Split (3)

train · 273k rows

title stringlengths 0 299	text list
Why are objects in the mirror closer than they appear?	[ "Because the mirror is convex, it collects light from a larger field of view than a flat mirror would. This is good at letting you see more road, at the expense of depth perception." ]
What is the difference between Computer Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering?	[ "Computer Scientist here. (see bottom half of comment for a tl;dr as well as an ELI5-esque analogy)\n\nEach of these majors will have significant overlap, but there will be some differences in the topical focus in the later years. It also varies from uni to uni, so I'm using the [University of Adelaide's](_URL_0_) ...
what does more damage to the brain, a single KO blow or a flurry of smaller blows that result in a TKO?	[ "With CTE studies and the NFL we are only just beginning to understand head trauma. It appears that its not a single concussion that is the cause but more of repetitive hits to the head. Dont be mistaken, though, both is not healthy... brain wise." ]
Why are most television shows made to censor curse words and other possible offensive vocabulary, but are allowed to show the visual representation of things along the same lines as the omitted/edited speech?	[ "because children who don't always necessarily understand whats going on under the covers it could go over their heads and they wont realize it was a rude scene but if its swearing or talking about sexual subjects it the kids will definitely realize what the shows trying to convey." ]
With the rise of automation in manufacturing and retail, what's next in the line of work for the people who will lost their jobs?	[ "Many of those jobs will go away. But not all will, and other jobs will become necessary because of the change, and those will employ some of the others.\n\nA number of workers and jobs will stay directly in transportation. Many transportation workers provide more service than just an act of driving, and because th...
Why is it assumed to be liquid water on Mars as opposed to some other liquid.	[ "It's not assumed, it's known. They used a spectrometer to analyse the chemical composition of the liquid in the channels." ]
Who are the Oath Keepers and what do they do?	[ "The Oathkeepers are a group that is supposed to consist of people who take an oath to defend the Constitution as part of their work---so soldiers, some other government workers, police, and the like. \n\nThe organization asks its members to swear that they will never follow an unconstitutional order, meant as insu...
Why do storefronts have two sets of consecutive doors (usually automatic) at the entrance?	[ "This design is particularly common in regions with cold climates (like Canada), even for relatively small stores, because having a single door system that opens directly to outside where there is heavy foot-traffic is simply not feasible in extreme weather conditions (e.g. outside temperatures of -20°C/-4°F).\n\nT...
What difference does the layout of pistons in an engine make?	[ "[this is more ELI9]\n \nIt helps to think of a car (or any other piston-engined machine) like a bicycle. Each piston moves up and down inside its cylinder, sort of like your legs do when pedaling your bicycle. Those pistons, just your legs, turn a crank that connects to the wheels and makes the car/bike move forw...
Why would Cinderella's shoe fall off if it fits perfectly?	[ "Also, why wouldn't the shoe that fell off disappear with the rest of the outfit?" ]
Why does pee foam when it hits the ground outside.	[ "Foamy urine can be caused by rapid urination. At times, when you delay going to the washroom, large amounts of urine gets collected in the bladder. Also, proteinuria or presence of significant amounts of protein in the urine, is one of the most common cause of foamy urine.", "Does your piss not make bubbles in t...
How do 501c4 non-profits work and how do they threaten democracy?	[ "They don't in and of themselves. A 501c4 is a tax exempt organization that is allowed to use their money to influence public opinion which includes influencing elections.\n\nSo people can donate money to the 501c4 and that organization can then spend money to influence the election via TV ads, etc. Some people f...
What law guides the confessions in a R.Catholic confessional?Suppose a Catholic priest decides to give data on a penitent to the CIA?Or the FBI puts its staff in the seminary?	[ "Canon law- the religious law of the Catholic Church (the Orthodox and Anglican churches have their own Canon law, too, I think)- provides for the immediate and automatic excommunication, which can only be lifted by the Pope, of any priest who reveals information obtained through confession.\n\nIn parallel to tha...
base 10 numbering system	[ "Base 10 is what we mostly use. We count individual things until there are ten of them, then we start counting how many sets of ten. \n\nNumber 11 means (1) Set of ten with (1) individuals.\n\nNumber 42 means (4) sets of ten with (2) individuals.\n\nNumber 236 means (2) sets of hundred, (3) sets of ten, and (6) ind...
