Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why does pouring hydrogen peroxide on wounds sterilize them and sting?	[ "The hydrogen peroxide kills germs and living cells. It can delay healing and leave scars, so it isn't recommended for cleaning wounds. It is a powerful oxidizer and if undiluted, it would cause severe burns.", "Hydrogen Peroxide reacts with the enzyme catalase which is found in most cells. This enzyme turns the ...
What would happen to the earth if all the whales were gone?	[ "ELI5 does not allow hypotheticals. Questions like this are better in r/asksciencediscussion." ]
Inmune privilege of the eye	[ "In the event of an infection, most parts of the body send blood to those areas, causing what you know as swelling. This blood carries white blood cells and oxygen to the area in effect to help kill off the infection and kickstart the healing process. The eye, however has a special circumstance, in that intraoccula...
how exactly do some antibiotics and other drugs make you more sensitive to sunlight	[ "These drugs have certain structures that absorb radiant energy (UVA or UVB from sunlight) so when photo-activation of this drug occur there will be excitation of electrons in your body (from stable to excited state), after returning back of electrons from the excited state to the original stable state they transfe...
if identical twins are genetically the same, how do they get different fingerprints?	[ "Fingerprints are not generated genetically. Fingerprints are generated when we are in the womb from pressures present on the fingers.\n\n\n2 people can have similar to even nearly identical fingerprints as well, in fact the chance of 2 people having the same fingerprints is about 1 in 64 million but when you have ...
Could you angle series of lasers and fire them into an object, mirrors, prisms, or something to focus and then combine them into one powerful beam?	[ "No, because the reflection of light is by its nature reversible. If you shine a beam into a prism and measure its output angle, shining a different beam back into that same path will come out the same direction as the original input beam.\n\nIf you COULD convert multiple beams into a single coherent beam, it would...
What’re the good and bad things that came from the Affordable Care Act and why is it such a landmark of politics?	[ "The good: People without insurance got insurance, and insurance companies are no longer allowed to fuck people who have 'pre-existing conditions.' You have to understand that in the past, a person could pay their insurance premiums for years and then when they got a real illness (such as cancer) the compan...
why do goats have horizontal pupils?	[ "Wider field of view, I believe. It's like how predators have vertical pupils, it narrows the light coming in so they don't get distracted as bad since their periphery vision is so small. \n\nGoats are the opposite, and having wide set, wide pupil eyes means they have a maximized horizontal field of vision, which ...
Do wasps inject the same amount of venom with each sting?	[ "Yes they do run out. They have a sack of venom near the stinger. The amount it releases in each sting will varry until the sack is empty. Usually its empty after 2, 3 stings" ]
Why do some birds mimic the songs of different birds? Wouldn't that make it harder to find a compatible mate?	[ "Some highly intelligent birds will mimic any sound they hear. I used to work in animal care and we had an African Gray that used to be next to a pool, it started mimicking the lifeguards whistles and calls and had to be moved because it was causing false emergencies. It was moved to a merchandise location and wa...
How chemical sunscreen absorbs UV ?light?	[ "Instead of physically deflecting UV light, these molecules absorb UV radiation through their chemical bonds. As the bonds absorb UV radiation, the components of thesunscreen slowly break down and release heat.\n\n~_URL_0_~", "It's not different than any other spectrum of light being absorbed. It has to do with t...
What's the hissing sounds made by semi trucks when they stop?	[ "The brakes are air assisted. The hissing sound is when the driver lets go of the brake pedal", "On your car the brake lines aren’t pressurised while you’re driving. When you press the brake pedal it puts pressure into the brake lines, causing the brake pads to squeeze. \n\nThe problem is if your brake lines leak...
