Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why isn't a vacuum created in my body when I fart?	[ "Vacuums would only be created with rigid bodies.\n\nWhen you fart it's more like popping bubble wrap; Your stomach compresses rather than having a vacuum.", "Fart happens due to the build up of gases by bacteria in your stomach. More gas, means more pressure. When you fart, you are relaxing your spinchter muscle...
Why does water taste weird in the morning compared to at night?	[ "You'll have to be more specific, water sitting on your counter or stagnant in the pipes will be warmer and have more oxygen or minerals dissolved in it making it taste different.\n\nOther wise factors like brushing your teeth, or having a lot of build up of bacteria in your mouth while you sleep can affect the tas...
Why is there a rise of radical conservative officials in public office around the world right now (e.g. USA, Brazil, South Korea, Britain, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.)?	[ "Billy runs a lemonade stand in a middle-class suburb neighborhood. He gets his supply of lemons from Jimmy, whose dad runs a lemon picking company and Jimmy gets a cut of whatever profits Billy makes.\n\nThe neighborhood is made up of people much like Billy. They also tend to all look like Billy in terms of skin c...
How are porcelain brakes, on my car, guaranteed for life? Do they never wear away? How do they not produce brake dust?	[ "Do you mean ceramic? They produce dust still, but it's light colored so it's practically invisible compared to the dust most other pads produce. They definitely still wear out but they have a very long lifetime. The ceramic compound brakes on my 330i have lasted through track days at Laguna Seca, California Speedw...
Why is it hard to speak when we are emotional?	[ "Emotions are caused by chemicals being released in the brain. These chemicals can cause love, panic, fear, nostalgia, etc. When surprising information hits your brain, it can get flooded by these chemicals and can hinder other non essential brain operations.", "Emotions take up processing power and influence our...
elemental particle spin.	[ "> How can a particle have 1/2 a spin? Does it go around half way and then stop? Or is this a speed in that it spins half as fast as a 1 spin?\n\nThe particle isn't actually spinning, there isn't even a clear meaning for this for a point particle. 'Spin' is just a number that it has which affects its behaviour - t...
What causes the “burn” in muscles when working out?	[ "When you perform strenuous exercise, the movement of your muscles require more energy than can be provided by aerobic methods which use oxygen from your blood. Your body is then forced to produce energy by anaerobic methods (without oxygen). These processes end up producing a substance called lactic acid which cau...
Why is the letter "Y" sometimes a vowel?	[ "Even though we label letters as consonants or vowels, it's really only sounds that are consonants or vowels. And thanks to English's screwy writing system, \"y\" can be either - at the start of \"you\", it's a consonant, and at the end of \"try\", it represents a vowel (well, a diphthong, so it's sort of two v...
What is the deciding factor in whether or not a light wave is absorbed or reflected?	[ "Mostly the electron configuration and whether the light energy is the right frequency to promote an electron in the receiving material.\n\nLight hits electrons, makes them more energetic, and they either do so stably, unstably, or just arent the right match. Arent the right match and they go dtright through, stabl...
How do people "grow out" of allergic conditions like Asthma?	[ "This is ELI5, so simply put, your body gets used to the allergen that it overreacted to in the first place. The protein/carb/lipid tags on the foreign body are so familiar to your immune system there isn't any reason for it to go into a reaction. In theory most allergies can be \"cured\" this way, but for some r...
Why does rain make us feel cozy?	[ "Let's be a bit more specific and talk about gentle rains with maybe a bit of thunder in the distance while you're inside or under shelter. There's a big number of things that contribute.\n\nFirst, the soft white noise. A gentle rain creates tons of mildly distracting pleasant white noise. This helps reduce stres...
Say I have a bad cold with an impossibly stuffed up nose. No way to breathe through my nostrils. Now say I get kidnapped, and they put duct tape over my mouth. Would my body react to un-stuff my nose so I could breathe to live?	[ "I wouldn't worry about it. Next time you have duct tape (and preferably no facial hair) take a strip and put it over your mouth and try to get it off without your hands. It's absolutely trivial. The whole \"I have duct tape over my mouth so now I can't talk\" thing is just for the movies. Honestly it's one of ...
