Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why cars like Toyotas cant look like Lamborghinis	[ "Because Lambos are form following function. \n\nTo put it another way, Lamborghinis are styled the way they are because of what they're designed to do. \n\nIf you want to build a car that goes from zero to fast in almost nothing flat you've got to put a huge engine into it and you've got to transfer a massive amo...
Why is it that even when I'm close to my router, i never have wifi speeds close to what I'm paying for on my internet plan?	[ "lets see\n\n1) Megabit vs Megabyte, 1 megabyte is 8 megabit, so if you have 10Mbps from your telco, you probobly have 1.25MBps\n\n2) Protocol overhead, the data dosnt go un a raw format, its usualy packaged in a protocol called TCP/IP which requires envalopes called \"packets\" with their own structure and inner d...
why didn't Bruce Jenner go to jail after the fatal car crash	[ "The investigation determined that it was an accident, not a criminal act. Sometimes shit just happens when people drive cars." ]
Why does medical research need so much of donated money when pharmaceutical companies are super rich and can afford to do the research themselves?	[ "Pharmaceutical companies make drugs. They do not invent new surgical techniques, new equipment or new courses of treatment.\n\nEven in situations where the solution turns out to be different drugs, the reason pharmaceutical companies are super-rich in the first place is that they spend their money on those avenue...
the evolutionary reasoning/theory behind menopause	[ "If we look at life as a game, we 'win' when we manage to pass on our genes to the next generation. The more we manage to do this, the higher our top score becomes. But, there is no use in passing on your genes if your children will die before they can reproduce. Especially for a species like humanity, where we hav...
Are there gradual forms of depression or is it purely binary?	[ "As someone who is very depressed, it's gradual. Never binary. You have good days, you have bad days." ]
How did popcorn become associated exclusively with watching movies?	[ "From the Smithsonian magazine: [Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?](_URL_0_)" ]
How were the transatlantic network cables put in place?	[ "With a really big cable laying ship.\n\nThere's no need for weighing them down. The cables are quite heavy by themselves. If a cable breaks a specialty cable laying an maintenance ship goes out, finds the break, brings up the cable, and repairs it or splices in a new cable section.", "[Modern Marvels] (_URL_0_) ...
The difference between "Damnit", "Dammit", and "Damn it"	[ "\"Damn it\" is the proper spelling.\n\n\"Dammit\" is a colloquialism, showing how people tend to pronounce it as if it were one word.\n\n\"Damnit\" is a compromise between the two. I've rarely seen it spelled this way.\n\nAside from that, they all have the same meaning." ]
When did lobsters become a hot food commodity for the wealthy when it used to be fed to slaves and servants?	[ "From what I understand, they used to be so plentiful that they could be gathered from the shore. When they had to start actually fishing for them their value increased because of the cost of traps, boats, and time." ]
I am blind in one eye. Can you explain what 3D movies look like?	[ "In a person with normal sight, your brain can work out how far away something is because your two eyes see a different picture due to being a few inches apart.\n\nIf you are blind in one eye, I'd imagine (not being blind in one eye myself, I'm guessing a bit here) that if you move your head from side to side, you'...
Last night I had a deep logical conversation with a character in my dream. How is this possible?	[ "Why would you presume it to be not possible? You are, presumably, capable of logic, and the 'you' and 'character' in your dream are manifested by you, so they are presumably capable of logic as well. The only means to measure the grasp of the logic is your own experience, so even if you have a poor grasp of logic,...
Can I just fill up potholes?	[ "You can, but generally you are breaking a law. Or at least an ordinance.\n\nPlus, your patch sucks and will form another pothole shortly. DIY asphalt patching simply isn't capable of standing up to the sort of abuse that road get -- unless the person doing it themselves is a professional with professional-grad...
Why is it when counting numbers teen comes after the number but every other number after that the number comes at the end ?	[ "The suffix [-teen](_URL_0_) originally meant \"ten more than\". So thirteen is 'ten more than three', fourteen is 'ten more than four', and so on.", "Germans have it easiest. 15 fünfzehn means literally five-ten 25 fünf und zwanzig five-and-twenty. fünf und neunten is five and nine tens or 95 etc but from 30 to...
