Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why Muslim's hate pictures of Mohammed enough to kill over it.	[ "\"Muslim's\" don't. There's no specific prohibition of it in the Qu'ran and in many countries they're absolutely fine with it. Some muslims are of the opinion that it encourages idolatry and false worship, which is prohibited in Islam. Some of those some muslims are extremists who just want any excuse to commi...	[ "America has regulations for this: _URL_0_ > * Illustration must be less that .75 or more than 1.5, in linear dimension, of the currency > * Illustration must be one-sided. > * Destroy or erase anything used in the making of the illustration that contains an image or part of the illustration." ]
Would evolution allow mermaids?	[ "Evolution doesn't \"allow\" anything. It's a non-directed process. But if you're talking about converting a land animal who walks on legs to one that is in the water, it's already happened with things like pinnipeds (seals) and manatees." ]	[ "Well they have been finding deformed marine life (in the months after the spill there was like an article pushed out every day), but there are a lot of factors that could do so which makes it hard to prove. There's plenty and i mean PLENTY of other pollutants in the sea that have been there for a while that's al...
why does my beard grow red while my hair is brown?	[ "It's common and normal. I'm the same. It'sGenetic Co-Dominance – This is when a single gene has more than one dominant allele. An individual who is heterozygous for two co-dominant alleles will express the phenotypes associated with both alleles. So you can have some red hair and some brown hair going on." ]	[ "The browning of many foods during cooking or baking is the result of sugars and amino acids, this is called the [Maillard reaction.](_URL_0_) Another common browning process in cooking is [caramelization](_URL_1_) which is the thermal decomposition of sugar. The boiling of pasta involves the hydration of the starc...
Why/how do transistors create heat in doing their work?	[ "Changing the conductivity state of the transistor involves electrons shifting shell layers. Every time the electron goes in a layer, the excess energy is released as kinetic energy, aka heat. So the more state changes a transistor makes, the more heat is generated. But even beyond that, electricity passing through...	[ "Crickets, like all other insects, are cold-blooded. They take on the temperature of their surroundings. Many characteristics of cold-blooded animals, like the rate at which crickets chirp, or the speed at which ants walk, follow an equation called the Arrhenius equation. This equation describes the activation ener...
Does eating hot food provide you with more energy?	[ "The actual energy difference is very slight compared to the chemical energy in the food. If you drink a liter of water that was about to boil, it would only be about 60 calories. 1 food calorie (kcal) is what it takes to heat/cool a liter of water by 1 degree, and your body is about 60C below boiling. Not sure on ...	[ "Birds, believe it or not, cannot taste the spices in chilli peppers, and so they eat the chilis happily while most animals leave them. Birds travel much further distances than most animals, so when they poop out the seeds the plant can spread over much greater distances. So, basically, peppers evolved to taste goo...
Why does your stomach “growl” when you haven’t eaten?	[ "If I remember correctly, it's cause your stomach is always making those noises but if you don't have food in your belly there's nothing to block the noise. Sounds silly now that I write it out though" ]	[ "I read an article a somewhere that said it was do the the \"roughness\" or randomness of the noise. As the fingers nails catch and slip it produces random variances in the amplitude and frequency of the noise. Our brains find the signal unpredictable and that somehow causes it the view it as a danger. There are a...
Why is it more dangerous for an adult to get chickenpox as opposed to a child getting chickenpox?	[ "I'm going out on a limb, but I believe this has to do with your chance of getting shingles increasing. My boyfriend has gotten shingles three times—twice in adulthood—and each time has been stressful because of where the virus progresses. It can attack the eye and make the person blind or cause a paralysis. Luckil...	[ "No. This is commonly referred to as the \"square-cube law\". Basically, the strength of something relates to its cross-sectional area - how thick it is. If you scale up something by a factor of 2, then the cross-sectional area of the arms/legs/etc increases by a factor of 4, i.e. the square of the scale factor. Ho...
How exactly does tourette's work and why is it so hard for people affected by it to control?	[ "It's like a \"mental sneeze\" that you can sometimes hold in through will power, but it takes effort and it's a lot easier to just let it out." ]	[ "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...
Why does looking into the sun/light help you to sneeze?	[ "It's called photic sneeze reflex, and only about 20 to 30 percent of people have it. It's not really known what causes it, but one theory is that the nerves in the eyes and nose are close, so the signals get mixed and your brain interprets the light as a stimulus in your nose." ]	[ "This is a more scientific answer than it sounds: it's all in your head. Try having a friend hold a pen there randomly half of the time. You guess when it's there, the more you guess the closer to chance you should get." ]
How do changes in Earth's global temperature caused by Milankovitch cyclicity compare to other climate change sources (anthropogenic and other)?	[ "[This page at skeptialscience](_URL_1_) discusses Milankovitch Cycles and cites the variation of solar forcing due to orbital eccentricity as ~0.45 W/m^2. Current estimates of anthropogenic alterations to the radiative balance ([see IPCC](_URL_0_)) are about 1.6 W/m^2. So variations in forcing due to Milankovitch ...	[ "The person you link to has borrowed (~~or plagiarised - there's no citation~~ Edit: /u/Iguana_on_a_stick points out they do reference Eckstein on page 3, I only Ctrl-F'd the first page. My bad.) their main argument almost entirely from Arthur Eckstein's Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome...
How does wave-particle duality relate to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle?	[ "There's no medium. The waves in quantum mechanics are probability waves. One way to put it is like Feynman said it: there's only particles. But if you want to compute what the particles do, you need to work with \"probability amplitudes\" and it's those probability amplitudes that behave as waves. [Relevant lectur...	[ "Uranium-238 and uranium-235 are really hard to separate. They are both uranium, and have identical chemical properties, and the difference in physical properties is minuscule. Therefore, you need very complicated technology to separate them. You don't make it into 235, it does not work that way. But, you can irrad...
Why do YouTube videos seemingly "unbuffer" themselves when I scroll back on a video?	[ "It's part of the new way videos are rendered. Youtube used to waste huge amounts of BW, because a large percentage of people didn't finish watching videos, so all this traffic was putting unnecessary strain on their infastructure. Some months ago they changed the way they do things, now each video is broken into ...	[ "not related to disk - its related to your bandwidth speeds. your telco who provides your internet service allocates you a certain amount of bandwidth. since downloading is what is most important to customers, the telcos allocate more bandwidth for downloading and less for uploading. (imagine they allocated them ev...
