Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why do objects have genders in languages other than English, and how are those genders assigned?	[ "One possible explanation as to why grammatical gender arises is redundancy. It is a good thing for a language to have a certain degree of redundancy; that way, if part of a message is cut out or somehow misunderstood, it is still possible to understand the whole meaning, as redundancy means it was transmitted more...
Am I really saving gas by turning off my car's engine at red lights?	[ "I believe 10 seconds off will make up for the gas to start it up. However if you stop your car at every light you will wreak havoc on your starter.", "Forget the original question for a moment. When I learned to drive fifty years ago, my dad made the point that there are idiots on the road (there still are) and ...
How do people figure out what colors to use when coloring an old black and white photo?	[ "\"Black\" and \"white\" are actually a ton of different shades of grey. If you know the method the picture was taken with and how it converts visible light into something that can be put onto film in greyscale, you can tell with a pretty high degree of accuracy which shade of grey corresponds to which visible ligh...
How does my car radio display the station's call letters?	[ "Via [RDS](_URL_0_). There's another signal tucked away inside the FM broadcast that can carry information like text. The station chooses what to send.\n\nThis is also how radios can identify the type of music playing like 'Rock' or 'Jazz'." ]
From a technical standpoint, how are hackers able to "crack" online passwords?	[ "On most sites user names are very easy to find. For example I can see yours right on this page, SonicPavement. For every way a website tries to block hackers, those hackers will come up with some clever way to get around it. For example, they could use a botnet (many computers that they are under their control)...
Do special forces count as "boots on ground" or do they have their own separate rules?	[ "\"Boots on the ground\" isn't a really helpful term since it basically means whatever the speaker wants it to mean. That said, it doesn't typically apply to special forces or \"advisers\" or the like. Assuming the figures in [this article](_URL_0_) are correct, the US has/had 1,000 advisers in Iraq while insisting...
how did we as humans collectively decide on the location of the international date line?	[ "It didn't.\n\nThe date line is the opposite side of the globe to the Prime Meridian (roughly).\n\nThere were multiple Prime Meridians throughout history, typlically countries with large a large navy or merchant shipping fleet would have their own. Eventually they all lost out to the current PM.", "you'll notice ...
How do self-driving cars reduce accidents	[ "> Can a self-driving car keep tabs of all the pedestrians around it too? \n\nYes. A self-driving car also has (depending on how its implemented) a 360 degree field of vision, and has a reaction time that exceeds human reactions by an order of magnitude. A computer can begin stopping the car before you've even *n...
If a woman became president of the US, and got pregnant, would she get a maternity leave?	[ "On the off chance a woman of child bearing age became president, which is unlikely, the VP would step in if she were incapacitated following the birth, or when she couldn't do things like flying, but as it isn't a very physical job, and the baby could always be in her office, I imagine she wouldn't take a complete...
Is the heart like a ticking time bomb, or are we harming it over the years before death?	[ "Usually not. It's usually a gradual process. There are many different things that can go wrong with your heart, the most well known is a heart attack, in which some of the muscle tissue actually dies. But there are many other things that can cause problems in your heart. \n\nHowever, usually when something does go...
Why is it not possible to control your heart the way you do your lungs or any other muscle?	[ "Two points here:\n\n1) Your body is programmed (for want of a better word) not to die, so for example it's extremely difficult to hold your breath until you die or even until you pass out. Your autonomous nervous system keeps necessary functions going regardless of what the conscious passenger in your body thinks...
Why did Sarkozy call Netanyahu a liar? What did he do?	[ "Palestine and Israel are pretty much enemies today, though they would like to share the same land. So, a lot of other countries (including France) want peace to appear there.\n\nSarkozy probably had some verbal agreement with Netanyahu. Sarkozy put some weight on the discussions between Israel and the EU. He also ...
Why was Princess Leia on a diplomatic mission to Alderaan if she was FROM Alderaan?	[ "The Galactic Senate wasn't on Alderaan, she could have presumably been heading home between legislative sessions.\n\nOf course nobody in the galaxy bought that story either way, since Tatooine isn't close to either.", "I think it's unusual, but makes sense. Let's think of it this way:\n\n**It's 4am at Schipol Ai...