When receiving a survey in regards to a customer service interaction, why is anything less than a perfect mark considered a complete and utter failure?	[ "There are a number of reasons for this, including the idea that \"world class\" or \"best-in-class\" customer service is a differentiator and source of competitive advantage. To that notion, anything less that \"mind-blowingly great\" can been seen as poor. Remember that customer service surveys assume - right or ...
Why do so many African Americans have Welsh surnames?	[ "That former slaves took on their previous owners' surnames is a widespread myth: the one thing they didn't often do was to assume the names of their former oppressors. They usually named themselves after other famous Americans, especially those they regarded as heroes of the anti-slavery movement: thus African Ame...
Isn't being a Nazi and being an American a conflict of interest? Didn't America fight against Nazis in WWII? Why are Nazis allowed to exist in America today if they weren't allowed here during WWII?	[ "In America we have very strong free speech laws which means that you can say whatever you want as long as you are not directly threatening someone. You can not ban a political opinion just because it it is deplorable, even if the whole country is against it. We fought Saddam Hussein too, it is not illigal to suppo...
Why does sitting in a car or on a plane for over an hour without standing up put you at risk for blood clots, but laying in a bed for 8+ hours a night is perfectly okay?	[ "The main difference is that your legs are vertical in a car or plane. It takes a lot of effort to move blood from the legs to the heart, so there are little valves in the returning blood vessels to make sure that moving blood doesn't go back down when it stops moving.\n\nWhen you move your legs, the muscles help t...
Net Vertical Impulse with a drop jump AND a counter movement jump	[ "When the athlete drops 0.3m, he will land with a velocity.\n\nWhen the athlete jumps 0.45m, he has an initial velocity.\n\nWe seek the change in velocity first.\n\nWe know that position = velocity × time.\n\nWe know that position = acceleration × time × time\n\nAn athlete falling 0.3m will fall for:\n\n0.3 = 1/2 ×...
The economics of C.H. Douglas' theory of Social Credit	[ "I've always struggled to understand social credit theory as well. Here in Alberta, Canada the social credit party formed the government for 34 years straight. They were a highly socially conservative christian party which left much of the social credit reforms unaddressed. For a time they issued \"prosperity credi...
how does free shipping and handling work?	[ "There's still shipping and handling costs that are part of getting the product to your doorstop, but the company that's selling them pays for them and buries their costs in your product price.\n\nHere's the four cases for a $10-price product that costs the company $7 to make, with an extra $2 of cost for paying th...
Why doesn't AAA kill all their useless perks and just make membership cheaper?	[ "Those discount deals don't cost AAA anything. In fact, they probably get paid by the partner companies: it's marketing (advertising) for the companies. AAA is essentially selling their customer list, and advertising directly to them.\n\nAnd of course, AAA gets a benefit as well, since their members feel they are g...
When astronauts are in space and they use trusters what are they trusting against to move forward?	[ "Thrusters don't work by thrusting \"against\" anything. They work based on the conservation of momentum. When you throw something in one direction, what remains has to move in the opposite direction for the momentum of the entire system to remain the same.\n\nImagine standing on a skating rink wearing ice skates...
why does an analog clock's second hand continue to move, but stay in the same position, when the batteries are low?	[ "It's not a feature, it's that the second hand requires a certain amount of force to be moved. If the motor running the clockwork doesn't have enough power to move the second hand all the way, it just keeps chugging ticking half seconds and falling back to its initial spot. \n\nThe reason it doesn't stop entirely ...
Magnetism allows objects to affect the velocity of other objects (pulling or repelling them). Where does the energy that creates that force exactly come from, since energy can't be created nor destroyed?	[ "In order to move the magnet and the thing it's pulling on to a place where they'll interact, you have to do work against the magnetic field. \nIf you put a bowling ball on top of a step ladder, you're doing work against the gravitational field. \nWhen the bowling ball rolls off and squashes a pumpkin or someth...