How do people money launder through bitcoins? Don't you have to put cash in your bank to buy bitcoins? And even if that works, then when you withdrawal money from bitcoins to buy stuff isn't doesn't that raise red flags?	[ "I don't have a ton of experience with Bitcoin, but AFAIK, you can download a wallet app, meet with someone and exchange cash for Bitcoin (you pay cash, then simply transfer the bitcoin to your wallet by snapping an image of their QR code), and walk away. You completely bypass any bank, that's the entire point of B...	[ "When China artificially makes their currency worth less than it otherwise would be, Chinese goods end up costing less. If a country's currency is worth more, it can buy a lot more of other countries goods (import), but other countries can not buy as many of their goods (export). So, if China's currency were to ris...
Why are GPUs capable of much higher speeds than CPUs?	[ "GPUs are extremely powerful for a fairly specific subset of problems. CPU's are much more flexible. Specifically, GPU's do two things really well: 1. Floating-point operations (operations with decimal numbers instead of just integers), such as physics and graphics stuff 2. Operations that involve running the exact...	[ "The pain relievers available over the counter are either NSAIDs (like aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen) or acetaminophen (aka paracetamol or Tylenol.) Both act in some way to reduce the effect of a group of enzymes called cyclooxygenases (COX) which are important in producing inflammation. NSAIDs inhibit COX all over,...
Why, when you play two keys next to each other on a piano it sounds so ugly?	[ "It's all about the frequencies of the notes. When you play two notes that are an octave apart, the frequency of the higher note is double the frequency of the lower note. Think of walking with a little kid, where they take two steps for every one you take. The rhythm of your steps sounds good. When you plan an int...	[ "You ever read about the Star-Bellied Sneetches? When the non-star bellied sneetches went through the star-on machine, the star-bellied sneetches paid even more to go through a star-off machine to sustain their difference (and thus, their superiority). If you make cheap cars look like expensive cars, people will ...
How did Planck come up with the idea to allow only discrete energy levels? (Black Body Radiation)	[ "It was essentially an act of desperation. You seem familiar with the background, you might have heard of the phrase \"ultraviolet catastrophe,\" when the best model they had (the Rayleigh-Jeans law) at the time was so horribly wrong for short wavelengths. The field of statistical mechanics was still young at the t...	[ "First, you have to understand that it's basically a graph theory question : regions become vertices of your graph, and two vertices are joint by an edge if the corresponding regions touch. The graphs that arise when you look at planar maps are called planar graphs. These are the graphs that you can draw on a plan...
Is there a region in the earth's core where magma floats around at zero gravity?	[ "The only place in the Earth's core where gravitational forces all cancel out is at the very center. Since this is solid, there is no magma floating around there at zero gravity. However, even if it was liquid, it still wouldn't be floating around weightlessly--because it it surrounded by magma and molten metal whi...	[ "The difficulty in creating such a state is that a fluid, like a liquid or gas, behaves very differently from a solid, and so there's no way to be both solid and liquid at the same time. And for the record, gelatin is a solid. There is, however, a point where water is neither liquid nor gas (steam), but something c...
If Daesh's specific goal is to start the Islamic Apocalypse, why doesn't the west just crush them in legitimate battle?	[ "The nature of modern international policies is inherently very inhibiting for any attempt of open \"legitimate battle\", or even simply declaring war. It is built this way to inherently discourage modern nations from trying to solve anything with war. ISIS doesn't play by the rules set by these policies. But the s...	[ "Imagine that you are at home and you are waiting for a really important phone call from your best friend. All of a sudden, tens of thousands of people call your phone number at the same time trying to tell you something. The odds of your friend's important information getting through to you go down drastically, be...
Why is there no sound in space?	[ "because there is no air or other matter. Sound is vibrations in air. No air=no sound. edit: no liquid=no sound as well." ]	[ "You answered it yourself. Its in the movies. We wouldnt instant freeze to death. We would relatively slowly lose heat to radiation. Suffocation and the vacuum would kill us first." ]
Does it use more or less energy to climb steps two at a time, rather than one at a time?	[ "It is more efficient to climb two steps at a time. If you trace the path of your feet/legs it will be slightly longer when climbing one step vs two steps at a time. In addition, touching your feet to a step will result in you losing both forward and upward momentum which your muscles will need to exert themselves ...	[ "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...
If a fourth primary color was visible, how would it change the way we perceived secondary colors?	[ "People typically have 3 types of color sensors in their eyes, and so are called trichromats. What you are asking, as I understand it, is how vision would change if we were tetrachromats. In fact, there are human tetrachromats. You can read about this [here](_URL_0_). You might also find the Wikipedia article on [t...	[ "Some materials don't interact with light at certain wavelength ranges. Those materials that don't interact with light between 390-700nm we humans call transparent because our eyes see that range. However water is not transparent at other wavelength ranges, it blocks. other wavelength of light, like radio waves, a...
What is the difference between Smiley Smile (1967), Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (2004), and The Smile Sessions (2011)?	[ "Pet Sounds isn't like SMilE in the least. But...you'll probably end up liking it anyway. Go with The SMiLE Sessions. Pet Sounds is grounded in reality - SMiLE is a colorful fantasy trip. And hey. Try Sunflower. Also Friends." ]	[ "I can give a partial answer. Vitamin B12 is not available in a vegan diet and must be supplemented. It was first synthesized in 1972. It was not possible to be fully vegan until this time. Edit: this may be incorrect. While in a wild diet, animal products are required to acquire B12, there may have been bacteria- ...
A horse goes through puberty in its second year. Why is our physical development so slow?	[ "I'm away from home right now, or I could give you a more complete quote, but John Gottman in his book \"And Baby Makes Three\" talks about the evolutionary loss of our \"fourth\" trimester. Essentially, we are forced to be born too early because our greatest evolutionary asset (our brain) means that our heads woul...	[ "It would not have caused outrage, it was quite common, at least for the nobility, to marry at a very young age. As in many cases the marriage was a political thing, a way to connect families, power, land, etc. \"Canon law, however, decreed that such marriages should not be consummated until both parties were of ag...
