Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why do mosquitoes eat me alive while completely ignoring my husband?	[ "I read somewhere that it has to do with your blood type. I hear O types are the most likely to make them ravenous for you." ]	[ "This sounds like an extreme example of \"Tip of my Tongue\". _URL_0_ I can't really give an overly scientific answer as to what causes it (some interesting articles on that page, though), but I'd imagine that it's just a \"brain fart\", kinda like deja vu. It's a problem with long-term semantic memory recall. (Se...
How do music editing programs change the pitch without changing the speed?	[ "Sound can be converted between \"time domain\" and \"frequency domain\" using Fourier transform (sort of a spectrum analyzer). So you can convert the sound to frequencies, do modifications there (for example shift frequencies) and convert back to time domain, and you get pitch shift without speed change. In practi...	[ "You don't always want all of the updates. Some Windows updates will cause certain programs to break, for most people it isn't an issue but in business or industry situations with specialised software this can be a big concern. The easiest way to manage this is to keep the original version the same and selectively ...
Can sound travel around corners?	[ "Yes, sound can go around corners. \"Sound\" just describes a relatively high frequency (20hz-20khz) change in air pressure. Imagine you're on a spaceship and someone opens the airlock around the corner from you - The air around you still moves to fill the vacuum. The same works for sound - The only \"soundproof wa...	[ "The question is asking you to examine your belief in events without absolute proof or evidence. Logically, everything in your life's experience tells you that it will make a sound, but you have no way to prove that it will. In any issue, some things have to be taken on faith." ]
Why does diarrhea have so much force behind it?	[ "The diarrhea (watery stool) can build up when peristalsis (generally-moving of food through digestive tract) is pushing digested material to the colon faster than it is being released. When it gets really full, the expanded (stretched) colon is going to be putting more pressure on the digested material--and hence ...	[ "I don't know, but I suggest you stop eating at White Castle." ]
Why is ice cream always harder the second time you open it?	[ "When opened ice cream is kept in the freezer, a lot of water content starts turning to ice which makes it considerable harder. If you were to put it in an air tight container and then store, it won't become harder :)" ]	[ "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." ]
Why do cities set minimum rates for taxis?	[ "It prevents cut-rate cab companies from hiring crazies. In theory, it makes it so that a hard-working cabbie can make a living without having to break laws or endanger their fares." ]	[ "Yelp has recently become a bit extortionist in regard to which reviews they show. Business that are Yelp-members may have the couple reviews that show by default be very high ones, even if the majority of their reviews are poor. Additionally, companies that choose not to become members will show poor reviews, even...
How can The Brain produce thoughts, imagination, and the mental world if its physical?	[ "There is currently no finished explanation for consciousness, though people are working on it. What we do know is that almost all processing happens without our awareness, and that processed thoughts are presented to our consciousness to consider. For example, everything you see, whether you should take another sh...	[ "I'm not sure it's very well studied, but from personal experience there's a reason they're called \"entheogens\". [This](_URL_1_) may have some of the information you're looking for; it cites a study showing that connection between disparate brain regions increase during magic mushroom trips. [This](_URL_0_) looks...
Why did the United States relenquish control of the Panama Canal?	[ "Not to discourage further responses, but u/CaptainSquishy1 answered this exact question a little over a year ago [here](_URL_1_). Edit: Also [this](_URL_0_) comment by u/YesRocketScience might be some help." ]	[ "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...
Can you stop a bullet with a powerful magnet?	[ "Not in any practical sense, no. [Mythbusters did it.](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "If this was possible (it probably is) it would be a horrible idea. You would literally be slowing down the earth. Maybe the effect would be small at first, but it would build up over time. The question is only how long would it take to have an effect, and how bad would the effect be." ]
Why do so many articles of women's clothing require that you lay them flat to dry when similar articles of men's clothing do not?	[ "Doubt that they're the same. Spandex, something found in a lot of women's clothes, cannot be put in the dryer. It stretches and deforms the elastic quality. There's only about 3-5% in most pieces, but its there. Wool, cashmere, other things like that, will shrink in the dryer." ]	[ "It’s not a matter of which direction the electricity is flowing when the appliance is on (because it’s AC as you pointed out) but which side of the circuit is live when the switch is off. In the US, polarized plugs use the smaller prong to supply current to the appliance and the wider prong as the neutral. If bot...