Why is there a lot of ruckus over how America is moving from an industrial economy to a service economy?	[ "Industrial jobs, due to their more skilled nature, are more likely to have higher wages and worker's rights(unionization is easy when it's harder to replace workers), where as in a service oriented economy, workers are unskilled and easily replaced, allowing them to be paid as little as possible with fewer rights....
Why are so many video/computer games not available in Australia?	[ "Cost. \n\nNot just physical costs like shipping, which can be mitigated with digital distribution, but international trade/licensing agreements come into play. For many non AAA titles, it may just not be financially viable to distribute there." ]
What is the difference between a nightmare, a night terror and sleep paralysis?	[ "Nightmare = a scary dream you have while asleep.\n\nNight terror = a scary feeling you have that remains equally terrifying even after you wake up.\n\nSleep paralysis = a side effect of being asleep (now or seconds ago), in which your body doesn't respond to signals from your brain telling it to move." ]
Why is the human tongue so strong? Evolutionarily, how did it develop that way?	[ "The tongue is something that often gets taken for granted. When you think about it, it is incredibly important for eating. It's main job (beyond speech) is to move food around in your mouth to the optimal teeth for chewing. Moving a piece of food from one side of your mouth to the other is not in itself very diffi...
Where did the idea of people becoming angels when we die come from, considering that bibically angels are another species altogether?	[ "Its just misunderstanding. Because the origins of the angels is rarely discussed. Honestly most people never talk about those early parts of the bible that explain the angels place in things because its kind of embarrassing.. Like how angels would rape human women because seeing their hair made them super horny. I...
Why does hot water set stains in cloth? Why does cold water help get them out?	[ "When cloth fibers get hot they expand, thus allowing the contents of the stain to get deeper into the cloth. The the cloth fibers are cold they constrict, thus pushing the stain out of the fibers." ]
How is all of our poop disposed of when it is flushed down the toilet?	[ "When I was about 16 I worked on a private school campus where they had their own little waste treatment place. \n\nThere was a swimming pool sized... pool that had three or four sections. The first section had the raw sewage water in it and was constantly churning. There were plastic things that separated the sect...
Why do energy drinks come in metal cans instead of plastic bottles?	[ "Ever seen a Rockstar or Monster in a clear container? they look really nasty. i always thought that's why they're in cans.", "I have only seen [NOS](_URL_0_) sold in plastic bottles.", "to convince you to pay $3.99 for $0.05 worth of sugar water and caffeine.", "In my country they're sold in glass or plastic...
If you buy a $999 computer online during Tax-Free Weekend, are you exempt from taxes?	[ "Under Georgia law, you won't pay sales tax on a computer costing under $1000 during the tax holiday. So, you should be able to go in with $1000 in cash, buy a $999 computer and walk out with a dollar.", "I assume you're most likely asking about the online part. States can only collect sales tax from a retailer i...
Why does the iPhone make you delete so many pictures in order to take a new one?	[ "50 sounds like an awful lot but anyway, it's like this: when you take a picture the raw data is recorded from the sensor, this raw file is a shitload bigger than your standard jpeg. The phone processes the raw data, compresses it, saves it and then discards the raw file. Therefore you need a lot more memory space ...
why is everybody mad about the Sodastream issue, but not Victoria's Secret which manufactures garments in Israel?	[ "What's so bad about having something made in Israel?", "Sodastream's factory is in the West Bank, not in Israel proper. Big, big difference." ]
Why is a lot of human effort directed towards space exploration and colonizing different planets while no serious attempts are made at ocean colonization?	[ "It is harder to explore the bottom of the ocean than it is to explore space. It is far easier to protect from a vacuum than to protect from intense pressure." ]
Why do people hunt rhinos for their horns? What do the horns have that you can't get elsewhere?	[ "As in, what do they physically have that makes them desirable? Nothing. The horns don't contain any special chemicals that make them valuable. They look cool though, so they can be used for decoration (which is terrible really because you could make something that looks like rhino horn without killing rhinos. But ...
