family homes in the US? | It's not worth it A multifamily dwelling is significantly more likely to have a fire than a single family home, the greater likelihood and greater potential damage justifies the increased cost Sprinklers also require regular maintenance to function properly. If you don't drain your sprinklers every few months then they'll fail when you need them. Putting them in a home where you can't ensure maintenance is wasting money as they won't work when needed There are about a thousand house fires per day in the US, there are 126 million homes. If sprinklers cost $10k and a burned down house costs $1M then it would take 34 years to pay back the investment. That's not remotely worth it to insurance companies so they don't push for it | 1 |
8yccdw | Other | If blood is a biohazard, why are feminine hygiene products not thrown away in a more careful way? | Blood is actually pretty safe. Especially if it doesn't get inside you. You could even drink the blood of a healthy person, or even a sick one, and the likelihood of anything happening would be very low. If you think about it, many people eat the blood of animals all the time. Sometimes, like Sushi and Steak Tartar, they eat it completely raw. While people do occasionally get sick from doing that, it is pretty rare. What is dangerous is blood from someone who is sick. Especially if that blood gets directly into your blood. Like from a needle. So at a hospital, where you have sharp needles, lots of blood, and plenty of sick people you have to be extra careful. Even unlikely things can happen if you have lots of chances for them to happen and nurses and doctors are encountering blood all day everyday. Feminine hygiene products are usually only directly handled by the person using them. A person has little to fear from their own blood. Responsible people dispose of them in the garbage or other places where no one else has to touch them directly. So the risk that someone would even touch it, much less get the blood into their body is incredibly low. Even if that did happen, the chance that would make someone sick is very low. Using the same kind of procedures for feminine hygiene products that hospitals use for blood would be very costly but wouldn't really make anyone safer. | 14 |
8gz9kh | Biology | Why do humans have to "wipe" after defecating? Are we the only animals that do so? | You will find out why humans have to wipe if you refrain from wiping for lets say a fortnight... | 23 |
mk41bo | Biology | Veins carry blood, so why do we bleed when areas that don’t carry veins are cut (skin) | There are three types of blood vessels: Arteries carry blood from heart to organs. There's large pressure inside of arteries, so if you cut open an artery, the bleeding will be pretty massive. Veins carry blood from organs back to the heart. They're low pressure vessels, so the bleeding is much slower, though if you hit a major vein, it's still pretty significant. Inside of organs, arteries split into capilaries. Those are the tiniest blood vessels, so small that the red blood cells have to go through them one by one. These vessels are everywhere and there's an enormours amount of them. And that's what gives rise to the bleeding when you cut a place where there are no vessels visible. | 3 |
bzionp | Other | where is water going? Why is the water crisis a thing and why isn't the water cycle preventing water scarcity? | Water scarcity occurs when water is taken from a source faster than the water cycle can replace it. If a town is pulling 1 million gallons a day out of an aquifer or resevoir but rainfall only replaces the equivalent of 0.7 million gallons a day the town will eventually pump the aquifer or resevoir dry. | 2 |
bhmdc2 | Chemistry | Why is it movie theater popcorn tastes so amazing no matter where you are? | huh? the one i buy from grocery store tastes better. | 4 |
9s56iw | Biology | Why is exhaustion a common symptom of clinically diagnosed depression even when blood tests show no deficiencies? | We don't know what causes depression. We also don't know how anti-depressants work or why they work only slightly better than placebo's in clinical trails. We don't even know what depression is on an biochemical level. a lot of people will tell you things about serotonin playing an major role or being the cause or something but that has never been proven or even gotten close to being proven. we just know that serotonin plays an role, we have no clue what that role is or how anti-depressants relate to that. depression is very very very complex, our mental health and thoughts in general are incredibly complex and are dependent on such an huge variety of things that its really hard to pin down. for example, your gut bacteria are influenced by your depression and your depression influences your gut bacteria([called the gut-brain barrier or gut-brain axis]( URL_0 )). or how your [heartbeat literally slows down during an depression]( URL_1 ). these illnesses are incredibly complex and very very serious, its time we start taking our mental health in general serious. | 2 |
7ze9zn | Economics | Why do prices for airplane tickets change so frequently? And why are they not fixed? | In short: They want to sell every Ticket but they also want to take advantage of people who are willing to pay a high price. In a little bit longer: There are basically two kinds of people who fly, travelers and business people. The former are usually very price conscious and can book in advance (You usually book a flight and a vacation month prior) so they will compare and try to find the best price possible. These people are usually the "filler" as most flight routes are not in such a high demand that you can fill an entire plane with business people. The business people are people who: a) Don't care what they pay, as the company pays for it b) Travel often c) Often travel on short notice, most often, you won't know that you need to go to another country months in advance Ideally, you can sell the expensive tickets to the later, while trying to fill the plane with people of the former group (As selling a low priced ticket can do anything from reducing loss compared to an empty seat to making a small profit) | 1 |
6jxb4p | Biology | How is toothpaste different from taking antibiotics? Does bacteria in your mouth become resistant to toothpaste? | There is a difference between an antiseptic and an antibiotic. I'll make an analogy. If someone took a ton of salt and dropped it on you and you died, would it make sense to list the cause of death as too much salt? Or is it more accurate to say you got crushed and the fact that it was salt is inconsequential as no chemical property caused your death, merely it's mass. An antiseptic could be something like alcohol, fire or heating of something to steralize it, iodine solution, etc. It is not a drug that penetrates bacteria and causes them to die, it's something that kills bacteria on contact the same way a big block of rock salt can kill on contact. An antibiotic on the other hand is a class of substance which has a complex chemical structure which exploits a weakness in a bacteria and leads to it's destruction. It's more like a sneak attack, and antiseptics are more like a flame thrower. Toothpaste is not an antibiotic, it's a very gentle polishing compound that scours plaque off your teeth. Mouth wash though is an antiseptic. It usually has alcohol in it which kills bacteria on contact. | 3 |
