Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
why does the TV remote start working after you beat it?	[ "Towards the end of a batteries life corrosion can start to build up, reducing the effectiveness of the electrical pulses sent through the battery to the remote. Smacking it once or twice can often shift the batteries a bit or ‘dust’ off this corrosion enough to allow them to work properly." ]	[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant...
Are there animals that can see outside the visible spectrum of humans?	[ "Yes. Birds and Bees can see into the UV. _URL_2_ _URL_0_ And let's not forget the Mantis shrimp which can see into the UV and near-IR _URL_3_ Also some animals are able to tell the polarization of light. Human's can do this, but it's a very subtle effect _URL_1_ I'm sure there are more, but these came to mind." ]	[ "A follow up question: Is it possible that they are potentially as smart as we are, but the lack of hands, appropriate communication (etc.) limits their ability to develop their potential?" ]
Why do most people have different handwriting if we’re all taught it the same way?	[ "Handwriting - specifically cursive - is a fluid movement that involves fine motor skills, so is largely unique to a person's hand and nervous system. Education teaches the general shapes to make so that it's legible, but the rhythm of writing, the places that are strongly or lightly pressed, the little flourishes...	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Why does the United States have so many military facilities on foreign soil, while other 'superpowers' do not?	[ "There are no other superpowers, first of all. To answer your question: America is isolated from the Europe-Asia-Africa landmass by two large oceans. Over 80% of the world's population lives in Europe, Africa, and Asia, meaning that that's where most geopolitical problems are going to occur. It is difficult to supp...	[ "Let's say you're starting a business and I loan you the money to get started. You make your payments and manage to keep the lights on. Soon, you start making a profit. I, who loaned you money, don't come demanding more money because you're making the payments on which we agreed. Your buddy Jeff has a business, to...
Why do modern shows like The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men look so bad?	[ "Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men are buth multi camera comedies shot in studios in front of a live audience, while Modern Family/ The Office are single camera shows shot on sets or on location. The difference is lighting. A multi camera show has to have a uniform lighting set up, so they can shoot a scene li...	[ "The Chinese, among other Asian cultures, feel that food should be served ready to eat. This includes being bite sized. Making diners \"work\" for their food is seen as poor food etiquitte. There are exceptions to this, such as a hot pot, but for the most part food shouldn't need anything more than a utensil to get...
Is there a reason for the Alphabet to be in order?	[ "who says it is in order? not like there is a sequential numerology to it, we've since gotten good at numbering the letters to assign positions to it, and thats helpful for many things, but still does not prove its in order. all we know is that the order is more or less, unchanged since the first records of the alp...	[ "This is a pretty common question here; here's some links from the FAQ: _URL_2_ _URL_4_ and a few others that have been posted over the years: _URL_3_ _URL_1_ _URL_0_ Most posts agree that it is largely a post-war pop phenomenon with fairly little evidence to support it." ]
If the stars and planets are accelerating away from each other, will we one day see no stars and planets?	[ "The expansion you're referring to affect large groups of objects, such as galaxies. It does not affect the individual bodies in small groups (i.e., solar systems). So, we should continue to see the planets in our solar system. However, it is possible that many billions of years in the future, we will no longer see...	[ "Our atmosphere is continuously bombared by particles from all kinds of cool cosmic events, such as supernovas. These particles collide with atmospheric particles at energies that are far higher than we can hope to achieve in our particle accelerators. If such high-energy collissions would create dangerous things, ...
The difference between states on commonwealths	[ "In the U.S. they're essentially the same thing. The name commonwealth goes back to the end of the colonial period. [Here's](_URL_0_) a good article explaining it simply." ]	[ "In may cases it look like it is because of name changes of the zones for example the next after Worcester is Milton Keynes but the area was originally called Wolverton & #x200B; [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) & #x200B; So most are alphabetical series but there have been later changed for various reasons." ]
If transubstantiation means the body of Christ is being eaten, doesn't that mean it's cannibalism?	[ "Not exactly. Denominations that believe in transubstantiation also don't think that Christ was merely human, but in fact the son of God. This includes the belief that he is consubstantial, that is, made of the same essence, as God the father. The typical idea of cannibalism doesn't really apply to that situation...	[ "It's a loophole. You are officially paying escorts for their time and companionship, the sex part is free with the purchase of companionship. Back when Chicago banned foie gras, there's a restaurant called Hot Doug that has always serves foie gras hot dogs. The owner said he's just selling the hot dog bun, the sa...
How do Ice Hotels work?	[ "Silly answer, same as any other hotel, but made of ice. Serious answer, they only get made when conditions are right, as in winter, and only where temperatures are below freezing for most of the season. The building is usually constructed of river ice which lets them cut it to however big or small they need it to ...	[ "Because water molecules are polar (have positively and negatively charged ends) so the oscillating EM field affects those molecules, but molecules that comprise air (O2, N2, etc) are non-polar, so the oscillating EM field doesn't affect them." ]
Why are all Android charges the same?	[ "A few years ago, several major phone makers (Motorola, HTC, Samsung, etc.) all got together and agreed to use the same kind of charger." ]	[ "Put a slinky in a long glass tube and fix one end of the slinky to one end of the tube. Now lay the tube on your desk. The slinky is all curled up . Next, stand the tube upright. One end of the slinky is fixed to the top of the tube and the bottom of the slinky dangles down. What if you held the tube at an angle.....
Why are Nazis associated with the “Far-Right” when Nazi means “National Socialist,” a left leaning ideology?	[ "Because Nazis arent associated with their economic policies. They are widely known for their foreign policy and race related ideologies. Namely that bit where they killed 6 million jews, its rather frowned upon. The far right is also heavily race oriented, with a specific emphasis on nationalism and isolationism, ...	[ "The idea of Net Neutrality is that all internet traffic has equal access to bandwidth/speeds. Doing away with it would be akin to allowing for highway speed limit signs that read \"Speed Limit: 65, BMW Owners Speed Limit: 85\" if BMW decided to pay for such access as a selling point. Or conversely, it'd be like a ...