How can a 64gb SD card hold more data than a 32gb SD card if they are the same physical size?	[ "We're talking about storing information, not an actual physical substance. If we're talking about something physical, like water, it would make sense that two buckets the exact same size would hold the same amount of water.\n\n\nHowever, we are talking about information, and information can be represented smaller ...
Why can I watch Netflix or porn online seamlessly but when I watch a video on _URL_0_ it's choppy as fuck?	[ "ESPN has horrible video technology. They use an in house video player that hasn't been updated in some time.\n\nOn the other hand, Netflix and Youtube's whole business model relies on having good video service. They spend a lot of money making sure they have a great video player.", "Bandwidth and just expertise....
Would you die if you injected water into your bloodstream?	[ "Depends on how much water you injected. A small amount (a drop or so) probably won't kill you. A larger amount would cause your blood cells to rupture because the concentration of water inside and outside the cell would be different. Water would rush inside the cell and blow up the cell membrane. If you kept injec...
How smoke detectors work	[ "Smoke detectors are a really cool piece of technology. They contain a bit of radioactive material in them (not enough to cause any serious harm to people). This radioactive material decays every now and then, which generates alpha particles, which in turn knock electrons off the atoms in the air. This generates a ...
Why do industries stay close together geographically	[ "A lot of it is because that's where the good employees are, because that's where the jobs in that industry are. That's kind of a chicken and the egg thing, but it's there now, so it perpetuates. There are businesses that do that there, so the colleges start having curriculum around that industry, and it snowball...
Politics aside, why is pet euthanasia considered humane, while lethal injection is considered cruel and unusual? In other words, why can't we put people to sleep and then administer drugs to stop the heart?	[ "Lethal injection is technically the most humane method of execution that we have. It's not that lethal injection in it of itself is cruel and unusual it's just that the death penalty system isn't the greatest. Lethal injections usually use 3 drug cocktails that anesthetize, relax muscles, and stop the heart. The p...
How do skulls and, specifically, brain cavities grow in humans?	[ "The skull does not start out as one solid chunk of bone. At birth, it consists of multiple plates connected by cartilage. Infants have a soft spot, aka a fontanelle, where you can feel that bone has not fully formed and even see the baby's pulse. The plates grow larger and the cartilage is replaced by bone, which ...
why are some people fresh and upbeat in the morning ("morning people") and others can barely get out of bed no matter much sleep they have, but can stay up all night easily?	[ "I think its a habit thing ... Whenever I get used waking at certain time, I'll always wake up at that time. Ex. Its been a week waking up at 11 am ... Next week I'll sleep at 5 am and still wake up at 11 am" ]
.. How can H & R Block afford to give away 1000$ everyday for a year?	[ "H & R Block is valued at [over 8 billion dollars](_URL_0_). $365,000 is basically nothing on that scale." ]
why does South Park have all of its episodes to stream, for free, on the internet?	[ "If you're talking about the southparkstudios website, they show ads during the episode streams, and since they've been doing it for a long time, they probably make enough money from those ads that the website turns a profit." ]
How do people who make song mashups isolate the vocal tracks to songs?	[ "Vocal-only tracks for many songs can be found publicly. For many songs for which vocal-only tracks aren't publicly available, producers of those mash-ups may have connections to labels/artists and can get the vocal-only audio for a track privately. \n\nI've done music composition/DJing/remixes for 20 years (as a ...
Why did Obama Care raise the cost of private health insurance for many middle and upper class Americans?	[ "Insurance is pooled risk. Everyone puts in a dollar in case they need 10. \n\nThe company collects 100 knowing that they will only need to pay out 3 lots of 10. Everyone is still paying a dollar so all is well. However the company knows that some people are at a higher risk than others, to protect its profits it e...