679htt | Other | Why do Kenyans consistently outperform other nationalities in long distance running? | A few reasons: * Lots of Kenya is high altitude, meaning people who live there have adapted and have more efficient respiratory and cardiovascular systems. * Long distance running is very cheap to train. A country like Kenya can't afford expensive athletic facilities, so they focus on cheap sports. Runners only need shoes and space. | 3 |
68is8x | Other | Which is worse for someone under 18: Alcohol or Marijuana. Why? | The brain in your teen years is still developing. Pathways are forming in your brain for how you are going to handle and process information in adulthood. Using an excess of drugs or alcohol is going to interfere with the development of your brain's pathways. Which is worse? Hard to say. What's important now is not develop a dependency or a habit with substances. If you want to enjoy drugs, then never do them. Because then when you actually do, they are actually fun.^1 ^1 CK, Louis. Louis CK: Live at the Comedy Store. Pig Newton Productions. USA. 21m53s. 2015. | 1 |
dj4xgs | Biology | do animals have periods? | Yes and no & #x200B; "Periods" are the end result of what is known is the menstrual cycle and involve the shedding of the lining of the uterus. Humans, some other primates, and some bats are the only mammals that go through this process. & #x200B; But most other mammals go through a similar process called the estrous cycle. It's similar to the menstrual cycle but instead of shedding the lining (and having a period) they reabsorb it back into their bodies. Sometimes there will be a little bit of blood loss but not a complete "period" like you get with humans. | 2 |
dazlyx | Other | What makes villain songs sound sinister and evil? Why does certain music evoke specific emotions in our mind? | To put it simply, western music typically falls into two categories, Major scale (happy) and Minor scale (sad or dark etc). The scale depends on what notes are used and vice versa. So "villian" music is typically written in minor. This combined with social norms and possibly some neurological or evolutionary reactions makes us think "evil". This "evil" sense is really driven home when a piece incorporates the flattened 5th (The 5th note in the scale is a semi tone lower). This is predominately done in metal music to evoke that feeling of "evil". If you listen to Black sabbath, by Black Sabbath, from the album Black sabbath, you will hear this flattened 5th used to great effect. | 11 |
dhqaei | Other | In a situation of constant hyperinflation (eg prices doubling every few days), how do individual shopkeepers know when to raise prices by how much? | They don't, unless they are offered an extraordinarily large amount they feel like they can liquidate before it becomes worthless. Those crazy exchange rates and inflation rates aren't "real", they don't represent how ordinary people use the currency. They are based on currency exchanges speculating on the money's future value, which in turn is based largely on how fast the country is printing money. Ordinary people usually turn to barter or foreign currencies. | 3 |
60ra7h | Culture | What did Hillary Clinton have to do with the Benghazi attack? | As Secretary of State, one of her duties was to distribute the resources of the Sate Department, which includes embassies. Which means she was responsible for determining how much security there was at the embassy in Benghazi during the attacks. The argument that she was ultimately responsible for the deaths during the attack is that she didn't adequately staff the security there. Other complaints are that she tried to lie about how bad the attacks were and cover up her failure. Some more extreme theories are that she knew the attacks were going to happen and pulled security so that soldiers and diplomats were killed to further her own political agenda, unfortunately I don't understand these theories enough to explain them any better. But, Congressional hearings and investigations have found no evidence that Hillary Clinton did anything wrong, lie about the facts in any malicious or official capacity, nor was there any gross negligence in her distribution of security at US embassies. EDIT: To add, my personal belief is the whole Benghazi incident was an unfortunate event and the attacks on Hillary Clinton were politically motivated in spite of the fact she was obviously not at fault. I did try to keep my answer unbiased, but feel I should mention my opinion none the less. | 3 |
j2kt3d | Technology | How do fitness trackers know that you actually sleeping but not just laying there resting, being awake ? Edit: Thanks for all the answers and the awards, I’m shook | They don't. Once my Fitbit registered a nap, but I was just being a lazy fuck laying in bed watching shows. I guess I didn't move for a really long time | 23 |
isqf5n | Biology | How come we don't bleed out during surgery? I've always wondered how the blood doesn't just keep flowing out of you like say, during knee surgery when they cut you open to expose your knee bones. I've always wondered how this works. | There are large blood vessels and small blood vessels. Doctors avoid cutting the large blood vessels, especially arteries. If they have to cut them, then they'll temporarily clamp them off so they don't bleed, then reconnect them. For the smaller vessels, nowadays they have these cauterizing scalpels that cauterize (burn closed) the ends of blood vessels so they don't bleed. | 3 |
d3wgy7 | Physics | - When standing 4 feet in front of a mirror, do our eyes focus on an image 4 feet away or 8 feet away? | You can actually test this with an old rangefinder or SLR camera! If you stand 4 feet from a mirror, you’ll need to set the focus marks to 8ft. | 5 |
jz867n | Biology | Why do pets not respond to a video/phone call of their owner, even though it sounds very similar to real life? | It probably doesn't sound as similar to a pet with a wider hearing range than us, but mostly I think it is because pets are trained to ignore the voices coming from speakers because we often have a tv or computer playing stuff. The pet will quickly learn this is useless noise and drown it out. When you play a phone call to a pet, they're not really paying attention to the phone-voice because they never do, and the sound quality of an audio device is very different to a human person in the room, so its easy to auto-filter out the device noise. Some pets will recognise their human's voice from a device. Sometimes it's because the audio quality is really good, other times it's because all the humans in the room keep indicating to the audio device or putting it near the pet so they can't ignore it, and they recognise the sound now that they're paying attention. But other pets still will not realise the audio is supposed to be their owner because they use way more cues than just sound to realise someone is in their vicinity. They can't see or smell their human, so audio won't be enough to convince them the voice is that of their human, or enough to make them take note of the voice. | 5 |
j3s4ll | Physics | How do fans cool a room if all they do is agitate the air raising kinetic energy and temperature? | They don't cool the room - they cool you. By blowing air around you, they allow your body to control your body temperature better. The heat produced by your body is (literally) blown away, allowing your body to lose more heat. | 3 |