Why was a country as small as Germany so effective in WW2?	[ "First of all Germany wasn't that small. It had the second largest population after Russia. This is especially so after it had absorbed Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia. \n\nSecondly, Germany was more industrialized than, say, Russia, with better infrastructure. To put it simply, it was wealthier and more develo...
Why do the desktop computers (Dell Optiplex 9010) that I get on at my university run so fast and smooth while the 6-month-old netbook laptop I use runs so slowly?	[ "A base model (which is what I assume your school has) Optiplex 9010 has much better specs than your average netbook. It's actually a very good computer for school/office work, I'm surprised your school has computers that nice. The processor that it has (i3-3220) was only released about six months ago and is very m...
What the Black-Scholes Model is and how it works.	[ "The Black-Scholes formula works by assuming changes in the stock price are Gaussian distributed/normal distributed (actually they assume log normal but that's not hugely important) around 0. This means a few things:\n\n* The expected value at any time in the future is the current value.\n\n* The variability around...
How do they determine which song hits number 1?	[ "It's the song with the most revenue in that week.\n\nThey look at sales online, downloads and in stores." ]
How are portable powerbanks able to stuff 30,000mAh worth of energy into such a small body as compared to a 28A portable car battery?	[ "You can't compare Lithium-polymere accumulators and the Lead-ones currently used in cars. In your car you need a battery that has no problems with pumping out high currents (your starter can require up to 100A for a start.) but you seldom need a long lasting battery since most of the time your engine should be run...
How does a 'child recovery' operation work?	[ "It's basically a kidnapping.\n\nMost countries agree to a certain set of protocols to handle international custody disputes but some countries don't. So with Lebanon, if you are Lebanese and get your kids there, there is little the other party can do.\n\nSo they hire some professional kidnappers to get the kid bac...
how can the Hollywood studios acquire so many cars from the 20s - 70s period?	[ "Car clubs. They baby their cars and would like nothing more than to have them on a movie set.", "They build them. From cheaper materials. They are not fully working vintage cars, but modern replicas. Cars from the 70s are probably still available, but those from the 20s will almost certainly be replicas.\n\n[Her...
Why do pain killers like tylenol or paracetamol make flu shots less effective?	[ "Paracetamol works by stopping your body from making chemicals that naturally increase blood flow by dilating blood vessels. When you get a big bruise that's swollen, these drugs reduce the blood flow in that area, which helps reduce swelling.\n\nIf you've gotten a flu shot after taking a bunch of drugs like this, ...
What is the purpose of a five-star military rank?	[ "Those ranks exist so that during wartime a single supreme commander can be appointed in a given operational area. This simplifies the chain of command by making it totally clear who is the senior officer. Remember that in a large operational setting (like a theater of war) there may be a large number of very senio...
What Is Visual Snow, Why Does It Exist & Does Every Human Have It?	[ "It’s considered as a disease, or at least as a symptom of a disease (Lyme disease, for example), so no, everyone does not have it. It happens when a part of you cerebral cortex goes into overdrive, causing your ocular nerves to misinterpret information.\nAs for what it is, you can picture it as the visual noise on...
Why insulin is so important.	[ "Insulin is a hormone which regulates sugar (glucose) levels in the bloodstream. With another hormone called glucagon, it keeps sugar levels in the bloodstream at a nearly constant level by breaking down or building up glycogen stored in the liver or sometimes fat or protein stored elsewhere.\n\nHaving glucose in t...
How does phantom limb syndrome work?	[ "Your nervous system has been sending singles to your brain about how your limbs feel since before your were born. Right now, reach down and touch your pinky toe without looking at it. You can do this because your pinky toe is constantly sending signals to your brain with \"status updates\". \n\nNow if your pinky t...