How do people find the most off the chart random glitches where you have to do a certain thing to do it in a video game?	[ "Some of them are on purpose due to knowledge of the code. For example, Ghandi in Civilization.\n\nIn short; in some game code, if you make a number go below zero, sometimes it will circle around to a very high number instead.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSome are done by trying over and over. Playtesters don't just play games to...
how is it that my cellphone gps can still show my live position on a map if I lose cell reception?	[ "GPS does not have anything to do with your cell reception its a seperate radio that communicates with GPS satellites. Your phone talks to at least 3 of them to pinpoint itself and tell you where you are. This is how you can have signal and no GPS and vice versa. \n\nYour phone can also use tower triangulation to f...
Why are companies like Walmart and Apple considered American when they are owned and operated from The British Virgin Isles, Luxembourg, etc? Also, why are their incomes shown in billions when the taxable income is millions?	[ "Because it's an American company hiding on that island so it doesn't have to pay taxes equal to its earnings.", "Because their headquarters are in the US and that also where they are incorporated. \n\nWalmart's HQ is in Arkansas*. It is incorporated in Delaware. - Here is Walmart's 10-K filing showing this:\n_UR...
When you read news articles about global warming such as "The hottest year on record in 80 years!", why was it so hot 80 years ago?	[ "This year being really hot isn't necessarily indicative of global warming, an article with that title is being sensationalist. If the running average temperature over the last 10 years was getting continuously warmer, that would be a better indication of a trend.\n\nTemperature is affected by a lot of different th...
How is cape town in South Africa running out of water?	[ "Desalinization is energy intensive, so it's quite expensive. You see it a lot in places that have little water but are on the ocean, and there's lost of money -- like the Arabian peninsula.\n\nThe problem with Cape Town is that it's experiencing a drought, which is a temporary reduction in rainfall. Desalinizati...
Why were revolvers created to generally have 6 shots?	[ "Ease of design, mostly. If you stack 7 circles in as close a shape possible, you get an hexagon with 2 on top, 3 in the middle, and 2 at the bottom. Use the centre as a rotating part, and you get 6 holes in a symmetrical way, without having to do weird complicated math.", "It was the result of the best ratio of ...
Why is there a risk of a deformed child when brother and sister perfom incest?	[ "Basically, for some genetic defects, you need both parents to be carriers of that defect. If only one set of your genes (you have two idk how five you are) has the allele for this defect, you'll be a carrier but not show symptoms. So if there's a small chance of being a carrier, even if you're a carrier you're spo...
Why do white things turn yellow if they stay in light?	[ "It's not that they're white, it's that they're made of a type of plastic that, after prolong exposure to light, will degrade, becoming yellowed and brittle. UV is bad for that type of plastic, so the more time it spends in direct sunlight, the more it yellows.", "Either ultraviolet rays from sunlight, or just ox...
When dreaming, Why do we sometimes forget we are in one? How does our brain make it realistic?	[ "In some ways, you are living in an artificial simulation created by your brain at all times. Sometimes the simulation is based on information from your senses (like when you're awake and sober) and sometimes it's not. Noticing that you are in a dream requires you to realize that the reality that you are experienci...
If doctors prescribe medication, why do comercials for medication exist that are targeted toward patients?	[ "That's all about encouraging patients to ask for the drug by name, rather than the generic version. Brand awareness 101.", "Just wanted to throw in that the U.S. and New Zealand are the only two western nations where these types of ads are legal.", "Because a patient asks for a specific medication increasing t...
the opioid epidemic	[ "* One of the earliest catchphrases for the more-or-less current opioid \"epidemic\" was \"hillbilly heroin\", the large supply of Oxycontin in Appalachia, which is a poorer region populated by many people who worked in the physically demanding job of coal mining. Poor ongoing healthcare combined with chronic orth...
why everyone fled/hated Digg once v4 was implemented?	[ "Why I left, in a word, superusers. The way content was promoted was not even close to being democratic. This is a good read...\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > An ordinary user might post the most important story of the day on Tuesday and get three \"Diggs.\" But if MrBabyMan (King of the Digg Super Users) noticed the story on ...