cr2kz2 | Physics | Why do vehicles (especially trains/trams) have this "bump" when they stop completely? Basically every vehicle has it but in trains/trams is it particularly strong (probably because they have so much mass). | What you are feeling is "jerk" or the change in acceleration. It's the same sensation when someone suddenly slams on the throttle or brake. This occurs when a vehicle comes to a stop because brakes only help decelerate when the vehicle is moving. When the vehicle comes to a complete stop, the acceleration goes from {some big negative number} to zero almost "instantaneously" (over a small time); imagine the time it takes for the vehicle to go from 0.1kph and to 0kph. Jerk = change in acceleration / time. = {some big number} / {small time}. = {some bigger number} | 3 |
a0gj3w | Biology | Why is AIDS almost impossible to cure? | All these comments are talking about how well hidden it is. The real truth is that the virus mutates way too often. AIDS is a Syndrome caused by the HIV virus, which is classified as a retro virus. What this means is that instead of stable double helix DNA, the virus has single helix RNA. Imagine you have a picture of a house. This is the virus. Scientists could cure the virus, if the picture stayed the same. A virus with DNA is a picture that gets put in a copy machine. Perfect copies come out almost every time. But RNA virus’ get copied like a person hand copying the picture. Almost every time it gets copied, one of the lines or more in the picture are get changed from the original. Then the RNA goes on and camouflages itself in Immune System cells’ DNA. Due to the rapid mutation of HIV, if scientists were to take a person’s HIV and make a vaccine out of it, it would be useless, even to the person they got it from. Because it has a high chance of a bad copy every time it enters a cell. Now the reason why the RNA is bad at copying is a whole other manner. If you want to learn, keep reading. DNA is commonly modeled as a twisted ladder. The rungs are made up of 4 different types of nitrogen bases (A,T,C,G) in different combinations. But only A’s attach to T’s to form a rung on the ladder, and only C’s attach to G’s to form a rung. So when the ladder is unzipped to make a copy, one side is used as a sort of mold to make a copy of the other side. Once the other side is made as a copy, the copy is then used as a backwards mold to recreate the original mold. Think of it as how plaster molds are made by putting the original object in the plaster, then when the plaster hardens (copied other side) a gelatin mold is poured in to cast the original object (second copy). This is a rough idea of how DNA copying works. Very safe most of the time. Acts as a general checker for itself. RNA however, is only one side of that ladder. So it’s natural checking system using the other side of the ladder is gone. Think of the Hand copied drawing, the person uses a light tracing to fully outline over the original. But some of the tracing is smudged or wrong. This part I understand lesser of, but I do know that RNA is bad at checking it’s duplicates. EDIT: So a quick look into my bio notes, retrovirus’ use reverse transcriptase (a molecule in the virus to turn its drawing from RNA to DNA) which has a poor checking system due to only one side of the drawing existing. TL:DR HIV is RNA(retro virus) not DNA, so lot’s of errors in its copying causes too much mutation for an effective vaccine. | 6 |
esc5ug | Psychology | Why are weighted blankets so comforting? | They make us remember, subconsciously, the feeling of the womb. We never forget it. That's why swaddling infants stops them crying. And it isn't just humans. You can buy vests for dogs to wear when something triggers stress in them. Lightening, for example. | 11 |
84l61z | Biology | Since cuts and abrasions are easily infected, why do many military's require that men stay clean-shaven? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to not shave, but then trim their facial hair (and other places) to avoid pests that could infiltrate their hair, and not create skin lacerations to invite infections? | Gas masks. That's it. You can't seal a gas mask with facial hair. That means you're a liability, since carrying 180 pounds of dead/dying soldier during a chemical attack is a lot of work. There's other tangential benefits such as hygiene (can't get lice as easily if you have a short haircut and no facial hair) and uniformity, but at the end of the day the military tends to be practical more often than not. That's why exceptions to this rule are always strictly for practical reasons as well. You can be on a shaving waiver if you're in a camp with inadequate access to water, or have a skin condition exacerbated by shaving (particularly PFB). | 4 |
eonbav | Chemistry | why does hydrogen peroxide fizz when it touches wounds or anything dirty? | So is hydrogen peroxide ok to use as a mouth wash? | 4 |
cb0jr5 | Biology | There’s millions if not billions of creatures in the ocean and they all pee, so how do they not get sick from essentially inhaling each other’s urine? | One man's trash is another man's treasure. & #x200B; Fish that pee produce nutrients that other organisms consume and convert back to healthy water or material that is then nutrients that food fish eat are able to use. You can experiment with this yourself. You can make an aquarium completely self cleaning using various types of plants and animals. | 15 |
filni4 | Chemistry | Why is it that when having a hot shower there is steam even though the water is no where near 100 degrees? | It's not actually steam, it's condensation. You've got hot water going into a cool room, the shower water is about 50° celsius, the air is less than half that warm. The heat transfers from the water to the air and the air absorbs the moisture along with it. After a certain point the humidity (water dissolved into the air) become high enough where a fog is created. That's the "steam" you're seeing, it's not hot water that's boiling into a vapor, it's the hot water from the shower being absorbed into the cool air around it. | 3 |
c99elo | Technology | How do electric circuits work? I’ve always been very mechanically minded, although when it comes to electronics and circuits, I’m baffled. How can pieces of silicon and metal make my computer turn on, to being able to run games and programmes? | Certain materials called conductors or semiconductors can make electrons "flow" at the molecular level. As a very basic example imagine water going through a hose. This doesn't apply to all electrical circuits but for a basic understanding it is enough. There are different types of electricity, Alternating current (called AC) and direct current ( DC). Basically AC is for stuff you plug into your home using those pronged cords and DC is for batteries. The electric circuits you describe is different from the electricity that powers your house or your oven. Fundamentally it is the same concepts. Electricity is defined as the flow of electrons. They don't flow differently but for larger things like powering homes resistance is usually bad and for smaller things like microchips or your computer motherboard resistance is necessary because the amount of electricity is so small you don't want to fry it. Of course electricity on all levels must be regulated to the correct amount. It isn't just an "amount" to be set to. For example you can't just pour a certain amount of water into a plumbing system and expect it to work. Pressure and resistance in an electrical circuit must also be regulated. For electronics, which is different than residential electricity or construction electricity, there are a plethora of devices that are used to achieve these things. I'm not gonna lie to you, electricity can be confusing. I myself had only taken an introductory course to electricity and electronics mixed in with more advanced classes. But if you take your time to figure things out, basic problems can boil down to simple arithmetics. I realize my answer might be all over the place so if there's anything you still want to know that I didn't say, feel free to message me back and I'll do my best to explain or hopefully someone else can provide a better answer than me. I love learning the trades so I'd be happy to help you excel in your learning. | 3 |