Why does the ATM make me enter 0s for the cents amount of my withdrawal when the machine only gives out $20s?	[ "Not all ATM's only give out $20 bills, this is decided by the bank do the owner of the ATM, so the ATM's software is designed to allow for different amounts." ]	[ "They're either on a timer or on a sensor. Ever approach an intersection and see vertical and horizontal cuts in the pavement? That's where workers buried the sensors. Those work by detecting metal, not the weight of the vehicle." ]
If I find an undiscovered island in international waters, is it mine?	[ "Essentially, on the scale of nations, there's not really legal rules exactly. Its more like, if you can convince everyone that it is yours, then it's yours. For my money, I would instead make a deal with the US or your large power of choice. \"Let me own this whole island, and I'll be part of your country.\" The o...	[ "You'd still need to connect yourself to the Internet. This is kind of like saying you can go buy a bunch of pipes and become a water company. You still need the water, not just the delivery system." ]
Will increasing the volume of a media player (tv, radio etc) affect power consumption?	[ "Yes, because speakers are motors. They push and pull the cone inside the speaker that creates sound pressure waves. The louder a speaker gets, the more voltage is used to create a louder sound." ]	[ "Others have already given good answers, so I'll just suggest that you study Fourier Series. A Fourier series is a way of breaking down any wavefunction as a sum of sines and cosines. It takes an infinite sum to get perfect precision, but it is easy to get to the point where a human ear cannot tell the differenc...
is it bad to wake someone up when sleep walking?	[ "No, it is perfectly safe to wake up a person who has somnambulism. The person may be dazed/confused about his surroundings, but other than that, there is no real harm." ]	[ "There's two schools of thought to this. First is that there is a code in warfare and part of it is to not target medics. It's a guideline so it's not like there's anything really preventing you from doing that but it's \"frowned upon\". I'm not 100% if there is a convention behind this to support that line of reas...
Why do old people smell like old people?	[ "Their bodies are slowly evolving into a corpse." ]	[ "A few reasons, first you may remember from high school chemistry the ideal gas law. PV=nRT, where P=pressure, V=volume, n= number of moles, R is a constant and T is temperature. If you spray a pressurized gas (the propellant in the can), which is typically butane or propane, as the gas comes out of the spray nozz...
How do people build up a tolerance for spicier and spicier foods?	[ "Its not that one builds tolerance, it's the loss of the ability to perceive capsaicin, the compound that we perceive as \"spicy\". The more of it you consume, the less you're able to perceive, so you can eat hotter foods without it being painful... at least not painful in your mouth." ]	[ "You don't. You just get scared of more realistic things and when you have nightmares you just sometimes don't recognize them as nightmares because your boogeyman exists in real life." ]
How come most aerial fireworks are illegal to use for the general public, but can still be purchased without any sort of permit?	[ "The laws governing fireworks sales and usage are very much dependent on jurisdiction (e.g. local state, county, and/or municipal laws). There are many jurisdictions in the US and other countries where the sale and usage of aerial fireworks is permitted with few restrictions. There are other areas where aerial fire...	[ "Because things build up around the old portions of the city, so that the older, small parts are less noticible in a larger overview of the city. If you explore a city locally, you'll find the older portions, but the sky line will be dominated by all the new things." ]
how did Islam spread to southeast Asian countries like Malaysia? I mean it spread to the Middle East and Africa through direct contact but how did it get to the other side of Asia?	[ "Commerce. South East Asian area has always been a notable trading post. When ships became popular, Middle East merchants sailed to SE Asia to buy or trade stuffs. At that time, the prevalent religion there was ~~Hinduism and Buddhism~~ [a mix](_URL_2_) [of Hinduism](_URL_1_) [and Buddhism](_URL_0_). which enforced...	[ "[The Gulf Stream](_URL_0_) > The Gulf Stream influences the climate of the east coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, and the west coast of Europe. Although there has been recent debate, there is consensus that the climate of Western Europe and Northern Europe is warmer than it would otherwise be d...
How are fingerprints left behind when, according to the chemistry of molecular bonds, no two surfaces TRULY touch as the bonds repel one another?	[ "saying that the surfaces don't truly touch is an interesting philosophical observation about the meaning of \"touch\" but doesn't really impact your question. What we call \"touching\" at the macro level is an interaction between atoms that prevents them from occupying the same space at the same time. That this c...	[ "When you wash something using water what you are trying to do is get the dirt/oils to lose its grip on what you are washing by grabbing it with the water and rinsing it away. The problem is that water and oils like grabbing onto different types of things. You can imagine water being made up of the original Velcro ...
Why isn't more being done to stop the contamination being released at Fukushima?	[ "Reactors 1, 2, and 3 all had full-meltdowns, meaning that there is radioactive material that has breached containment. Cleaning this up is more complicated than taking a mop and water to it - there does not at this time seem to be any indication that they can get to it safely, as there were also explosions in thos...	[ "The government has already fined some of them and taken a controlling stake in others. Ultimately the laws in place in 2008 encouraged that kind of sub-prime lending and the dubious rating that banks were using to pass those lemons off on eachother. Politicians wanted to increase homeownership rates and had encour...
Why do we have vivid nightmares? Why do we have nightmares in general?	[ "Why questions like this are difficult to answer with certainty, because the brain has developed to accomplish so much that we are nowhere near knowing why everything happens the way it does. However, researchers have a few theories on it. One is that nightmares are to help reinforce fears from the environment to h...	[ "It has to do with your sleep cycles. For the average person, a sleep cycle will last around 90 minutes. You have light sleep, medium sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep, and they all take place within the cycle. When you wake up during REM sleep (at the tail end of the 90 minutes), you feel a lot better than when you...
What is the exact purpose of the hooked gloves that gymnasts wear for the uneven bars? And do some people consider it cheating, or is the advantage miniscule like wearing a glove in golf?	[ "They are not hooks. They are strips of leather that aid the gymnast in rotating around the bar. It still takes some strength to maintain your grip on the bar." ]	[ "A can beat B in arm wrestling. B can beat C in arm wrestling. So we can deduce that A can beat C in arm wrestling. A has bigger arms than B, so A beats B in arm wrestling. B has bigger arms than C, so B beats C in arm wrestling. A (by deduction) has bigger arms than C, so A beats C in arm wrestling. So by inductio...