That American Civil War - Why did Arkansas cede from the Union?	[ "Here's what Daniel Sutherland, professor of history at the University of Arkansas, wrote in \"A Savage Conflict\" (Chapel Hill, 2009): \"Arkansas faced perhaps the most unpredictable situation [during secession]. The state was betwixt and between, not part of the Deep South but not currently threatened by border w...	[ "This has essentially been answered by the preceding comments, but what hasn't been contributed is this: _URL_0_. Muster and enrollment records, transfer lists, honours lists, etc, for the period of 1730 through 1898. Worth having, OP, if you're writing or researching the topic academically. To succinctly summarise...
Why has the pace of technological advancement increased so rapidly in the past 200 years?	[ "Another reason that progress was nearly stopped, was a big control from the church in Europe. Don't want to start a hate conversation, it's just how it was back then" ]	[ "Better cables (copper) and fibers, better best practices, fixing bugs in firmware of switches, routers, network cards, faster cpus in network devices. Protocols are the same but im sure they are being constantly updated. Also routing protocols are better, routers works better, the infrastructure is much better tha...
Why is there not a movement to ban junk mail that is equivalent to the movement that banned plastic straws?	[ "Straws make up a very small portion of \"how much waste\" that is created. The reason that they're the first target of bans is because they're the easiest. Seeing at how much people freaked out over the tiniest, most trivial, \"sacrifice\", we're fucked." ]	[ "I once cleaned the offices of a local law firm, fairly successful, but quite small. In one room was their records. Apparently they had a case against Coca Cola. There were well over 100 3\" binders FULL of paperwork dedicated to this ONE case. I am talking bookshelves FULL of binders labeled \"X versus Coca Cola\"...
100 year old glass elephant predicts the weather. How?	[ "I think it is some kind of transition metal complex. ~~Chromium or copper~~. When the humidity increases hydrates can form and those complexes are colored differently. I remember my general chemistry professor making a joke about how some of these chemicals were used as dyes before we knew better and he would chas...	[ "Those kind of fortune telling/horoscope thingys are usually formulated in a very inaccurate way. Things such as \"You will meet an important person tomorrow\" can be twisted to fit in just about any situation you find yourself in, if you believe in that sort of stuff, you will interpert it as a phropecy coming tru...
What does the term 'adjusted for inflation' mean?	[ "$1 in 1950 would buy a lot more then than it does today. $1 in 1950 adjusted for inflation to 2016 is the amount of stuff that $1 in 1950 would buy today. for example. if a ford car costs $1000 in 1950 and $20000 today. we can say that $1000 in 1950 adjusted for inflation is equal to $20000 today. of course, the ...	[ "Imagine you buy a shiny new toy. It costs $20. A week later, you want to sell it to a friend, but that friend will only pay $15 because he knows he could have a new one for $20. You decide not to sell. A year later, the toy has gone out of fashion. Now, your friend will only pay $5 for it. It's in similar conditio...
What is the white foamy stuff when you put Hydrogen Peroxide on an infection and why does it become foamy?	[ "There are enzymes in your blood that attack the peroxide and turn it into water and oxygen. The bubbles are what that looks like. As a sidenote, though, you should not put peroxide on wounds. It kills germs, but it kills everything else it touches, too, including healthy tissue. And since you have a cut you'r...	[ "There are little tubes inside of your ear that have water in them. Normally, they help you tell which direction you're turning. Try it! Close your eyes and sit in a chair, and have your parent turn you in a circle. You can tell you're turning, right? Even though your eyes cant see anything, those tubes in your ear...
Can someone explain linkage disequilibrium to me?	[ "It's basically a measurement of the extent to which alleles at different loci associate with each other. If the two alleles do not associate in any way, the frequency of all the possible haplotypes should be based solely on the frequency of each allele (this is the expected distribution). If they do associate, how...	[ "This is a clear example of a [lever](_URL_0_). The distance between the applied force (your hand) and the fulcrum (your knee) determines the [torque](_URL_1_) that you apply to the wood. If the force you applied is constant, but the fulcrum is much closer, you have a smaller torque." ]
What causes everything to revolve in the universe?	[ "> Would everything collapse in the absence of angular velocity? Not only would it ...it already did. We see objects mostly in nice stable, near circular orbits. That's because objects that didn't have the right amount of angular velocity to make in nice orbits collided with other objects or got ejected from the sy...	[ "Technically, if we treat the Earth-Sun system as the equivalent one body problem, then one focus of the ellipse is not at the center of the Sun, but slightly away from it. We usually just approximate it as being at the Sun's center because the mass of the Sun is so much larger than Earth, that the focus may as wel...