Why do some politicians say the military needs more money when the military itself says it doesn't need more money?	[ "A lot of the time, when politicians talk about the defence budget, they don't necessarily mean the military itself, but spending on defence contractors who employ citizens in their congressional districts and who contribute to their reelection campaigns and PACs. It doesn't even matter if the contractors deliver a...	[ "here let me show off my big fancy expensive plane that can carry nukes around the world. now i dare you to attack me. so yes, presenting the existence of a weapon will allow enemies to counter it. but still the best deterrence for being attacked is your capability to counter attack. not to mention that this also r...
Why are women's only organizations okay but men's only organizations seem to not be okay and don't exist anymore?	[ "The freemasons are men only... as are all other fraternities" ]	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
If I demand too much of a certain brain area, like the visual cortex, and get a headache, will it feel first in that exact head area?	[ "You can't feel pain in your brain. Headaches aren't inside the brain, they are in the surrounding tissue." ]	[ "> why isn't the field of view larger as you go from 720p to 1080p? Quite simply, it's because the entire point of higher resolution is usually better quality, not a larger field of view. No one wants a better display just so they can see more of a scene at the same low quality. Instead, they want to see the same a...
Are there any reactions more exothermic than nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium?	[ "The mechanism by which hydrogen is tempted to fuse is lots of heat and pressure. Many elements under enough heat and pressure are going to fuse. In a supernova heavy elements are formed which even consumes energy (any fusion above iron is endothermic) and the end product may be less stable than the particles you s...	[ "A similar design was at least mentioned for Project Plowshare, and it considered detonating nukes inside the earth's crust to heat up underground water. It does not seem to have a code name, only known as \"Geothermal Power Plant\" as far as I know, so it would seem there no detailed plan was even created. Just be...
Why is it that when you get certain shots from the doctor it makes you really sore while others don't.	[ "Shots typically come in two forms: Intravenous - Injected into your veins Intramuscular - Injected into your muscle fibers Typically a shot in the muscle fibers will induce soreness more often than an intravenous shot. However, the size (\"bore\") of the needle and the medicine being administered also play a facto...	[ "Your brain isn't like a recorder that instantly writes your experiences into a persistent format. It sorts, categorizes, prioritizes, and even edits your experiences as it makes memories. That takes a certain amount of time, and getting hit with a syringe full of night-night juice interrupts the process." ]
How did Russian Orthodoxy survive during the Soviet era?	[ "There was no comeback, there was nothing to comeback from. My great grandmother was going to church all her life, my grandmother was going to church all her life, I was baptised in USSR. Religion was discouraged but not prohibited, lost all support of the government, but wasn't outlawed either. \"70 years of oppre...	[ "This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians...
Why HDTV's cause latency with consoles.	[ "HDTVs generally do a lot of processing on images it displays. Check and see if your TV has a game mode. It'll turn off the processing effects and offer less latency." ]	[ "Depends on the way the online stuff is done. It's either server side calculations, where you pressing the button sends a message to the server along the lines of \"hey he pressed shoot, tell me what happened please\" or client side which is \"hey he pressed a button so I figure the bullet went here and hit that gu...
How come FanDuel and Draft Kings are legal, but online poker is not?	[ "Because the law banning US banks from allowing money transfers to online poker companies specifically exempted fantasy sports as gambling." ]	[ "Because the alcohol and tobacco companies have more money than God and use some of that to pay lobbyists. Remember the fallout for cigarettes in the 90s? Did you notice they are still around, except Joe Camel can't peddle directly to kids? Yeah." ]
Seeding and Leeching of torrents on The Pirate Bay. What do they do and how do they work?	[ "Seeders are the people you can download from. Basically they have the file on their pc or server, and we can download it from them, they \"seed\" it to us I guess. Leechers are the people that are downloading the file. They're leeching off of the Seeders. So the more Seeders there are, the more people you can do...	[ "The supreme court had previously held that making private copies available for use by others was legal in Canada (see BMG vs. John Doe). As such, there was no legal copyright infringement that copyright holders could use as leverage to get (the subpoenas required to get) ISPs to disclose the identities of the file...
how television shows make money just from people watching?	[ "Advertisers pay them according to how many people watch...measured by ratings. This is commercial, network TV of course. Many people think they are in the business of delivering programs to viewers, and advertising pays for it. Actually, they are in the business of delivering viewers to advertisers, and the progra...	[ "I was curious about this as well, so I did some google-fu and found some results. This is all secondhand so take it with a grain of salt. It seems that the stations contract survey companies to get a rough estimate based on a sample population in the area. Arbitron is one of those companies. How do they do it? The...
Why do virtually all American Chinese restaurants seem to be so similar?	[ "I recommend watching the documentary \"The Search for General Tso.\" I believe it's on Netflix, and it pretty much answers your question, with a focus on the dish \"General Tso's Chicken.\" The gist is that the earlier Chinese immigrants adapted their dishes to American tastes, and when more Chinese immigrants cam...	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Differences between calibers of weapons and ammunition, like .357 and a .45 or even what a "nine" is?	[ "When somebody says \"5.56\" (think AR-15), \"7.62\" (AK-47), \"9\" what theyre saying is the diameter of the round in millimeters. I know that .223 caliber is about the same as 5.56 mm round. Caliber is the diameter in 1/100th inches. So yes, a .357 magnum round has more power than a .45 ACP, but the diameter is i...	[ "In pharmacology the figures of [EC50](_URL_3_) and [IC50](_URL_2_) are measures of how much of a substance is required to induce a desired effect or to inhibit function. These numbers vary a lot depending on the site of action, nature of the pharmacological compound, type of interaction, etc. It is all covered und...
How do you go about "unifying" two different forces?	[ "maxwell was the first one that realised that the electric and magnetic field are two sides of the same field. For example if you have a purely electric field in 1 frame; you will also find a magnetic field in another frame. In calculations you can describe both by a field strengh tensor F_ab. With this tensor you ...	[ "It has been done, but it's kind of rare. With PC and consoles though, it doesn't tend to work well, as usually the PC players have the upper hand, thanks to using keyboard/mouse instead of a controller. Also I should imagine it's easier (therefore cheaper) to keep the auth/integration systems separate than gettin...