In movies and TV shows, why are streets at night always wet, like it just rained?	[ "Because it looks better on camera. Lights reflect in the surface and it just gives it a better look on screen.\n\nThe movie crews generally wet down the street before rolling.", "Because it looks cooler. TV and Film are a visual medium, and the realism of \"how could it always have been raining?\" is ignored ove...
How do power-washers only take the dirt and grime away and not the underlying paint on a car or house?	[ "Dirt and grime are only physically stuck to the paint. Paint actually undergoes a chemical reaction and becomes chemically bonded to the underlying surface. You could remove it with a pressure washer set to high enough pressure or pointed at it for enough time just as you could sand it off. but the dirt and grime ...
people's fascination with Albert Einstein	[ "His theories were groundbreaking. It's hard to sort of get in touch with that nowadays since many of our attention spans are so small and we tend to take a lot of things for granted (internet, computers, etc) and there isn't that much going on in terms of mindblowing theories, at least on the level of Einstein. Bu...
Why are cork caps still used in wines when they only pose a risk for the wine to taste like cork?	[ "The short answer from what I can find is that it's more tradition, and a wine-drinking populace that is unwilling to accept that a screw cap could treat their wine better than a cork when cork has been used for ~~millennia~~ several centuries to keep wine sealed and aging well." ]
Why is that when I drink water or soda, I feel full after a while, while with beer, there's no stopping me?	[ "By the time you have drank enough to feel full [for me it is 3 glasses of water] you have had enough alcohol for the fun to start. Lack of inhibition is enough at that point to make you want to drink more. On top of that the ethanol being metabolized in your liver causes a sudden blood sugar drop. Drops in blood s...
With ice caps melting, ocean levels rising, and higher global temperatures, this theoretically would be a perfect storm for massive rainfall. Why aren't we seeing an increase in precipitation within dry arid area's, instead of increased droughts worldwide?	[ "Dry arid areas like north texas where we've gone from 10 years of drought to massive flooding in 6 months?", "All of the above does not dictate specifically how precipitation occurs. Precipitation is also affected heavily by ocean currents and geography. \n\n\nSo for example, Nevada and the Rockies in general wi...
Why are Junior, the II, the III etc. only used for males? Is there a female equivalent? & if there is, why isn't it used as often?	[ "I'd think it's because 99% of sons keep the same first and last name their whole lives. Then you can have Bill Jones, Bill Jones Jr, Bill Jones the Third, from birth onward and the name sticks.\n\nWhereas women are much more likely to change their names. Mary Smith's daughter is Mary Jenkins, her daughter is Mar...
Why doesn't the strength of the strong interaction (of the fundamental interactions) diminish with distance?	[ "There is no fundamental law that forbids forces from exhibiting \"weird\" and non-trivial behaviors, and the strong force is an excellent example of a very, very non-trivial force. Between quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, it doesn't fall off with distance, but rather grows stronger. This actual...
The supposed manifestations of 'Qi' ("Chi")	[ "Parlor tricks. The tips of the \"spears\" are rounded. Line them up carefully with a meaty part of your leg and they'll hold you up with enough \"comfort\" and cushion to not cut into you. Line up the third with a relatively cozy spot between your chest while holding yourself up with your arms and you do the \"mag...
How can I move around so much when I sleep in my bed, but don't move an inch when I'm sleeping on the couch?	[ "I'm guess would be that you have more room to more." ]
I've read that the simulation hypothesis is extremely unlikely because of something called Lorentz Invariance, but I don't know enough about physics to understand why.	[ "LmOver isn't quite right. You've got it right, though! Lorentz invariance is a symmetry (think - something you can do to an experiment without changing the results) of spacetime that can be easily understood as rotations (plus \"boosts\" - think rotations between space and time). If the universe was a simulation, ...
why do houses tend to go up in value?	[ "It's not so much the house as it is the property that the house sits on. Land is expensive and continues to grow in value because we can't make more land." ]
Why is wine only served in 5 oz (150 ml) portions, while other alcohol may be portioned out differently?	[ "It's not, really. It's just that 5 oz of wine is a good measure to use to compare to a 1.5 oz shot of liquor, or 12 ounces of beer in terms of alcohol content. Of course, it's not perfect as beer and wine can vary in the amount of alcohol they have per ounce. Liquor, on the other hand, is almost always the same am...