doyar8 | Biology | Does avoiding germs too much hurt your immune system? I know a lot of people who are very religious about disinfecting everything and hand-washing obsessively. People argue whether they are hurting their immune system or not. Personally I am very lax on this and rarely if ever get sick. What's the truth to keeping a hearty immune system for an average healthy person? | If your immune system is never exposed to germs it cant build a resistance to them. For example when Europeans came to North America the germs they had killed many Native Americans who were not exposed to those germs. | 5 |
cqpcsi | Economics | Why don‘t more building have a rooftop terrace? | From my perspective (HVAC engineer)it comes down to 2 things - cost and space allocation. It does cost more to make the roof ‘hospitable’. Without a terrace, the roof of a commercial building is effectively no different than a mechanical room or a basement - just outside. Making it someplace that people can easily access and want to hang out costs extra. Depending on what type of HVAC system the building has, there may be limited space on the roof. Typically, any building with a rooftop terrace is also the type of place that may want individual heating and or cooling units for each condo (I know some apartments have rooftop terraces too, just not as common). These take up space and will typically be located over the top of the corridors to limit noise transmission into the housing units. There are also at least 1 but, more often 2 HVAC units to serve the corridors themselves. Add in any exhaust fans (trash room, parking garage, generator room, transformer room) which require a 10’ distance from air intakes, and space becomes a premium. I have seen buildings with a ‘rooftop’ terrace that is effectively one side of the building with the actual roof rising up another floor occupying the other side of the building. The issue there is that the entire thing is essentially usable space that could be housing units but it’s now amenity space that can’t be sold. The price of the other units has to make up for the extra square footage. Or the homeowners dues. Long answer to a short question. | 1 |
ffwpa2 | Technology | How does a food processor work differently than a blender? | A food processor tends to have a much wider, flatter work bowl, which means that it is much better at getting larger amounts of food - particularly solid food - to a smaller-but-not-puree consistency. A blender, with its tall, narrow shape, would struggle to get an even consistency with non-liquid foods unless you take it all the way to slush. Could you get by with juse one? Sure, but having the right tool makes the job easier and the results better. Blenders are the right choice for some applications - particularly liquid ones - and food processors are the right choice for solid foods. | 10 |
biofuu | Engineering | How do modern vehicle speedometers work? Tire rotations per minute? | How much error is introduced by tire wear? New tire vs old worn tire... | 4 |
5lnd4v | Repost | Why is one currency worth more than another? | It's all to do with perspective. Let's say you and two other friends want to trade. You've got oranges, one friend has apples and the other has peaches. If you want a peach, you could just trade one orange for it. But what happens if you think your orange is worth more than a single peach? If your friend with apples really wants oranges too, he might be willing to give you multiple apples for a single orange. If there's a higher demand for your oranges, you can sell them for more. This is essentially where the "worth" of a currency comes from. Traders take a lot of things into account when buying and selling currency. Things like having a strong economy will increase the value of currency, by driving up demand (lots of people want it). If traders feel the currency is high risk, there will be low demand which means in order to sell it you have to drop the value. The external value of a currency isn't everything though. You can buy about 10 Norwegian Kroner for one Pound Sterling, but things in Norway cost about 10 or 20 times as much. | 1 |
6b40wk | Other | Why didn't a snake get poisoned by its own venom? | Venom and poison are different. Venom is not 'poisonous' so you can eat it and it is fine. It has to be injected into the blood stream to harm you. | 2 |
bo2191 | Physics | If you have a tank filled with liquid, that has a spout at the bottom (so it empties downward), and is filled from the top, given no other outside influences, will the liquid that comes out of the spout essentially always be the 'oldest' liquid in the tank? | No even without turbulent mixing from adding fresh liquid that u/myonlineidentity9090 has talked about Brownian motion URL_0 will completely mix the contents of the tank over time. If you take a dye and very carefully add it to water so there is to begin with only a small concentrated dye layer at the bottom of the tank the Brownian motion of the water molecules will mix the dye to give a uniform coloured solution given time. | 3 |
gee0dq | Economics | What is the difference between an MLM and a pyramid scheme? EDIT: Thank you for all the responses! | In essence, they are very similar. It exploits the idea that exponential growth is really fast and many (most?) people have a hard time visualizing this. MLM's get away with being legal in that it offers products as opposed to financial pyramid schemes which are designed to be fraudulent. Example: Say you lived in a modest sized city of 1 million people. There is probably a "targetable" population of say (generously) 250,000 households. Well since everyone cannot be selling to each other, assume that each participant in the MLM needs 9 regular customers to break even. So the goal is to have roughly 25,000 people selling to the remaining 225,000. To really make money, the MLM participant relies on the "pyramid", say you need at least 2 layers of 5 people "below" you. This is being generous. So a decently profitable MLM participant needs 5 + 25 ie 30 lower level targeting 150 people. To really make money you'll need more than that. 1) How many layers can the city support? First layer is say 1 person. Second layer is 5 people and so on. The number grows as the sum of a geometric series 1, 6, 31, 156, 781, 3906, 19531, 97656... Answer: around 7 for a target population of 250,000. 2) What is the likelihood of making money (ie have at least 2 layers below you). Answer: 781. This is the problem, the number of people making any money is small but the TOP 2 to 3 layers make out huge - this is the idea of the "pyramid". Exponential growth is not intuitive. Say the entire world has a population of 1 trillion households, so roughly 100m sellers. How many layers of this example can it support? (50? 100?) Answer: less than 13. That's right - going from a city of 1 million to cover the globe only adds 5 layers. | 5 |
90ga55 | Biology | How do humans and other animals “feel” and predict changes in the weather? i.e rain. | The pressure changes with the weather, low pressure usually means rain. You know how you ears pop when you go up in a plane because of the high pressure. This is the same idea but with a change to low pressure. Some people who have achy joints can feel the pressure drop because there isn't as much pressure around their body from the air. Some people can "smell" rain if the wind is carrying it toward them. The same idea is for animals as well. | 2 |