What happens to ants that a separated from their colony?	[ "If the distance is close enough, they will be able to find their way by scattering to scout and tracking each other via the pheromones they lay on their path.\n\nHowever, 5km might be a little long for them; I think after first scrambling away for a little while, some of them will get lost in their own trail and g...
Why is every planet spherical?	[ "Planets form spheres because of the gravity emitted by their own mass. In space, any mass in space that exceeds about 6x10^20kg, or about 1/10,000 the mass of Earth, will compress itself into a sphere because its gravity pulls all of the mass in. Ideally, this leads to a shape where all the mass is equally distant...
Why is plastic surgery for hands so ineffectve? We see many ageing celebrities with young-looking faces, but their hands always give away their true age. There's surely a market for it, so what's holding it back?	[ "You ever notice how people with a lot of work done on their faces can't be very expressive because their faces don't move as much? Now imagine the mobility in your hands is that limited. People are willing to sacrifice some ability to move their faces (which everyone will see and notice) more than dexterity in the...
What is Cop Baiting?	[ "It's when you do something in order to provoke a cop into doing something.\n\nThe most common topical example would be to harass a cop with insults while filming them until they respond inappropriately. You then share the last half of the video where the cop acted inappropriately." ]
How fast is the fastest computer?	[ "The fastest computer in the world is the Sunway TaihuLight, which can do over 93,000,000,000,000,000 floating point calculations per second. This means that you'd need around 71,000 Xbox Ones working together to match it.\n\n > Like say I wanted to download a movie, what kind of wait time am I looking at?\n\nDown...
What are the pros & cons of using a neural network as opposed to a symbol system?	[ "The obvious ones are that neural networks don't have transparency, in the sense that you can't easily tell what they are doing. Typographical/symbolic systems are (generally) constructed by humans and have obvious, engineered structure. That lets you figure out how logical structures work and how to construct in...
Why do most people enjoy potatoes but don't like other vegetables?	[ "Though botanically classified as vegetables, potatoes are nutritionally classified as starchy foods that differ greatly in taste and texture from the traditional leafy green vegetables such as lettuce, spinach, and kayle." ]
From where does Earth get energy to rotate around itself and revolve around the Sun?	[ "Earth is falling towards the sun, for the same reason that you'd fall to the ground if you jumped - gravity!\n\nWhy doesn't it hit the sun though? Well, orbits are just when you move sideways fast enough to miss the object you're falling towards. That's we use the term free fall... in space, you're always falling,...
What is RAID (Computer Terms) and how would I use it?	[ "Like you're five:\n\nImagine you are storing a song on your computer, but instead of bits and bytes, there are little people in there that sing it back to you. You don't want to lose your song (singers quit all the time), and let's also pretend you want it sung as fast as possible. What do you do? You configur...
What makes my nose "blocked"?	[ "I just had surgery to fix this sort of thing 2 months ago. \n\nThere are several reasons this could be happening, it is most commonly caused by inflammation of the sinuses called sinutitus. Sinutitus can be managed with a steroid nasal spray, and it may be caused by continuous and long lasting sinus infections. \n...
Why do some people choose not to be organ donors?	[ "Some are too lazy to register or check the box.\n\nSome find it unacceptable due to their religion.\n\nSome don't like contemplating the thought of their mortality.\n\nSome don't like the thought of their body being separated and used for spare parts.", "A friend in high school told me she wasn't an organ donor ...
Why is desertion a serious crime?	[ "I would say that it is a bit obsolete, but originally, this is due to morale and discipline.\n\nWhen your army is charged, you don't want them to flee. When you are losing, you don't want them to run, or turn on you.\n\nIf someone is allowed to just disagree, and leave, discipline breaks down in the ranks as ev...
Anyone care to explain the axiom of choice? Thanks.	[ "Let's say you want to know why the sky is blue. I could tell you that it's because the light from the sun is mostly blue and that the air makes things seem even more blue than they are and so on, and you would then ask \"but why is the sunlight mostly blue?\" and so on. Theoretically we could play this game foreve...