How do you know how much cash it will take to fill up your car and what will happen if you give the clerk too much cash?	[ "They refund the overage amount. So if you give them 20 but your car holds 10. Go back inside and they'll give you the other 10 back." ]
Is strength reliant on volume of muscle within the body? If not, how does the strength to volume ratio work?	[ "Also how that volume of muscle is distributed along the skeletal frame is important. The physics of leverage and hinge points is definitely a consideration when it’s comes to applicable strength.", "I’m not an expert, but muscle density plays a huge part in strength. You can take a supplement creatine, which in...
Why does brake fluid need to be changed even though it never really "runs out"?	[ "Brake fluid absorbs water. When water gets in to it and the brake line pressurizes, the brake brake fluid can get hot enough to turn the water to steam. Steam can compress more than the brake fluid, it can cause your brakes to fail when water is in the brake fluid. It usually happens when you brake really hard.", ...
In old CRT's why does physical damage to the tv cause the picture to rise, disappear, and then reappear in that order constantly?	[ "The picture on a CRT is made by a beam of electrons from an electron gun hitting the screen and making tiny dots on the screen glow. The beam scans left to right for each row of the image, and then jumps down to the next row, until it reaches the bottom of the screen and starts over again. \n\nAt the same time, ...
How can a neutron decay into an electron and a proton?	[ "Particles are perturbations of the underlying fields, and many physical processes produce or destroy particles via one of the interactions interacting with one or more fields while preserving total energy. The weak interaction allows quarks of different charges to be transformed into each other. The neutron decay ...
Does recycling plastic really make much of a difference?	[ "My interpretation of this is that though the costs of sorting, melting, and recasting the plastic are roughly equivalent to (if not greater than) making it fresh, the real green effect is from the waste plastic not being tossed willy nilly and damaging the oceans and whatnot.\n\nHowever, when the oil starts gettin...
what is a normal day of food for you?	[ "Google greek food or mediterranean food...\n\nBasically no or little processed stuff or sugar. Lots of veggies and lean meat." ]
Why do cargo planes such as the C130 and the A400M use propellers instead of jet engines? Wouldn't jet engines be more powerful and allow more weight to be carried over a larger distance?	[ "They do use turboprop engines which are turbine engines that turn a propeller. The turboprop is more efficient at lower speeds and altitudes than the turbojet.", "Jet engines are pretty fragile. If they suck a rock up it can damage the turbine blades and take the engine out.\n\nPropellers don't suck things into ...
How come when we float, is easier to float face down, then face up?	[ "The biggest areas of low mass, the lungs, are closer to your front. With front down they displace more water and seem to push you up more." ]
If mammal brains all have roughly the same structure and systems, why do drugs work so differently between families and species?	[ "When it comes to the brain, effects come down to the receptor physiology (aka the exact shape and function) of the neurotransmitter receptors on neurons.\n\nEven slight differences in receptor physiology can have huge effects. For example, if one person has a dopamine receptor that lets dopamine bind slightly bett...
What are the differences between Patriot air defence system variants?	[ "GEM stands for Guidance Enhanced Missile.\n\nGEM/T - the T stands for TBM (Theater Ballistic Missile). The missile has been optimized to shoot down ballistic missiles.\n\nGEM/C - the C stands for cruise missiles. The missile has been optimized to shoot down cruise missiles.\n\nGEM+ - an upgraded missile capable of...
What are the differences between different types of toothpaste (eg whitening vs enamel strength vs gum repair) and why doesn’t one toothpaste just do everything?	[ "Dentist here. It's the additives. Pretty much all toothpastes are an abrasive and fluoride. The abrasive is to amplify the efficiency of your brushing and the fluoride to help fix the damage caused by the acid erosion from the bacteria. Under the enamel is the shock absorber of the tooth, dentin. The dentin has a ...
Physiologically, what is strength and where does it come from? For example, there are two men who are the same height and weight with almost identical builds. Why can one of the men bench 250 Lbs. and the other can bench 300 Lbs?	[ "Strength is a measure of how many muscle fibers you have. Muscles are built from little repeating units and stronger muscles have more of them and can generate more force" ]
If the clitoris' only function is giving pleasure, was its development a mere biological accident?	[ "Not necessarily, by making sex and therefore reproduction more pleasurable it could help incentives early humans to reproduce more which would then pass on the genes etc. etc. etc.", "Yes, in the same way that all traits are accidents. A random mutation causes change in trait x. If trait x leads directly or indi...