fticcm | Economics | What is illegal about government officials selling stocks before a major market crash? | Insider Trading is the illegal part. Basically, it's illegal to use information not available to the public when selling stocks, because it's unfair to the people buying your stocks. If you work for a company, let's say Apple, and you know that the new iPhone 50 is buggy and going to be released anyways, you may want to sell your Apple stock to a bunch of people who think that the new iPhone 50 is going to be a huge hit and earn tons of money for Apple. They don't know that the new iPhone is going to be bad, so they're going to spend a lot of money on buying that stock from you, and then that stock will very quickly become worthless. It's like if you had a car, that you knew had engine problems, but sold it to someone without telling them about it. It wouldn't be fair. It's like fraud. So, the idea here is that the government officials got a private briefing about how bad the virus was going to be, and sold stocks with that knowledge in mind before the general public knew. Likewise, most of the officials in question were ones who didn't actively warn people about the problem, so it seems that they cared more about protecting their investments than they did about protecting the American people they serve. | 6 |
l1scgq | Other | why do drive through ATM machines have braille on keypad? | Probably some legislation that said it has to be on all ATMs and either didn’t consider drive thrus, didn’t care cuz it doesn’t hurt, or drive thru banks didn’t exist at the time. I figure. | 3 |
5xl43i | Culture | Why are so many US veterans homeless? Why are they in this position or how did they get to this point (generally speaking) | The Army culture just fucks with your head. The worst part is that you don't realize it until it's sunk it's claws deep down in your brain and it's got you. Soldier's don't go and seek care for injuries or illnesses because they don't want to be thought of as malingerers or "shit bags" by their comrades or ESPECIALLY the NCOs in the unit because god help you if you get on the bad side of one NCO because now you are a shit bird and every NCO now thinks it. It just builds this dystopian reality in your brain and then in 2 or 4 or 6 years or whenever your contract is up, you don't re-enlist because you're like "this fucking blows, why would I keep doing it?" Then they stamp your forms and out the door you go and then you realize, "HFS. I have NO IDEA where to go from here." I suppose I could go to college or go to work at my friends garage but the fucked up thing is that, a lot of times, you miss the Army. Stockholm syndrome is where a captive comes to have affection for their kidnapper and I swear it's just like that. Whether you write guidance software for Boeing or sweep a floor at Chipotle, you miss you captivity and it is like a fucking ball and chain around your ankle. | 43 |
82fets | Technology | How do radar detectors work and how do police detect radar detectors? | > How do radar detectors work They detect the radio waves emitted from some types of radar guns used by police. > and how do police detect radar detectors? Mostly, visual inspection: they see that you have a radar detector mounted somewhere in your vehicle. Radar detectors themselves emit some amount of radiation, so it is possible to use a radar detector detector that can detect that radiation. | 2 |
6b3dqp | Mathematics | How can they be absolutely sure pi doesn't end somewhere? | Imagine if pi did end somewhere, like 3.14159265359 Then we could write that as one number divided by another: 314159265359/1000000000 = 3.14159265359 If pi stopped anywhere, we could write it as one big number (starting with 314...) divided by another huge number (starting with 100...). But there are some numbers that cannot be written as one number divided by another number. And some math people proved that pi is like that. So if pi ended somewhere, that would break math. But since math seems not to be broken, we feel confident that pi doesn't end somewhere. | 3 |
d0ti2x | Chemistry | Why does fabric lose its softness after being washed multiple times? (Especially those big fuzzy blankets) | In addition to the other excellent suggestions, when you wash something like polyester fleece, the wash cycle will actually loosen and wash away some of the fibers. Then when you run it in the dryer, those get lost and caught up in the lint trap. It's a big component in microplastic pollution, too, afaik. This makes the blanket less soft, and thinner. Similarly, as you wear and wash flannel, the brushed soft face of it pills and gets rubbed off, leaving you with the rougher main body. | 8 |
iz9mnw | Chemistry | What is the difference between “permafrost” and just regular old ice? | Permafrost refers to ground that stays frozen... well, more or less permanently. Technically the requirement is at least two years but for the most part, it tends to way longer than that. Ice is frozen water, which is not frozen ground. You might have ice covering permafrost, or ice on ground that is not permafrost, or permafrost without ice on it. | 1 |
asb0d7 | Other | At the pharmacy, there's a $1 pregnancy test. Right next to it is a $50 pregnancy test. Are they the same? What is the difference? | I heard from women at work who were trying for kids and going through a bunch of tests every week that you only need dollar store tests. They work fine. | 29 |
gyli24 | Biology | How does the symptom “sense of impending doom” work and how is it different that just feeling uneasy? I’ve seen this as a symptom for people who receive the wrong type of blood in a transfusion. If I try hard enough, I can convince myself/brain that something bad is going to happen and get a very uneasy feeling. How is the sense of impending doom different? | I’ve felt it a few times during bad panic attacks. I’m sure there is some biological fight or flight response kicking in. It’s hard to explain the difference and even put into words what it’s like. Comparing the feeling of being uneasy to a sense of impending doom is like comparing a nerf gun to an assault rifle. Again it’s hard to explain but feels a lot more ‘deep’ and a strange feeling of your brain going “oh shit something is really really wrong, I’m serious this time.” | 2 |
5uwacl | Biology | What would happen to someone born with two Y chromosomes? Could they live? Has it ever happened? | No, YY is basically impossible. Evolutionarily speaking, all chromosomes used to be X shaped. It's like the X chromosome tells a body how to build a body, whereas the Y chromosome is like an afterthought that says "hey make that a penis by the way.". The Y chromosome is a mutation that happened a very long time ago and this is found in all mammals including humans and some other animals. It is synonymous with sexual reproduction and the very existence of 'male'. At least one X chromosome comes from the mother, and because all animals have a mother, it is impossible to create a new animal without an X chromosome being passed on. It IS possible for two Y chromosomes to exist in a XYY configuration. In humans this happens roughly 1 in every 1000 baby boys born. It doesn't actually effect them much, I suppose because the two Y chromosomes are basically a copy of each other and thus don't give the body mixed signals, almost like a 'echo' in the gene. | 2 |