Why does Nutella need no refrigeration or microwaving?	[ "It's ingredients do not spoil at room temperature until said expiration date, similarly to peanut butter, and is edible as is; the ingredients have undergone their completed industrial processing and are safe to eat from the jar.", "Nutella is mostly fat and sugar. In such high concentrations, that it litterally...
How can the car industry be so diverse, and still be so successful?	[ "For the same reason there can be dozens of fast food companies, dozens of soft drink sellers: there is a huge, huge market with lots of different preferences.", "The market for cars isn’t that diverse. You have major car brands and then companies that fall under their umbrella. 9 total" ]
Aussies, what are bogans?	[ "bogans are culturally marginal people. they wear shit clothes and speak in non sensical platitudes. they smoke value pack cigarettes and drink goon. they vote labor for the benefits, and are all about 'straya. they are borne of underage and unmarried parents - and again fall pregnant and create more socially para...
How can you not bleed to death when surgeons cut you open? I mean a papercut can still bleed	[ "They clamp major arteries, and use an IV to put fluids back into your body. For a minor surgery, the fluids are enough to keep your systemic pressure up while your body makes new blood.\n\nFor major surgery, they give you whole blood or plasma, as needed.", "Cutting through the skin bleeds but the muscles in ves...
how do we know how old Saturn's rings are if we never been there?	[ "When you say never been there, people's may not have been there but the rings have been analyzed through Hubble, Voyager spacecraft and Cassini space probe. It used to be believed the rings were created like 100 million years ago but ring features seen by instruments on Cassini -- which arrived at Saturn in 2004 -...
How you play Dungeons and Dragons?	[ "EDIT: Also, check out /r/rpg for more about RPGs!\n\nThe full rules are actually pretty complicated, so I'll give you a general run down of how D & D and other table-top RPGs are played.\n\nYou need at least 2 players. One is the \"Game Master\" (GM) or \"Dungeon Master\" (DM) - the titles pretty much mean the sam...
how did clocks and time pieces work before batteries/electricity?	[ "You may have seen a pendulum swinging under a [grandfather clock](_URL_1_). One neat thing about pendulums is that the period of the swing (that is, how long it takes to swing back and forth) depends on the length and weight of the pendulum, not how far it's swinging, so as long as the length or weight doesn't cha...
Sunday trading hours (UK)	[ "its more a nicety to the worker who would have to work those extra hours now on the rota that has been expanded to include all day Sunday. Even if its just a rest from the rest of the week. Also any government who suggested it would suffer significantly from all the retail workers who suddenly had to work that ext...
The United States debt. Does it just keep increasing forever? what will eventually happen?	[ "Your questions;\n\nFirstly, debt=public debt. That is the one you hear in the news all the time. It is what the government owes.\n\nThe US debt is what we owe to the world, but as stated by /u/majiming it is mainly owned by the US, US institutions, and the people. If we default our perfect credit rating is harmed,...
How are worlds in Minecraft randomly generated?	[ "Background: Pseudorandom number generators (almost all RNG's in computing) are algorithms that take an initial value (known as the seed) and from that, generate a list of numbers that seems random (passes a slew of statistical randomness tests) despite the fact that the list is actually deterministic and repeating...
If a person's heart stops, and blood stops going to their organs, they become brain dead, and then dead dead; why can't we just pump oxygenated blood through them artificially after an hour or so, to revive them? Why do they stay dead?	[ "On my phone but basically, your body uses oxygen as the final electron acceptor as it makes ATP (this is the form of energy the cells in your body use). No oxygen = no ATP can be formed. If there is no ATP, your body can't pump sodium out of the cells with the Na+/K+ ATPase pump, and the cell gets filled with lots...
How do pirates still exist today/what exactly do they do?	[ "More or less the same things they've always done: hijack ships in order to steal the ship itself and/or its cargo and/or hold the crew for ransom. Piracy really hasn't changed much for most of human seafaring history. \n\nWhen people think of modern pirates they usually think of Somalia although the problem isn't ...