Why do the Police Follow me for a While Before Pulling me Over?	[ "They're looking up your plate to see if your car has any violations or if the registered owner has a warrant or had reported the car stolen." ]	[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to anyone who mailed back the special offer." ]
How come Chinese words in English are spelled funky?	[ "Zhou is not pronounced like Joe. Chinese words are generally spelled according to their pinyin (phonetic system) which has correlates English letters to pronunciation." ]	[ "Because in the majority of situations in which you could tell which is which by context, which leaves the designer free to make stylistic decisions. But I'm with you - it bugs me and I try to avoid using them." ]
"Black" or "African American"	[ "I've run into this a few times as well. I've come to like the phrase \"black community\" but any better guidance would be appreciated. Repeating African-American seems very clunky and inarticulate, even it it is \"safe.\"" ]	[ "Referring to the year as Two thousand X is a bit of a holdover from the last decade. I don't hear it much anymore. its increasingly being referred to as Twenty X and will be going forward." ]
If I took a polar bear and placed it in a forest, would it survive?	[ "Polar bears and brown bears can crossbreed, from what I remember reading. The hybrids are fertile and display a mixture of instinctive responses from their parents. Bears are omnivores, so polar bears in a forest should have no problems finding food. The just won't have the instincts or ancestral memories to trave...	[ "Nasa, among other groups with space exploration in mind, are asking that question themselves: _URL_0_ It seems the biggest problem to overcome is the low atmospheric pressure, which sucks the already rare water out of plants. Nutrients don't seem to be a problem." ]
Why do we need to warm up our cars before driving?	[ "With modern cars, we generally don't. The only exception is in very cold weather, where the oil may be too viscous to properly lubricate the engine until it warms up slightly." ]	[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant...
Are there any known mutations in drosophila melanogaster that cause a phenotype of folded downward wings?	[ "Perhaps you didn't find [FlyBase](_URL_2_) and/or your [_URL_3_](_URL_1_) kung fu is still developing (scholar links to a handful of papers that specifically say \"folded wing phenotype\"). Flybase finds one gene: [fol](_URL_2_/reports/FBgn0000720.html). I didn't look at many alleles, but based on your description...	[ "I'm in the car right now (not driving), so hopefully someone can better elaborate. Rosalind Franklin took X-ray photographs (crystallography?) of the DNA double helix. She was working with James Watson and Francis Crick who published the information and received the Nobel Prize for the work. Franklin was not award...
Do any modern humans carry mitochondrial DNA or Y chromosomes from Neanderthals or Denisovans?	[ "There has not been any Neanderthal or Denisovan DNA detected in mitochondria or the Y-chromosome of modern humans. That might seem surprising given that Neadnerthal DNA can make up around 4% of the genome in Eurasians and Denisovan DNA can be found in comparable amounts in some populations. But [this paper](_URL_1...	[ "I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'American'. With regards to the colonies that later formed the US, then the answer is no. If you include the colonies that later became Canada, then from 1624 to 1707, baronetcies were sold in the newly created Baronetage of Nova Scotia in order to fund the plantation of th...
Were the retrospectively bizarre Victorian morality and attitudes prevalent in other European countries or was it really just a British thing?	[ "You should also keep in mind that \"Victorian attitudes\" were restricted to the middle and upper classes, which made up a pretty small ~~majority~~ minority of the actual population in Victorian England. The number of prostitutes in Victorian London would be mind-boggling to most people today. EDIT: Wow, I \"majo...	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
Why animals try and keep themselves awake, when they could easily just sleep.	[ "Animals, though they are tired, might not want to sleep because they want to be prepared for danger. They want to stay alert because they need to protect their young, their humans, or themselves." ]	[ "Please use the search function. _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_11_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_12_ _URL_13_ _URL_13_ TL;DR: Why is a bad question with no good answer. We can't tell entirely with other animals, because we can't directly communicate though anecdotally, many seem to." ]
Why are some animals not able to move backwards on their own?	[ "I wish I had an answer... but I'm curious what animals you are asking about? I didn't realize some couldn't move backwards on their own. I'll be staying tuned for any answers that pop up on here! Good question!" ]	[ "Cartoons back then were animated using layers, similar to how you would on Photoshop. The back layer holds the background, and is made to be set and forgotten about. If a character is called on to interact with a background piece, that piece is pulled into the foreground layer. Because of the methods they used, as...
Why aren't Discover/American Express accepted every where cards are? Don't they all work in the same way?	[ "Every time a credit card is used, the business has to pay the credit card company for the convenience of the service. For the merchants, it's a complex matter; they ideally don't want to accept credit cards at all, but many customers wouldn't shop there because the customer's card isn't accepted. Each merchant has...	[ "Besides money there is the problem of having a rover than can survive the more extreme conditions on other planets. The Moon and Mars are pretty tame compared to Venus, Mercury or Jupiter. The distances, as well as the environmental conditions, make control and communications a much bigger problem. Look at the rec...
Someone today claimed that the Nazis made many advancements in medicine and learned a lot about the human body through inhumane experiments in concentration camps. Is there any truth to this?	[ "\"learned tons\" might a bit of an overstatement. Many of the experiments carried out on nazi prisoners were highly unscientific and sometimes downright silly (injecting eyes of one twin with dye to see if the other twins eyes would change colour etc), other were aimed primarily at testing the effectiveness of var...	[ "False positives (having something good taste bad) are far less damaging than false negatives (having something bad taste good). Given that, there is no big evolutionary advantage to weeding out excessive false positives, so it didn't happen." ]
Why do Europeans tend to be less religious and more left-leaning than Americans?	[ "Down to two things education and history. For the history America is said to be founded with a gun in one hand and a bible in the other, Americans are reluctant to admit to wanting to give up either. For education the level of general education in the US is the lower than in the other G7 developed countries, as le...	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
If we have 100% solar power production at home is there a point to using AC other than appliances being made for AC?	[ "Nowadays the transformation of arbitrary electrical energy sources into an arbitrary other isn't an issue anymore due to high power electronics like IGBTs. Basically any source can be rectified and smoothened to a nearly perfect DC, which in return gets chopped, upscaled and shaped to any wanted form. Therefore it...	[ "Your body generates heat, so it needs to cool off. The warmer it is outside your body the harder it is to cool off. However if it is too cold then it can cause damage to your body. Basically chemical reactions happen at different rates depending on temperature so you don't want temperature to change much if you h...