Why have supersonic flights such as the Concorde been abolished completely?	[ "Supersonic flight atill happens regularly. The concorde was the only commercial supersonic aircraft in use, and it was not a moneymaker. That huge accident made them retire the plane, and commercial supersonic service went with it.", "It is not economical. The fuel requirements for flying that fast on a jet eng...
Why a car’s usage is measured in distance (mi/km) but boats are measured in hours?	[ "Boats encounter a different kind of resistance in travel. It can not be measured the same way as something with wheels.", "Most new vehicles also have an hour meter on them. Most machinery is measured in hours used. Automobiles are one of the only things that are still measured by distance. A tractor with 5000 ...
How does the 5th amendment work and why is it not taken as an automatic admission of guilt?	[ "You are innocent until proven guilty.\n\nThats pretty important. They have to prove that you're guilty. You can't be forced to implicate yourself, the government needs to actually prove their case.\n\nIt also prevents a situation where you may be forced or compelled by some reason to confess to a crime you di...
Why do cucumbers taste so mild while you're eating them, but taste so strongly when you burp afterward?	[ "It's the cucurbitacin in them. It's a chemical that they have to help prevent certain animals from eating them (too much and there wouldn't be any to make more-hey nature!)\n\nIt's mostly in the stem end so if you don't eat that part it will cut down on it too. Also can deseed them and they will help prevent exces...
why are women not prone to baldness?	[ "Actually baldness is carried on the X chromosome by the female, but she is usually protected from baldness, whereas guy do not have another X to counteract it's effect.\n\nOn the aetiology side of things, it's to do with too high testosterone levels that again girls don't have.", "There is a correlation between ...
Why does the taste of something change with the temperature?	[ "Taste is its own sense, but a good portion of how we taste food is by the way it smells.\n\nSo think of heat as movement. Something hot has molecules that are moving all over the place (think steam). Something cold has slower moving molecules (think ice).\n\nThe faster moving molecule means there’s more of them fr...
Why do many insects under complete metamorphosis? Isn't it a huge waste of energy, not to mention leaving it extremely vulnerable?	[ "The energy is worth it if it allows the animal to change its environment to better suit the goals of the different life stages.\n\nFor example: the goal of a caterpillar is to eat and grow. That's it. Crawling around is just fine. It doesn't need to be flashy and brightly colored. It can stay camouflaged among the...
Are you taking in fresh oxygen when you breathe in near a tree?	[ "You are taking in oxygen wherever you breathe. There is no such thing as 'fresh oxygen'. Oxygen we breathe is simply a molecule that is produced via many natural occurrences. The tree will produce oxygen as a result of photosynthesis, but it's a very small amount compared with what aready exists in the air you...
Why do people catch diseases like the flu or strep throat multiple times when diseases like measles are very difficult to catch after you have already gotten it once?	[ "The flu and strep are very broad categories. Many diseases are called \"the flu\" and new ones form every day, so your body can fend off any you've already had but there are so many out there that you still end up catching a different strain later.", "Virulence factor, or pathogenic mechanism (a fancy way of say...
why do some stars look brighter when you are looking away from them than when looking directly at them?	[ "you eye has two different kinds of sensors. One senses light (on or off, called a rod) and the other senses colors, called cones. The cones are concentrated around the center of the back of your eye so the main focus of your sight has good colors, and the \"edges\" have better black and white sensitivity. So wh...
why did light skin appear in Europeans and not in native North Americans? And how long did the process take?	[ "There is evidence that humans expanded to Europe as much as 150,000 years ago. Being so far north they would have less sunlight to worry about and would have adapted with lighter skin pigmentation.\n\nWhereas humans expanded to north America only 20000 years ago by crossing the land bridge from Russia to Alaska. S...