What happens in court if there is conflict between parents over homeschooling their child?	[ "Are the parents still married? In which case, do they want to get a divorce? Because this is how you get a divorce. A married person doesn't sue his spouse if he doesn't get his way. \n\nIt's impossible to say how it would go down. It really depends on a lot of circumstances: there will probably be a psychological...
What causes the earth's surface to spontaneously drop into sinkholes?	[ "It's caused by the surface collapsing into holes beneath the surface. It can be hard to determine the exact geology underlaying a site, and it's possible to simply not know about underground weak points that can eventually collapse into a sink hole.\n\nFlorida and some other parts of the South are really known for...
If downloading packets is random, how come videos stream in a sequence?	[ "Downloading packets only has a random latency, and probably a smaller random loss rate. The actual packets and their order isn't often randomized.\n\nThe packets contain serial numbers, so they can be put back in order. Video streams aren't real-time, the player buffers up enough packets before the video starts ...
What did Google "invent" that made their search engine so much better than earlier search engines like Yahoo?	[ "[Page Rank](_URL_0_) which was a good process to decide which pages were important. Prior to that it was easy for a computer to find a lot of pages that had some keyword, but hard for them to tell which were useful (and this was exploited by a huge number of pages that had an enormous list of keywords hidden in w...
How can water/liquids in pipes and hoses go straight up and defy gravity.	[ "You defy gravity every time you lift your arm. Your muscles can apply enough force to overcome gravity and make your arm lift. Defying gravity is really easy.\n\nAs for how the water in your pipes can do it, it's because of water towers. They pump a large amount of water into the air and let it gravity feed back d...
How do people who specialize in computer forensics retrieve data on a hard drive that has been formatted or magnet wiped?	[ "Reformatting can be as simple as deleting the file system and rewriting it. That won’t delete any of the data, just remove knowledge of where it is. Secure formatting will rewrite all the bits and is not recoverable. \n\nMagnets generally aren’t strong enough to ruin a drive, those that are will do so by physicall...
How is the Brexit divorce bill being calculated?	[ "The figure the EU came up with is the cost of the Uk's membership up to 2020 plus any funding or financial agreements already pledged by the UK (note these might be agreements from years and maybe decades ago), around £100 billion. The EU then took any rebates owed to the UK into account to come to around £50 bill...
Why is it important to have buffer states?	[ "Buffer states aren't always about marching armies. North Korea, for example, is a buffer between China and South Korea. It's not about keeping out the South Korean Army.\n\nIt's about keeping out the South Korean Economy. If poor rural Chinese had rich, urban, capitalist, democratic, South Koreans just across t...
Why does a humidifier (water vapor) keep my skin from getting dry while simply splashing water on my skin does not?	[ "Your skin gets dry because it loses water to the air. Unless you keep your skin constantly wet, it will lose water to the dry air. A humidifier makes the air more moist, which makes it harder for your skin to lose water to it." ]
why if you try to sleep when not very tired, you stay awake way longer than if you waited until you were more tired	[ "Pressure/stress and (possibly) lack of routine. Here there are a myriad of things working against you. The first could be lack of routine. If you get in a habit of doing specific things before you go to bed, that allow you to relax, it signals the body \"time to sleep now\". \n\nSecondly, pressure/stress. Thes...
why can't heat be converted to electricity in a closed system?	[ "Because in any closed system, entropy always increases. Assume a uniformly warm room. Turning some of the heat to electricity would now give you a warm area and a cold area, thus decreasing entropy (sorting things out rather than mixing them together).\n\nHowever, if your room includes a warm zone and a cold zon...