Why do people wear ties?	[ "(_URL_0_) Neckwear has existed in various forms since antiquity but the modern tie (and other mother neckwear such as cravats) started as a fashion statement popularized by King Louis XIV. It gradually evolved into the longer tie which has become customary in the west as it is easier to tie. In some form, the tie ...	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
Why do sons get named after their dads, grandpas etc. and become "Jrs" or "The Thirds" but daughters/women don't??	[ "Comes from inheritance, you named your son after the master of the house to clearly show the line of succession. Women could not originally inherit/own land so there was no need to name them after their mothers who also did not own land." ]	[ "Porn is about fantasy. Safety procedures kind of kill the fantasy. For the same reason you never see the hero's looking for toilet paper, and we don't watch Iron Chef wash the dishes after the meal is made. Reminders about the boring (or even dangerous) parts ruin the fantasy. We want (at least briefly) to suspen...
In a battle in Ancient Rome,what rank would one have to be to be out of the actual fighting of a battle?	[ "None, Roman commanders were expected to lead from the front. It was their bodyguard's job to make sure they didn't die. Every rank up from a decurion was more free to move about the battlefield, though. Commanders would thus often choose to go to places were the fighting would be most decisive. The standard place ...	[ "Followup question, did it help that this is a nearly ideal teaching-kids-Latin text? It is written in basic, nonflowery prose. The military subject matter is interesting to at least male children, compared to most other choices of old literature. Would Dark Ages and Medieval monks have always used this as a teachi...
Is it possible for the human body to forget how to do basic things, e.g. sneezing?	[ "Forget? No. Reflexes like sneezing aren't something you 'remember', they're hard-wired into your nervous system. Many simple reflexes (like pulling a limb away in response to pain) can occur while unconscious or even brain-dead / decerebrate, because they are mediated by [reflex circuits](_URL_0_) in the spinal co...	[ "Imagine you're trying to find a coffee shop in a city. If you've been there recently, it should be pretty easy to find. If it's been 10 years since you've been to the coffee shop or the city, it might take you a LONG time to find. It also might take long to find if you've been to other, similar coffee shops in the...
Are There Any Records Of A Society Accepting Themselves As Inferior Under Social Darwinism?	[ "Societies are complex and I don't know of one where such thinking was universally accepted within a whole community. However, during slavery, a genre of folktales actually appeared in Africa and in the Americas to explain the African enslavement and cultural subordination, what William Piersen (in Black Legacy) ca...	[ "I would check out It's Okay to Be Smart on youtube. They do a good episode on this (im bad at links)" ]
If one of the usual after effects of 3rd degree burns is rampant infection, how can cauterizing an open wound be helpful at all? Or is that just more TV hokum?	[ "You can treat an infection later. Cauterizing a wound stops you from bleeding out immediately. It's not a good thing to do but sometimes it's the only way to stop someone from dying." ]	[ "Nuclear engineer and senior reactor operator here. Some bad info in this thread so let me clear it up. The reactor IS fully shut down during core melt events. The nuclear reaction can be fully stopped in 3 seconds and for most reactors this is partially or fully passive. Meaning it works even without electricity...
If I’m driving down the highway and release an insect out of my window, does it have any sense of location? (Does it feel “lost”?)	[ "First of all, insects do not experience human emotions, so it would be impossible for them to \"feel lost\" the way a person would. Some insects, however, do have different relationships with spatial location. Ants and bees have a home that they return to, using different methods to navigate to and from their nest...	[ "A) Endeavor is being moved to Los Angeles to be put on display in a museum. B) The space shuttles are pretty much flying bricks. They're meant to fall out of the sky allowing some degree of control. Their wings cannot provide the needed lift, and the engines aren't designed for forward movement through the atmosph...
Why should I pre-heat an oven instead of just putting whatever I want in there, and let it cook that as the oven heats up?	[ "Science. The food manufacturer doesnt know how long it takes for your oven to heat up. But they do know that when its 400° its at 400°. They know how long it needs to cook for at specific temperatures. So they are trying to eliminate as many variables as they can so you can replicate their results and get properly...	[ "Having passengers check in before boarding allows the airline to confirm which passengers have actually shown up for the flight. This can be important if a flight is overbooked (too many passengers), or if a flight has open seats that could be filled by standby passengers. If they waited until boarding to check al...
Why can I feel the vibration of a 5kg cannon ball when it's dropped onto the ground, but I can't feel the vibration of a 75kg man when he lands after jumping?	[ "Usually the man is being slowly (relatively) decelerated by his muscles and tendons. His legs absorb the kinetic energy quite effectively. A solid object though transfers all its energy into the ground. Also note the man's center of mass might not actually move too far when he jumps. Depending on how good of a ju...	[ "Put a slinky in a long glass tube and fix one end of the slinky to one end of the tube. Now lay the tube on your desk. The slinky is all curled up . Next, stand the tube upright. One end of the slinky is fixed to the top of the tube and the bottom of the slinky dangles down. What if you held the tube at an angle.....
- Why does the air feel “lighter” when it seems like it’s about to storm?	[ "The \"trigger\" for many storms is a warm front moving into an area. Warmer air is less dense and has a lower pressure, so it is \"lighter\"." ]	[ "Point a flashlight at the wall and turn it on. See the small circle? Now, let's say your flashlight is delivering xyz power to the wall. So xyz power is landing in that circle, right? Tilt the flashlight in any direction. The circle spreads out across the wall doesn't it? But you didn't change the batteries or any...
Why are mortgages a good thing?	[ "Houses are really expensive. Paying in smaller payments means you still have money to purchase other necessities (food, clothing, transportation). Paying in a few large payments would put a huge dent in peoples' wallets, and so would either have to forfeit other necessities or purchase a house that may not sui...	[ "They 1) convince the happy chemicals in your brain to stay around longer, or 2) get more happy chemicals to come to your brain party." ]
Why is it that when you jump on an airplane, you land where you started?	[ "You have to remember that you're moving 500 mph along with the plane. When you jump, you keep your forward velocity. From someone outside the airplane, you would appear to be leaping up-and-forward at 500 MPH. The only time you would move relative to the plane is if the plane changed speed (accelerated or decelera...	[ "Our brains didn't evolve with cars in mind. They evolved with, like, being hunted by a jaguar (or whatever) in mind. So your brain doesn't know what to do with a car. It thinks hey, we're sitting, our body's not really doing anything physical, there's very little activity or stimulus... this seems like a good time...