What does adderall do to the user's brain?	[ "Adderal is dextroamphetamine. It pretty much jacks you up, like cocaine or caffeine. The more mild stimulants (i.e. not meth or crack) are generally not that harmful, but have a lot of addictive potential. Also, with abrupt cessation, a lot of people experience a \"speed psychosis\", and get super paranoid and see...	[ "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...
why is Jimi Hendrix considered the best guitarist of all time?	[ "not sure \"best\" is the correct word...perhaps most revolutionary... for electric guitarists...there's sort of before and after hendrix" ]	[ "This CGP Grey video does a really good job of explaining it all. _URL_3_" ]
Did other colonial powers come to appreciate/appropriate their colonized peoples' food like the English did with Curry?	[ "Couscous is quite widespread in France: > Couscous was voted as the third favourite dish of French people in 2011 in a study by TNS Sofres for magazine Vie Pratique Gourmand and the first in East of France _URL_2_ Drinking chocolate comes from the Mayas and Aztecs. _URL_0_ Spain has appropiated Valencian paella, ...	[ "If you're new to the thread, please don't post the Mythbusters episode again. Mythbusters is entertaining but it's not history (or more specifically, it's not historical proof of anything.) The short answer is no, not that we know of. /u/davidaop, our pirate expert, and I have both answered [questions about th...
Why can some people from broken homes be successful adults while others are failure	[ "why can some people be raised in a perfectly normal home be successful adults while others are a failure? There are many varied factors that go into peoples outcome." ]	[ "* A married couple gets pregnant. Nobody is surprised. * A married couple can't get pregnant. It's really sad. * A single woman gets pregnant. It's probably sad news. * A single woman doesn't get pregnant. Probably nobody cares. Make sense? Nobody cares about a dog biting a man. But if they hear about a man biting...
Does anyone else peruse archives online?	[ "The National Archives of the United Kingdom have digitized a lot of their Poor Law administrative records, so you can see how people would claim to be destitute, and how the local poor law guardians would help them. If you combine those very fine-grained records with the bigger-picture House of Commons papers onli...	[ "Are you talking about the Lloyd deMause style of psychohistory? If so, you are surely aware that it is highly controversial? I realise this isn't really an answer, I just wanted to make sure first that we are talking about the same thing." ]
What makes my extension cord crackled when something is plugged in it	[ "This certainly sounds like a defective cord, with a loose connection or a partly broken wire. These can start a fire. Stop using it immediately -- unplug it, cut it up, and throw it away." ]	[ "Making some simplifying assumptions (eg friction doesn't exist)... yes, all of them become excited. This is true for 1D strings too, not just for circular membranes. To illustrate, let's model a \"pluck\" of a string as meaning that at t=0, the string at rest but is deformed into a perfect triangle shape. Then we ...
The main difference of a fruit and vegetable is that fruits have seeds. So, where the heck do vegetable seeds, used in gardeningand such, from?	[ "The definition of fruit and vegetable are rules with a couple exceptions. The definition that covers most fruits/vegetables is as follows: A fruit is the part of the plant that develops from a flower. It's also the section of the plant that contains the seeds. *The other parts of plants are considered vegetables...	[ "Regular downloads are when the file or files are coming from one location (a server). You (your browser) asks the server for the file and it sends it to you. When downloading using torrents you there is no one server to download from. Instead you ask the server, or tracker, for information on who has the file or f...
Why is a carbonated drink so excruciatingly painful to drink for more than 3 seconds? (Why does carbonation hurt)	[ "It's most likely because carbonic acid is soaking into tissues. Carbonation is carbon dioxide dissolved into water which forms the carbonic acid, which then spontaneously breaks down into water and carbon dioxide again when the liquid is no longer under pressure. While drinking, the acid levels on the nice soft we...	[ "Your whole high school is in the gym for an assembly. The presentation comes to an end and everyone needs to leave all at once. If you never open the doors, people will never leave. If you open one door, how long will it take for everyone to leave? If you open all the doors, how long will it take for everyone t...
Why is the standard for an Olympic bar 45 pounds? Why not a flat 40 or 50?	[ "It's actually not 45 pounds, it's 20 kilograms. So it really is a nice round number, just not in the measurement system we use in the US." ]	[ "The graph cites a broken link to the US Census Bureau. A few minutes of digging led me to [this table](_URL_0_). As you can see, the only number for 400 BCE is from Biraben, whose numbers are higher than the McEvedy and Jones numbers the table depended on before. Biraben numbers often are the upper limit, but acco...
Question about HIV/AIDS	[ "From the Rutgers post by CylonBunny: Mosquitoes digest the virus. It's that simple. HIV simply has not evolved to tolerate the mosquito gut. Pathogens that go get transmitted by the mosquito have evolved mechanisms to survive. HIV, not having done so, is unstable there, gets broken down and absorbed as part of th...	[ "Because smoking isn't a 100% guarentee of getting cancer, it only increases your chance. You can smoke a pack a day your entire life and not get cancer." ]
In older literature, the nobility frequently come across to me as being extremely emotionally/psychologically fragile. Is this being exaggerated, and if not, is there some explanation, other than “they’re rich and precious”?	[ "A point on karamazov, his nobility were largely shown as charicatures, as Dostoevsky liked to focus on people's affectations, and he believed the nobility especially to be ruled by those affectations." ]	[ "Jonathan Steinberg has a book entitled [_Why Switzerland?_](_URL_0_) that attempts to answer that very question. One of the problems he addresses in that book is how Switzerland was able to weather a lot of the storms characteristic of modern history: nationalism, class warfare, racial and cultural conflicts. Stei...
What would happen if you point the Hubble Telescope at the Earth?	[ "This question has been asked and answered already: _URL_4_ _URL_6_ _URL_5_ _URL_3_ _URL_1_ _URL_0_ _URL_2_ If you have any questions that aren't addressed in those links, feel free to clarify." ]	[ "This has actually already been done, [here is a video](_URL_0_). The problem is that the image coming from the eye is full of gaps and errors which our brain has evolved to cover up. We think we see a perfectly clear image but in reality it's distorted and constantly waving back and forth." ]
How many times would the word "great" need to prefix grandmother/father in order for me to be talking about a waterborne ancestor?	[ "If you want to go back to the first tetrapods, then you're about 390 Ma. In human generations, assuming 25 years for a generation, you have about 16 million generations (15,999,998 greats, if you will). However, this is very rough and only based on a human generation. Your ancestors didn't have the same lifespan,...	[ "Oh, they surely existed-- we find weapons and armor from people with no recorded history. However, the people who find, dig and interpret these sites aren't historians, they're anthropologists and archaeologists. \"History\" per se starts with written materials; without them you're in other domains, with other too...