Why do certain sounds, such as nails against a chalkboard, make us cringe?	[ "Iirc (i am a bit jurassic), the sound is made of frequencies at both ends of our natural range of hearing, but are NOT harmonic of each other. The auditory cortex has difficulty trying to make sense of the noise, causing unpleasant feeling.sorry i can't cite, and this may be incomplete explanation." ]
How does a ship force a submarine to leave an area?	[ "The only thing a submarine has is stealth. It uses the depths, different thermal layers and silent operations to hide in the background ocean noise.\n\nGetting detected means the submarine is pretty much a sitting duck. It reflects either a mistake made by the submarine crew, or the skills of the surface fleet at ...
How can there be so many federal laws and regulations which aren't in the constitution? - The Tenth Amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."	[ "Your answer is in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. This portion of the document empowers Congress to do a great many things, but the most important for your question are \"to...provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States\" and \"to To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, an...
Why do gas stations with the same name, have different prices from location to location?	[ "Most such gas stations are part of something called a franchise, which means that the physical gas station you're at doesn't actually belong to the company that owns the name. Instead, the owner of the gas station pays fees to the company that owns the name, wears their uniforms, and follows their standard busines...
Why do Americans in the highest income bracket and with the most education tend to consume the most alcohol?	[ "You are confused by the poll. The poll doesn't say that rich drinkers drink more than poor drinkers, it says that rich people are less likely to claim to be total abstainers.\n\nWhy might this be? I can think of four reasons. The most likely reason for an American to abstain totally from alcohol are (1) membership...
Why do sunburns feel warm?	[ "Blood is rushed to those areas for repair thus causing the feeling of more heat in a specific piece of your body." ]
Do worms travel with a single orientation? Do they have a "belly" side that they usually travel facing down with? Or do they just move without caring about their rotation?	[ "They have a \"belly\" (abdominal) and a back (dorsal). They are not symmetrical inside. The neural system is the top side, the digestive system is the bottom side. And they aware of which side is up and down.", "Not all \"worms\" have the same body plan.\n\nSegmented worms, earthworms for example, are bilaterall...
Why are wedding dresses white?	[ "Because Queen Victoria wore a white dress when she married Albert in the middle of the 19th century. A white wedding dress became fashionable, then the fashion turned into a tradition.", "And just to add: not all wedding dresses are traditionally white. For example, chinese wedding dresses are red (the col...
Why does our vision look black and white when it is dark and our eyes get adjusted?	[ "In our eyes we have two different recepters called rods and cones. Cones help us see color and rods help us decern between light and dark. Cones are only useful if there is light, because color is a reflection of white light. Rods, on the other hand, are fantastic at making out shapes and figures when there is no ...
Can dogs understand other dogs when they bark?	[ "Dogs don't bark in a language like how you speak English. Languages are an invention which must be taught to our children and requires constant care and revision to be mutually intelligible. Dog barks are extremely simple vocalizations. Though it is probable that dogs have a better idea of why another dog is bark...
When it's sunny out, how does closing one eye allow you to open the other eye fully without discomfort?	[ "Because when you close one eye, you're instantly stopping 50% of the light from entering your brain. That's why you wouldn't feel discomfort." ]
Please help me understand what systemic vascular resistance is.	[ "Emergency Med. PA-C here. SVR is the back-pressure within your arteries that your heart must overcome each contraction to pump blood to the rest of the body" ]
what's going on with YouTube?	[ "I hihly recommend watching Ethens (h3h3Production) explaining what's going on. Basically what's happening is, that the people or the companies who want to advertise on YT are signing a contract. In the contract they can check boxes where it says something like -\nIt's okay if the video I want to advertise on has: ...