Does mass increase when temperature increase?	[ "> I did the maths for 1000m3 of water, the supposed mass variation from 10°C to 90°C is 3.7 mg. I guess it is big enough to have been measured with something more stable than water. Your calculation is correct, but 1000 m^3 of water has a mass of around 10^9 g. Measuring a fractional change in mass of about 3.7x10...	[ "The ice and snow actually contributes to the Earth's Albedo, a value between 0 and 1 which corresponds to how much incoming solar radiation is reflected back into space before it is being absorbed. For lower Albedos (closer to 0), this means that more of the solar radiation is being absorbed. The more being absorb...
What causes meteor showers, like Perseids, to have a peak day for viewing?	[ "Typically meteor showers occur as a result of Earth's orbit intersecting interplanetary debris. In the case of the Perseids, this is due to comet Swift Tuttle. The peak would therefore occur when Earth's orbit brings it through the highest density of debris. A simple analogy would be driving through a cloud of in...	[ "_URL_0_ Reportedly cows tend to feed more around sundown when the nutritional content of plants is higher. > “A series of USDA studies looked at animals’ ability to choose different forages. The researchers cut hay in the morning and in the evening and used this in the choice tests. They’ve done it with cattle, g...
Plasma, as opposed to solid, liquid, and gas.	[ "Plasma is a state where the atoms of a gas have got so ridiculously energetic (hot) that rather than bond covalently with other atoms to create stable molecules, they have shed outer electrons to become a cloud of ions and electrons. Light is generally emitted when these recombine, producing effects like in the li...	[ "* LED: Standard display using LED backlights to light up the display screen * OLED: Does not use backlights, the physical screen produces the light * AMOLED: Each pixel can be turned on/off individually, thus saving power * SuperAMOLED: The screen has a touchscreen built in, rather than being a separate layer on t...
how Empire building nations historically justified what they were doing and why they were right or wrong?	[ "Spainish-spreading the glory of god British: [\"White Man's Burden\"](_URL_0_)- the civilized peoples of the world are responsible for bringing civilization to the rest of the world. Ottoman: They were the heir apparent to take on the Muslim cause in the longstanding Islam Vs. Christendom feud. Solidifying Ara...	[ "You're going to need to narrow down your time frame here, keep in mind you're asking about a time frame of 1000 years over a very, very large area of land with vastly different cultures. You'll be more likely to receive an answer if you narrow the question down to a more specific time." ]
On a motorway, what is the ideal speed for fuel economy when considering drag?	[ "There are a lot of variables at work if you look at this from a purely theoretical perspective and account for vehicles that are not .... realistic reflections of what we actually drive(no one drives something with a really, really high drag coefficient), but for most typical cars you will get the best MPG at abou...	[ "Part of it is also tied to the price of oil extraction. Alberta for instance has been experiencing an economic boom because of the oil sands, however when the market value of petrol drops below whatever it costs to extract and process oil from those oil sands(IIRC $75 a barrel around 2000), it becomes a better str...
Is there any audible difference between cd quality sound and mp3? What is it more specifically and what should I listen for?	[ "It's noticeable, moreso if the mp3 is 192 kbps or less. Listen to cymbals - instead of going 'kssshhh', they have a sort of fast swooshing modulated effect." ]	[ "I used to work for our local TV station, Ch3 WEAR, in the master control department, and one of our jobs was to prep all commercials ran locally prior to them being loaded into our playlists. So, that meant checking captions, volume levels, run time, etc. If any of these were off by a certain margin, we had to con...
Why do so many bad movies get made, considering they have enormous budgets and large teams of experienced world-class experts behind them?	[ "There is no clear answer to this question despite much discussion. Here is my favorite theory. When feature film producers are looking to spend a great amount of money, they get very worried about risk. They don't want to be the guy who lost a huge pile of cash on something which may or may not pay off, they want ...	[ "Think of it like a teacher in a class room. They (teachers) don't write the text books. They don't do any of the learning. They don't build the school or buy the desks. They don't set the schedule or finance the operation. What the teacher (director) does is make sure that all those things come together to ensure ...