How do lips still sync up in slow motion music videos?	[ "One way to do this is to film people moving at normal speed, but the music they're lip syncing to is sped up. That way when they slow the video down and play the song at normal speed, the song is playing normally, the lips still match as long as they sped it up the right amount in the original recording." ]
How exactly does Morse Code work and how was it developed?	[ "It was developed at a time where we could not transmit speech yet. A simple \"current on or off\" is easier to transmit. But how do you convert messages into \"on/off\" patterns? You invent a pattern for every letter. The sender sends them via pressing a key, and the receiver has a speaker making a sound when the ...
How do MOBA's and MOBA style games make so many different heroes and terrains and make the art style match?	[ "The individual artists aren't working in a vacuum. They will reference the intended look and feel of the game as they work. Also there will generally be a lead designer or artist who instructs the other members of the team on overall style. \n\nProcess varies from company to company, but typically each character w...
If energy cannot be created or destroyed, what happens to the energy and matter that gets sucked into black holes?	[ "Black holes do not violate these conservation laws.\n\nThink of a penny that you drop into an ocean. For any practical purposes, that penny is gone, but that doesn't mean it just disappeared, it's still somewhere deep in that ocean.\n\nBlack holes don't destroy energy, they just \"trap\" it, if that makes sense.",...
Why does resetting a router sometimes increase connection?	[ "A router is a small single purpose computer, with a CPU, and memory. It runs a simple operating system, called \"firmware\".\n\nThis little computer only helps you talk to the internet. It gets information from the internet, and passes it to your PC, laptop, or Playstation. Then it takes information from your P...
On a cold day after baking, will leaving the oven door open warm my house any more than leaving it closed?	[ "At the end of the day, the same amount of energy would be released into your household. Opening or closing the door will just allow the release of heat to happen faster or slower. \n\nWith the door closed, the only effective way for the oven to lose the heat is to just radiate it out. There is a small vent that ...
Why were the passengers on 9/11 hijacked flights able to call their loved ones on cell phones in the air before the crashes, but my modern cell phone loses all service pretty much instantly after takeoff.	[ "I believe the passengers were using those clunky old airplane phones in the seat backs. You'd just slide your credit card through and get a few minutes of not-especially-great service.", "Because the Dual and Tri-Mode phones at that time could fall back to AMPS analog cellular service, which gave them more rang...
What are "War Crimes" and who, or what, keeps nations from committing them?	[ "The goal of war isn't to kill people -- the goal of war is to defeat your opponent. This can be done without killing anyone, or it can be done by wiping everyone out. The problem with wiping everyone out, though, is that you really need to justify it in order to prevent another war from breaking out agains...
Why do we make the sound "Ow!" when we get hurt as opposed to any other noise?	[ "Because that's what we observed our surroundings do when we were babies. \n\nIt's culture. \n\nLike how many cultures have different ways to articulate animal sounds." ]
Barbers/beauticians paying for "their chair"	[ "The stylist is an independent contractor, not an employee... basically they are their own small business.\n\nImagine a strip mall with 5 storefronts. A landlord owns the whole building, and each business that wants to reach and serve their customers pays rent for the store. Doesn't matter if they make $1/month or ...
Why do we spend so much money on capital punishment rather than just shooting those on death row?	[ "The expense doesn't really come from the method of execution. It's the overhead of all the appeals.", "The USA spends an inordinate amount of money ever year solely for the purpose of killing it's own citizens, how are people okay with this?\n\nLet's check a few studies and such:\n\n* 1) Kansas: An audit i...
How do we know we aren't in a simulation? What is the science behind the studies and how do we know that science isn't just programming?	[ "This isn't a theory that is currently testable by science; it's more a philosophical issue than a scientific one. \n\nAs humans, all our perceptions are filtered through our senses as nerves. Per the [Brain in a Vat](_URL_0_) scenario, we have no objective way of proving that our sensory input is 'real'. As such, ...
Why does the sounds made by kid's toys slow down when the batteries start getting low?	[ "In simple terms, most circuits that make sound or play back digitally recorded sounds use a timing circuit (like an oscillator) to send out the sound waves at a constant rate.\n\nMore expensive toys will use crystal-based oscillators and low-battery cutoff circuits to keep things from getting funky as the power le...