Why is national rail not considered a monopoly for travel into London.	[ "As I understand it, most trains are actually not run by National Rail but by one of many train operators - Virgin Trains, Southern etc. And in theory there could be some scope for competition - for example, from Cambridge to London you could either get a Great Northern train or an Abellio Greater Anglia train. If ...	[ "> So I'm wondering why land speed records aren't set by huge rockets tipped sideways on wheels. Their are different categories for the different records, all with their own sets of rules and regulations. There is a governing body, so you can't just \"build whatever you want\". > And in regards of Piston powered c...
How do computers go from physical parts to computing languages?	[ "[Here](_URL_0_) is my answer to a similar question, if it helps you." ]	[ "If you were to build a 'super' car, would it be the fastest? The car that uses the least fuel? The one that can carry the most cargo? The one with the most amounts of seats? The one that fits in every parking space because its small? Different people create different languages for different reasons. Some are supe...
Why can't certain cancer tumors be removed from the body and how does removing it not stop the spread of cancer?	[ "Some cancers can't be removed because of their location (brain cancers are a nice example, as it is fairly obvious that it isn't easy to access one's brain). Other cancers can't be removed at all by surgery because they are not solid tumours, such as leukaemia. Even if you can remove a cancerous mass you can't be...	[ "Not an expert, but if the fetus is very young (in the beginning of the pregnancy), they do a technique called a \"curettage\" which is basically a big needle they put in, and they \"suck\" the fetus out (this is when the fetus is not really more than a bunch of cells). Not sure of other techniques, I think some in...
How did/do scientists verify that quantum entanglement is actually occuring?	[ "1. Create particles A and B that you believe are entangled. 2. Move A and B apart. 3. Measure the spin of A and B simultaneously. If they are entangled, their spins will be opposite. However, if they're not entangled, there is still a 50% chance of getting opposite states. 4. Repeat 1-3 several hundred or thous...	[ "The same way they do now: using satellite and microwave transmissions. Using the internet is kind of sketchy, because of a lack of control of the bandwidth that can cause the connection quality to drop, which is why other technologies are preferred when feasible." ]
Why do they recommend that newborns sleep on their backs?	[ "Well, they used to have higher instances of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, too. When a baby is sleeping on the stomach, the chest is compressed between the mattress and spine, giving less ability to inhale (this happens in adults, too, but we can adjust ourselves), the neck can end up compressed as the head tries t...	[ "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." ]
1+1=2 took 162 pages to prove in the Principia Mathematica. Why? What did Betrand Russell need to prove first?	[ "First you have to define '1,' '+,' \"=,\" and \"2.\" That's where the difficulty lies, in defining the concept of value and addition in order to prove that 1+1=2 rather than treating it as an axiom." ]	[ "Say you live in the US. You make $100,000 a year. Now say you live in China, but you make $50,000 a year. You could say that the person living in the US is twice as rich as the Chinese person in absolute terms. But consider that lunch (a sandwich) costs $10 in the USA. It costs $1 in China. So an American can buy ...
Why are artists signed to multiple recording labels?	[ "Adding to that what was already said is that sometimes artists are signed to different labels which handle different areas or countries. Label A is North America but not Canada. Label B is Canada only and Label C is South America. Sometimes artists choose to work with more than one label to split up the release b...	[ "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 English-speaking Europeans have English accents that sound more American than British when Britain is so geographically close?	[ "Because most people who want to learn English want to learn American English. There is also much more American media in Europe than British media simply because the US is such a massive media exporter." ]	[ "The longbow required years of practice, as well as yew trees for the making. Many monarchs did not want their people to be skilled archers with armor piercing weapons readily available. So the culture of the longbow was not readily transported to a different place. However, English archers did hire out as mercenar...
What is the purpose of a single egg holder? Is that how fancy people eat hardboiled eggs? Do they own many of them or just one?	[ "No, that's how you eat softboiled eggs. You chip off the top part of the shell and scoop out the egg like it's a little bowl. The egg holder is essential to holding the egg upright. _URL_0_" ]	[ "I've always been fascinated by the wide variety of \"Fall of Rome\" arguments and how they're affected by historical perspective. I was wondering: **Does your historical specialty advocate a certain theory for the fall of the Roman Empire? or what's a unique argument for the fall of the Roman Empire that you've co...
Why don't people become conditioned to avoid alcohol after getting severely drunk and vomiting?	[ "Conditioning works best when the reinforcer or punishment is given immediately after the stimulus. With drinking, people tend to be immediately rewarded with the positive effects of alcohol, and only the next day, are faced with the consequences. There is a medication that alcoholics can take that make them feel s...	[ "It's about novelty. When it's new, we cherish it and want to take care of it. Novelty eventually becomes familiarity. We see this a lot with cars. That new car, the owner is so careful. At some point, however, it becomes OK to toss that empty Big Mac box in the back seat." ]
Why does PBS use pledges to raise funds rather than conventional advertising?	[ "As a not for profit organization, donations are not taxable. If they sell advertising they must file a 990 and pay taxes on it." ]	[ "I'm far from an expert on this so I might be 100% wrong. I think it's the cost, having dedicated servers means you basically have a dedicated area full of processors managing all the player activity, where as with p2p the processing load is handled by the players. Source: some guy bitching about youtube and talkin...
Is there a large difference in in underwater pressure in a river where the water is potentially deep and swiftly moving?	[ "Does water pressure increase going around a bend- Yes, slightly, as the centrifugal forces acts on the water in the way it does. Water does not compress- Water does not significantly compress in any meaningful way on a day to day basis, it simply requires incredible amounts of pressure to do so. Friction at the b...	[ "Diver here. The amount of air in an uncompressed bottle won't be enough to make the effort worthwhile. You would be better off taking the time and energy to get to either the surface or a reliable air source like a partner's backup regulator. For short vs long, either one would deplete in a matter of 1 breath any...