Sauna Heat	[ "Adding to what other commenters said, going outside exposes you to much more radiant heat, in addition to the convective heat in a normal steam sauna with a more traditional heating element. \n\nYou used the example of going outside when it is 105 and it being hotter than a sauna at 105. These are not equivalent. ...
Why can some plants grow roots from a cutting, yet Florist flowers cannot?	[ "Florist flowers do not grow roots after being bought because of two things. First, and most commonly, they are not fresh. They have probably sat for weeks in fertilizer infused water, which makes them look and smell fresh, but kills the buds of the roots IIRC. If you bought them specifically fresh, and they don't ...
Why do drops of liquid still stick to a container if the liquid is poured out?	[ "It's not surface tension, it's adhesion. Water has the quality of adhesion that causes it to stick to things other than itself, as well as cohesion which causes it to stick to itself as seen in surface tension. Simply put, water is sticky.", "Liquids in general experience molecular forces that attract them to so...
Why do candles slowly disappear on a candle warmer? They aren't burning.	[ "Candles burn by first melting wax, sucking it up the wick, then boiling it and burning the vapor. Candle warmers only do the melting part, and the wax slowly evaporates just like liquid water would when left out." ]
How do paintings get their value? For instance a Picasso painting may be worth 1M. How is artwork value measured?	[ "It’s demand. If enough of the right people want it, it’s priceless. If no one wants it, it’s worthless", "I may be a bit cynical, but I think the demand has a lot to do with a form of money laundering. Art and real estate are things that can be difficult to value and can therefore facilitate large financial exch...
How can the same meteor showers occur every year and not run out of meteors falling to earth or other passing planets?	[ "So there is a lot of debris in space. We are not running out of it any time soon. Comets leave a lot of debris when they orbit as well.\n_URL_1_\nThis website gives a good visualization of that.\nAlso don't forget about all the junk we put up there.\n_URL_0_" ]
what's the meaning and difference between "Workforce Participation rate" and "Unemployment rate"?	[ "Unemployment only counts people who are actively trying and failing to find a job.\n\nWorkforce participation includes people who have chosen not to work for whatever reason (they are already rich, they are a stay at home spouse, they are disabled, retired, etc.)", "So, looking into this a bit, I believe that th...
what is meant by streamlining governance? For example if we say there is a need to streamline corporate governance, what would it entail?	[ "If you have a business that has a management structure that looks like this.\n\n1 CEO\n\n5 Regional managers\n\n30 Area managers\n\n300 Local Managers\n\n300 Assistant Local managers\n\n\nAnd you cut the amount of managers down by keeping the most capable. Getting them to do more, making the the less capable redun...
There’s police and fire departments but why are there no EMS departments?	[ "In the UK we have ambulance stations which function sort of like a police or fire department.\n\nIts basically just a place where we restock the vehicles and chill when we’re on break. Because our work requires us to be in different locations.", "Because they are medical personnel, just mobile. And medical perso...
What are the differences between stocks and options? Would starting to invest in option be a good idea?	[ "Not bein rude/mean or anything at all...but if you have to ask what options are, you absolutely aren’t ready to invest in them. Basically you’re paying for the right to either buy a stock if it drops past a certain point, or the obligation to sell a stock if it hits a certain point. But that’s incredibly simply pu...
How does your body know you've eaten too much rich food before you've digested it?	[ "No, as soon as you start to eat, hormones get produced that signal your stomach to get going.\nAs the stomach fills up and digestion is slowly occuring, more hormones are produced that signal the brain that youre good on food and its time for the stomach to stop and for the intestines to get going", "Different f...
Why are people in medieval paintings often depicted with tilted heads?	[ "Medieval European art developed directly from late Byzantine art, which was mostly religious in nature. In early Christian art, the people’s faces were always depicted as being turned attentively to God, the heavens, etc. to illustrate that their attention was on holy things, while their bodies were doing somethin...
