Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why do animals sometimes break up fights between each other?	[ "Because certain dog breeds are pacifists by nature. Just kidding, it's a show of dominance over both fighting animals by the animal stopping the fight. Basically the animal stopping the fight is saying \"the only fighting will be done by me, and only when I feel like it so sit down and shut up!\" It can honestly b...
How come right when a wound or a scab is about to heal it becomes very itchy?	[ "The physical stress of the skin stretching closed tickles the nerves that signal itching. Scar tissue being formed can also itch, due to its texture." ]
What exactly does it mean to be double jointed?	[ "It is an awkward idiom used to refer to people with hypermobility/hyperlaxity. Meaning they can flex joints much further than the average person can.", "No such thing as \"double jointed\" you dont have extra joints... just the ability to hyperextend the joint in question" ]
Why is the standard of mass was named "kilogram" instead of just "gram" like any other units?	[ "It appears on my limited research that gram was originally chosen as the base unit, but then it was decided to be too small so the standard unit was changed. And I suppose to keep it simple, instead of significantly changing the meaning of a word, a prefix was added.\n\nThis video goes over the history of Kilogram...
How does the US Air Force determine which aircraft(B-1,B-2,B-52,F-16,etc) a target needs to be bombed by?	[ "Mission parameters, cost, availability:\n\nThe F-16 has a smaller payload capacity than a bomber. It's also cheaper and easier to maintain. If a target can be destroyed by an F-16 within mission parameters, then use an F-16 instead of a B-52 which will burn more fuel, require more maintenance, etc." ]
How does a water softener work?	[ "So you need to think of water like a bus. It cruises along inside of your pipes occasionally picking passengers up along the way (Calcium and Magnesium mostly). Now Calcium and Magnesium are bad patrons. They leave a film on the bus and generally make things work less efficiently because of their disruptive nat...
How are viewership figures calculated for TV Shows and are they accurate?	[ "Unless you are a household that participates in TV rating measurement (ie, having a Nielsen box to track usage in the USA), it does not matter what you do.\n\nA random sample audience is used to track statistics, and then that data is used to extrapolate nationwide viewership.\n\nFreeview sounds maybe like a UK th...
If our brain can apply "motion blur" to fast moving objects we see in real life, why doesn't it apply the same to high framerate video or other fast moving objects on a screen?	[ "Let's pretend your eyes only register 5 \"dots\". When you don't see anything, you might see \"oooo\". If you're looking at a static object, you'd see \"Xoooo\". Something moving at regular speed would go \"Xoooo\", \"oXooo\", \"ooXoo\", and so on.\n\nMotion blur comes in when something moves across your field ...
How can tabloid magazines get away with making up embarrassing and shocking stories about celebrities? Isn't that considered libel?	[ "It's libel if the claim can be shown to be untrue. If the claim is true, or cannot be proven false, it's not libel. And as /u/Melon-Tester says, there are ways of wording your article so it can't easily be proven false. Another trick is to make the claim in the form of a question: \"Did Angelina Jolie snort cocain...
How can medical professionals test for evidence of a heart attack after it occurred?	[ "They use something called an Electrocardiogram (EKG) to test for electrical signals from the heart, as well as drawing blood and testing cardiac enzymes which will show evidence of a heart attack.", "It depends how long ago the heart attack was, but you can often measure levels of troponin and creatine kinase in...
What material does an electromagnetic wave exist in?	[ "No medium. Think of what medium a gravitational field moves through? It doesnt have a medium. A changing electric field creates a magnetic field next to it. That magnetic field creates an electric field next to it, and the energy of an EM wave travels through these self-creating fields.", "The electric and magn...
Why do we add up chances differently? (diminitive addition)	[ "It's a little easier to do with coins. Suppose you flip a coin, there's a 1/2 chance you got heads. If you flip the coin, what are the chances you got heads on either of your two rolls?\n\nWell, we can make a little tree that shows the possible outcomes:\n\n first flip: heads tails\n ...