How and where does acid in our stomach come from?	[ "Sure, we start out as a mass of cells, but that doesn't really say much. Cells are capable of a variety of tasks. Detecting light, moving the body, pumping blood, firing electrical impulses, creating new cells. Producing acid isn't especially unique as a 'cool thing cells can do,' cells do all kinds of crazy thing...
the difference between murder and assassination.	[ "Assassination is to murder as beagle is to dog. Assassination is a specific type of murder generally defined by its political nature or the prominence/celebrity of the target.", "Assassination is generally political in nature. When JFK or MLK was shot it was for a political statement and therefore an assassinati...
today's science's view of the shape of the universe.	[ "If you're referring to the \"observable universe\", it is the distance from Earth we've been able to observe. It's a sphere because earth is a sphere. That is not the whole universe" ]
"pretty sure you're in some list now." Does the government really tag each individual as possible "criminals?" And if you do something illegal do they use this information gathered on you? Is this legal?	[ "It depends on what you do and if you get caught. If you get caught doing something illegal then yes the offence will be put in public records so anyone can look you up. You probably aren't on a list unless there is a reason you should be." ]
Under what circumstance could residents of the United States overthrow the government if said person/organization would immediately be charged with treason and/or imprisonment?	[ "The entire point of overthrowing a government is that the usurpers are declaring that the government is not valid, and than none of its laws apply. If they succeed, then they rewrite the laws, and will not be charged with a crime by the new government that they create.\n\nBasically, overthrowing the government is ...
Does the Earth make a sonic boom?	[ "It doesn't, because it isn't moving trough anything. Sonic speed is based on the medium propagating the sound. No medium, no sound, no speed of sound, no sonic boom." ]
What determines if gas is expelled out the body as flatulence or a belch?	[ "If the gas is liberated in the stomach, it goes up as a belch. If the gas is liberated once passed the pylorus, it will exit as a fart", "Not a biologist, but trying to apply common sense here: for a belch, the air would probably mostly enter your stomach alongside your food - think carbonated drinks, or maybe a...
Computer terms like SSD, RAM, HDD?	[ "ELI5: I like to compare the operation of a computer like a person working at a desk. This analogy may be a bit old, but I think it's apt for a 5-year old.\n\nCPU: The CPU is the person working at the desk. No two people are the same, some are faster, some are slower, some are better at performing certain tasks ...
why is it that elderly people tend to wake up earlier the older they get?	[ "You're looking at a biased sample set. Once they get old enough, they don't wake up at all.", "If you are interesed in the science behind this, it can be explained with the functions of the pineal gland. It has a significant role in regulating our circadian rythm/biological clock. The pineal gland produces a ho...
How can so many movies claim they are the "#1 movie in America" and not be lying?	[ "By not defining what they mean by \"#1.\" If they don't say it's the #1 movie at the box office, or the #1 movie according to critical rating, or #1 highest rated movie on metacritic user reviews, or such, they're not lying. By not quantifying it they can easily decide for themselves what it means, and argue that ...
What does "paper money has no intrinsic value" mean and what are some examples to help understand the word "intrinsic"?	[ "Intrinsic means inherent value that the item has just for existing. When they say money has no intrinsic value, they are basically saying that money is valuable because WE say it is valuable, not because money is naturally valuable.", "Intrinsic means of itself. Gold is useful because you can use it for jewelry,...
Where did the tradition of having bedrooms on the second floor come from?	[ "Bedrooms have been upstairs since houses had two stories, because it puts them away from the public spaces, away from the livestock, and away from some of the creatures that crawl around on the ground. Also it's warmer in the winter, and catches more breezes in the summer.", "Heat rises. Be it cattle, fires or c...
How do you run for president?	[ "- Convince a few wealthy people you'd make a good President and get them to help finance your campaign. Alternatively, be wealthy enough to fund yourself in the early stages.\n\n- Enter the primaries for one of the major parties, campaign hard in each state, press flesh, get people to believe in you, and solicit m...
Why can't we build a graviton detector?	[ "Basically, gravitons are just really hard to detect because their interaction with matter is so limited. We have the same problem with neutrons. It takes massive underground tanks just to detect a couple neutrinos. Detecting gravitons is several orders of magnitudes larger.\n\nTo simplify the passage you posted, i...