What is the point of showing the 'tropic' lines on a globe or world map?	[ "These lines represent the northern- and southern-most points of the sun's \"travel\" in the skies. The sun would be overhead during one of the solstice's were you to stand on each line--the northern one in June, the southern one in December. In between these lines and the sun may appear overhead some months, north...
Does running vs walking an equal distance use the same amount of energy?	[ "It depends what you mean by \"energy\".\n\nRunning and walking a mile are both going to move the same mass the same distance, so in terms of physics, you did the same amount of work and expended the same amount of energy.\n\nIn terms of calories, running is going to usually go burn a few more for a given distance....
What is going on with the US Secret Service	[ "It's likely mismanagement that is causing all of the commotion combined with the Internet putting everything in front of your face every single day. I'm sure there's always been some bad eggs in any organization. Previous management may have had a better grip on keeping issues in house. Having said that, any new s...
Why does our perception of time disappear when we go to sleep?	[ "Our brains stop taking in external information when we sleep. Sleep also messes with memory, so we simply don't remember much of what happened. How much we take in and remember depends on the stage of sleep. If you're sleeping well and hitting REM/deep sleep, you won't remember much. If the quality of your sleep i...
Game Show questions for TV watchers	[ "The most likely reason is that if they didn't have a question, it would be considered gambling, and they'd need a gambling license. By having a question, it's not gambling, it's a competition. I have no idea about the law in Germany, but that's true in many countries." ]
Juggalos	[ "Alright, real answer, trying not to be derisive even though they make it difficult.\n\nJuggalos are fans of Insane Clown Posse, a rap-rock group that's kind of like what would happen if you crossed Marilyn Manson with Lil Wayne and then poured in a container of bleach and some extra chromosomes scraped off the flo...
Why is Hunter S. Thompson cool?	[ "Writing talent. Sociopolitical insight. Humor. Sports knowledge. The ability to make friends with almost anyone. The drug tolerance of an african elephant.", "He's a unique character. He has always been a counter-cultural figure, but also has a number of conservative values. He's an avid and enthusiastic user of...
How does hydroplaning work? How can a dirtbike ride on a lake?	[ "Liquids acts like a solid the first millisecond you touch it. That's why you can slap the surface of a container of water." ]
Why do humans like white noise like rain so much?	[ "The brain likes to use its senses. In dead silence the brain goes as far as making up noises for itself to process. White noise is less crazy person, more natural feeling. \n\nEdit to add: This also tricks your mind out of super sense mode. A uniform noise throughout the night is predictable, easy for the brain...
When you visit a fancy restaurant, why are the pepper shakers so large? What does the length add?	[ "* they are pepper grinders, not shakers...they grind up whole peppercorns to give you tasty fresh pepper\n* the bigger they are, the more peppercorns they can hold\n* the longer they are, the more easily they can reach across a table", "I'm guessing you're referring to those huge foot-long pepper grinders (or pe...
Tiktaalik	[ "It's a fish with feet! It lived in Greenland! It was a badass motherfucker! It was three feet long! It demonstrates that tetrapods evolved even before the conquest of land! It shows that feet might have useful purposes even if you're just hanging around in shallow pools and don't feel like walking around on dry so...
Why aren't meteorite fragments more valuable and treasured than diamonds and other rare earth minerals?	[ "They're ugly, they're almost impossible to distinguish from regular rocks, and they're far too rare to collect enough to sell regularly.", "Supply and demand. And skillful advertising. There are large gem companies that work very hard and spend a lot of money to convince people that gems are beautiful and rare--...
Triangles in our Skin	[ "If you take any surface and cover it somewhat uniformly with dots, and then connect all the dots to their nearest neighbors, you automatically get a pattern that's almost all triangles (or diamonds, which are just double triangles).\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_" ]
How are space probes from millions of miles away able to send/receive signals and HD images back to Earth, but people still have network problems on their mobile phones?	[ "With a lot of expensive technology, [huge antennas](_URL_0_), laws to ensure lack of interference, cooperation with other countries, and the transmission rates are still glacially slow due to the enormous distance.\n\nI think New Horizons is transmitting at 1 Kb/s. \n\nEdit: Then there's that there are much fe...