Why did people in places like Africa develop darker skin when black absorbs the most light compared to lighter colors?	[ "Dark skin is caused by melanin. When the sun hits your skin it gets absorbed by melanin and not by your skin cells. This is a good thing because if your skin cells absorb the sun it can cause damage that can possibly lead to skin cancer.", "Darker skin has high concentrations of melanin which can help to protect...
When art is stolen, where exactly is it going? Who is in the market to buy art that is known to be stolen? Are pieces just passed around amongst a super wealthy and elite black market society? & once purchased, then what happens?	[ "It's often used as easily transportable collateral among organized crime groups. Barring total societal collapse, it will always be valuable, no matter its provenance.", "The word \"stolen\" in art can refer to a many circumstances, such as: \n\n1) Art obtained by force, such as war or robbery/burglary\n2) Art t...
Can someone explain Linked-Lists in C to me??	[ "A linked list is like a treasure hunt. Every location you get to, you find a piece of candy and a clue as to where to go next." ]
American Football Overtime Rules	[ "> whoever wins the coin toss has an enormous advantage\n\nYES. This is a constant debate in the NFL. Rules were changed recently that if the first team to score only gets a field goal, then the other team gets the ball and can try to score, but if the first team scores a TD its over. Its controversial, but that...
Why's it so important to have intake ventilation for attic fan?	[ "When you turn a fan like this, you can definitely feel a pressure change in the house. It sucks fresh air through the ventilation aka windows into the house. Without proper ventilation, your fan will not work efficiently.\n\nI googled a specific danger example:\nTurning on a fan without proper ventilation can cau...
In films such as Horatio Hornblower from 1951 they have amazing live action sailing footage of old sailing ships. How did they make them so realistically?	[ "They used real ships. :)\n\nEven today, there are a number of people and organizations dedicated to preserved old sailing vessels, and many ships of this type still operate, mostly for recreation or tourism, around the world.", "according to the wikipedia entry for the movie \"captain horatio hornblower\" they ...
How colorizations work when people colorize black and white photos.	[ "Basically, if you take a paint brush in Photoshop, guess the color that most accurately represents the skin tone, and lower the opacity (transparency), you can achieve colorization by painting over the image. Black and white photos have all the shadows, so it's just a matter of accurately guessing the appropriate ...
Why is a wall of text an eyesore and difficult to read?	[ "We have been conditioned since we started reading to understand passages better when they are broken into paragraphs. It gives a short mental break between two characters speaking, or when the theme transfers from one focus to another. \"Ah, the author has completed that thought and moved on to the next. Got it.\"...
What is the Kaaba? Why is the rock so special?	[ "IIRC, The Kaaba is a building said to have been built by Abraham and his son to house a rock from Heaven brought to him by an angel." ]
How do copyrights work exactly?	[ "I'm an intellectual property lawyer so I'll do my best to keep it simple. \n\nIn the United States there are 4 major categories of intellectual property: trademark, trade secret, patents and copyrights (if you are curious I can explain the rest but I'll focus on what you asked). Copyrights are meant to give protec...
Why do our taste buds change over time?	[ "Repeated exposure and your taste buds dying, basically. As a kid you're primed to like sweetness and hate bitterness because sugar = energy to keep you alive and bitterness = poison that can kill you. Once you get older, you become more adventurous with your food choices largely out of necessity - I hate salad, an...
Chronostasis.The phenomenon of ''Stopped second-hand ''.	[ "Your eyes move in small \"jumps\" called saccades. During a saccade, you are effectively blind, since your brain \"throws away\" all of the information coming from your eyes while they're moving (since it would be just a massive blur, which is useless at best, and disorienting at worst).\n\nBut I'm sure you've no...