Was sewing "invented" in one part of the world and then spread about, or did different cultures developed their own sewing techniques independently?	[ "Sewing is well attested in archeological records as one of the oldest human activities, bone needles were used to sew leather in the paleolithic. Because it happened so long ago, we can't determine who was the first or how sewing spread." ]	[ "Most spiders are territorial, although [social species exist where multiple spiders share a web](_URL_1_). Some spiders intentionally [steal prey from other spiders' webs](_URL_0_)--some even [eat the webs themselves](_URL_2_). Anecdotally, I see spiders (cellar spiders) using pre-existing webs all the time--tryin...
Why does hitting a flashlight that has gone out make it turn back on?	[ "The flashlight has loose contacts which the jostling reconnects. If it was out because the battery was depleted then hitting it wouldn't do anything." ]	[ "I learned about this researching how to help my kid be a better sleeper. Essentially, you are over-tired. There is a \"sweet spot\" for everyone regarding the time they should go to bed (just the right level of drowsy). Once you get past that, your brain thinks there must be an important reason for you to continue...
Why do you feel extremely hungry after you wake up sometimes, even if you ate a lot before sleep. But don’t if you were awake the same time with nothing to eat?	[ "Well if you sleep for the acerage 7-8 hours, the body gets in that much time for digestion. That's a fairly large break between meals and feeling hungry is pretty normal after such a break. Plus, people are typically dehydrated after sleep, which also contributes to the feeling of hunger. Finally, it's a learnt be...	[ "It takes much water for your body to digest all the fats and sugar. It will first draw this from your stomach and intestines (from your bloodstream, ultimately). Thirst is your body telling you to drink water - in this case, just to replenish what was used to break down the fats and sugar." ]
Why do people think previous decades were better?	[ "It's a well-known psychological phenomenon, one of several cognitive biases, called Rosy Retrospection, possibly related to nostalgia. There's a lot of study on the topic, but the theory on it right now seems to be that it is a side effect on adults focusing on emotional regulation causing a decrease in negative ...	[ "This is more of an opinion or discussion question than a concept you're looking to have explained. Not really a topic for ELI5. Maybe /r/askreddit" ]
Why is it that hospitals can charge me an absurd amount without insurance, but with insurance those same numbers come down significantly? Isn't this discriminatory pricing?	[ "There's no law against discriminatory pricing as long as you aren't discriminating based on protected criteria (race, sex, religion, etc.). Part of the reason insurance companies get lower rates is because hospitals know they'll get paid. If you don't have insurance, it's sort of a gamble to provide treatment (and...	[ "That depends on where you shop. Walk into a souk in Marrakesh and every shopkeeper will negotiate on the price of every item. It's easier in a store where there are cash registers to just hire workers to scan the barcodes and have the shopper pay the total. In order to set the price through negotiation, you need w...
Why do people (a lot of whom are on reddit) love Nuclear Power even after the disasters at Fukushima, 3 mile, etc? How are we confident that such disasters won't happen in the future?	[ "Fukushima, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Windsor etc. is the exceptions. If you look at the problems with coal dust, gas explosions, oil leaks, radiation output, destruction of landscapes, global climate change, etc. which is small constant problems that together add up to much more damage then the nuclear disaste...	[ "Some cells stop working or go rogue eventually due to mutations that are not caught by the various checkpoints in the cell cycle. In our cell, there are various defense mechanisms against such errors, ranging from simple DNA repair mechanisms to apoptosis (cell self destruction). However, some of these mutations e...
How do express drug tests work? How are they made?	[ "Basically, they work by a technique called ELISA. An antibody designed to fairly specifically bind the drug of interest is linked to something that produces a visible change (such as a color change). The antibodies are made by injecting animals with large quantities of the substance you wish to detect." ]	[ "There was actually an article on this very topic. If I find it again, I'll post the link. Apparently, this is done to weed out the smart people and only get those that are gullible to respond. It's like reverse elimination. Eliminate those that would see through the scam as fast as possible. Write a horrible email...