By only looking at the movie, how do people recognize that a movie has a good director?	[ "In addition to what TheHarpyEagle said, you can think of the director as the captain of a boat. The helmsman might be the one actually steering the boat, but he does it according to the captain's vision of where the voyage is supposed to go and what it's supposed to do. The director decides how a scene should feel...	[ "It's most likely the knowledge of the wineries. The type of glass, the shape of said glass, pairings, temperature of the wine when poured/drank and how it's stored can alter the taste pretty severely. if you find a good wine ask, do they serve in crystal, take note of the shape of glass, how long they let it sit, ...
From how high up would an ant have to fall from for the impact of landing to kill it?	[ "The terminal velocity of an ant (the fastest it can fall (on Earth!), due to the interaction of wind resistance and their weight) is insufficient to harm it, so it can fall a theoretically \"unlimited\" distance. I'll google the references in a sec and edit this." ]	[ "Your error is here: > As such, the train hits the fly with a massive amount of force, equal to the acceleration times the mass of the train. The force on the fly is the acceleration of the fly times the mass of the fly. The force on the train is the acceleration of the train times the mass of the train. These...
Why did Hitler and Mussolini declare war on the US to support Japan when Tojo/Emperor Hirohito didnt declare war on the USSR in support of Germany and Italy?	[ "What would likely happen if Hitler wouldn't declare war on US? Is it completely unreasonable to assume that US population absorbed in war with Japan would not give support for war with \"neutral\" Germany." ]	[ "Charlemagne, at his death, ruled an Empire encompassing modern day France (sans Brittany), the Pyrenees, Austria, Switzerland, the low countries, the northern half of Italy, and the majority of modern Germany. After his death, his son Louis I came to power, then died leaving his three sons to divide up his Empire,...
How does sunscreen make you stay longer in the sun? How does the higher number change things.	[ "> Does it block a certain percentage of UV rays? That's exactly what it does, more specifically it blocks UV-B rays, which are the type that cause sunburns. To my knowledge it doesn't \"last\" a certain amount of time, but rather it is worn away due to water, sweat, etc over time, which is why you need to reapply...	[ "Previous reply was pretty close. \"W\" is often referred to as winter or more specifically cold, this is the viscosity of the oil when it is cold. The 2nd number is the operational viscosity, or how well it flows once heated. It's is best to put the recommended oil weight in a car. Truth be told there is a complex...
Why does google allow application like adblock in the chrome store when most of the ads come from google?	[ "If they get the reputation of being an evil dictator over the app store who removes apps people want and like people will eventually just find a newer and better browser with a better app store that doesn't." ]	[ "They make money in one of two different ways. 1. Donations - (Firefox). Pretty much your standard charity works. 2. Support Contracts (Red Hat) - Imagine a grocery store who offered you unlimited free food, but if you want any of it cooked, have to hire one of their chefs to cook it for you. You can still eat it r...
Can we extrapolate, based on observable universe, the distance and direction to where the Big Bang took place?	[ "The big bang isn't something that happened at some spot in the universe. The big bang occurred everywhere in the universe at once. So actually, just look around you... That's where the big bang happened. Here's an article you might enjoy about it: _URL_0_" ]	[ "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...
Why do streetlights sometimes turn off after I've walked near/under them?	[ "It's just a coincidence, think of all the times you walked under a light and it didn't go off. Old gas type lamps on their way out will go off and on as they fail,cool down and try to strike again. If it lights it will get to a point where something fails again and the lamp goes off only to start it all over again...	[ "I recommend listening to Feynman describe the sum-over-histories model of quantum electrodynamics (for which he and two other men won the 1965 Nobel prize in physics): [Here's the video.](_URL_0_) There are a lot of amplitudes, phases, and little spinning clock analogies involved. Essentially, light takes all poss...
What's all this Victoria/shutdown crap all about?	[ "This has been asked quite a few times within the past couple of hours. Copy-pasting my answer: A key organizer/moderator of the AMA subreddit named Victoria was terminated from her position with little to no explanation from the higher-ups. She made sure all of the AMAs were set up and went smoothly. The backlash ...	[ "The server in question is most likely the database server. When you access a page, reddit's web server needs to ask the database for the data. The database has a limited number of available connections, so if too many are currently in progress, it will refuse more connections. The web server will then get an error...
How much did Asian societies know about Europe, and how interested were they in Europe?	[ "Hey there. I know you said something before about the middle ages, but I actually looked into something similar not too long ago. [Da Quin](_URL_0_) would be a good place to look. [This is also extremely relevant.](_URL_1_) That second link was amazing to me when I read it. From what I recall, the Chinese seemed t...	[ "Do historians Play Europa IV? What is your opinion on it, what do they get right and eyescratchingly wrong? Does your knowledge of history make you a better player?" ]
How did people in the middle ages clip their nails?	[ "This question gets asked here a lot. [This thread](_URL_0_) goes into details, particularly the top answer by u/sunagainstgold." ]	[ "Do you have a particular geographical region or time period in mind? You're more likely to get a good answer if you are more specific than \"people in the past\"." ]
When a candle burns down, where does the wax go?	[ "The wax is what burns. The wax is the fuel for the flame. It is converted to heat, light, CO2, and water vapor, mostly." ]	[ "ELY5: Earwax is boogers for your ears. Keeps all the extra dust and debris out of your ear so your eardrum doesn't get fucked" ]
Emotional jealousy despite genes to mate with various partners	[ "Think about how incredibly dangerous and taxing it is for a woman to have a child. They're unable to mate for a year minimum, risk death and have a huge need to then care for the child. If you're a male who has invested in a woman, there is a very clear incentive for you to make sure that she doesn't go through th...	[ "Because this is how it works... Every animal seeks to survive to pass on it's genetical code. This is why in a bank robbery one man with a pistol (let's say 13 rounds) can hold down 30 people, because no one wants to be one of the (worst case) 13 people who get shot before taking the bad guy down." ]
Explain please, space elevator, how could this possibly work?	[ "Attach a ball to a piece of string and start spinning around, you can even do it on a windy day." ]	[ "Here's a link to the Hubble website (that another poster plagiarised from) that gives some explanation: _URL_0_" ]
what does socialist mean?	[ "Perhaps the OP did search, but is seeking a new perspective? Here's mine: Socialism is when the government takes care of basic needs, cradle to grave. Examples include free health care, education (especially college), day care, retirement, nursing homes, and burial. This is paid for with personal income taxes. Re...	[ "Different TLDs follow different countries' rules. In both Sweden and the US, the government isn't allowed to arbitrarily seize domain names- they have to follow some procedure, probably involving the courts, to do so. Swedish law and legal procedure allowed the government to get an order to seize the .se domain. U...