How do you stop texting and driving?	[ "Easy. Just don't text and drive. If you have a condition where you literally cannot stop texting, you should seek a medical professional, but for most people it's just a matter of self control.", "If you can't control yourself, turn off your phone and put it out of reach in your car, like the backseat." ]
What are the actual requirements for the Police to make an lawful arrest and detentions?	[ "If they observe a law being broken they are allowed to make an arrest. If they have a warrant for someone's arrest they can make an arrest. They can temporarily detain someone with probable cause to assess the situation and determine whether a law has been broken, or civil infraction has occured.", "Probable cau...
Is is Possible for a Moon (Satellite) to Have its own Moon?	[ "Yep. It's completely possible. From a physics standpoint there's really no different between the Moon orbiting the Earth and the Moon orbiting the Earth which is orbiting the Sun. The reason you don't see many natural satellite around planets' moon is because, on a long enough timeline and given the relatively ...
Why do elderly people get shorter as they age?	[ "It's most likely to do with posture and strength of the intervertebral discs within your spine. In your spine, between each vertebrae (bones surrounding and protecting your spinal cord) are discs full of fluid (known as intervertebral discs). As you age, you lose this fluid, which leads to those discs becoming com...
How do Americans afford/pay for their extortionate healthcare fees and why is the government so unwilling to help?	[ "I'm from the U.K., live in the US now. I'm a healthy 23 year old and my health insurance is about $150 a month. My deductible is $6k. \n\nThe problem, or at least how I see it is, the health care industry here is a massive, multi-billion dollar industry that makes a lot of people very rich. For Christs sake, there...
How can generic supermarket brands like Great Value and Kirkland produce such a variety of different products and and still maintain good quality and value?	[ "They don't pay for advertising. \n\nTheir products are usually made by the exact same manufacturers as the \"brand name\" products you would otherwise buy. However, those other products spend a significant amount of money on advertising.\n\nYou know all that \"free\" stuff you get everywhere? Like free radio? ...
Why does a negative number when multiplied by another negative equal a positive?	[ "Because it actually is just getting negated twice. So -2 × -5 = -(-10) = 10 \n\nThe reason --10 = 10 is essentially because negation is making things opposite, and if you flip things twice, you generally end up back where you started. What's the opposite of Up? Down... What's the opposite of Down? Up. So what's t...
The Veil of Ignorance	[ "The Veil of Ignorance is an idea that's been used by philosophers for centuries to handle certain types of questions. \n\nJohn Rawls, for example, used it to develop his theory of Justice and how to make a just society. His thought experiment goes like this:\n\nImagine you get to create society as you saw fit. BUT...
why do so many different Rx and OTC drugs, with wildly different purposes, all cause drowsiness?	[ "A lot of different compounds in your brain and blood control sleep. (dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, histamine, glutamate and acetylcholine) \nBig percentage of drugs affecting your body will also affect these compounds, which will end in drowsiness or hyperactivity, mood changes etc. \nFor examp...
Why are abs shaped like little squares instead of being one large muscle?	[ "It's actually two muscles, one long one on each side (running top to bottom). What creates the indents is connective tissue. The muscles are called the rectus abdonimus and the connecting tissue is called linea alba.", "The linea alba runs north and south. The horizontal indentations are formed by tendon-like bo...
What is neoliberalism and what are people blaming it for?	[ "So /u/BtmnDetroisDeserves and /u/hoffmania explain the basics of it really well. I just want to expand on that a bit more in a way that's more tangible and... well, individualistic, since it's neoliberalism and shit. \n\nBy that I mean, neoliberalism is heavily centered around independent choice and work, or at le...
Why are aliens portrayed as stronger and superior?	[ "The general thought I see it as: If an alien race has the technology to come to our planet, they are technologically advanced/superior to our own.\n\nBut, this isn't always 100% accurate: See War of the Worlds, where they are stopped not by humans, but by disease that we are immune to (or well, resistant to the po...
How did the first STD's originate?	[ "The fact people are born virgins doesn't matter, it's what happens after they have sex. Probably the first STD was transmitted by some other means AND could be transferred sexually. If there were 1000 strains of a virus and one could be transmitted two ways instead of one, that strain would have an advantage. Even...