If "celebrity" priests, like Fr. James Martin, S.J., have taken a vow of poverty, as all Jesuits do, where do the profits from their books sales go? Charity? The church?	[ "The big misconception here is not all priests take a vow of poverty. This might have been a requirement of the Jesuits, but it is not a requirement of the Catholic church or most Protestant churches. So the money goes to the celebrity priest in most cases." ]	[ "The works are in the public domain. Anyone, even you or me, could publish a complete Shakespeare and reap any profits. Not that there would be many, because everyone who wants one already has a complete Shakespeare, but you could do it." ]
What does Anti-Dandruff shampoo do that is different from regular shampoo?	[ "Pharmacist here. Most common anti-dandruff shampoos contain selenium sulfide which helps decrease the rate of cell turnover AKA slows the rate of your skin flaking off of your scalp, therefore minimizing not only the appearance of dandruff but the amount of flakes that actually fall off. Other anti-dandruff produc...	[ "There's little technical difference, mainly just what the service is expected to be used for. When a DNS server responds telling you the address for _URL_0_, it also says \"you can remember that for (perhaps) 24 hours, it won't change\". That cuts down the load on the DNS server and saves you or your ISP wasting t...
Why does everyone say pandas are poorly designed?	[ "Pandas are a type of bear that adapted to eat what was available, which was bamboo shoots. At this stage they only eat bamboo, but they only eat the least nutritious parts. The result is an animal that eats all the time and is still malnourished. Their digestive system isn't good at digesting the plant matter (som...	[ "The video shows every step. The fish, crab, and eels, have millions of years of evolution where finding holes in the bank to hide in resulted in fewer deaths from predation. So they seek the holes. They seek dark holes with the scent of prey. Humans come along. They imitate the dark holes with bamboo. They put ou...
How can my dog catch a frizbee midair but cannot understand movements of other, larger objects such as cars	[ "A Frisbee is a small, fast moving object - much like a prey animal that dogs are evolved to hunt for. A car is a large, fast moving vehicle that dogs are not evolved to deal with. If you are being charged in an open area by a much larger animal than you, it might make sense to freeze until they are closer, then da...	[ "Fly reaction times have a lot to do with availability of food and the ambient temperature. Next time you attempt to scoop one up, think about the environment and time of year and see how that compares to your success." ]
What's the difference between glass and crystal?	[ "Crystal glass uses lead in place of calcium in the mixture. This makes it far heavier and gives it a higher index of refraction than regular glass, which makes it sparkle more. Despite the name, it doesn't actually have a crystal structure, it has an amorphous, irregular structure like regular glass." ]	[ "[The Straight Dope covered this](_URL_0_). Basically, they started out as being made by two different production teams, but after a certain point, they became essentially interchangeable, but they kept both names going." ]
Why is restarting routers from time to time needed for them to work properly?	[ "The short answer is bugs in the router's software. The manufacturers don't want to incur the added expense to make consumer grade wireless routers more stable. Enterprise grade routers will run for years without needing a reboot because the manufacturers test them more thoroughly and in return charge more for them...	[ "You and some of your friends are at your house playing a game. In this game you are all in different rooms, one in the bedroom, one in the kitchen and so on - the only rule is you can't leave the room you're in. You play the game by shouting messages from one room to the other, and it's all fun. But there's a prob...
Why are air/drone strike videos in black and white?	[ "UAV cameras are capable of color imaging, but the vast majority of the time they are Infrared because it is much easier to see and follow targets Source: I flew UAVs in the Army" ]	[ "If you're talking about [pictures like these](_URL_0_), they are taken with electrons instead of light, so they don't have any information about color (what wavelengths of light are reflected). In that picture, Ladanov made images at three different voltage levels. Then he combined the three images by making each ...
Can a x86_64 CPU be designed to run code meant for ARM_64?	[ "Could you design a processor that could execute both x86_64 and ARM_64 code? Yes. You really wouldn't call it an x86_64 processor anymore though, at that point it would basically be a x86_64 + ARM_64 processor combined. Would this even be worth doing? Not really. The cost would be you lose the individual advantage...	[ "Turns out the experiments published were less than convincing. There were quite a few blog posts and letters in Science that went back and forth over the presented data. No one, except maybe the original experimenters, really believes (yet?) that this is a new arsenic-using life form. _URL_2_ _URL_0_ _URL_1_ Some...