How did Super Mario Bros on the NES look blocky, have no detail, and lack a bunch of features; yet Super Mario Bros 3, also on the NES, with the same hardware, have a fully fledged world map, Siginificantly higher quality sprites, and more content? While on the same cartridge?	[ "Memory hardware inside of cartridges advanced precipitously in the five years between the release of Super Mario Bros. & Super Mario Bros. 3. The limitations on the quality of graphics were almost entirely based on the amount of available storage in the carts.", "The NES cartridge connector connects several NE...
What is Usenet? And how does it work?	[ "A collection of forums (called newsgroups) that was bit like really old version of Reddit. \n\nIt's a bit hierarchical, so groups kind of contained other groups - so One called \"alt.subculture\" might have a sub group called \"alt.subculture.punk\".\n\nIn the past it worked by internet providers synchronising the...
Why do places with hot climates like spicy hot foods more.	[ "capsaicin, the chemical that makes things spicy, acts as a preservative. One thing to note is that a lot of areas that have a lot of spicy food are not only hot, but humid as well. This is the perfect breading ground for bacteria so food doesn't really keep well on it's own.", "I've heard it is because in hot ...
How does Wifi actually work?	[ "It's a radio modem. It uses radio waves. It interprets the signal sent/received over the radio waves as data.\n\nThe radio waves in question are what's called \"non-ionising\". They can't do you any damage. If they could, you'd be dead already from a million other things, not least naturally occurring radio wa...
How is soap simultaneously made from fat and an effective remover of fat?	[ "Because you modify the molecule so one end is polar and can be dissolved in water. Fat is hard to remove by water because it is non polar and is not easy to mix with water but soap and alcohol have polar and non polar ende. So is can form a layer around other fat so the outside can be mixed with water and you can ...
If the boiling point of water is 212°, then why does it evaporate at room temperature?	[ "Boiling point is where it must be a gas. At lower temperatures, it seeks an equilibrium between liquid and gas.\n\nA liquid is a big jiggling mass of molecules loosely stuck together. Because they are moving randomly, occasionally a molecule at the edge will be shaken loose and bounce away. That's evaporation. S...
Back in 1960, a house in a big American city cost less than an annual wage. What happened that inflated the prices so much ?	[ "Questions about the US are generally better in r/askanamerican." ]
How do countries determine territory lines?	[ "There are, occasionally, these things called \"wars\" over where those borders should be. Sometimes the borders are just were the the front lines of the last war ended at. Sometime nations negotiate openly and directly. Other time they try to make a claim through usage, international law, and getting other nations...
It just hit me that there are no longer any wild cows. How/when did this happen?	[ "Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs. As time went on, the aurochs were hunted, saw their available habitat shrink greatly, and contracted diseases from domesticated cattle. The last one died in the 17th century.", "There are 4 species of wild cattle still existing. ( Subfamily Bovinea Subtribe Bovina...
How isn’t Gucci gone bankrupt yet since less than 3% of the world can afford their products?	[ "3% of the world is still over 210 million people and people buy expensive things to show them off. It's the same reason people buy jewelry and supreme clothes." ]
How does électrocution work if electricity is just a bunch or electrons and why does our body shake when exposed to electricity.	[ "Our nervous system is electrically activated. Our bodies work fairly well as a replacement for electrical wire. When electricity passes through you, it activates your nerves/muscles as each pulse of it passes from the source to the destination.", "Electricity isn't just a bunch of electrons flying around, it is ...
How do turtles know the exact location to return to when they lay their eggs?	[ "Memory, but they don't always get it right, the laying time is often synchronised with that of the moon and tides." ]
What causes birth marks?	[ "Birthmarks have been a little bit of a mystey to us, but we've finally narrowed it down to two main causes.\n\n1. Vascular birthmarks: \n\nThese are caused when your blood vessels grow in a weird way in the womb, and usually don't last to adulthood. However, if the blood vessels keep growing in that way throughout...