Why do only some Amazon prices show the price per volume? \| example: $15.00 ($3.75/ounce)	[ "I don't know for sure, but I'd assume it has to do with what the sellers input on the item is. \n\nI know that's the same way with items that are sold in bulk quantities, they'll list the individual price rather than the price per lot, so you can buy them for 10¢ each, if you buy 200. \n\nThat said I'm not an Amaz...
to a European why so many Americans value the founding father's opinions and views over anything else? It seems in America, the "founding fathers" opinions are viewed as the sole acceptable opinion by many when there must be many others intelligent enough born after the "founding fathers"	[ "The founding fathers were some of the best educated thinkers of their generation. They actually wrote the constitution with checks in mind to prevent future authoritarian leadership (such as a monarchy). They also knew the future was going to be different but wanted to assure principle freedoms to all persons. The...
If I light a candle in my dark bathroom and put it in front of a mirror does that double the amount of light in the room or does it stay the same?	[ "I know this is marked as Explained, but I just want to expand on this.\n\nThe amount of light in the room doesn't necessarily double. It depends on what you had before where the mirror is now.\n\nSay you had a wall painted black before. The black wall would absorb a good portion of the light, and the room would ...
How can reddit have such severe and constant server issues over a long period of time when all content hosted on the site is text-based?	[ "A metric assload of traffic that surges every now and then. A metric assload of people upvoting and downvoting and commenting, resulting in constantly changing pages that makes caching comment pages pretty much impossible. Every user not only seeing the default subreddits has a customized front page.\n\nThe site...
Why is there so much gang raping in India?	[ "* India is a huge country with a population of 1.2 billion (some perspective: South America - 387.5 million people, North America - 528.7 million, Europe - 739.2 million, Africa - 1.03 billion). If you don't think in the per capita terms, you will find India leading on many fronts.\n\n* India is not a developed co...
Why do many people tend to die in Quarry Waters/Lakes. What makes them more dangerous than a regular lake or body of water	[ "Two of my brothers friends were killed doing just this. Separate incidences (lessons were not learned!!!) but both jumped from 85ft in to Preston Hill quarry and if you want an idea of what is under there watch this:\n\n_URL_0_", "I would think it's the secretive nature of quarries. people seem more apt to do ca...
At what minimum time is it more efficient to idle than turn your car off then back on?	[ "For gas consumption...30 seconds.\n\n\nBut it wears your engine bearings every time you start the engine.", "You probably put more wear and tear on your engine by turning it off and on again everytime you stop for more than 30 seconds rather than leaving it on. Your engine's bearings aren't like regular ball be...
What's the Difference Between the Shia and Sunni aspects of Islam? As both groups are following the Koran, whats the major differences?	[ "I was born shia. There are at least three sub-sects in Shia and many more in Sunni so it is very hard to pinpoint a concrete difference. \n\nTo explain the difference, it might help to explain their history and how they came to be. I happened after Muhammad's death. According to Shias, he had appointed Ali (his so...
Why there doesn't seem to be any defense against a DDOS.	[ "So a DDoS would be like me having 1,000 people an hour call your cell phone, constantly, so that you couldn't make any calls and (more importantly) people trying to call you couldn't get through. Though in the computer world it's more like 100,000 or 1,000,000 an hour. The point of the attack is to prevent legitim...
Why don't modern compilers such as gcc cut out the middle man (assembly) and compile directly to machine code?	[ "Assembly is just machine code written in slightly more readable form. There's no reason to cut it out.", "I think you're confused, gcc does indeed compile source (which could have been written in any of a variety of languages) directly to machine code." ]
What's stopping us from harnessing the energy in lightning?	[ "Energy storage\n\nWe simply have no way of storing the concentrated power but short duration involved in a lightning strike. \n\nPeople have imagined capacitor storage banks, heating piles etc. but as yet we have not created a technology that can store that energy quickly enough\n\nAny other method of storing e...