How your drink can go down the wrong pipe?	[ "No it is in fact the case, your throat goes to 2 places, your stomach and your lungs. There is a flap that decides where the contents are going, and on occasion you will come close to sending liquid into your lungs. Of course your body realizes this and coughs it up rather violently to ensure it doesn't happen.", ...
how do SSRI's cross the blood-brain barrier and inhibiting the reuptake?	[ "SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor which actually does a lot to explain what it does. First of all, many molecules can cross the blood-brain barrier, they can do so by either using existing channels in the barrier by being similar in structure to things we need to get to our brain, or by being ...
Is it as dangerous for animals to eat raw meat as it is for us humans?	[ "Animals can and are frequently harmed by pathogens in the food they eat and humans both in the past and the present enjoy the eating of raw meat, including raw, or hardly cooked mammalean meat regularly without significant harm.\n\nHumans are a bit more succeptable to foodborne pathogens, largely because our guts ...
Is there a way to argue that a person who buys two lottery tickets does NOT have twice as good a chance of winning as a person who only buys one?	[ "The odds are better. BUT the odds are still awful. \n\nThis is like having two grains of rice vs having one grain of rice. Yes, it is twice as much, but it is still very, very little.", "As long as the two lottery tickets aren't the same number, you do have twice the chance.\n\nFor example, if there are ...
USB-A vs USB-C vs USB 3.0/3.1	[ "It's backwards compatible in the sense that the protocols work together. They don't physically fit together. The USB-C standard carries a lot more pins designed for extra USB-C specific services and features. \n\nSo yeah, you do need an adapter. The nice part is that adapters can be relatively cheap and simp...
Can you fire someone for having cancer?	[ "If you actually say it like that, then hell no. But if the person with cancer is missing work without calling in, staring off in extreme pain instead of working, or depressing customers to the point that they leave, you can fire them for that. Although they have a decent chance of winning a lawsuit against you if...
Why do news and other websites need me to allow 34 scripts to watch a video.	[ "Two broad brush reasons.\n\n1) Developers are lazy and often just grab something that they think works and run with it. They don't notice that it is pulling in stuff from 7 domains and that stuff pulls in more from 27 other domains. (I work in software development, and I see this in many forms.)\n\n2) As others ...
Why do gas stations charge extra for using credit/debit when it seems no one else does?	[ "Visa/MasterCard (an association that sets the rules and takes 1/100th of every transaction) does not allow their merchants to charge more for credit transactions. It's a blacklisting offense that will get you banned from taking cards. \n\nHowever, the gas industry resisted credit cards for a long time due to their...
google adwords v google advertising	[ "Google adwords is the practice of paying for \"keywords\" to rank in search results. This has become extremely sophisticated with the tracking capabilities. \n\n_URL_0_ was always a great tool to get an estimate for how much a specific website is spending on adwords. \n\nYou may want to investigate seo as well as ...
Could state level laws overrule things like SOPA?	[ "Look at the 14th amendment. Passed after the Civil War, the States have to do what the Fed says.", "Nope. Look at how the marijuana issue is handled. California has basically legalized it, but the feds are still shutting down legal grow ops and dispensaries weekly. The feds will do what they want regardless of ...
Why in the middle of winter, it's usually colder when it's sunny and warmer when it's cloudy but in the middle of summer, it's usually the opposite ?	[ "Not an expert, but IIRC\n\nThe clouds in the winter hold in the heat from the sun creating a greenhouse effect increasing the temperature a small amount.\n\nThe clouds in the summer (depending on how humidity applies towards a sticky or steamy element in the air) block some of the sun's rays and cool you off.\n\nH...
How would a smart phone go about orienting itself in space?	[ "Gravity can be sensed in a couple different ways. one way used to be with mercury switches, which are now banned from use. Another way may be the orientation of weights- like a ball on a string always points down. Another but least likely way is pressure from weights. \n\nIn space, however, there is no gravity. I...
Why are defendants who are found guilty (and didn't plea guilty) not also charged with perjury?	[ "The Pennsylvania Constitution states:\n\n > In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel, to demand the nature and cause of the accusation against him, to meet the witnesses face to face, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and in pro...