In computer science, how do packets get lost in the first place?	[ "Many ways including:\n\n1. Packet filtering due to policy rules\n2. Routing errors causing loops resulting in the time to live TTL expiring\n3. Link errors causing corrupt frames that can not be self repaired\n4. Queue buffers getting full on routers\n5. Software errors on routers such as the bloody VSS issue with...
What determines music taste? Why are some sounds or genres more pleasing than others?	[ "A bit of a different viewpoint here from a software programmer. There's an interesting concept that I deal with in computer science called information theory and it affects things like how much zip files can shrink data. \n\n\nThe idea is that if something is very repetitious then you can shrink it by writing a p...
What stops a living body from decomposing like a dead body does?	[ "Mitosis. Healthy cells multiply, dead cells are excreted. Dead body just have dead cells with no way to get rid of or replace." ]
Why do stars twinkle?	[ "Twinkling is an effect of atmospheric interference when viewed from the surface of the Earth. Random motion of air molecules, thermal flows, etc. all produce slight light refraction. The twinkling does not exist when viewed from outside the atmosphere, like in the Hubble Space Telescope." ]
Why are the citizens of Hong Kong Protesting?	[ "Chinese government is forcing influence over Hong Kong, people of Hong Kong don't like oppressive communistic regimes" ]
What objectively makes a song catchy?	[ "Repetition, easy beats for people to clap/tap along to, simple harmonies where the subsequent notes are 'predictable'.\n\nSongs with a 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 pattern with a repeating chorus/verse structure where there are only a few components to the full song.", "Certain patterns are more pleasing to the human ear tha...
How does a state without state tax pay for its infrastructure?	[ "All states have some type of tax. One state might not have sales tax, but may have a property tax twice as high as the neighboring state for example. \n\nFor roadways in particular, funding may come from local government, state government, federal government, or any combination of those. This can include income ta...
why is being so hungry that you’re not hungry a thing?	[ "You feel hungry because you're used to eating at a certain time, ie lunch. After a while, your body resorts to other sources of energy like using glycogen stored in the liver and through a process called autophagy, in which your body consumes it's own cells.", "Imagine you are back in the stone age. Noe todays h...
Why do companies add all those poisonous components to cigarettes, what's their motivation, and what's wrong with smoking pure tobacco?	[ "Tobacco already has many toxic compounds within the plant itself, which can be concentrated when the plant is dried. Additives generally promote increased smoking, by enhancing the addictive properties of tobacco, adding flavors, etc. But pure tobacco has plenty of toxic and carcinogenic substances even without ...
; What is the cavity at the bottom of winebottles for?	[ "It’s called a punt, and there are several “reasons” but none of them are good and none are officially the “real” reason. \n\nA few reasons: \n1) it makes the bottle easier to hold\n\n2) it allowed the glass blower making the bottle to hide the seam (where the glass is pinched off) so the bottle would stand upright...
Why do humans don't remember how they learned to speak or make sentences growing up ?	[ "In psychology, memory must be encoded and stored before it can be retrieved. This is done via neural structures in the limbic system that are still developing while language acquisition is occurring in infants." ]
Why can’t we predict earthquakes at all?	[ "The plates aren't in constant motion and you can't just see a collision coming. They are pressed against each other and stuck there for long periods as pressure builds up. The force pushing the plates has to overcome the friction of the two plates rubbing together. Eventually, there comes a point where the pushing...
How can you look really ugly on pictures and on a camera but find yourself attractive on a mirror?	[ "Short explanation. The lighting changes between the situations where we have photos taken of us. And then the image is flipped in a mirror, so it looks odd to see a photo where it isn’t flipped.", "Mirrors are a reflection of pictures and how others see you. People usually see themselves every day in the mirror...
In trigonometry, what is the difference between the inverse sine function and the arc sine function.	[ "They are the same thing to the extent that you probably care about. The true \"inverse sine function\" is a multivalued function that returns a countably infinite set. Thats a bit much so usually only the principle value of the function is returned (that is it will be ~~between 0 and 2pi~~ \\-1/2pi and 1/2pi) If s...