Why is crispbread stored in paper and not plastic?	[ "Plastic seals in moisture, so as water evaporates out of the bread, it gets trapped and eventually reabsorbed by the crust. This makes it not crisp, so it would just be bread, and not crispbread. \n\nPaper absorbs the moisture as it evaporates, so that the crust stays crisp." ]
The lighter your skin, the more prone you are to getting sunburn... considering that light colors reflect more light, and dark colors absorb more light?	[ "Because sunburn isn't about heat: it's about UV light causing the same kind of damage that heat does to our skin.\n\nMelanin is a protein human bodies produce that protects against UV light; and is dark in color: basically, it absorbs UV (preventing it from damaging us) and some visible light (causing the darker a...
How do social networks like Facebook defend themselves against DDoS attacks?	[ "They are really really big.\n\nDDoS is all about overwhelming a server. When your servers are capable of handing a few billion pings a second, a couple extra hundred million doesn't make a noticeable impact. Few people have the resources to compete against Facebook's servers.\n\nAdditionally, they have (probably...
Why are car designs today so mundane opposed to car designs of the past (1930s-1990s)?	[ "From 1930 to 1990 ish oil especially in America was very cheap so they made all kind of designs and now oil is more expensive so cars have to have aerodynamic designs to save oil." ]
Why are drug stores selling products that have a disclaimer saying "No Approved Therapeutic Claim"?	[ "They are believed to have beneficial effects but haven't gone through the testing needed to prove it, or haven't conclusively showed any benefits during testing. It can also mean that the company selling the product just doesn't have permission to say it does have approved therapeutic properties. As for why stores...
How did we determine the composition of the Earth's core?	[ "We haven't actually \"detected\" the presence of iron/nickel in the core, or even measured its actual temperature. Seismology allows for measuring the core's density, as well as the inner/outer core boundary because the outer core is liquid.\n\nAssuming that the core is made of iron/nickel is basically a very safe...
Why do we "jump" a bit when we are scared sometimes?	[ "It's called the startle response.\n\nIt's not just humans. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it.\n\nIt's a hardwired reflex that your brain stem initiates in order to protect extremely vital areas of your body (Like your brain stem). This usually comes from a sudden unexpected sound, something that's...
How and why did mead lose it's popularity?	[ "Beer and wine from fruits can be produced in higher quantities than meads. Honey production is much more limited in volume than the crops used to make other beverages." ]
Diffference between DPI and sensitivity?	[ "Dpi is how many discrete points per inch your sensor will resolve. Sensitivity is how far the mouse will move per discrete point.\n\nIn some sense they do the same but if turn up your Dpi to extreme levels small mouse twitches and noise from unhomogenous surfaces will be amplified. Many mouse are also advertised w...
How/where are heavy elements created?	[ "Stars can produce atoms up to iron, although they produce these elements very late in the life cycle. Any atoms heavier than that are produced in supernovas.", "Stars go through cycles. As one fuel runs out they start to burn out which causes them to start compressing due to gravity which then raises the pressu...
When did sexual reproduction come into play with evolution?	[ "Today we're going to go painting!\n\nI have 10 cans of black paint so the best I can do is to paint my entire house black. Since the black paint absorbs rays from the sun, the house gets very warm during the summer. One day it burns down from the heat. \n\nThat winter I live at my next-door neighbor's place. Her h...
What is this thing on the bottom of all airplane windows? (Pics)	[ "It's a hole. There are two panes of plastic separating you from the outside, creating an air pocket. With the pressure change varying so much with altitude, if the air pocket were sealed in, it would more than likely explode. The reason the pocket exists in the first place is to create an insulating cushion to ...
what's the fascination that people have watching videos of maggot removal, zit popping, ear dirt extraction, etc. ?	[ "Talking completely out of my ass here, maybe it has to do with some instinctive grooming drive that we inherited from our ancestors.\n\nIf you go to the zoo or watch a documentary, you can see that apes/etc. instinctively groom each other; so some people probably get a sense of pleasure from seeing such things bec...