How does a split-brain work when the corpus callosum connecting the two brain halves has been removed?	[ "While the corpus callosum itself has been severed, both sides of the brain still have their connections to the rest of the body. As a result, activities originating in one side of the brain but not the other can't really interact, as demonstrated in [Sperry's experiments](_URL_0_), but those activities can still b...
How does the fourth dimension work?	[ "You will often hear that time is the fourth dimension, and this can be true in some contexts, but I assume you're referring to a fourth spatial dimension. \n\nI've had to work in 4 dimensions from time to time, and trying to picture it can be very difficult. In my work, we usually accomplish this by displayi...
What do 'Space Coordinates' look like? When NASA points a rocket at Jupiter and punches (trajectory solution) into a computer, what are they actually inputting?	[ "JPL has a [great web page on this subject](_URL_0_ ).\n\n > Spacecraft navigation comprises three main aspects: (1) Designing a reference trajectory which describes the planned flight path of the spacecraft; this is the task of mission design. (2) Keeping track of the actual spacecraft position while the mission ...
Why does water expand when it freezes.	[ "Water molecules (H2O) are made of an oxygen atom between two hydrogen atoms. They aren't lined up straight; they're bent at an angle, like a noodle of macaroni.\n\nWhen water freezes into solid ice, these macaroni shapes arrange themselves into hexagons, as shown in [this image](_URL_0_). The empty space in the ...
purchasing power parity (GDP)?	[ "Say you live in the US. You make $100,000 a year. Now say you live in China, but you make $50,000 a year. You could say that the person living in the US is twice as rich as the Chinese person in absolute terms.\n\nBut consider that lunch (a sandwich) costs $10 in the USA. It costs $1 in China. So an American can b...
Why do TV shows have loud intros?	[ "I assume it's simply to:\n\n* be distinct and memorable\n\n* notify occupied people that their preferred TV show is starting" ]
Why is it that when I Google image search "flag of Spain", many different flags come up?	[ "Spain has had many different flags in the recent past. It had a different one shortly after Franco's death, a few different ones under Franco, a different one before Franco, etc." ]
how do surgeons make incisions without cutting nerves?	[ "They study for years to make sure they know where the major nerves are. \n\nSome minor nerves do get cut - and to some extent they can regenerate, though slowly. The one cut when I had surgery under my jaw took 20 years or so to reconnect!", "Surgeons study anatomy to know where the major nerves are. \n\nSurgeon...
How do music streaming services pay artists? How much are artists paid? What is payment based on (number of plays, etc)?	[ "They know what people are playing and they compile costs based on play count and cut checks to the labels on a pre-determined basis. Sometimes rates are different based on quantity and such. It all differs, but most services pay standard rates that are set by law.\n\nSometimes companies pay different rates depen...
Why water feels like cement after jumping from a really high height.	[ "It takes a great deal of force to compress water. When you jump into the water, mostly it's getting out of your way rather than compressing. If you're moving too fast, then the water molecules can't move fast enough to get out of your way, and they won't compress. You hit a bunch of molecules that don't move, s...
Why do we hate hearing some sounds (e.g. nails on a chalkboard, fork on a plate, styrofoam against styrofoam)?	[ "The sound frequencies they produce are disturbing to the ear. Humans generally dislike sharp frequencies and disturbed frequencies. As nails scrape against the chalkboard, the fingernails hit small cracks in the board which slightly alter the frequency of the sound. That's not something that humans typically enjoy...
Why is it socially unacceptable or frowned upon to drink/eat soup out of a straw, yet using one to drink a beverage is fine?	[ "Soups are chunky bro. [At least man soups are.](_URL_0_)", "Customs simply haven't evolved enough tolerance for this behavior, just as they had not for having elbows on the table at meal times (U.S.) a few years ago.\n\nHowever, the behavior might seem 'weird' to some people because of the perceived inefficiency...