Why do fans always have controls that go: off, 3, 2, 1 instead of off, 1, 2, 3?	[ "because when you turn on a electric motor, you want it on it's max setting as having it on it's lowest setting may not be enough power to start the fan so then it will burnout.", "Some fans don't have enough force from setting one to overcome the friction from rest. Setting 3 ensures the fan revs up to speed wit...
Why do mobile phone companies cap data on a monthly basis, but I have unlimited Internet access through my cable provider?	[ "To prevent complete saturation of the cellular bandwidth, and to persuade you to pay them ridiculous quantities of money for more bandwidth allocation.", "Infrastructure costs.\n\nSo with a normal cable provider they have your neighborhood wired and there's a central note with some equipment in it. The wires ar...
What is a realistic way to get rid of the drug cartels in Mexico?	[ "I am sure I won't be the first person to suggest this, but legalization seems like the only answer to me.\n\nLegalization would make drug prices plummet, and create of flood of legitimate businesses into the market. This cuts off their money, and thus their power.", "Fellow Mexican here, I'll try to put my pers...
How are presidential polls considered to be representative of public opinion when I've never met someone who has actually sat through a phone interview for one?	[ "Your typical professionally-conducted presidential poll talks to around 1000 people; in the presidential election season, there might be two dozen major polls conducted in a month for two years. That's roughly ~576,000 (=24 x 24 x 1000) people polled per presidential election, or about 1 person in 600. \n\nAnd b...
Why are people so against wind farms?	[ "Apart from the wildlife issues (which I think get over-stated a bit) and the fact that a lot of people don't like looking at them, the real problem is the pay-off time (when they've generated enough power to cover their cost) is often longer than the service life of the hardware and the energy cost to produce them...
Are transgenders allowed in the sports?	[ "Your question brings up a couple of issues that can be easily conflated. I read your question to be: \"Are transgendered persons allowed to compete as the sex they have transitioned to? (e.g., a male-to-female transgendered person competing as a woman)\"\n\nThe answer to that is that it depends. On the internati...
Why do we feel the weird banging in our body when listening to loud live music	[ "Sound is pressure waves moving through the air that vibrate your eardrums.\n\nYour ribcage doesn't have much that is solid behind it to stop it vibrating to large, low frquency pressure waves.", "Sound is just waves of pressure or vibrations moving through a medium like air. What you're feeling is sound, the sam...
Why a humidifier doesn't use as much energy as an electric kettle?	[ "A kettle's job is to boil a whole lot of water very fast.\n\nA humidifer's job is basically boil a small amounts of water slowly.\n\nThe amount of energy used to boil 1L of water in a kettle dry is the same as the amount used by a humidifer to use up 1L, however a kettle will use all that energy in like a minute, ...
How do bare-knuckle boxers not/rarely break their own fists?	[ "Bare knuckles boxers don't hit as hard as ones with gloves.\n\nIt may seem counter-intuitive, but a fighter with gloves is actually far more dangerous than a fighter without them. The fighter with gloves can launch full-force attacks that create a huge impact wave in their target. In contrast, the fighter without ...
Why do old broken bones and injuries hurt when there are extreme highs or lows in the weather.	[ "Weather is caused by pressure differences. Like when you see on the weather channel the (H) and (L) converging. [here](_URL_0_) you can see a great visualization of that.\n\nAll our joints have fluid in them (Like oiling your gears) and we're used to the fluid expanding and contracting normally under different atm...
How come people who are crossing Europe illegally are considered migrants and not illegal immigrants?	[ "Well a migrant is just somebody who travels, could be an immigrant or an emigrant. As for the North African and Middle Eastern immigrants, they're refugees of a war zone so referring to them as \"illegal immigrants\" creates a certain stereotype which they don't deserve.", "Immigrant means a person who goes to a...