How and why do certain cities/states impose stricter gun laws than others?	[ "The Bill of Rights isnt absolute, there are limits. For example, shouting \"Fire!\" in a theater isnt protected Free Speech. Also, the US was set up to try and retain as much local control over the government as possible, so the courts were giving the right to interpret laws. So, the Founders knew that just becaus...	[ "Different gasoline taxes. Different distances between the nearest refinery. Different blend requirements for the gasoline(California). Different requirements on who's allowed to pump gasoline into a car(Oregon/New Jersey). Different minimum wages. Different property values for a gas station sized plot of land. Dif...
Why should I not buy a computer from Best Buy?	[ "If you want a powerful computer, then yes, you have to build it yourself (or risk being ripped off for multiple hundreds). If you just need something to browse the Web and maybe watch Netflix / YouTube then a normal cheap computer is fine. I'm fairly active on PCMasterrace and I'll tell you that most people there ...	[ "They use a wavelength of light that is cancer causing. Do you want to sit under a cancer causing light? Plus, they aren't all that effective to stop, say a sneeze from transmitting to another person. It takes some time to kill the germs." ]
question about the pictures taken from deep space.	[ "Just to be absolutely clear - the Space Shuttle never went more than about 400 nautical miles in altitude from the Earth. The most distant probe we have is Voyager 1 (just leaving the solar system now, over 30 years after launch)." ]	[ "Here's a link to the Hubble website (that another poster plagiarised from) that gives some explanation: _URL_0_" ]
Why can't we cut off the cirrhotic part of the liver and have it regenerate that way instead of having people die by keeping it in?	[ "Cirrhosis affects the whole liver. If you were to cut out a part, you'd put additional burden on the rest of it, thus potentially further worsen the situation. I can't say much about regeneration in a cirrhotic liver, but what I can say is, that is simply not a treatment option by all medical standards." ]	[ "It is clamped. The heart is then stopped with a potassium solution (many potassium solutions such as KCl can cause cardiac arrest, which is used in lethal injections!). The sewing of another vessel is performed, then the heart is eventually started once again." ]
What's the white stuff that forms on batteries after a while?	[ "It is mostly lead sulfate, caused by the reaction of the sulfates in the battery itself with the terminals. It it forms, it means that the plastic sealing is not entirely perfect, although a small amount of it isn't cause for concern. It is somewhat toxic, but as long as you wash your hands after contact you'll be...	[ "This article answers pretty much all of your chemistry questions. _URL_0_ It seems like they release an odor that masks the smell of urine by either sublimating (like dry ice becoming gas) or dissolving when you piss on them. They also have antimicrobial chemicals (which are variable) including quaternary ammoni...
Why does a tyrannical state like Saudi Arabia send thousands of students to the West for education?	[ "Because they can't get the same level of education at home, so they are weighing the risk that they will become westernized with the benefit of having a well trained professional class. Also, revolutions typically come from the lower and middle classes. The professional class tend to protect their privileges, the...	[ "Let me tell you. There is no rights at some countries. For example my country(Turkey) can block any site without asking. It doesn't matter what kind a site it is. They suddenly can block ANY site. Not only adult sites. Don't think like that. Not only warez sites. They can even block the social networks. In past da...
Rise of islam, is there a video that explains it all?	[ "[Crash Course](_URL_0_) has a pretty good introduction, it's also presented in a light-hearted way." ]	[ "If you have a spare afternoon or two I'd check out these two Khan Academy playlists on the [Credit Crisis](_URL_2_) and the [Paulson Bailout](_URL_0_), and if you want to learn more about how banks work check out this [Banking and Money](_URL_1_) playlist as well; there's a few others on finance and credit as well...
Why are 11 and 12 not in the "teens"?"	[ "This is an interesting question actually, and you might get a more thoughtful response over at /r/etymology. The number names you're looking for would likely be firsteen and secondteen, but they aren't called that, as we all know. My guess, and I'm only guessing, is that eleven and twelve are names held over from ...	[ "_URL_0_ 'December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar which was used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans.' ELI5 translation: End of the mayan calander, about as much significance as reaching the end of your calender. Everything to do with i...
How does chemotherapy work?	[ "It's a poison that kills cancer slightly faster than it kills people. Seriously, no joke, that's literally what it is." ]	[ "_URL_0_ The wikipedia article is excellent and better than any of the answers in here so far. If you have specific parts you don't understand, ask away and I can help explain them to you." ]
How many times in the U.S. has a state constitution been written before the state was admitted by Congress?	[ "Every time, since the territory needs to draft a constitution and submit it to Congress in order to get Congressional approval for statehood. For each of the 50 individual stories, see Benjamin Shearer, ed., The Uniting States." ]	[ "A woman named Frances Wright did something like what you are asking in 1824. In Memphis, TN she bought two thousand acres of land from Andrew Jackson and would buy slaves. On this land she set up a co-operative labor system where they could basically work off their price of purchase and then they would be set free...
How could a person freeze to death in space?	[ "You answered it yourself. Its in the movies. We wouldnt instant freeze to death. We would relatively slowly lose heat to radiation. Suffocation and the vacuum would kill us first." ]	[ "My money is on suffocation assuming the suit kept your temperature up well enough. Or CO2 poisoning if you want to be more specific." ]
Is it more fuel efficient to drive with maximum torque or maximum power?	[ "The ideal engine speed to operate at is not the peak power or peak torque, but peak efficiency. Those operating points will usually not line up. I cannot find a general source to prove this is the case, but I have a specific example: my old Kia Rio owners manual claimed that the most efficient speed for the engine...	[ "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 ...