The economics of running a cemetery.	[ "If they are smart they take a portion of each plot sale and put it in an investment account. So if you pay $100 for your plot I take $10 profit right away and put $90 in an account. That account earns me interest, say 5% so every year I get $4.50 interest from that account. Hopefully it costs less then $4.50 to...
Why do some sports games and programs start at random times like 8:49?	[ "I'm not entirely sure, but with sports, I wouldn't be surprised if the reason is so broadcasters can do pre-game previews and stuff before the game starts.", "A sports game doesn't last a block amount of time so they need to start it at an odd time so it will end at a block time for the next show in the schedule...
Why are the bodies left on Mt. Everest and are not returned to the families?	[ "Summiting Everest requires a great deal of money, and it's quite treacherous.\n\nEvery corpse you see on Everest is someone who died on the way to the summit or on the way back. It's hard enough to do it carrying all of the gear (oxygen bottles, tent gear, clothing, food, climbing gear, so on) that they have to c...
Hotel room lights	[ "It is easier to replace a lamp if someone destroys it rather than rewiring the light fixture, and repairing the damage to the wall." ]
Why is force defined as mass x acceleration instead of mass x velocity?	[ "> If an object is moving at a fixed rate of speed (velocity = x), the acceleration would be 0, yet it would still have force.\n\nBut an object moving at a fixed speed doesn't have any forces acting upon it (or more correctly, all forces acting on it cancel out).\n\nWhy do you want to redefine physical units?", "...
what does it mean when a country "devalues" it's currency?	[ "It means that one day one day the Fakeland Dollarpound is worth one US dollar, and the next day it's worth 35 US cents. Obviously that will make Fakeland's exports way less expensive, and anyone owing debt denominated in Fakeland currency will be laughing. BUT, all of a sudden your Dollarpounds pay for far few...
Why do countries have different names for one another instead of using that country's local name (or something close to it) for itself?	[ "Have you seen the top post at /r/mapporn? It's about all the different names of Germany.\n\nCountries are named in different times and from different point of views. Before Deutschland was named Deutschland there were already a whole lot of names for that region. Germany after Germania, Saksa after the Germanic tr...
Military naming conventions, especially M-designations.	[ "Ok. M seems to be model. Examples are m-4 and m-1911 a 1. Usually for weapons. F is fighter. Like f-16 and f-111. A is attack so air to ground. A-10 and a-5. C is transport so c-130 or c-5. It does have its logic in there.", "??????\n\nsource: Army logistician\n\nBut thank you for posting the link to the Wikiped...
. How does your body make you sleep so much when you are ill?	[ "Your wanting to sleep is regulated by a chemical in your brain. When your brain feels it's better off sleeping to deal with an illness, it makes more of the chemical. So you sleep more.", "there are several molecular pathways from inflammatory response to change in behavior in animals (including humans)\nthe ini...
Why are some people so against circumcision?	[ "Generally people who are against circumcision don't have a problem with it if there is a genuine medical need for it, or if an adult chooses to be circumcised. \n\nCircumcision may not (usually) be harmful, but it's still permanently altering someone's body. Usually surgically altering a person's body without thei...
How a digital gyroscope works	[ "These devices usually have microscopic vibrating structures inside a silicon chip, like tiny tuning forks. They tend to keep vibrating in the same direction in space even as the quadcopter turns. So if the electronics set one vibrating say, from front-to-back of the quadcopter but they start to detect vibration ...
The difference between current, amperage, and voltage	[ "[Never seen it put better and simpler than this. ](_URL_0_)", "Electricity is electric charge moving through stuff, the charged bits that get piped through wires are electrons.\n\nAmperage is a measure of current, that's how much charge is moving through a component. It's sort of analogous to how much water is f...
Why is "it's" so commonly grammatically misused over other function words like "your vs. you're" or "a vs. an"?	[ "People get confused because the 's declares ownership as that is what we have been taught. So when some people see its ability, they process it as it having the ownership of the ability hence using the apostrophe and writing it's ability.", "In my case it's my damn autocorrect. It replaces most instances of 'it'...