From a physics perspective, is there a difference between liquids and gases?	[ "Macroscopically, liquids have surface tension and gasses do not, so a liquid will take a form that minimizes surface area, while a gas will just expand to fill space. Microscopically, the molecular or atomic components of a liquid are touching each other (to the extent that touching can be defined at that scale) a...	[ "When you drive, your wheels are always between you and the road. Does this mean that you do not move up and down with the road? (Negating the effects of your shocks) you will still feel the entire topography of the road as if you were in direct contact with it. To avoid confusion it is better not to look at the fo...
Science behind warming up before an athletic event.	[ "It conditions and primes your muscles for the activity ahead. For starters, it gets your heart rate and respiration up, which means more oxygen and nutrients will be available to your muscles. It also gets the synovial fluid from the bursae of your joints flowing, increasing the lubrication of your joints allowing...	[ "I'm sorry that I'm no expert, but I remember reading about this the last time a similar question was asked: _URL_0_ Basically, you percieve time faster after your run because of endorphines released during the work out, which means that the music seems slower. This is apparently also why a lot of rock musicians pl...
What exactly is the noise coming through my speakers when my phone receives signals next to it? Why does this happen? Could this phenomenon be used practically?	[ "That's your phone call. Your speaker chords are made of metal and they're acting as a radio antenna and picking up your call. But since your call is digital, and encrypted, and transmitted at a frequency outside your hearing range, the ringing just sounds like noise on the speaker. We use this phenomenon all the t...	[ "Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained: 1. [ELI5: Why can't I hear very well while yawning? ](_URL_5_) 1. [ELI5: Why can't I hear while I am yawning? ](_URL_2_) 1. [ELI5: Why when we yawn we can't hear anything until the yawn is done? ](_URL_0_) 1. [ELI5: Why can't I hear when I yawn? ](_URL_4_...
Where does wind come from?	[ "the short answer is the sun. & #x200B; The earth's surface doesn't heat evenly. The sun sends radiant energy that hits the ground, and then the ground reflects it as infrared (heat). This makes the air get warm, which rises. So when that warm air rises, something has to rush in to replace it (colder air from some...	[ "I suspect it's the same reason your nose runs when you cry. Your eyes have small 'ducts' to your nose, maybe yours are a bit loose. On a different note, I can plug my nose and blow and get a small stream of air out my left eye. Eww." ]
The $7 Trillion in increased spending that Obama kept on repeating and Romney kept on denying in last night's debate.	[ "Romney proposes to cut income tax rates 20% across the board; this would lead to 5 billion less in revenue. He claims that he would offset this by closing tax loopholes, but he has not identified any specifics of this plan, and except in the debate he has consistently said that getting the cuts implemented would b...	[ "The dollar is the price that you would expect, while pennies are the price that you're getting. So if I had a $2000 TV for sale for only like $100, you could say \"I'm buying this TV for pennies on the dollar!\" Because it's worth $2000 and you're only paying $100, you're basically only paying 5 cents for every do...
If I stood on an accurate enough scale, would I weigh a little less during high tide than during low tide?	[ "Yes but you need a really really accurate scale. And it needs to be the right kind of scale too, a balance is not affected by local gravity (as long as there is some gravity). A balance would give you the same weight even on the surface of the Moon as it does on Earth. Things like [local gravity anomalies](_URL_0_...	[ "Two questions, two answers. Color: The light from the Moon has to pass through the atmosphere to reach your eyes. When it's near the horizon, it has to pass through more air to reach you (just from the geometry of the situation), and so more the light from the Moon is scattered away before it reaches you. However,...
What was a Ancient Greek equivalent to a Police Officer?	[ "In Athens, they had 300 state owned slaves, typically scythians, who were responsible for enforcing laws, arresting and holding criminals, crowd control, and herding adult males into the ekkasia for assemblies. They had slaves because when they used local citizens, The athenians would either bribe or hire their ow...	[ "[This previous discussion](_URL_0_) might help. In a nutshell: homosexuality was known to happen, but was frowned upon. Sex without the possibility of procreation was considered morally offensive to the divine guardians of fertility." ]
why is it that wind farms stop their turbines from spinning?	[ "Two most plausible reasons: 1) Too much power in the grid right now. 2) Too strong winds right now, they have to secure it against spinning out of control." ]	[ "Imagine a bathtub full of water, the water represents electricity. The bathtub has a faucet, which represents the generation of electricity. Imagine now that there are little holes in the bottom of the bathtub, all plugged up. When ever a home needs power, unplug the drain and let the water flow out. Now imagine ...
Why does steak at a steakhouse cost so much?	[ "Better cuts of beef, better prep (like dry aging), better chefs to cook it. Also in a higher end restaurant you are going to be paying more for everything basically for the better service, atmosphere, location, etc. A nice steak at a high end restaurant is totally different from a $10 steak at TGI Fridays or somet...	[ "Depends on what level the study is at. Look at people who regularly eat lots of red meat and bacon, and compare it to people who don't If there is a difference in cancer rates between the two groups, something is causing a higher rate of cancer. Maybe work place exposure, food, lifestyle etc. Then take genetically...
Why is "Bloodclot" such an offensive term in Jamaican slang?	[ "In Jamaican Patois the \"th\" sound is often pronounced as just \"t\". so, bloodclot refers to a woman's menstrual cloth." ]	[ "Horse meat isn't rare at all. You can get it in many parts of europe. Tastes ok too. Anyway, that's culture. The same reason we think that bacon and eggs is a breakfast food, and don't eat grasshoppers." ]
If I have a cup with 1 drop of water and I fill it with water, drink half of it, fill it again, drink half and so on. How many times will I have to repeat to make the molecules of the first drop "disappear" from the cup?	[ "That's highly random and will depend on how you fill the cup, the temperature of the water, the geometry of the cup, how you drink it, and how long it sits between filling and drinking. If the fill and drink are relatively turbulent it may take millions or billions of fills before every single molecule is gone. A ...	[ "In reality, you need to put the microwave on for some time between 60 seconds and 120 seconds depending on a number of factors. In the case that the object absorbs all the microwave energy then you would need 120 seconds because you need double the amount of energy to heat the two objects. In the case of an object...