Why bugs come towards you when you spray them with Raid.	[ "If it looked something like [this]( _URL_0_) they are called basement / cave / camel crickets. They will jump after you if they feel threatened to scare you away. It is their only defense mechanism for large predators and it works like a charm! \n\nThese have sent me running on several occasions. We had a large g...
How does the army work? How does one get a promotion and such?	[ "Military promotions are not nearly as sexy as they appear on TV.\n\nIf you're enlisted, you earn rank by passing formal tests, doing your job well, and earning time in rank/service.\n\nIf you're an officer, you earn rank by earning time in rank/service, meeting educational goals (like getting advanced degrees), an...
What would water feel like at the deepest point in the ocean?	[ "You'll feel like you're being crushed from all directions (in reality you'd already be crushed into a pulp). Imagine being buried alive but x1000" ]
The OJ Simpson court case	[ "\"The People vs. O.J. Simpson\" TV show sums up most of the basics pretty well. In short, there was a lot of incriminating evidence against O.J. Simpson, but his \"dream team\" of defense lawyers was able to sow reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors based on the fact that the LAPD officer who acquired much o...
Why doesnt your soda get "shaken up" when it falls out of the vending machine?	[ "Two reasons that both contribute:\n\n1) The vending machine acts as a fridge, and at a colder temperature the CO2 gas requires more force to seperate from the liquid\n\nBut more importantly:\n\n2) The \"drop\" you see in these machines isn't as dramatic as you may think. There are [columns](_URL_0_) of each differ...
Pseudorandom numbers and how it is different from truly random numbers.	[ "Pseudorandom numbers are generated by a formula. They look random at first glance, but if you know the formula, you can predict the next number with 100% accuracy.\n\nAlso, if the formula is not very good, then you can detect patterns in the numbers that it generates, or determine that it might favour certain num...
Why do dogs have to sniff about before going for a dump?	[ "It's an instinct from when they were hunters in the forest. If they poop near a game trail, the deer will be scared from that trail because they can sense that a predator was nearby recently, and then the wolf will lose a food source. By making sure they always poop far from game trails, they increase the likeliho...
How is it possible to program a random number generator? Wouldn't it need an algorithm	[ "The programmer provides the seed number, often choosing the time in milliseconds (a pretty random number).\n\nEncryption software uses stronger methods of randomness like asking you to move the mouse for a few seconds and pulling random data from that." ]
How is the position on the Earth's Surface determined by a GPS?	[ "There is a cluster of satellites in orbit (the much cooler term is \"constellation of satellites\").\n\nEach one has a very accurate clock and they continuously broadcast their current time and which satellite they are. Your GPS device receives these time signals and since it knows (a) which satellite sent which s...
How can someone with type AB blood be the universal recipient for blood donations, and only eligible to donate blood to other type AB patients, yet is the universal donor for plasma?	[ "[This image kinda sums it up](_URL_0_). The important thing in blood donation is that the plasma can't have antibodies against the antigens on the red blood cells. \n\nYou either have A-antigens on your red blood cells or (you're pretty likely to have) anti-A antibodies in your plasma. B-antigens and anti-B ant...
What is a blind and a double blind experiment in science?	[ "Blind: The participants in the study don't know whether or not they're receiving the treatment being tested.\n\nDouble-blind: Neither the participants nor the researchers know which participants received the treatment being tested (during the course of the experiment, in the case of the latter, they obviously find...