What are the benefits of salt grinders?	[ "Aesthetics.\n\nIt allows the salt and pepper grinder to match more closely since they now have similar mechanisms in them.\n\nAlso, to some extent, you can choose grind size as others have mentioned, but that relies on the grinder actually having a grind selector. But it's more reliable to simply buy salt with th...
How does the shoulder joint work?	[ "I'm not sure if \"complex\" is the right word, but the shoulder joint is the most flexible in the body. The shoulder joint is what's known as a ball and socket joint. The ball of your arm bone(humerus) is nestled into the cup or socket of the bone in your torso(scapula).\n\nThe same is true of your hip bone. What ...
USA Healthcare system costs.	[ "ObamaCare, while an improvement, is still nothing close to what most of the developed world gets in terms of access to affordable healthcare. It basically compels more employers to provide insurance, and it offers group buying plans for those without access to employer plans. It sets rules for who and how the insu...
Why do I feel like a bug or something is on me after I see a bug on me?	[ "Because you are paranoid of having a bug on you, your mind becomes more focused on the skin. It is a mind thing, because you think their are bugs on you, you will feel bugs on you." ]
Where did the generic doorbell/clock melody originate? Why is it used around the world?	[ "It almost certainly got its popularity from being what the [Westminster Clock Tower (“Big Ben”) plays](_URL_1_), which was inspired by the church of Saint Mary the Great in Cambridge. Where it came from before that I don't think anyone knows, but building melody patterns out of different permutations of ringing a ...
How do people find seemingly impossible Easter eggs in games?	[ "They sometimes find them by accident, but in most cases they look at the code that makes the game work and find something in the code that makes no sense. For example...\n\nLet's say that you are looking at a code for a shooting game. You are looking at the names of the guns and you say \"BFG\" in the names, but h...
Water in a vacuum.	[ "\"Boiling\" doesn't mean \"hot\". It just means \"turning into a gas\". At very low pressures, water will vaporize even when the temperature is relatively low. Here's [the phase diagram for water](_URL_0_). Notice that at room temperature (roughly 300K), water will change from liquid to gas at pressures below ...
why do some foods like apples cause me to get hungrier?	[ "The sugar in an apple causes a spike in blood sugar level and insulin. When the subsequent crash takes place, your body tells itself it is hungry in an attempt to normalize the blood sugar level again. Vicious cycle." ]
What are Imaginary Numbers, exactly?	[ "A Visual, Intuitive Guide to Imaginary Numbers:\n\n_URL_0_", "Mathematicians like to solve equations; that's just what they do. And for most equations, that's pretty easy.\n\nE.g.: X + 4 = 10. Therefore X = 6.\n\nThe idea is that no matter what equation you write, mathematicians want to come up with an answe...
How can children watch the same movie (or any other content) over many times without getting bored?	[ "Uh... Children? I've seen \"How to Train Your Dragon\" at least a dozen times, and I'm 59 and live alone.", "Kids don't grasp and comprehend plots as quickly as adults. They are also easily distracted. So they glean more content upon repeat viewings than you as an adult would. Their understanding of the mov...
How does our brain differentiate between a sad song and a happy one?	[ "Our evolution lead us to have empathy. Part of being empathetic is to attribute certain looks and sounds of another to emotional feelings. When we hear someone sound sad, it makes us feel sad. When we hear someone sound excited and happy, it makes us feel excited and happy. Empathy has an evolutionary benefit that...
How did people before the invention of toothpaste keep proper oral hygiene, if at all?	[ "Toothbrushing tools date back to 3500-3000 BC when the Babylonians and the Egyptians made a brush by fraying the end of a twig. Tombs of the ancient Egyptians have been found containing toothsticks alongside their owners. Around 1600BC, the Chinese developed \"chewing sticks\" which were made from aromatic tree tw...