With so much advancement in communications. Why are we still not able to find the missing flight Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370?	[ "I think many people that believe MH370 can be discovered easily is mislead by how enormous the area of search is, and how minute the plane is compared to it. I made an image to show how much this plane can cover in an hour. (777-200 typical cruising speed 0.84 Mach, assume 20 Celsius and 1 ATM, that's 1039 kilomet...
Why are some people not immune to Hepatitis B?	[ "Like anything else\n\n1. Maybe they did not receive the vaccine\n\n2. Maybe the vaccine they received was ineffective\n\n3. Maybe their body did not properly react to the vaccine and therefore never built the right anti-bodies\n\n4. Maybe they are immunosuppressed due to transplant or disease" ]
Why do tickets dispensed by arcade machines always seem to arrange themselves into neat piles?	[ "One of the ways tickets can come from the factory is in accordion-folded stacks. (The other is on spools.) After they're fed out of the machine, the tend to fold back the way they were.", "They have to be folded to fit in the ticket holder (ex. 7 tickets per row) and when they dispense then they just go back to ...
Why don't we, instead of filling tires with air, just make them out of solid rubber?	[ "Solid rubber weighs way too much.\n\nEdit: they are experimenting with airless tires though. Imagine a hollow honeycomb in a circle. I think they're plastic. I've looked into this, and will post a link as soon as I find it.\n\nEdit edit: [Link]( _URL_0_) this is some pretty cool stuff. I last looked into it a few ...
What would happen to a plane that was flying within the Earths atmosphere but suddenly began to experience no force of gravity?	[ "well let's suppose that can happen. who would happen.\n\nplane's going at some 500 mph relative to ground at altitude of 30,000ft. God turns off gravity in the entire universe.\n\nfirst thing that'd happen. all the passengers would freak out. \n\nnext thing that'd happen, the plane would start gaining al...
how does circumcision not count as illegal genital mutilation?	[ "Simply because it's a socially accepted act that is rooted in religion with Western cultures. If the act were not Westernized, it would be considered mutilation." ]
How is Stephen Colbert a character? What is different between Stephen Colbert and "Stephen Colbert"?	[ "Stephen Colbert played a character by the same name on his Comedy Central show \"The Colbert Report\". The fictional Colbert was a parody of the kind of personality-driven opinion shows common on nighttime cable news networks.\n\nWhile that was a very popular character that was appropriate for his cable show, it w...
Why do black tattoos turn blue eventually?	[ "Cheap ink and Sun Exposure.\nNot all black inks fade to blue.\nMy grandfather's 35yr old tattoo is still black, mind you it's blurry due to 30 years of aging.", "Tattoos fade because your cells try to get rid of the ink particles. \n\nHowever, they are very large, so cells must break them into smaller particles ...
How do music producers create "remastered" albums?	[ "There's a couple of ways that vary in how much it's involved. \n\nThere are three stages to production of traditional records. Tracking, mixing, and mastering. A remaster can involve redoing any one of those three steps. \n\nTracking is the stage where the musicians are in the studio. Their play is recorded to ind...
How does a jail broken phone work? Do they create a whole new OS or just add stuff on to the old OS?	[ "Jailbreaking (Or Rooting on Android), is the same operating system it was before, you're just modifying the system to allow you to do things that were previously not allowed. It's called jailbreaking because normally apps run in a jail or a sandbox that keeps them contained and limited. So once you've modified t...
How can the Department of Homeland Security actually run out of money? (since the House just failed to extend funding) A	[ "Congress doesn't budget for departments to build reserves like that, so when they stop cutting checks that's all she wrote", "Government money for \"non-essential\" things can only be spent if Congress agrees to a budget, and those budget agreements don't last forever. The last one ran out today, and they coul...
Why do we feel like time has passed after sleeping but not after being given general anesthetic?	[ "I had my first experience with general anesthesia this year and felt the same. Waking from a nap or a night's sleep, there a sense of time having passed. After general anesthesia there's just a blank with no sense of duration.", "A general anesthetic doesn't put you to sleep, in the general sense of the word. It...