When you've been pulled over by an officer, why must they take so much time to do whatever they have to?	[ "They are looking up your vehicle tags. Once they have your license they are also looking you up. Idea is that criminals tend to commit crimes. So perhaps you are speeding because the car is stolen. Handy info for the officer." ]	[ "Bernoulli's law states that a fluid's pressure is proportional to its velocity (there's more to that equation but I simplified it) When you are in a moving car, say at 60 mph, the air is moving at 60 mph relative to your car (assuming it is not a windy day) This means that the velocity of the air relative to your ...
why is there no yy chromosomes?	[ "The woman has the XX, while the man has the XY chromosome pair. A man can inseminate a woman and pass on either the X or the Y, while the woman always provides an X." ]	[ "There aren't usually enough women. \"Extra\" men generally leave and go elsewhere, either voluntarily, or forcibly." ]
[Physics] If strong force is strong enough to keep protons together, why do atoms need neutrons to keep the protons from tearing apart?	[ "You might be tempted to say that the Coulomb force is what prevents all-proton nuclei from existing (except hydrogen-1 obviously). But that's not the full story. In fact, if you replace all the protons with neutrons, the system is still not bound. So the nuclear force itself simply cannot bind a system of mult...	[ "> because each flavor has a different mass The flavors don’t have well-defined masses. There are three mass eigenstates and three flavor eigenstates. But a neutrino or a given mass is a superposition of all three flavors, and a neutrino of a given flavor is a superposition of all three masses. If the flavors had ...
If the sun died and turned into a black hole, where would the event horizon lay? Would Earth get sucked in?	[ "The radius of a (Schwarzchild) black hole with mass m is 2Gm/c^(2). In the case of the sun, this comes out to [just under three kilometers](_URL_0_). It's worth noting, however, that when the sun dies it will have lost much of this mass, and it won't result in a black hole anyways, because it's not large enough. ...	[ "If something enters the Schwarzschild radius, it's not coming back out again." ]
How is it that baseball became so prominent in Carribean islands like the DR Cuba and PR?	[ "I have a climate theory about this. Baseball is an outdoor sport made to play in the heat. All the running is done in short burst. Sans the pitcher/catcher no one is giving effort on every defensive play. Then after three outs you get a break in the shade and can sip something cold. As viewer, its a great sport t...	[ "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 is more energy required to melt a metal that's already at its melting point than is required to raise the temperature to a metal's melting point?	[ "It's not just metals, it's all materials. [Melting and boiling require energy](_URL_0_), since it involves breaking inter-molecular bonds. Conversely, condensing and freezing release the same amount of energy due to the re-formation of these bonds." ]	[ "This occurs for the same reason why the hottest part of the day is usually around 3 PM. To picture this, imagine a pot of water on the stove as the earth and the fire beneath the pot as the sun. The flame is set on high like the months of June during the solstice until the water's temperature reaches 50C. Then, li...
How do youtube channels avoid copyright from images?	[ "It's usually a combination of 'roll the dice', ignorance of copyright law and hoping the use of the image will be protected by 'Fair Use'. I'm sure there are cases where Youtubers ask permission or purchase a license to use an image, but I imagine that's probably only going to apply to the major / corporate spons...	[ "Country specific ones follow the laws of that country. You can search for Tibet freedom on _URL_0_. but not _URL_1_ or Google.can Google was given a choice by Chinese gov. Either you make the search engine follow our rules, or you don't do business in China at all and China blocks _URL_2_ entirely" ]
Why does rain have a distinct smell?	[ "The ground is filled with a lot of small holes, or pores. So when it rains, the air in these porous surfaces (concrete, soil, anything really) is made into tiny bubbles that collect a lot of the small things in these spaces and raise them into the air- basically it's like a natural aerosol spray! For the same reas...	[ "Are you sure it is not water condensing on a cold surface or a layer of ice on the surface melting?" ]
How do micro SD cards keep having more an more memory, yet stay the same size?	[ "Most of the size of a microSD card is taken up by the wiring from the contacts to the chip(s). The chip is actually a pretty small part of the card. What is happening is the chip manufacturers are constantly improving their fabrication techniques and researchers are refining the physics so we're able to fit more '...	[ "1. You've heard their style before, so it's growing stale to you. 2. They used all of their A material when they were younger and trying to break into the scene. 3. As musicians become more popular, they have to give up creative input to please producers." ]
Given enough time, could asteroids in the asteroid belt conglomerate into a planet large enough to crush itself into a sphere?	[ "If you're asking whether there is enough mass in the asteroid belt to form a spherical planet, the answer is yes, because there is already a spherical (dwarf) planet in the asteroid belt: Ceres. If it somehow collected all the rest of the asteroids, the resulting dwarf planet would also be spherical, and somewhat ...	[ "Some are shaped like a ball. But it depends on a galaxy's rotational speed & energy. It's the rotation of the galaxy that flattens them out into a disc shape. Kind of like how you can place a ball of dough out on a record player, turn the record player on, and in a few short minutes, the dough would spread out an...