Is earth's electric potential growing or decreasing?	[ "The larger the Earth's net charge gets (whether + or -), the more it repels particles of the same charge and attracts ones of opposite charge. This has the effect of lowering the charge again. It's a self-regulating system." ]	[ "You see charging effects in SEM imaging (which usually happens at the same time as an EDS measurement) if the sample is not conductive enough. If the sample is conducive, electrons return to the sample through the grounded stage." ]
Why are we supposed to stop bruises from swelling? Isn't it supposed to help us?	[ "Swelling, also known as [inflammation](_URL_0_) is the body's response to things such as trauma and infections. Swelling occurs from the dilation of blood vessels to the affected area and increased blood flow and nutrients for cellular repair. In the majority of cases the swelling and heat from your inflammatory r...	[ "The bigger you make something, the weaker it gets, because as you increase the size, mass grows faster than strength. Say you have an ice cube that's 1 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm. That's one cubic centimeter in volume, and it has a footprint of one square centimeter. If you make this cube 10 times larger in all dimensions,...
Why are there so many transgender people in Thailand?	[ "It may sound odd to Western ears but in Thailand many people believe in a third gender, called Kathoey, or Lady Boys. For whatever reason, Thailand has been greatly accepting of this identity(there's really no consensus as to why). A lot of Lady Boys have found great success doing entertainment shows and the like....	[ "It takes a while to implement the changes. How would you like it if the law changed overnight and you had to pay fees/go to jail next day without having a chance to adapt yet." ]
Why do trees grow through things such as chain-link fences?	[ "For the same reason seeds can sprout through concrete I imagine. Plants seek light, they'll grow around whatever they need to to get to it easier." ]	[ "Do you have a fly screen over the window? If so what you are observing is a [Moiré pattern](_URL_0_) being projected onto the window. Essentially the light is passing through the screen and the light waves get split up and then interact with each other causing spots of superposition where some regions are darker a...
What keeps a health insurance company from running their own clinics?	[ "It can vary based on laws in the area, but it does happen. [Kaiser Permanente](_URL_0_) is probably the best known example of a company that offers both health insurance and operates medical facilities. But the main reason you don't see it as much is that, even though from our perspective they are similar because ...	[ "Investment banks are selling stocks. Equity Research is figuring out what a stock is worth. The inherent conflict of interest is that if the same company is both selling the stock, and providing research about it, the buyer has no way to tell if the research has been influenced to improve the story about why the s...
How do plants determine which leaves "die" first?	[ "I know that mangroves will use their leaves as repositories for the salt they clean from the water and when you see one with a yellow leaf, that leaf is about to drop because it is full of salt." ]	[ "it's a computer model, meant to simulate the feedback mechanisms of life on a planet orbiting a star that is getting hotter. There are black and white daisies. the black ones absorb light and heat the planet, white ones do the opposite. The competition between black and white daisy populations, with their succes...
I once read that Gaulish warriors in the Roman arena didn't fight bears because they could kill them too easily by plunging their arms into the bear's throat. Is there any historical veracity to this?	[ "It may help if you had the source you originally found this in. This is a pretty spectacular claim, and its veracity could be checked more easily if there was a position to start from. What was the text you used for that course? Does your college still offer it? If so, are they using the same text? EDIT: u/Ediced...	[ "By asking this question, I am assuming that you are wet-shaving. The main goal of shaving is hair reduction. When you shave with the grain (in the direction of hair growth), you allow the blade to remove hair without much resistance. Resistance in shaving requires pressure, and pressure leads to cuts and blee...
Why are there "Cash Only" businesses in major cities? How could it be a benefit to a business?	[ "Credit card companies charge a certain percentage of the total sale price every time a customer uses their card." ]	[ "I don't know where you experienced this but I do it all the time. I bought a tv one day. It came up to $500 and something. I handed the dude 4 100 dollar bills, and told him I was going to put the rest on a card. He punched in the $400 and got my new Total of $100 something. Then I ran my card like normal." ]
Why do omelets and scrambled eggs taste differently even though I put the same ingredients into them?	[ "First, texture has a lot to do with food. The sensations of chewing, moving food around in your mouth, and taking a bite-sized solid piece of omelet versus a fluffy bit of scrambled egg with a lot of air in it will add to a difference in flavor. Next, your omelet usually has a big chunk of \"other stuff\" in its m...	[ "ELI5 always gets answers from people who are trying to get extra credit on a college assignment or something... It comes down to intervals; the space between 2 notes. Any single random note wont sound good or bad until its compared and contrasted with another note. If the 2 notes are made of waves that don't line ...
If extra wings seen on biplanes add more lift and maneuverability, why don’t we add them to modern planes or jets and have them built into the airframe like we do today?	[ "The whole point of a biplane design is to achieve a given wing area with the lightest possible structure. In a monoplane, the wing roots (where the wings meet the fuselage) has to carry a large bending load, which means it has to be very stiff, which means it's heavy. In a biplane, the wings are interconnected by ...	[ "Yes, the transiting planet should more or less pass between the our telescopes and the star, which of course is a limitation. There are some alternatives that do not require the planet's plane to intersect our line of sight, such as Astrometry. It involves measuring the wobble of the star as the planet orbits aro...
Why are people against an eye for an eye?	[ "It's not practical or just. If you break my toy and I break yours then now we have two broken toys. A better approach is that if you break my toy then you replace it. Likewise, if you cut off my arm and I cut off yours then we're both screwed and I'm still down one arm. Better if you compensate me somehow than me ...	[ "There is a lengthy appeals process for death penalty cases, and lawyers are expensive. We still manage to execute an innocent person now and again." ]
The reasons for the split between Catholicism and Protestantism is fairly well known and discussed. The split between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, however, is often overlooked. Why and when did this split occur? What are the main similarities and differences between the two?	[ "Could you explain what you mean by \"overlooked?\" Who is overlooking the Great Schism?" ]	[ "It's like boxing vs. kickboxing. They are similar, but one allows kicks and the other doesn't. It's a small change, but it completely changes the strategy. Muhammed Ali was one of the best boxers of all time, but I don't think he would have been a very good kickboxer. The same applies to Taekwondo and Karate. Taek...