I I work in the medical field one of my jobs is to encapsulate exposed wires with epoxy and then hit it with ultraviolate rays to cure it. I am curious, How does light cause the substance to go from liquid to solid, and why is it conductive when it is liquid, and nonconductive when it is solid?	[ "The UV light causes a polymerization within the epoxy.\n\nThe epoxy is composed of a bunch of small single molecules, called monomers, that are floating around more or less freely. However, when exposed to UV light, they are given energy that gets used in bonding the monomers together into big molecules of repeati...
why is it a bad idea to make hate speech /political incorrectness illegal?	[ "> I can't quite articulate why and I'd like to read the opinions of others. \n\nBecause you wouldn't have the opinions of others if you ban free speech. Some things aren't nice to say/hear, but education is the key." ]
How does Grooveshark play whatever song you want for free while Pandora requires you to listen to radio stations with mandatory commercials?	[ "Pandora operates completely legitimately, while Grooveshark technically does not. Grooveshark has been involved in the occasional lawsuit, and more will likely come. Its more a matter of the fact that Grooveshark has remained more under the radar, and with so many different sources of what may be called copyrigh...
The purpose of the painted spiral on the front of an aircraft engine.	[ "It visualizes the speed at which the turbine spins, since the turbine blades move so fast that you can't distinguish between a slowly idling engine and one which has full power. The spiral can be distinguished even at high speed, since it changes only a little bit each revolution. This is mainly useful for reasons...
Why does pouring beer into a glass of ice make it go flat?	[ "CO2 bubbles usually don't form just at random in the middle of a fluid. Instead, they need to form in cavitation points, which are basically tiny nicks in the surface of something which change the properties of the carbonic acid form of CO2 enough that it turns back into a gas. This is why you usually see a stream...
What are CETA and TTIP, and why are some countries so opposed to it?	[ "[This](_URL_0_) is actually a really good article about why people are scared of it. Add on top of that. all the negotiations have been behind closed doors, so our fearless leaders are going to push things that a lot of people are dead against down over their heads. Thus the pushback. Some of us consider ISDS a cr...
the numbers in the periodic table of elements	[ "It depends on which numbers you are referring to. They all deal with the chemical and physical properties of the element.\n\nThe most common are:\n\nAtomic Number (the number of protons): which essentially defines the element. For example, an oxygen atom is only oxygen if it has 8 protons.\n\nAtomic Mass (the aver...
fluoroantimonic acid ph	[ "pH is kind of a useless way to talk about acidity because it depends on the concentration of the acid in its solution. A better metric is called pKa. Without getting into detail, the more negative the pKa is, the stronger an acid is. And it's a logarithmic scale (meaning that if something has a pKa that's higher b...
How do sites like google or yahoo come into existence? Does someone just decide one day that they want to invent something new and make it part of the internet? I know they aren't using Go Daddy to run this shit...	[ "Google started out as a PhD project by Sergey Brin and Larry Page while they were doctorate students at Stanford. To prove the concept they used some of the computers that were available to Compsci grad students at that university, and initially they put it publicly on the web at the URL of _URL_0_ (it had an inte...
Why do governments not put extra taxes on sugar, salt and fat to make the population healthier?	[ "Take a look at how New York City's ban on large sodas went. Soda lobbies fought it. People didn't like it, they felt that the government was impeding on their freedom to consume how they deem fit.", "Because taxes are very unpopular not to mention such a tax would hurt the lower class more.than any other. To do ...
What is the significance of prime numbers in encryption? Why are we trying to find bigger ones?	[ "If you take one number, let's say five, and multiply it by itself some number of times, let's say three, you get an exponential expression, which we would write in this case as 5^3 = 125 which we say as five to the power of three is 125. If we made the three bigger, the result would get huge very fast. It's really...
how does sexual attraction mature with age?	[ "Well there's plenty I could go into, but basically some of the main factors in attraction is being able to tell that the person is able to produce children. So young men easily find women in their 20s and 30s attractive. However with the age of the female the rate of abnormalities in the fetus increases, and the g...