Are house spiders in the Southeast US harmless enough to let live in your house?	[ "Most spiders are perfectly harmless to humans, even if they were to bite you. The vast majority of spiders are not going to bite you randomly, if you are poking it, or shaking it in your hand then sure. I would look of poisonous spiders that live in your region, and get familiar with how they look and where they a...	[ "The government has already fined some of them and taken a controlling stake in others. Ultimately the laws in place in 2008 encouraged that kind of sub-prime lending and the dubious rating that banks were using to pass those lemons off on eachother. Politicians wanted to increase homeownership rates and had encour...
why arent words in english from other languages spelled phonetically, for example pho spelled fuh?	[ "Since English is a mix of so many languages, many different, often conflicting rules and styles apply. Mostly, it has to do with the word's origin. For words with origins in languages that use the same Roman alphabet, spelling is usually taken from the contributing language (e.g., zeitgeist or words derived from L...	[ "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." ]
What would life be like if your brain was removed from your body, but it was kept alive and functioning?	[ "I'm not sure if it would. this is one of the great questions of consciousness. I presume if we were still \"alive\" in any sense of the word, we would be in a dream-like hallucinogenic state. The brain creates images where there are none." ]	[ "That's the primary role of the heart. The heart is a pump that moves the blood all throughout the body. Think of it like a hose hooked up to an electric pump. The hose is full of water, completely full of water, and hooked up to the pump at both ends. While the pump is active, the pump is pushing the water through...
Why are viruses considered as non living?	[ "It's something that's contested, so there's not any one answer on if they're alive or not. Viruses, while being organic constructs that contain genes and evolve via natural selection, don't have a cellular structure and cannot reproduce without a host cell." ]	[ "If I understood you correctly: You had some file (avi mov) and opened it in the program. Then you have deleted the file while the program was opened and the player is still playing the movie, right? On linux system, the unlink function deletes the file from directory entry but not the file itself. It decreases the...
Do Astronaughts have Wifi in space? Like can they facebook family and stuff?	[ "They do have Internet connections just for their use, ranging from 150-300 Mbps down and 3-25 Mbps up (although considering their position those terms should maybe be reversed)." ]	[ "I just looked this up and it appears that Japan charges hefty fees for using internet on large ships in it's territorial waters. Some cruise lines, simply opt to not use it in Japanese waters so they don't have to pay fees. Here's a [thread](_URL_0_) on it if you're curious to know more." ]
If a helicopter were to take off and hover in one place for 24 hours, would the earth rotate a full rotation for the helicopter to land in the same spot again? If not, why?	[ "No, because hovering means staying stationary with respect to the ground. Remember, all speed is relative. Yes, the earth is rotating at about a thousand miles an hour -- and the air is rotating at that speed too. In order for the helicopter to go up, and have the earth move beneath it and land 24 hours later at...	[ "IIRC when you sleep the length of the cycles becomes increasingly longer. For example the first cycle through each phase of sleep would be like 30 minutes. The second 40, and so on until you reach however many cycles you need. Everyone is different. Given that I don't think it would be possible after a whole night...
Do we jump higher at the equator?	[ "Centripetal acceleration is roughly 0.03 m/s^2 at the equator (4 * pi^2 * r / T^2, where T is the time it takes for the earth to revolve once, and r is its radius). Also, the earth is a little 'fatter' around the equator due to this, and (mountains and valleys aside), its radius is about 13 miles greater at the eq...	[ "Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube" ]
Why does smoking tobacco cause so many illnesses?	[ "Smoke: physically damaging to the lungs due to heat and irritation by carbon/chemical deposition. This causes most of the lung disease- COPD, asthma, etc. Lung cancer is in part from this, also because some of the chemicals are carcinogenic on their own. Cardiovascular: a big part of this is nicotine, which raises...	[ "Some of the particles dissipate inside your lungs making it less thick. If you're looking for a scientific explanation in detail I can provide that as well." ]
Why is Satan often pictured as sitting in many paintings/drawings?	[ "If you're referring to the sitting demon with the two fingers raised its not Satan right? Its Baphomet?" ]	[ "Small models. If you go to Mount Rushmore or the Crazy Horse memorial they have the scale model on display that the artists used for planning purposes. These models are perfect replicas of what's going to get built, but at a small scale that you can actually walk around. By taking measurements off these models and...
Was the Speed of Sound ever considered a theoretical speed limit?	[ "The first man-made object to break the sound barrier is the whip. I'm not sure when whips were invented, but it's probably far enough back that by the time we were thinking about theoretical speed limits, we had already broken the speed of sound." ]	[ "only if it's structure is perfectly non-[amorphous](_URL_0_) so that it wouldn't start contorting with the inertial effect commonly known as the [centrifugal force](_URL_1_). This would rule out glass and many plastics Also it would have to also be in a perfect vacuum so that air resistance, or friction with the a...
Why does does a rainbow form an arch?	[ "It's not an arch, it's a perfect circle. You only see half of it though because the ground usually gets in the way of the other half. If you [look from above](_URL_0_), you can see the full rainbow. And yes, the water droplets reflect the sunlight in a process known as [internal reflection](_URL_1_). The strongest...	[ "I recommend listening to Feynman describe the sum-over-histories model of quantum electrodynamics (for which he and two other men won the 1965 Nobel prize in physics): [Here's the video.](_URL_0_) There are a lot of amplitudes, phases, and little spinning clock analogies involved. Essentially, light takes all poss...
Why is saltwater not as dangerous as I think it should be?	[ "Na reacts with water. Na^+ , the sodium ion, does not. NaCl dissociates into Na^+ and Cl^-" ]	[ "The Wikipedia article on Hypoxia has [an absolutley fantastic video](_URL_0_) (~7:00 long) that answers your question. Essentially a large part of the issue lies in being unable to run calcium pumps that reduce the concentration of calcium ions into the cell. The calcium ions can trigger various enzymes that caus...
How did reddit get so popular and why there is no other competitior?	[ "Slashdot got boring, Digg went to shit, reddit stayed pretty good." ]	[ "The best way to understand it is through the account of a teacher who performed an experiment at his school, called 'The Third Wave'. It is a long read but it is worth it and gives you a much better insight than a few succinct paragraphs on ELI5 would. _URL_0_" ]
Putting aside whether it would be good, bad or, neutral: demography experts, given current trends, is the proportion of Muslims in Europe going to skyrocket the next few decades or are Mark Steyn et al. full of crap?	[ "You'll have to take into account whether kids born from muslim parents are and remain muslim themselves. To define what it means to \"be muslim\" is hard, if not impossible." ]	[ "At a fundamental level, they at least have the possibility to evolve faster. For reference, just look at the wikipedia pages for [coalescent theory](_URL_1_) or [genetic drift](_URL_0_). Population geneticists (in some sense the classical evolutionary biologists) measure things in generations. Evolution is, at its...

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