Why is The Interview receiving much more hostility than Team America:World Police?	[ "Probably because back then north korea didn't have internet and a different \"president\"." ]
What's the difference between stellarator and tokamak fusion reactors?	[ "Fusion scientist here, let me try to explain things. First I should probably clear up some misconceptions.\n\nThe stellarator design is actually just as old as the tokamak. The problem was for a long time we couldn't make stellarators that were good enough to compete with tokamaks. Now we can so they've gained a l...
why movies with good screenplays only have one or two writers, while the typical (and bad) blockbuster scripts often have up to three to four writers?	[ "Because with more writers some movies tend to get written and rewritten, to the point that the story makes no sense anymore. An example would be [Prometheus](_URL_0_), which was passed repeatedly between two writers. Obviously a screenplay with one or two writers would be more \"focused\". Of course that does not ...
Why is it that some food items, when we taste them once, we continue having more and more, even if our appetite is full already?	[ "Because things like fat, sugar, and salt are rare in nature. You are biologicaly driven to consume them in excess to create reserves. The food industry takes full advantage of these innate addictive properties." ]
LI5 Challenge: The Forth Dimension	[ "Disclaimer: I do not study geometry or topology.\n\nI'll walk us through each dimension step by step until we reach the fourth spatial dimension. When I say spatial I mean that we're dealing with shapes that we can draw, or objects we can see. We won't be including time as a dimension, that's for another day....
Why can non-American actors so commonly mimic a perfect American accent, but rarely can an American actor accurately mimic a foreign accent?	[ "In part there's a survivor bias. If you can't do an American accent, you won't land a role playing an American. So we don't get to see actors with poor American accents.", "Money, mostly.\n\nThe US has the largest, richest media market in the world. If there is one accent that with enhance a non-American actors...
- Do bees know they are going to die if they sting you? If so how?	[ "No. Bee stings are supposed to work against other insects, so they shred the carapaces with their barbed stings. But humans have soft and spongy skin, so the barbs get stuck inside, instead of shredding anything, and the bee accidentally rips out half it's organs trying to fly away.\n\nA single dead bee is not rea...
Realpolitik	[ "politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations... \n\npragmatical rather than ideological. \n\nfor instance: the US's good relations with China, despite being anti-commie.", "About 2,500 years ago there was a big war and a big powerful city (Athens) decide...
When people say they've lost their appetite, what's happening in the brain to cause it so?	[ "I've heard it explained in this way: if you weren't taught not to eat rotten food by your parents then you will try to at one point or another, when you smell the rotting food your body loses it's appetite so you simply have no desire to eat that rotting food anyway, therefore not getting sick/dying.", "All thos...
Is Everest growing or getting smaller?	[ "Mount Everest is subject to erosion, such as wind... BUT the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates are still colliding, pushing the Himalayas upwards. The latter is more significant than the former, so Mount Everast is actually increasing size/height." ]
Why can't the prison system agree on a "painless" execution method, when any veterinarian in the country can painlessly put down a dog?	[ "Part of it is, it's getting increasingly more difficult for states to get the drugs necessary. Some drug companies will not sell the drugs to states if they know it will be used in executions. \n\nIf the states could get all the drugs they need for an execution, instead of having to alter the process, or use off-l...
How do programs like Tor help to provide anonymity on the Internet, and are the methods they use effective?	[ "Tor creates a mesh of connections.\n\nA simple way of people figuring out who you are is based on your IP address. (There are more, but I won't go into details)\n\nFor example, your home connection has the IP address of 123.123.123.123. When you connect to a website, say _URL_2_, reddit's servers will see a connec...
how can my cat crawl under a mountain of blankets on my bed and sleep comfortably for hours but I feel like I'm suffocating after just a few minutes?	[ "The amount of oxygen a mammal needs is directly proportional to its mass, ergo your cat is way smaller than you are and needs a lot less air than you do. \nBasically it's just pure math, a cat that is 1/100th your size will need 1/100th the air." ]
Why aren't electrical outlets universal?	[ "The infrastructure was created independently, and once it made sense to standardize it was just too expensive.", "The different international organizations that control the power grid set different standards for the amplitude and frequency of AC power that comes through a wall socket. When each organization deve...