How is it that the Monty Hall problem and the gambler's fallacy don't contradict each other?	[ "The key to the Monty Hall problem is that the door that's removed from play is never the door with the prize and never the door you initially chose.\n\nSo if you choose a door at random, you initially have a 1/3 chance of being right and a 2/3 chance of being wrong. One of the doors you didn't choose is then r...
Why are there 360 degrees?	[ "\"The Sumerians watched the Sun, Moon, and the five visible planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), primarily for omens. They did not try to understand the motions physically. They did, however, notice the circular track of the Sun's annual path across the sky and knew that it took about 360 days to c...
How do animals become domesticated and why are some not able to be domesticated?	[ "DishonestStranger has a good summary regarding criteria for domestication. \n\nThe \"how\" can be complicated and appears to be different for different animals. \n\nThe prominent theory on dogs is that there was a \"self domestication\" that occurred many tens of thousands of years ago when humans lived in social ...
The Unabomber	[ "Ted Kaczynski was incredibly smart. He was accepted to Harvard at 16. While there he participated in a study about stress interviews in which someone berated and belittled him because of his personal philosophical views. His recorded facial reactions were played back to him at the end of the study. People have arg...
The Tree Of Life	[ "The Tree of Life is primarily about sublime experience more than it is about deep story.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSublime is a philosophical concept about the sensation of being incapable of taking in the entire power and magnitude of something, especially something natural. Looking at the night sky and imagine all the stars...
Why do European forests seem to have less underbrush than forests in the Eastern U.S.?	[ "Im no expert but I believe its because they've been left alone to grow longer, when trees get bigger it cuts off sunlight to the floor, over time you get a lot less smaller plants in the underbrush due to that and maybe the bigger trees using up more nutrients. I recall reading that in USA it used to be possible t...
what consequences if any are there from streaming tv shows on your computer?	[ "Hardware like your monitor and the CPU have to be working, and those can only work for very roughly 50 000 hours. Your ISP might bill you if you go over your cap if you go over your cap... and have a cap to go over to begin with.\n\nWere you thinking there was something special going on here?" ]
Why Are Fundraising Sites Necessary to Some for Medical Expenses (in the US)?	[ "Insurance is a tricky thing in the U.S. Not all insurance is the same nor does it cover the same things. It's entirely possible to go to a doctor that is not covered by your insurance and have a procedure done which you thought was covered and it isn't so you end up with high medical bills. A $50,000 medical bill ...
If/Once the Cuban Embargo is lifted, what will change?	[ "It will be easier people in the US to visit Cuba, acquire Cuban goods and do business in Cuba. Vice-versa for people in Cuba dealing with the US.", "Cuba will finally be able to buy newer, safer cars. _URL_0_", "There are two hypotheses about this. Critics of lifting the embargo are afraid that the injection ...
After a recent deed, someone told "that was mighty white of ya". What does that phrase mean?	[ "Their intended meaning: that you did something nice that they appreciate.\n\nThe actual meaning: black people are incapable of goodness or decency.", "At some point I believe the phrase was used to imply that white people are more virtuous than other people. However, for a while now it's been a sarcastic way of ...
Why do the majority of living things, like animals, insects, and bugs, require oxygen to survive?	[ "Living cells need Oxygen to react with the food we eat to get energy - It's basically the same thing as burning, but much less ''violent'', and produces the same waste (Co2). Oxygen is used for this due to how easily it reacts, but it's possible to use other gasses as well.\n\nThere are lots of bacteria that do no...
Explain 4k vs 1080p and other TV display resolutions to me	[ "There are two things to consider (well, more, but two that I will go into): resolution, and pixel size. All \"1080p\" screens will be 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels tall. However, you can have a 1080p screen that is pretty small (I think that smartphones are approaching this) or you can have a 1080p screen ...
Who/what is the "Chair" of the Senate, and who tells him/her what to do?	[ "The [president pro tempore of the senate](_URL_0_), meaning president for a time, is the second highest ranking Senator and a senator who serves as something like acting senate president in absence of the Vice President. The position was created in the Constitution (Article I Section 3):\n\n > The Senate shall ch...

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