How do older movies look better on Bluray? Ex: The Shining	[ "Film records at a resolution higher then any current media form can play back, so they can take a movie that is old and still transfer it to new media like blue ray to give you a better looking product.", "Same way if Michelangelo painting (original analog film) is scanned on crappy scanner (DVD) or better one (...
The Koch brothers and their influence on politics.	[ "The government was worried about people donating lots of money to candidates allowing them to buy more commercials, and pay more people to help them get elected. They were worried that If people could do that the politicians would do lots of things to help out their friends who helped them get elected. \n\nSo th...
Why do I feel awkward seeing nudity/sexuality when I am with my parents? Its just the human nature after all.	[ "Normally we do not see our parents as sexual creatures. Since we do not look at our parents in a way befitting that type of intimacy, it feels wrong (edit: I should state \"wrong\" meaning socially abnormal, as much of the social stuff is learned behavior, that doesn't make it \"wrong\" in the traditional sense)...
What would happen to a human body in space?	[ "* Water on your tongue and eyeballs would begin to boil off.\n\n* Your eyeballs would bulge, and there would be pain in your sinuses and inner ears.\n\n* You would pass out in ~15 seconds due to lack of oxygen.\n\n* Over time, your body would dessicate.", "In addition to what the others have said, [this page](_U...
What was so offensive about that Jeopardy champion contestant guy, Arthur Wu, and the way he played the game that made him so hated?	[ "Well, I wouldn't say that it was offensive, but as a longtime Jeopardy viewer, it was distracting.\n\nThe typical style of play is to pick a category and, if you get the right answer, to stay with it, usually moving top to bottom. This allows a player to get a rhythm, get used to the \"feel\" of a category (they ...
Why does cold metal feel wet?	[ "The feeling of \"wetness\" isn't actually a sense, but more of a combination of senses. If you've ever touches water through gloves, your hand feels like it's wet, but you're not actually getting any water on you. This is because, even though you have gloves on, it's a combined triggering of your cold thermorecept...
Why is BB King a "legend" and not just a long lived and long active musician?	[ "There were a handful of artists who came out of the south and brought their distinctive style of blues to a wider audience in the 1940s. Until that time that kind of music had essentially no audience beyond the people who heard them play live in small bars and clubs in the south (i.e. mostly a black audience).\n\n...
Why do we feel so thirsty after eating sweets (ex: Ice Cream, Chocolate, etc)?	[ "When you eat sugar, it is absorbed relatively quickly into your blood. Now your blood has more molecules (sugar) floating in it than usual. Your body tries very hard to keep your blood the way it likes it (not too acidic, not too much water, not too much or too little anything). Now there's extra sugar in your bl...
Why/how to people get knocked unconscious?	[ "As far as benefits go, I don’t think humans “evolved” to go unconscious with a blow to the head. This would be like saying we evolved to go into cardiac arrest; doesn’t make much sense. You could of course always speculate a scenario where going unconscious is advantageous, say if it kept our ancestors alive durin...
How does red dot sights work?	[ "The dot in a red or green dot sight is not actually a coloured point that's hovering in a fix spot in the air like an iron sight does.\n\nInstead, the red dot you see is a reflection of a little red lamp that falls onto a spherical mirror which filters out only the red (or green) spectrum. This mirror is installed...
How does a (bitcoin) currency exchange work?	[ "It looks like the left side represents the amount of transactions happening. The bottom line represents time. The right side represents the amount of $ that it sold for. The actual bar shows what the highest amount was and the lowest amount was at that given time paid for those transactions." ]
Why is it that sometimes we humans can sense when another human is looking at us?	[ "Confirmation bias.\n\nThere's a ton of times when you look over and nobody is watching you, but you only remember the times when they are.", "Whilst there is an element of confirmation bias, there is also the fact that we have evolved as social animals to detect this kind of thing. One proposed explanation for t...
Bid-Ask spread and how Brokers make money off it.	[ "If someone comes up to you and says \"i want to buy a cake for $1\" and you're a cake broker, you would then go out to all the cake sellers and if one of them said \"i'm selling cakes for 0.98\" then you'd make .02 and selling it to your captive buyer for $1.\n\nlike that. no actual cake involved.", "They buy a...