In World Politics, what are the USA, Russia, and China individually trying to accomplish?	[ "The USA is an electoral democracy so its international policy sometimes seems a little deranged. Policy experts tend to have a pretty clear view of what is \"good for\" the US - extend defensive alliances with countries around the world, make it difficult for local rivals to benefit from aggressive war, extend fr...
How is our sense of taste and smell connected?	[ "> How is our sense of taste and smell connected?\n\nMost of what you think of as \"taste\" is actually smell. For instance, an apple and a raw potato taste almost exactly the same. If you hold your nose (which stops air flow past your olfactory nerves), you can't tell if what you're biting into is a raw potato o...
Why do my computer speakers occasionally pick up radio or (phone?) conversations?	[ "A piece of wire can be used as a radio antenna, as a conductive material can pick up the electromagnetic radiation that makes up radio waves. Your car radio, for example, has an antenna that picks up electromagnetic waves, and the tuner in the radio isolates which frequency to isolate. From there, the received sig...
How can a camera take a clear picture underwater, yet when I open my eyes everything is blurry?	[ "Light bends when it changes the stuff that it is going through. Lens bend light in a special way to help cameras and eyes see. How much the lens works depends on what the light is moving from before it enters the lens. The lens in your eyes work when light moves from the air into them. When you put your eye in wat...
Can someone dumb down (u/latros explanation on) why US healthcare providers are allowed to overcharge patients?	[ "[Here's the explanation I assume you're talking about.](_URL_0_) The post already seems relatively straightforward. Please clarify if there's a particular point from Iatros' explanation that's been confusing for you. \n\nBullet Point 1: Doctors get paid by insurance companies. The doctors have arrangements with...
How does smell transmit? Does it radiate like sound or 'float' like gas?	[ "Odor is carried by molecules. When you smell lemon, for example, little molecules from the lemon are making their way through the air to your nose.\n\nNow think about what happens when you smell shit...", "Think of smell as water. If I poured water on a surface, it naturally spreads out right? Just the same wit...
Why can I Crack my knuckles multiple times a day but never multiple times in a row?	[ "The \"crack\" you hear is caused when a bubble of vacuum is formed in the synovial fluid in the joint. Gasses which had formerly been dissolved in the synovial fluid (mostly carbon dioxide) rapidly fill the joint resulting in the sound (the technical term is cavitation). You can't crack it again until the gasses...
Where are all the famous artists from before the Renaissance?	[ "In whatever iteration of the afterlife they believe in, or just a couple of meters underground" ]
If automation in companies, driverless cars/trucks, and AI is can do the work of thousands of people in a handful or robots/machines, why do scientists and economists still insist that it will create lots of jobs?	[ "Each level of automation in low-skilled labor eliminates the low-skilled job that pays minimum wage but creates even more jobs at medium to high skilled levels to maintain & service those same machines.\n\nFast food example:\nTaco Bell currently needs ~30 employees to cover all the minimum wage & managerial jo...
Why do we know so little about ancient Egypt?	[ "Our troubles with understanding Egyptian culture and history are multifaceted. \n\nPart of it is that we don't necessarily understand the language quite so well as we understand Latin- there's been an unbroken scholarship of the Latin language since Latin was actually spoken thousands of years ago. We've never NOT...
Why was the King of Thailand so revered by his people?	[ "The recently-deceased king of Thailand is generally well-loved by the population. There are many reasons for that, but generally speaking, it is a combination of his long and quite successful reign (the longest certified reign barring that of Louis XIV of France), as well as a very good public image due to his gen...
How did the business suit become standard fashion for men in a diverse number of cultures around the world?	[ "The fact that Europe colonised almost the entire world about 150 years ago and spread their culture all over their colonies made it happen.", "Follow up ELI5: Why isn't there a summer version of a man's suit?", "Other cultures didn't see it as \"copying the West.\" They saw it as \"This is how rich people in r...
why we are in a "war" right now?	[ "The invasion of Afghanistan occurred as a direct response to 9/11. The goal was to go after the terrorist organizations that planned the attacks and find the people responsible. \n\nIraq is a bit harder to explain. Basically, the American people were told that the dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destru...