How can planes fly for 12 hours straight without running out of fuel?	[ "The simple explanation is that they contain a lot of fuel and it can be a significant percentage of the mass of the aircraft at take off.\n\nA example is a Airbus A380 that have a maximum takeoff weight of 575 tonnes and it can carry 254 tonnes of fuel, that is 44% fuel by mass\n\nThe range is 14800km and the cr...
Why does a long stretch feel so satisfying, and what triggers it.	[ "I believe it’s because your muscles slowly tighten up and lose blood flow when immobile and stretching increases blood flow and relieves the tension." ]
If the polar ice caps were developed during the last Ice Age, why is it so bad that they are melting now? Isn’t that more of a return to where we were rather than an anomaly?	[ "The earth doesn't give a shit what's happening to it. You do along with all the things that live on it because they've adapted to the conditions that existed after the last ice age and they don't want to adapt again to rapidly changing conditions because that means a lot of them and their offspring are going to di...
Why do a lot of bruises appear circular even if the object that made the bruise wasn’t circular?	[ "A bruise is more or less a blood leakage under your skin. If you hit yourself with, let's say, a cube, not all blood vessels in that area rupture. Unless you hit yourself really hard, only a few do and start leaking blood in the surrounding tissue. The blood spreads in a circular way around the wound, resulting in...
Why do TV manufacturers turn on the "Soap Opera Effect", or motion smoothing, by default?	[ "Because they use it in the advertisement, and a certain percent of consumers are too dumb to enable it. Because it’s more likely people who care will seek out disabling it, and people who don’t know any better will get mad if they don’t know how to use it.\n\nJust like how my last phone came defaulted to a super v...
Why are ear more sensitive to sound when you're tired than when you're wide awake?	[ "It’s the rest of your ancestors traits back when it was essential for your survival to be aware of your surroundings. When you are tired, most of your body won’t work properly. An increased sensitivity to one of your most important sensory organs was the key to hear any danger in the bushes after a wild hunt." ]
With mobile processors becoming smaller and more efficient, why aren't we using them in laptops? Especially Chromebooks would perform well I'd think.	[ "The first thing is that the processors are pretty different. Laptops and \"normal\" computers use x86 processors and mobile devices use ARM processors. Think of this as that they speak different languages, and can not understand each other. You can write a program for x86, but it won't work on ARM because the p...
When I'm driving towards a yellow traffic light how does my brain automatically calculate whether I should go or stop in the span of a few seconds?	[ "A stoplight displays yellow for roughly one second every 10 miles an hour the speed limit is. E.G. : 40 mile an hour zone (US) is equivalent to 4.2 seconds of yellow light. Cycle through this process a thousand times or so as you drive around and your brain picks up the pattern.", "As you practice and repeat a t...
What causes ripening fruits to change color?	[ "Imagine a banana in a garden, how can you see that banana and why do you see it yellow? Basically, we see things when visible light reflects from their surface and come into your eyes. When we see banana, the light falls on banana, gets reflected and is received by our eyes. We see banana. Why do we see it to be o...
what is neuralink	[ "The basic idea is to implant a series of very small, thread-like electrode arrays that should allow for brains to interact with external machines. The company's goals are treatment of brain diseases and, in the longer term, symbiotic interface with machines - so, yes, possibly some \"Black Mirror type stuff.\"\n\n...
Why does debris, Asteroids, etc. form rings around Saturn instead of being randomly scattered?	[ "What you're referring to is accretion disks that form around various types of astronomical bodies including stars (like the sun, planets, and the asteroid belt) or around planets themselves (saturn and its rings). I know it has something to do with angular momentum but it's been a while since I learned this" ]
why the more blades on a propellor is not better	[ "A propeller blade works best when its traveling through calm air, that'll give you the most thrust for the drag that that blade experiences. A couple blades going around means that each blade is going through relatively calm air and gives you most of the thrust that it can. A lot of blades going around means tha...