Why does warm air get cooler after being blown through a fan?	[ "It doesn't. However, it makes you feel cooler, because it carries heat away from you (mostly by evaporating your sweat) quicker." ]	[ "It's interesting that you bring up the example of a guitar in front of a fan. If you have a ceiling fan, play guitar with it off, and then play the same thing with it on. When the fan is on, everything will sound slightly sharper. I always thought my guitar was going out of tune until one of my friends pointed out...
How does Dry Cleaning work? Is it truly dry?	[ "It uses an ~~alcohol~~ ethylene based liquid, instead of water. So the clothes get \"wet\" to remove the dirt, they just never come in contact with h2o." ]	[ "\"One of the most common ingredients used was dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride (DHTDMAC), which belongs to a class of materials known as quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats. This kind of ingredient is useful because part of the molecule has a positive charge that attracts and binds it to negati...
Why are mouth ulcers painful rather than scabbing over like other flesh wounds.	[ "I am no biologist, nor a medical professional, but I have had mouth ulcers. My assumption is because mouth ulcers are in a moist environment, and are constantly being irritated by things like your mouth/tongue movement, doesn't have the chance to scab over" ]	[ "The tobacco is moist. Not designed to flare up but burn slowly. Not everything that gets lit has an open flame." ]
What's an Honors degree and how would it differ from my normal _URL_0_ Computer Science degree?	[ "It depends on specific programs and institutions. In the USA it typically refers to the highest-scoring students in a particular program. However, in the UK and other Commonwealth countries, an Honours degree can be a separate one-year program added to a standard bachelor degree, in which the student has to comple...	[ "Bitcoin is more like a shared ledger, where each account has a certain number of coins in it. The network tracks how many coins are in each account, not the coin itself. So you run your coins through a series of wallets that are doing other things - and you can't tell where the naughty coins went versus where the ...
Does religious tithing create any legal obligation for the church to the contributor?	[ "Not unless they are made legally explicit by some contract. Legally speaking, a tithe is a voluntary charitable contribution to a non-profit organization. Many churches claim they are required by the bible, and some even track them and deny you church services if you don't pay. But like any other charitable contri...	[ "The main thing here was that the company that they were paying to help get their kids into better colleges was illegally posing as a charity, so that the parents appeared to be donating to charity and getting tax writeoffs at the same time that they were cheating to get their kids into a prestigious school. That's...
What is the difference between decriminalized and legalized?	[ "Broadly speaking: Decriminalized: punishments have been lessened or eliminated entirely. Decriminalization generally means the state is no longer aggressively prosecuting most people engaged in an offense. For example, many states have reduced or virtually eliminated penalties for possession of small \"persona...	[ "Salt & Pepper season our food. They make it taste better. Spices & Herbs flavor our food. They make it taste different. Season everything. source: Chef." ]
Why, when someone close dies, do I not feel anything, but once I start talking about it I get emotional?	[ "From personal experience, when I first found out about the death it was rough but it never really hit me until I said it out loud. Actually hearing it was the trigger my body was waiting for, unfortunately. It was a reality instead of something inside my head." ]	[ "One word: Repetition. You know all those song lyrics because you listened to the songs thousands of times. Names are easily forgotten because in our own minds, names are not nearly as important as the idea behind them. You often forget names quickly because you instead incorporate the idea of the person (who t...
If perpetual motion is impossible then why is the universe expanding?	[ "Until fairly recently (that is to say, several billion years ago), the expansion of the universe was mostly the effect of inertia. In the very, very early universe, space was expanding very, very quickly and it slowed down over time. In fact, the expansion was slowing down because gravity was slowing it down. In ...	[ "The pressure doesn't keep increasing. It's pressurized to a certain level and stays there. Just as a balloon can hold pressure for days without the pressure increasing and bursting it. Edit: Or how a heavy book on a shelf doesn't press harder and harder until it breaks the shelf. The pressure has stabilized." ...
Could President Obama actually stop the DEA from raiding medical marijuana clinics with executive power alone? Could congress or the Supreme Court continue to allow the raids?	[ "The Department of Justice, and by extension the President, doesn't have the resources to persue all crimes, and can set its priorities at its own discretion. The President can order them to make marijuana enforcement its lowest priority. If this action caused someone undue harm, they could in turn sue the adminstr...	[ "Everyone in this thread who says he had no authority is not correct. After the war, the emperor's apologists claimed he was a powerless figurehead. Others claimed he was an all-powerful autocrat in the same fashion as the Russian Tsars. The truth is somewhere in between. Hirohito participated in daily war councils...
Why Are Israeli West Bank Settlements Illegal?	[ "You are incorrect that countries gain land through war. They did, once, but that was a long time ago. Gaining land through conquest is illegal under international law. That is why other pieces of land that Israel captured, such as the Sinai, were always considered \"Occupied Territory\" - and that is why the Sinai...	[ "Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question...
Are subatomic particles stretched by the expansion of space? What about their associated wavefunctions?	[ "Bound systems don't expand, from galaxy clusters to subatomic particles. It's not that we don't notice expansion it's that there is none. Also the other forces apart from gravity are even stronger than gravity to begin with. Protons, Neutrons, Mesons are compound particles, quarks bound by the strong force. As for...	[ "If you know the full Hamiltonian for your system and the initial state, you in principle know how the system will evolve for all time. The time evolution is governed by the [time-dependent Schrodinger equation](_URL_0_). However you don't necessarily know what the results of measurements will be. For example, if y...
What causes us to get sick of eating the same food repeatedly?	[ "I think it is an evolutionary advantage. Eating the same thing repeatedly is rarely good for your health and eating different kinds of food gives you access to different kinds of nutrients. So people who like eating the same type of food repeatedly will be at an evolutionary disadvantage because they will lack cer...	[ "commercialism. if you were happy with your old stuff, you wouldn't need to buy new stuff. all the designers and manufacturers come out with new looking stuff and market the old stuff as ugly and new stuff as pretty in order to make money. our tastes are hugely influenced by others." ]
Are some people inherently more intelligent or quick at thinking than others? Or is 'intelligence' based solely on developmental circumstances and environment?	[ "Your post absorbed down votes because this question's been asked tons of times before. However, IQ is substantially heritable, as [gleaned again and again from twin adoption studies.](_URL_0_) In western societies, genetics explains much more variation in intelligence than does parenting, environment, and anythin...	[ "Well, don't forget that rap has evolved to something of an art form. The same idea from the early days applies: rapping about dominance IS dominance IF you do it well. It's really just a platform on which you can do cool shit with the rhymes and good wordplay. However, if the rapper can spit something really innov...