In regards to sports: Why is it considered "proper sportsmanship" to essentially stop trying when you are comfortably winning?	[ "...so as not to humiliate the opponents. Bad enough they lose by a minute, awful if they lose by a mile.", "In professional sports like NFL Football, if you have under a certain amount of time left on the clock and have over a certain amount of points over the opposing team, it is customary to \"take a knee\". S...
How can they tell how much oxygen is in my blood just by shining a little light at my finger?	[ "The colour of your blood changes when it's oxygen rich compared to when it's oxgygen depleted. Your finger is a good place to get a reading on that because it's quite thin (to let the light through) but gets reasonable blood flow, your earlobe would also be a good but less common place.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_) is a pic...
How can people tell when they're being watched?	[ "I am pretty sure our brains are able to process information very quickly related to a pair of eyes on a person (or some other animal perhaps) locked on us. It would be a valuable survival mechanism. And like most valuable survival mechanisms it will over compensate and be subject to false positives (no one actuall...
Repressed memories	[ "Repressed memories have not been proven to exist but the theory goes that trauma can cause you to selectively forget that the event has happened. Later in life a smell or a sound can trigger the re-emergence of the memory. There is no way to tell if a repressed memory is true or not without the aid of collaboratin...
Why Does the Tetanus Booster Vaccine Hurt so Much?	[ "The tetanus vaccine is a toxoid, meaning that what they inject is not living attenuated bacteria, but rather the toxin that Clostridium tetani produces. This toxin is neurotoxic in that it causes intense muscle spasms (think the classic 'lock-jaw' of tetanus). This is what kills people who get tetanus (tetany is m...
Why does the moon always look so small and terrible when I try to take a picture of it with my cell phone?	[ "First off, there is no galaxy s5 (yet). And secondly, the reason is because the moon is small compared to the field of view. We tend to exaggerate in our brains the size of things in the sky because there is nothing beside them to compare to. Cloud pictures are the same way: almost always a disappointment. If you ...
Wardriving	[ "Wardriving used to refer to driving around trying to find an open wi-fi network to access the internet. These days, it's easy to find an open wi-fi network (and cellular internet is common), so it would rarely necessary to drive around to find one." ]
Why is the minimum age for president in the US 35? Is there something special about that age, or is it just kind of a number that was decided on a long time ago and was kept around?	[ "The main reason is it really is just an arbitrary number they chose, but one which is sufficiently young enough to allow a good portion of the civic population access to the office with a reliable \"live til the end of the term\" while also ensuring that whomever gets the job is likely to have some form of life ex...
how it works that I can Google a holiday location on my desktop PC then the next time I open the Facebook app on my mobile I get a "Suggested Post" for accommodation at that location.	[ "If your phone is an Android phone, or if it has the Google search app, your Google searches are preserved across devices. Now, if you read the Facebook Mobile privacy agreement, you would understand that it has sweeping power over nearly every bit of data on your phone, including the ability to read and send SMS m...
Why can't Iran have nuclear weapons	[ "The existing nuclear powers and the majority of non-nuclear countries attempt to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. This desire is universal but considered even more important when a country deemed irresponsible, unstable, or having ties to terrorist organizations is concerned. Very few governments want Iran to ...
What is going on with the lost IRS emails?	[ "The IRS (internal revenue service) is in charge of federal taxes. A scandal emerged, where it was found that the IRS was intentionally targeting conservative groups trying to get tax-exempt, not-for-profit statuses.\n\nLois Lerner was the director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Unit, which decides whether groups...
Why was September 22 the equinox, yet it wasn't until today (September 25) that there were exactly 12 hours of daylight (sunrise 7:07 a.m. EDT, sunset 7:07 p.m. EDT)?	[ "Your daylight hours depend on your latitude, so different locations experience different daylight hours at all times.", "The daylight hours are dependent on your location on the North-South axis.\n\nIt used to be that the Equinox (then known as Spring and Autumn solstice) was when there was equal day and night. ...

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