ehrxpi | Biology | How do gymnasts maintain a lighter weight despite their extra muscle mass? I thought muscle weighs more than fat. | You know what’s heavier than both muscle and fat? ... bone. The big difference is that world class gymnasts are generally very small people. Simone Biles, Olympic gold medalist / world champ, is only 4’8. The advantage is that smaller people have smaller skeletal structures than taller people, but still have the ability to put on muscle. So, a smaller person can have a greater power to weight ratio than a taller person. | 1 |
m8bf4u | Biology | What is biological purpose of male nipples | The basic issue with nipples, is that in the womb, the gender doesn't actually begin to affect physical development until after breast tissue began developing, which is why men have nipples and breast tissue. The reason we still have those, is more because it has not yet been mutated out, of the DNA, and it's not harmful to our survival or sexual prowess. | 2 |
bix0up | Technology | What is the process for creating cgi effects on the scale of something like the battle for Winterfell where there are so many individual moving objects? | It's not easy, but it's not nearly as hard as it used to be. It's called digital crowds and there's a few pieces of software designed specifically for it. (Massive, Golaem, Houdini Crowds...) Basically, each actor is set up like a video game NPC with a handful of animation cycles that are driven by an AI to interact with the world around them. | 3 |
9gfr05 | Other | Assuming the ‘Paving for Pizza’ commercials aren’t just a marketing stunt, how would a pizza company be able to fill a pot hole on a busy street? | In Massachusetts, they paid for a town DPW truck and crew to do pothole work, but the town’s DPW truck had magnetic Domino’s labeling all over it (covering any municipal DPW identifiers). | 2 |
5stgc6 | Chemistry | Is there a plateau of how energized you can get by caffeine? In other words, if I keep drinking coffee will I reach a point where I no longer feel an increase of caffeine effects? | Caffeine isn't energy in that it doesn't have calories by itself. Often it is combined with sugar in drinks. The way I understand caffeine is that it causes your blood vessels to increase in size slightly and raises your heart rate and blood pressure. More blood and hence oxygen is able to reach your brain and muscles. Your heart rate and blood pressure affect how "awake" you feel, as both are lower while you sleep and rest. Eventually, your blood pressure and heart rate increases from caffeine aren't going to feel just as "awake," but anxious, jittery, hyper-sensitive, etc. It isn't a plateau but instead a peak that is not sustainable for extended periods of time. Your body, which needs rest in order to function, will override the caffeine with forced rest - you will just nod off. Edit: grammar is hard. | 3 |
aac9pb | Physics | How can the quietest room in the world be negative decibels? | Great minds think alike. Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: What are negative decibels? How can a sound be negative? ]( URL_0 ) ^(_20 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How is it possible to get negative decibels of sound? What happens at those levels? ]( URL_3 ) ^(_3 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How can there be negative decibels? ]( URL_1 ) ^(_12 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Negative decibels? ]( URL_6 ) ^(_2 comments_) 1. [ELI5: What is a "Decibel" and how can you have negative on them? ]( URL_5 ) ^(_6 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How can sound measure at negative decibels? ]( URL_8 ) ^(_14 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How are negative decibel sound readings possible? ]( URL_2 ) ^(_9 comments_) 1. [ELI5: Why does my stereo measure volume starting in the negative decibels? ]( URL_4 ) ^(_11 comments_) 1. [ELI5: How can the quietest room in the world be -9 decibels? ]( URL_7 ) ^(_58 comments_) | 3 |
mwxb3n | Chemistry | Why are paint's primary colors red, yellow, and blue, and light's primary colors are red, green and, blue? | Paint's primary colors are cyan, yellow, and magenta. Which are the complementary colors to light's rgb. It is my understanding that it is because pigment is subtractive when mixing, since mixing the primary pigments gives you black. Light is additive when mixing, since mixing the primary colors gives you white light. | 1 |
9hqo9o | Technology | Differences between HTTP, HTTPS and HTTP2 | HTTP is... well, HTTP, your basic GET, POST, etc HTTPS the same protocol as HTTP but everything happens over encrypted secure connection. HTTP/2 adds ability to send multiple resources (pages,images,scripts,etc) over the same connection at the same time in parallel. It also allows server to push you resources that you didn't ask for, but it thinks you'll need. | 2 |
dznj9i | Biology | - What do protein shakes / bars do to your body and how do they help? Not sure what flair to add (if any) So a few of my friends have started going to the gym and they’re quite big guys and they’ve all ordered loads of protein and are talking about what it does and I just don’t understand how or why it has any effect. | When you lift, you tear muscles. Protein helps repair and strengthen said torn muscles to form bigger muscles. Protein shakes are a high source of protein so they help speed-up/guarantee this process. | 2 |
6rb518 | Culture | Why does getting your own place and leaving your parent's home such a big goal for Americans even though it could set them back financially. | Independence is pretty important in American culture. That's why so many Americans move far from their hometown upon graduation, this usually begins in College. Americans get their first taste of "freedom" from the dominance and control of their parents. We want to be able to do the things we like, without judgement from the previous generation who may not agree with the decisions we make. On the flip side, not leaving your parents home in your 20s is seen as negative here if you are a healthy fully functional adult. It is viewed as incompetence or laziness from some Americans because you don't have the financial independence or education to provide for yourself, let alone a family. It is also seen as more acceptable for a woman to be living with her parents than a man. That I don't really have an explanation for besides maybe it's a sexual/dating thing. If both parties live with their parents then who's home would you go to? Since still in this day and age men are primarily considered the providers, they're the ones more likely expected to have a place of their own. This also speaks for financial independence which because of the previous statements is typically viewed favorably on a man by the opposite gender. | 72 |
7a38wl | Repost | How are video games cracked? | Video Games are ran by a set of internal codes. If someone has the appropriate software they are able to see the internal codes (which are hundreds of thousands of pages long). If they are able to get into which line of code contains the players ammunition (for instance) then they are able to modify that line of code to constantly be changed to full ammunition. Cracking is not easy, depends on the publisher really. | 1 |
5uo7dw | Culture | How does human trafficking work? | It can happen multiple ways, but here is one way: Say I own a club and I want girls to dance at my club. So I have a contact in Thailand lets say, and he recruits girls to be dancers in my club. they sign a contract and I cover the cost to bring them over to where ever my club is. I keep their passports and put them to work in my club, provide shitty room and board, and take part of their pay to cover my costs of bringing them out. They basically have to work until they have paid for their way to earn their passport back. That is a pretty rough, generalized break down of one way that it can happen. | 5 |