Why do plants grow fruits?	[ "As a way of spreading its seeds. A passing animal pauses to eat the fruit before continuing on. The animal can't digest the seed, so eventually the seeds pass through digestive system and are eventually popped out. The seeds are now far away from the original tree, and have been deposited with the rest of the anim...	[ "Sugar tastes good. When faced with a choice between that which is smart and that which is pleasing, most people will spend their money on the latter. A business exists to sell people what they want to buy, not what some might feel they should buy." ]
If I go running outside, doing 7 miles in about an hour is totally doable, but if I set a treadmill to 7mph that's way to fast?	[ "You will sometimes slow down or speed up on your run, there may be hills that you descend or ascend. The treadmill moves constantly at 7mph, so you will never get to do a fast stretch and then take it easy for a while while still covering 7 miles in one hour." ]	[ "Basically everything wireless we use is on a 2.4 ghz frequency. Bluetooth headsets, baby monitors, phones, garage door openers, etc. Basically it's he industry standard as to not interfere with other radio frequencies that are flying around your house. With a 5 ghz wifi connection, you get away from the congestion...
Can someone explain the term meta to me?	[ "Meta- is usually used to talk about reflexivity, about something reflecting on itself: Metafiction is fiction about fiction. Metacognition is thinking about thinking. Metadata is information about information. It comes from the Greek word for \"after,\" but it took on a more metaphorical meaning of \"above\" or \"...	[ "Torrents store the metadata within files which you download and open up with your BitTorrent client. Magnet links store the metadata within a URI, which your BitTorrent client is set up to handle. You'll notice that you don't have to download a file in your browser when you use magnet links, whereas using torrent ...
Is there a maximum possible acceleration?	[ "Not by any physical law. There are practical limits, such as what a human could survive if you are talking about rockets. There are also practical limits in terms of “it would take more energy than exists in the universe”. But you could accelerate at any rate, as long as velocity stays below c." ]	[ "We aren't really sure why, but it doesn't seem that something like that can be done. Think about it like your bladder; you can build up a need to urinate, but you cannot urinate so much that your bladder is more than empty." ]
Why other subreddits are buying ad space on reddit linking to their subreddit?	[ "They are trying to increase their reader total. If they can't spread the word about their subreddit, they can't possibly grow." ]	[ "It is beneficial for airlines to fill empty seats and hotels to fill empty rooms, rather than to leave them empty. They form agreements with these companies to offer lower priced rooms, but often do so in secret so that the consumer doesn't know precisely which hotel or flight they are getting such a deal on. This...
Why do trials for new drugs need placebo patients?	[ "So in every scientific experiment you have to present a control ie you subject containers to the same physical changes and the experiment container with the \"special attribute \" Suppose in a study we have 6 patients out of which 3 are given the drug and 3 are not and we observe that 5 out of 6 patients developed...	[ "Marketing. It makes the reader more easily relate to them. They aren't really a group of editors and publicitsts pushing the book, it's just that one person in a small town that wrote a story." ]
Why does a century start on the first year? (ie. 2001 instead of 2000)	[ "The posted comments are right, I'm sure, but I think that there's another issue. You never start counting something at zero. If you have five elephants and you're going to count them, you don't say zero elephants, one elephant, two elephants...etc. You say one elephant, two elephants, three elephants, four elephan...	[ "I think it's less about arrogance and more about Americans being more comfortable with the imperial system. Pick up a random object near you, how many inches long is it? How many centimeters? If you've used the imperial system your whole life you will be much better at estimating the length in inches than in centi...
How much of intelligence is education?	[ "It depends on how you define intelligence, which has never been done without serious controversy. The question cannot be answered unless you have a good definition of what \"intelligence\" is, and that's not so much a scientific question as it is a scientific / philosophical question. Is IBM's Watson intelligent? ...	[ "Follow up: Would you even send him to university, especially if he was intended to inherit your land?" ]
How are sport game statistics recorded?	[ "It's a mix. There'll always be a human element but new technology is always being introduced. Players do wear things that can track things like how far or fast they're running. When I was in college they always made a big deal when ESPN came to talk to the statistics majors and hire a few to work for the company."...	[ "They have rather large production crews that work behind the scenes to do exactly that. It's not like the announcers are doing it. That combined with modern computer technology let them do it in a way that seems rather seamless to the viewer." ]
What's the biological benefit for making rashes itchy?	[ "When you scratch, you damage the skin. This causes more white blood cells to gather in the area to fight infections. That's why rashes are itchy. If you scratch too hard, you can break the skin allowing more infection. This is what the medical professionals want to prevent." ]	[ "Nobody knows why or even if it works, but that and variations of it are common practise in many countries. Cultural memes are like that, they spread, even if they don't have any real function." ]
Did Homer actually exist?	[ "hi, you may be interested in this recent response from /u/Iphikrates * [Do we know anything about Homer?](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "I'm curious as to why you say nobody from that time period coulf maintain that level of body fat." ]
Does using my gas oven in winter "waste" energy?	[ "You are right, a gas oven is pretty much 100% efficient in terms of converting chemical energy to heat. Likewise, something as simple as a light bulb, or as complicated as a computer is also 100% effective in converting electrical energy to heat. That's the beauty of thermodynamics, eventually any external energy ...	[ "On a modern car, cruise control should be more economical. One of the problems with cruise control is that it can't see the road ahead. So, the car will change gears on sudden inclines or declines too late and will, therefore, use more fuel - because of inefficient gearing." ]
How did all the murderers in the 70s and 80s get cyanide to poison people with?	[ "Likely they just bought it. Cyanide is useful for things like rat poison or insect fumigant and is perfectly legal for purchase from a variety of vendors. Assuming they lived in a rural area they may have a local supplier from which to purchase to chemical directly." ]	[ "Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!" ]

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