Why do salt lands have such reflective properties? Example: Salt Land in Bolivia looks like the world's greatest mirror	[ "They're formed by dried up seabeds, so they are perfectly flat. When it does rain, the rain has nowhere to drain to, so it forms a perfectly flat reflective puddle." ]
How do we know that we are "done" with a hug?	[ "There are many subtle clues. One person will slightly loosen their grip, and the other person will take this as the cue to end the hug. There also tends to be a \"normal\" hug time, which you also subconsciously track. After the \"normal\" amount of time is up, you loosen up, and the other person gets the message ...
How do people eat and drink in space? wouldn't the food just float around and not go straight to the stomach?	[ "Swallowing does not rely on gravity. The muscles around your esophagus (and all through your digestive tract) contract in series to squeeze food through you. This motion is called \"peristalsis.\"\n\nAs for getting the food in your mouth, that's just a matter of getting a food that clumps together pretty well, d...
Why can't/don't we use salt water in our toilets?	[ "This would require running two separate water lines into your house, one containing salt water specifically for your toilets, and keeping that water separate from the rest. It would also require towns / cities / whatever to have two water reservoirs - one for salt water (for toilets exclusively) and one with fresh...
Why do job applications ask for my ethnicity when they are apparently not going to be used in my application for equality purposes?	[ "Companies are required to ask and keep that information so that it can be reviewed if there were ever a complaint. The company isn't required to hire to maintain any ethnic balance, but they have to show that they are not discriminating in hiring because of ethnicity. \n\nIf someone complains, and there's an inves...
Why is Adele's Hello song & album, 25, released in 2015 nominated for the 2017 Grammys?	[ "The Grammys don't use the calendar year for eligibility, instead they use October 1-September 30. Since 25 was released in November of 2015, it's part of the 2016 eligibility year (which ran from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016).", "The Grammys is usually on February or the first quarter of the year. He...
How do mom porcupines and hedgehogs give birth without the babies' spines causing any harm to the mother's insides?	[ "A porcupine's quills are hair, not stiff rods. When they give birth, the quills are soft and wet. That is also why the quills can be replaced constantly.", "I'm not a porcupine expert, but my guess, is they the baby's quills are still soft/not fully hardened, and the babies are probably pushed out head-first, so...
Why did we ever start counting things in 'Dozens'? Why not in tens, or something easier to work with?	[ "Base 12 was used in ancient Egypt.\n\nYou can count to twelve on one hand, using your thumb to move on each finger joint (four fingers, each with three joints).\n\nArguably, base 12 and base 60 make more \"sense\" than base 10, because you can count to 12 on the one hand and keep track of five groups of 12 with th...
Why do home-made burgers get fat in the middle (even if you put a thumb indent in the middle) while frozen, fast-food burger start out flat as a pancake and stay that way after cooking?	[ "home made burgers are flat if you put a weight on em.\n\nburgers made in fast food places are cooked on a grills that close like a clamshell and press the burger down while it cooks so it can't expand in the center.\n\nthe real interesting thing is \"why do hamburger patties get fat in the middle?\"\n\nwhen hambur...
If most water is absorbed in the colon, then why does thirst resolve immediately after drinking?	[ "Yes, but it's your brain and not your colon that makes the decision of whether you feel thirsty or not. There are whole lot of times there will be a disconnect.\n\nConsider the experiments with infinite soup bowls. People will eat more when offered bigger portions, regardless of hunger, and if you covertly keep f...
Why are written and spoken English so different?	[ "English is the result of a linguistic mishmash of Low German dialects, Norman French, Scandinavian languages, Church Latin and Scientific Greek, and loanwords from a hundred other languages from Italian to Arabic to Swahili to Cherokee to Hindi to Japanese.\n\nAs a result, it has lots of different rubrics for how ...