9j2awj | Other | How do you get on plane “upgrade lists”? Also, how do they prioritize the people on those lists? | Every airline is different; some do not offer upgrades at all, no matter what. There are some general sequencing rules, but the gate agent has ultimate authority and can bend rules for you if you have a good story/needs/brought chocolate. The most common upgrade is someone with a lot of mileage status; they can book a coach seat and get a free upgrade as long as nobody buys them first. The second most common way is to arrive at the gate very early, and ask at the counter. You'll be prioritized roughly in order of who came first, but mileage upgrades still trump people that are just asking, just like how people that want to pay for the upgrade can trump everyone else. | 3 |
7zynj3 | Biology | How does sleep debt/build up work? If I were to sleep for 24 hours could I then skip the next 3 days of sleep? If so how does it work and if not why does it not work like that? | Sleep is not a biological quantity that you produce, store and use as needed. As your body goes through its normal daily routine, it uses energy, creates waste, and consumes resources (such as neurotransmitters). Many of these functions require use of finite resources - resources that cannot be regenerated while the body is using them. That's where sleep comes in. When you sleep, you recover these finite resources. You repair damage. You realign your body chemistry. Think of it like doing routine maintenance on a car. You can't take a car to the shop and tell the mechanic "do the maintenance stuff three times, that way, I'll have three times as long before I have to come back again." | 26 |
kd24qc | Economics | Why are car prices negotiable and other purchases like a TV or computer not? | A lot of places are doing fixed prices on cars now. "For your convenience we no longer allow negotiation on prices!" | 7 |
5ta326 | Other | Why do rich or famous people often get more lenient sentences? Shouldn't they be sentenced to the letter of the law, no matter how good their lawyer is? | I do believe that the US legal system is flawed and rich people do get off a lot easier than the average Joe. But... with that being said, some average Joe's are just lucky when it comes to legal matters or they're masters at getting sympathy from court judges. My brother is a piece of shit wife/kid beater and he ALWAYS seems to get off easy. He's broke as shit and usually drunk and usually unemployed. Whenever he gets arrested, and he has been arrested at least 4 times now (that I know of) its usually for beating his wife or fighting with neighbors/strangers or some other gang related shit, at least 1 weapons charge. Either way, the most jail time he has gotten was 3 months, 3 glorious drama free months. Then business as usual when he gets out. Once he and his wife apparently got pulled over for driving erratically (he was drunk) and the cop gave him a stern lecture and asked his sober wife to drive instead than sent them on their way. Oh his kids were in the car. Good times. | 18 |
821rl8 | Biology | How come we get super sleepy in a hot car, but can't fall asleep if our bedrooms are hot? | The difference is your body temperature. Hot core+hot air=miserable. Cold air+cold core= freezing. Hot air+cold core= relaxing and cold air+hot core= refreshing. Your body prefers to sleep with a colder core and in a warmer environment. | 2 |
k4zl3j | Physics | is Space Echo-y? Sound is a wave passing through the air, right? So if you were on a spacecraft in vacuum, those waves don't have anywhere to escape to; the vacuum can't carry a wave in its matter, because it has so little. Do the sound wave just bounce around the spacecraft until it's absorbed by the hull? | Sound is just vibrations in a medium, so since space has nothing to vibrate, nothing happens. That's equivalent to having a light source but no object (luminance vs illuminance) if there are no objects to reflect light, then it will be dark (or not illuminated so to speak). That's why space is such a dark and silent place. | 4 |
a7q043 | Economics | Congo. Can someone explain to me; why there are states (Congo) that are rich in resources (cobalt, etc.), but have an abundance of poor citizens (relative to 1st world countries)? | This is called the *resource curse.* URL_0 Basically, if the government sees that it can run the country on incredibly easy resource sales, it doesn't bother to develop the economy, the education system, and so on. Also, since the value of the resource exceeds the value of labor, people aren't treated as valuable. | 2 |
cf89tq | Technology | How the hell do Deep Fakes work? | Get lots and lots of pictures from different angles of someone, get some fancy AI that stitches those pictures onto the video depending on the angle of the face replacing it with the ones in the picture. | 6 |
cvgiod | Engineering | Why do some cars accelerate from 0-60 faster than from 5-60? Shouldn’t the rolling start always be faster as both cars are in the same gear? | 5-60 would be the test you want also if competing against an electric car. Electric motors have maximum torque between 0 and 1 RPM. All internal combustion engines are extremely weak at very low RPM so an electric will leap way out off the line. | 2 |
99t3vg | Other | Why is being told to do something when you had the intention to do that thing but hadn't started yet a seemingly universally hated experience? | I think it's on an individual basis. Different reasons to dislike it. Me personally as someone who is competitive in the work place hates being told what to do because I feel like they beat me to the punch even though I was planning on doing the task. Especially if it's a coworker and not a supervisor or higher up. I like to let my work speak for itself and not walk around announcing all the things I'm doing so when someone tells me to do something I planned on I get almost a little defensive. | 18 |
6kxavs | Chemistry | Why does water make smelly things more smelly? I've noticed when something smelly gets wet, it smells even worse. Why is this? | Adding water to, e.g., dog hair causes any water-soluble material to dissolve. Some of this material is smelly in large enough quantities, but usually is spread out across the dog's hair and skin. At most human-friendly temperatures, the smelly compounds will enter the air via evaporation and from being volatile chemicals. When aerosolized, the smelly compounds are much more concentrated than on dog hair, making them smell much worse. | 2 |
ceiebr | Biology | Why do some plants have sweet fruits which makes you want to eat it, but at the same time thorns that stops you from eating it? Blackberries for example. | Generally the thorns aren’t on the fruit it’s self. If they are I imagine they want the fruit to ripen, fall, and get the seeds to the ground. | 3 |
jm4f2c | Biology | If it is highly risky to give birth after 40, why do women continue to have periods into their 40s or 50s? | Well they keep having periods but the fertility is still declining with age. Menopause occur at 51 years old in average. So theorically, until that age, a woman can get pregnant. However, fertility among women start to decrease around 35-37 and really drops between 40-45, after 45 the fertility is very *very* low. Most women will not be able to get pregnant after that age. And even if they did, there is an 80% miscarriage risk. Therefore, an achieved natural pregnancy after 45 is rather uncommon. it does happen sometimes but either by sheer luck or because some women are exceptionnally fertile. And a successfull natural (without egg donation) pregnancy after 50 is exceptionnaly rare, will dumbfound your doctors and might get you cited in a medical journal about fertility. That's how rare it is. | 7 |