How and why do watermelons have less and/or no seeds now?	[ "Ah yes, seedless watermelons are a very special case of seedless fruit. It has to do with genetics, but seedless watermelons are not (necessarily) GMOs.\n\nMost plants, like animals, can reproduce sexually. Fruits are formed when pollen fertilizes the egg cell of a flower. In order to do this, each half (the polle...
why can’t scars tan like the rest of your skin can?	[ "In your skin, there are a couple different layers. In the most superficial layer, there are little cells called melanocytes that are responsible for “tanning.” A scar often damages the dermis and destroys these little cells and leaves a empty space that is filled in by the layer of skin just below epidermis, calle...
Contra-Rotating Propellors, Please!	[ "This is long, but I think it explains it well. \n \nWhen you have a one-propellor aircraft, you obviously have the propeller spinning at great speed, constantly. \n \nImagine yourself sitting in a swivel chair. If you take your legs and move them one way, the chair moves the other way. This is Newton's third ...
What Causes the "Fingernails on a Chalkboard" feeling, and why is it Metal on Metal for some?	[ "In college I was told that certain kinds of monkeys make similar sounding screeches to warn others in their group. Not sure if that's true.", "Am I the only one for whom styrofoam on sterofoam makes that feeling?" ]
If the temperature is 99-100 degrees, what warrants it to feel like 110-113 degrees? How does it feel higher in temperature when it’s not actually that high?	[ "Sweat is the primary mechanism used to cool off when hot, as evaporating water takes heat with it. When it is humid, sweat evaporates much less well, and thus is able to carry away much less heat, so your body temperature goes up faster." ]
Why do children fight the urge to sleep?	[ "A lot of kids have ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) and think all the adults are having fun while they have to go to bed. It seems unfair to me that the ones who want to go to bed have to put ones to bed that don’t want to go to bed!!\nAlso some kids get over tired and because they have a bad nap schedule or never lea...
Why is ingesting nicotine toxic but we can smoke cigarettes constantly?	[ "If I understand correctly you are asking why eating a cigarette makes you immediately sick and smoking one doesn't. That's because breathing in smoke only sends the smoke into your lungs (for the most part) and that smoke and chemicals in the smoke get absorbed through the lungs. If you eat something it goes throu...
The universe is 98 billion lightyears across and 13.8 billion years old. Nothing travels faster than light so how did that happen?	[ "> So how did the things all the way out get 49 billion lightyears away from the centre...\n\nAnd that is where the crux of the misunderstanding lies. There is no center, the Big Bang wasn't happening at a specific location in space. It wasn't just that everything in the universe was in a small point, every*wh...
How does oxygen work in submarines when underwater?	[ "Depends on the submarine. \n\nNon-nuclear submarines have a snorkel they use to pull in air for their primary engine. If they want to submerge completely they typically switch to an electric engine and typically the batteries used to run this will last shorter than the air in the submarine will keep the crew going...
How do ants locate a small food source inside of an enclosed house?	[ "Answer,: Ants follow smells, and explore by random. They actually walk certain amount of steps, while leaving pheromone trail. Then next ant walks the path, explores, and reinforces the trail. If an ant finds something interesting, they will return and tell other ants about it by using pheromones. If they don't fi...
Why did religious figures stop writing text which their congregation read, resite and follow? Why are the actions of religious figures then, time of writing the scriptures, more noteworthy than that of the religious figures now?	[ "There are tons of religious texts produced by various religious leaders and religious academics all over the world \n\nThis is a discussion for r/elint" ]
How cartoons that are handdrawn (Not Flash animated on computers) are made and then put on TV	[ "The animator draws out each frame of the character on each paper using a special lightboard table.\n\nThe drawing table usually has a circular hole in the middle for the light under a plate of glass. This enables the animator to draw consistent motion when drawing over his previous sketches.\n\nAnother artist take...

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