Why do undercooked potatoes taste disgusting, even though other root vegetables like carrots and parsnips are fine to eat raw?	[ "Because of the starch content; potatoes basically store their energy as starch, whereas carrots store energy as sugar." ]
how rugby is played.	[ "I'm going to describe Rugby Union, other types of Rugby are similar but have a few slightly different rules.\n\nFifteen players on each team on the field. The main objective is to get the ball to the other end of the pitch and either put the ball down over the line (scoring a Try) or kick it between the posts an...
Why is jupiter considered a planet when it is basically just a big ball of gas without surface?	[ "Because \"solid surface\" isn't a requirement to be considered a planet. The current classification is as follows:\n\n(1) A \"planet\"1 is a celestial body that:\n\n (a) is in orbit around the Sun,\n\n (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equil...
What's the difference between androids and robots?	[ "A robot is at it's simplest: an automated mechanical/electrical device that is made to operate with minimal or no human control and preform specific tasks. \n\nAn Android is a robot, a robot made to be specifically human looking or human like. \n\nA Cyborg is a combination of mechanical/electronic parts with biolo...
Why is it that when ice cream melts and refreezes it gets icy and its texture isn't how it's supposed to be	[ "Part of the magic of making ice cream is that little tiny air bubbles get whipped into it, and tiny globules of fat are mixed throughout the ice crystals. When it melts and re-freezes, all those bubbles get released and the fats can separate a bit, so you're left with something closer to greasy ice." ]
What object physically mediates the push and pull of magnets? What causes the tension between all objects we call gravity?	[ "\"Force\" is not a verb in this context. It's a noun … but a noun that's merely useful and illustrative, not explanatory.\n\nForce, in physics, is the time derivative of momentum. In other words, it's the way physicists quantify how a thing changes its motion. A change in momentum will result in an accelerat...
How do we survive the Earth spinning at an incredible speed and rushing around the sun at the same time? Wouldn't the g-force kill us all instantly?	[ "Because you started with the same momentum as the object you were born on.", "We're moving very fast, but the Earth is very large. The centripetal force required to keep us moving in a circle is roughly [1 part in 289 of Earth's gravity](_URL_0_). This is enough to be important for some applications, and in fact...
Why do we say "huh?" or "what?" when a person says something, even though we already heard it and answer the question before a person repeats themselves?	[ "for me personally often times is because I was really suprised to hear the person talk. It came out of nowhere and I was kinda \"unprepared\" to listen, so I intuitively interrupt them with \"huh what?\" to give my brain some time to prepare. \n\nBut most of the time I understood them anyways.", "you are still t...
Why is there so much backlash against Iggy Azalea in the hip-hop community, but not against other white rappers?	[ "Because she doesn't make good music, and she's made it to the mainstream music's Eye.", "Hi /u/act_of_dog, your post isn't really a fit for ELI5 as it isn't asking for an explanation of a concept. I would suggest posting straightforward questions in /r/answers or in the case of entirely subjective questions, /r...
The difference between the Common Law System that we use in the US/Britain and Civil Law System used in most countries around the world.	[ "In Civil Law, everything is written down, if there isn't a law against, it isn't illegal.\n\nIn Common Law, judges are given more latitude to interpret laws and derive legal principles from them. Those interpretations are recorded and serve as precedent, non-binding mini-laws that other judges will take into acco...
Is it possible to make paper out of the outermost peel of onions or shallots or garlic?	[ "It is probably possible to make onion peels into paper. Handmade papers are just wood or rag pulp dried in a mold. But it would take a lot to be useful and nobody is going to peel onions all day just to make paper when they could just buy paper that’s thin and translucent—which is called onionskin!" ]
Does a drug that prevents the spread of HIV mean we could eradicate the disease? If so, how do we coordinate that kind of effort?	[ "Supposing it was 100 percent effective, and we could get absolutely everyone to take it, and it could prevent transmission mother-to-child, then we could eradicate it in a generation. But the first two assumptions, at least, are false: the pill has 99 percent efficacy (still pretty great), and there's no way we co...
Why do people have pairs of chromosomes? What does that do?	[ "You get one chromosome from each parent. It increases genetic diversity by giving you one from each parent, rather than just one chromosome from one parent." ]

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