Why are some hospital liquid medications that come in pouches brighly colored (neon colors)?	[ "Depends on the drug; I work at a children's hospital and many drugs do not come in a liquid form but kiddos can't swallow pills. We have very specific recipes that we use to compound the drug into a liquid or emulsion. Dipyridamole comes as a white tablet but when you crush it using a mortar and pestle the inside ...
why is it ok to dig up human remains buried long ago, but not ok/acceptable to dig up more recent generations human remains?	[ "Because most people would be concerned if their mother was dug up and moved without very good reason, but wouldn't even know where their great-great-great-great grandmother was buried - or even who she was.", "It's perfectly fine to dig up recently buried humans. It happens all the time.\n\nWe dig up recent rem...
photographic memory.	[ "From what I understand; it's a fallacy.\n\nYou can have an exceptional memory, but the proof of a truly photographic memory is proving elusive.", "The way I remember things is to recall the picture in my mind. \n\nI can write down a phone number, look at it for a few seconds, and then discard the paper and then ...
How does Google's Magic Leap, visual technology work?	[ "It tracks things in the picture to create a frame of reference and then track them.\n\nIt then renders an image over the display." ]
What does it mean when divers suffer from "the bends"?	[ "The bends is an informal name for decompression sickness, which can happens if divers ascend too fast after spending time at depth. As divers descend, the pressure increases, and so does the pressure of gasses in the diver's lungs, which means the diver's blood can hold more dissolved gas. When the diver ascends, ...
Why does the box say to make the oven hotter if I want a softer crust on my frozen pizza?	[ "This is why you should read cooking instructions carefully. For the soft crust, the instructions will tell you to place it on a cookie sheet, thus avoiding direct heat. Usually, they either tell you to use a hotter temperature or just an increased cooking duration, your brand choose the former.", "To make it sim...
Why do we have a preference as to what side we sleep on?	[ "We are not symmetric. The heart, stomach, and the other intestines get different working conditions. Liquids and gases will be on the respective other side (where the entrance or exit of that organ is or is not). Pumping from above or from below is different for the heart. Some organs might have to work uphill." ]
anyone know how to calculate how much force a car exerts on a human body when hitting a running pedestrian?	[ "Short answer, it is very difficult - there are lots and lots of variables at play, that you would have to model mathematically. This is one of the reasons that they still use crash test dummies and physical tests in the automotive industry.\n\nFor collisions in general, the procedure usually relies in \"conservati...
Why do spaces turn into %20 when typing websites into the browser address bar?	[ "URLs are not allowed to contain spaces. Trust me - it makes life a million times easier for programmers.\n\nIf you want to access a resource that has spaces in it's proper name (like a file named \"why did you use spaces.doc\") you need to use an escape sequence to put it in there. The standard used for escap...
Why are models of our solar system always shown with the planets rotating the sun in a 2D plane?	[ "For the most part they do rotate in an almost 2D plane. I think Uranus's orbit is slightly skewed from the rest of the planets, but for the most part it's the most stable orientation.\n\nIt's kind of like how Saturn's rings are all settled in a single plane as they orbit around the planet, due to the gravity of th...
What companies like Goldman Sachs do?	[ "They are brokerage houses, they enable consumers to buy and sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds, etc.\n\nGoldman in particular caters almost exclusively to high end customers, a few million and up." ]
What happens in your body when you instantly sober up after witnessing something traumatic if all the alcohol is still there?	[ "It’s all about the adrenaline. You’re not actually sober but adrenaline causes you to be more alert and have extra energy giving you the sense of being sober." ]
How are gamers able to find glitches to do speed runs?	[ "brute force. Tons of people playing the same game for hundreds of hours, things will be found. A lot of the ways, they can tell how the physics in a game work and can think to themselves \"oh, how would this bit of physics work here\", and then they break the game through that. Other times, its pure luck" ]
An unbiased summary of the Patriot Act	[ "The two big things it does is increased information sharing and tweaks how warrants are used and issued.\n\nThe first one most would argue is necessary and is often overlooked. The second one is more controversial and gets the most headlines. \n\nOne change is that warrants can now be more broad. Instead of gettin...