7yg3ar | Chemistry | Synthetic meat Does anyone know what has happened to the synthetic meat we were all promised many years ago that would be just as good as the real thing (One step closer to Blade Runner ). It's now 2018 I haven't seen one synthetic burger. and is it really that good for you... or not ? | Two questions - doing my best to ELI5 them both. 1st Question: Imagine you have decided to sell jelly beans - but you have a friend who sells them too. He is your competition. Jimmy grows his jellybeans on plants, but when he picks the jelly beans the plants die. It takes a long time for Jimmy's jelly bean plant to grow and it requires a lot of water and fertilizer to keep them growing. You found a way to grow your jelly beans inside of a metal container. However, you're still trying to make sure that the jelly beans taste as good as Jimmy's. You're close but you need a bit more time. Once you have this figured out you can scale up your efforts and quite possible outsell and outproduce Jimmy. 2nd Question: You and Jimmy both grow jelly beans. They are made of the exact same material whether they are grown on the plant or grown in your metal vat. One will be as healthy as the other. Non-ELI5: Companies working on this have almost gotten the taste correct and are working on bringing down the price and improving the flavor. Once they do this they can ramp up production and potentially shave off the costs competing directly with beef farming practices. Since at the cellular level synthetic or lab grown beef is the same biological material as actual dead cow, the cells are as beneficial/harmful as the ones you eat today. | 5 |
9d777j | Engineering | How does electric current "spins" the motor in an electric engine? When you turn on a toy that has an electric motor in it, how does a current of electricity ends up as a spinning wheel? How is that energy transfered? & #x200B; | When current (charges) move through a conductor, they induce a magnetic field around them. This magnetic field can interact with other magnetic fields to produce a force, which causes movement. In a small toy, you'll have a brushed dc motor with permanent magnets on the stator (non moving part of the motor). These magnets are making a magnetic field going from one magnet to the other, through the rotor (the part that moves). The rotor ([image]( URL_0 )) has some coils of wire in it, a commutator, and brushes on the commutator. The brushes do not move, as they are connected to the stator. They are pressed to the commutator to allow current to flow. As the motor spins, a magnetic field is generated in the rotor in such a way that it is not aligned with the magnetic field going from one stator magnet to the other. So a force is produced. When the force is produced, it'll cause the rotor to spin a bit. As soon as it spins, the coils that were energized by the brushes are disconnected, and the next set are energized. So there's an effect like the donkey with the carrot tied to it's head, as it moves forward the carrot moves with it and the donkey never gets the carrot. | 4 |
64nk4b | Other | Why does cold water do a better job of washing laundry than hot water? | i wash my whites, sheets and blankets with hot water. clothes are washed in coldwater to prolong the life of them. hot water shrinks and fades regular clothing. if anything you can check your clothes care label for instructions if you are confused. | 4 |
a18xmg | Biology | Why do humans restrain ourselves from doing certain actions? E.g Hurting yourself, killing someone | Definitely not expert but my uneducated thoughts would be that for most of us self preservation is important to our survival and hurting yourself goes against that programming. On a community level killing others generally isn't that conducive as we typically rely on each other for survival. However, outside of the community level we've gotten really good at killing each other. Just my opinion though. | 2 |
d9aq61 | Other | Who creates those video games we often see actors playing in movies or tv shows? Im watching 13 Reasons Why on Netflix right now, and there are a couple parts in certain episodes where the actors are playing this shooting game on what looks like an Xbox 360. It obviously looks fake, but Ive seen different types of them in other movies and tv shows. How are those made and who makes them? | A graphics artist is just making a video. They aren't making real games, they aren't actually playing. It's the same as any other cgi, they just have a excuse for it to be obviously fake and look bad. | 1 |
kw4rtn | Other | Classical voice training | Here are a few things that are focused on during vocal training. 1) Breath Control - being able regulate how the air is used during singing. Keep the vocal folds together and not letting breath escape while singing. 2) Relaxation of the vocal tract - basically keeping all the muscles relaxed from the vocal folds all the way through to the lips and everything in between. Your larynx (where your “adam’s apple” is) needs to stay relaxed and in a lowered position. A relaxed tongue is also super important. 3) Lots of space in the vocal tract - lifting your soft palate, (the part that flaps when you snore) making sure your tongue is always in the correct position for all the vowels that you sing on, and letting your voice resonant within your vocal tract and nasal cavity. That’s what gives classically trained vocalists their power. 4) Practice controlling the really small muscles within the larynx to access the entire vocal range - both men and women have different “registers” or parts of their voice that sound different throughout their range. (How high and low they can sing) Practice is needed to even out those register “changes” so it sounds like one fluid sound from the lowest to the highest. That’s why boys voices typically “crack” during puberty. They don’t have control over their voice and it accidentally flips to the wrong register suddenly. I could keep going but I think that’s a decent overview. | 3 |
du3bnk | Biology | Why do some fingers and toes correspond in positioning but not in terms of how they “feel”? For example (in my experience), the big toe “feels” like the pointer finger of the foot, though it corresponds with the thumb in terms of position on the appendage. The toe next to the big toe “feels” like the middle finger of the foot, though it corresponds with the pointer finger in position. The middle toe kinda feels like a ring(?) toe-finger (although now that I think about it, it’s more of a middle-ring hybrid feeling), and then finally the 4th and 5th toes seem to actually “feel” like the ring and pinky toes, corresponding naturally to their finger-counterparts. What gives? | This isn’t an explanation, but I didn’t realize that anyone thought this too and now I’m happy I’m not crazy lol. You described this perfectly | 2 |
e8kf4l | Biology | 5: How is it safe for chiropractors to crack people necks? | It isn’t! Chiropractic is pseudoscience that has somehow weaseled its way into the mainstream. | 28 |
82g7lw | Biology | what makes a belly button an “inny” vs an “outie” | I've got a question as well - is everyone's belly button either an inny or an outie, or can it be smooth (halfway between the two)? | 6 |