Hypothetically if everyone on earth was quarantined individually for 1 month could we irradicate most airborne illnesses?	[ "No.\n\nHumans aren't the only people who have diseases. Animals and plants get them too. Every so often, bacteria or viruses will \"cross\" from animal to human, infecting humans for the first time and starting the disease. This is what is believed to have happened with Ebola (their natural host is the fruit bat) ...
How does one country make threats to another country?	[ "Who says they don't just call the other country and threaten them? What do you think diplomats do behind closed doors?", "1. Through formal channels. President A orders his ambassador to country B to officially deliver the message \"i'm gonna toss your salad\"\n\n2. Through indirect channels. Country A does...
How can any style be considered "modern" (like modern architecture)? Wouldn't any style be considered modern during its time?	[ "There is \"modern\" meaning contemporary and then \"[Modernism](_URL_0_)\" (or Modern) with a capital M referring to a specific artistic movement in the early to mid 1900s" ]
How do multi-million dollar companies end up paying $0 tax?	[ "A few ways. First thing to know is Company's only pay tax on profits, not revenue.\n\n1. Setup headquarters in low taxing country and shift profits there. One of the big mining company's in Australia sells it's own coal to a Singapore based company they own. In Australia then pay tax on the heavily discounted rate...
IPO's (Initial Public Offerings on the stock market)	[ "> How do they determine what the initial price is?\n\nThey go off the [Market Capitalization](_URL_1_) of the company. \n\nThis is a complex calculation but roughly they look at what assets the company has as well as other factors (proftability, future expectations and so on). In the _URL_0_ boom companies that ...
How different regions acquire different dialects.	[ "tl;dr Languages constantly change. Changes can be motivated by time, geographical separation, social stratification, influence from other languages, etc.\n\nBefore I start, there are two important things to keep in mind: \n\n* Languages constantly change.\n* There is no good point where a dialect becomes a lan...
Why is the Upvote system flawed?	[ "One major problem is that any people don't really bother reading more than the first page or two of comments.\n\nThis means they're only seeing the top-rated comments, and upvoting those. Any comments that come later never get read or ever have a chance to get upvoted, regardless of quality.\n\nYou can see this e...
The war on drugs in America	[ "I really like the book \"Chasing the Scream\" and that can provide you more insight. With that said, it is one book, and looking at many sources is encouraged.\n\nI am going to try to do this is a fair and balanced way, and I will also give people the benefit of the doubt. \n\nAbout 100 years ago, there was a ma...
How a cut on the body is healed?	[ "So there are 4 ish (it's debatable) phases of wound healing. \n\nThe first is hemostasis (this is the debatable phase). After your skin is broken, the vessels around the cut constrict (this is called vascular spasm). Then platelets (special cells in your blood that form clots) adhere to the exposed collagen around...
What causes me to wake up minutes before my alarm goes off, even when I've barely slept?	[ "There is something in our body called a biological clock. If your body is used to doing some things at a certain time, be it waking up or maybe using the restroom. You will generally do these things at those times even when its pointless to do so otherwise. Since you work your body does this to help you not oversl...
Why do rockets level off horizontally rather than maintaining a vertical path?	[ "All the other commenters are correct, but no one has linked [this classic xkcd what if](_URL_0_) that explains and illustrates the concept very well.", "Orbit is not a function of altitude, it's all about velocity.\n\nObviously reaching orbital velocity at ground level is tough. Lots of air to push through, lots...
How does a lawyer defend his client, if there is concrete evidence that they actually committed the crime?	[ "When there's concrete evidence that they did it, the lawyer will work for a lower punishment. They'll find whatever excuse they can to get a shorter jail time, avoid death penalty, whatever the case may be.", "Theoretically, a lawyer isn't supposed to just get his client free. He is supposed to represent the law...

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