What makes a person's voice sound so weak and "shaky" when they're old?	[ "As you grow older the organs in your body become less efficient and it compromises their performance. The same holds true for your vocal chords. You can see this in singers as they get older. Their voices mature and start deteriorating past a certain point. Cigarettes and alcohol also speed up this decline (Brian ...
How do radio stations get traffic reports?	[ "* Call in tips\n\n* Live Cameras on some roads\n\n* Communication with the police / transportation authority for accidents, incidents and construction.\n\n* Google maps\n\n* Airplanes and helicopters\n\nThese are the main ones and aside from google most have been in use for decades." ]
Why are the effects and graphics in animations (Avengers, Matrix, Tangled etc) are expensive? Is it the software, effort, materials or talent fees of the graphic artists?	[ "Former Digital FX Supervisor and 18-year veteran of the visual effects business here. Hopefully this doesn't get lost in the depths here...\n\nThe biggest expense in the visual effects business is people's time. ~80% of a budget for a VFX company goes towards paying salaries. Making movies full of things that d...
What are the effects of Austerity and why does Germany allegedly profit from this policy?	[ "One problematic consequence of the financial crisis was that many European countries found themselves in deep, deep debt which put a big drag on investments and the ability to stabilize the economy.\n\nGermany was among the less afflicted countries in Europe but decided nonetheless to push for a policy of austerit...
I just turned 40 so I'm technically an internet grandpa. Someone please explain to me hashtags. I see them everywhere, TV, news stories, social media. What is the point of them?	[ "You're probably aware that the most basic language for writing a website is called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language).\n\nThere has been a function in HTML forever called \"named anchors,\" where you could link to somewhere halfway down a page. As an example, if I link you to the start of Section 2 of a Wikipedia ...
If rain is a result of the water cycle, why do we have more rain in the autumn and winter when evaporation is presumably lower?	[ "First: This is not true for a lot of places ([New York for example has the most rain in the summer](_URL_0_))\n\nSecond: For it to rain you do need water in the air - but you also need that water to condensate. There are certain things that will make it more likely to rain, that means favour condensation of water ...
Why does scanning take so long if photocopying or taking a photo of something is so quick?	[ "Because you have a cheap scanner. Cheap scanners are slow. Expensive high end scanners are very fast.", "When you take a picture of a page, the light from various parts of the page enters at different angles. Ultimately the causes some lens distortion. The photo of the page isn't a perfect rectangle; the page bo...
Why are stores and restaurants on the east and west coasts of the US so different?	[ "It can be difficult for a store to expand into a new market if already dominated by competitors. For example Wal-Mart is also notably weak in Minnesota, because it's the home of Target who already dominated the department store market.\n\nSome chains have a huge following in their home region but haven't expanded ...
why isn't happy hour one single hour?	[ "Because it is hard to drink enough in one hour to wash the smell and taste of Corporate America off of you.", "The term happy hour goes back a long way, and no one is really sure where the term comes from as applied to drinking. It was a term for an hour of exercise, used by Navy sailors in the 1920s and has bee...
Why do they call it FAPing?	[ "\"Fap\" is internet short hand for masturbation. It is an onomatopoeic reference to the sound of a man masturbating (women is commonly \"schlick\"). Since many of the leaked photos were nudes or otherwise sexual in nature it is assumed they were used for masturbation.", "The terms \"fap\" and \"shlick\" both ori...
What's preventing world peace?	[ "Lack of education, stupid politics, religions, greed, natural resources.\n\nHard to tell. People are assholes." ]
The first SHA1 collision by Google	[ "SHA1 is a hash algorithm. It takes some data, runs it through complicated math, and gets something like a fingerprint. You always get the same fingerprint for the same data, but you can't get the data from the fingerprint.\n\nSHA1 only produces a fingerprint of 160 bits (1's and 0's). That's like 40 hexadecimal nu...

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