what is actually happening to an app on my phone when I update it? Does the file get deleted and then the entire new app downloaded?	[ "An app is made up of dozens of individual code files that each accomplish one part of the larger task. When the developer makes changes to the app, not all of those files will have changed. When it's packaged for an update, only those changed files included, so it's only them that are downloaded by your phone and ...	[ "Imagine you are made of genetic soup. Some people have ingredients that just don't go well together and make the soup taste bad. But that's ok, because when you have a kid, we just take some of my soup and some of my wife's soup and pour it in together. So even though my soup has some bad ingredients, her ingredie...
How is Bosch's stock trending around $19,000 per share?	[ "The absolute cost per share of a stock is a relatively meaningless number. You can divide a company into whatever number of shares you like, and that number can change over time (and does, when companies do stock splits or merges). If a company has a high price per share, it basically just means that they haven't ...	[ "CPA here. I hate Trump, and there are tons of great reasons to hate the guy, but this is just one cherry picked data point that doesn't really tell us anything. The article you read is one big facepalm. That huge loss is called a Net Operating Loss, NOL. The rules for an NOL are pretty clear, and let you deduct t...
Can Three of the Four Types of Volcanic Eruptions Happen Underwater?	[ "1. Event no.3 can definitely happen. There are multple documented, the biggest right now being a slow eruption under the Kikai caldera south of Kyushu. 2. 2 & 4 generally only happen close to land. These types of volcanos are also physicly impossible in deep water (2km deep) since the increased pressure prevents g...	[ "To give a slightly different example that /u/Vampire_Seraphin's a current excavation off of the coast of Sri Lanka at a fishing village called Gotavaya is the first marine excavation of an ancient shipwreck in Indian waters. It is dated from the first century BCE/CE, which was the peak of the ancient trade, but as...
Thought experiment: I'm holding the end of a thin pole many light-years long. Despite its length, I can still twist it. Could this twisting be used as a form of faster-than-light communication with someone at the other end of the pole?	[ "Short answer: No. Long answer: Keep in mind what it means to \"twist\" something, and note that no physical object is perfectly rigid. By twisting, what you're doing is rotating the molecule on one end of the rod, which then (using the chemical bonds, which are in turn based on electric forces) rotate other molecu...	[ "One would use RF communication systems in the X or Ka bands (8-40 GHz). This is achieved using directional antennas on both ends, and wireless protocols that use an appropriate data rate with built-in error correction (forward error correction or FEC) and data integrity methods. Fortunately, it is fairly easy to...
For st.patricks day, Chicago dyed the Chicago river green....how is this actually safe and good for the water? Does this not actually cause harm?	[ "So not all dyes have a negative environmental impact however no one on this reddit would likely be able to actually tell you the real environmental impact of dyeing the river because its [secret](_URL_0_) but that doesn't mean they are hiding anything from consumers. How it's safe is that it doesn't impact the th...	[ "Basically, the nukes we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very small nukes (compared to what we have at our disposal today) and, while they DID cause radioactive fallout, they caused a (relatively) small amount of it, and it is no longer dangerous to live there - but it WAS dangerous for many years after the ...
I'm not entirely sure this is the correct sub to ask this but, did the USSR (even modern day Russia) make films where the USA/UK were the 'Bad Guys'?	[ "I've never actually seen one, but the USSR produced 'red westerns', which was your typical 'cowboys and indians' films with the moral roles reversed. The natives were portrayed as peaceful people being driven out by oppressive Americans." ]	[ "In Rands book the Goodguys all take this vow: \"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.\" The goodguys love doing hard work and need little luxury. The Badguys are stealing anything they can from anyone, mostly by claiming the...
What happens when you go in space without a suit?	[ "Space is a near-perfect vacuum. You would not, however, explode. Your eardrums would rupture. Your blood would \"boil\" in the sense that the loss of pressure would cause vaporization. Your tissues would inflame to the extreme. Many of your small blood vessels would burst from inflammation. Breathing is also a pro...	[ "This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_" ]
Can radio waves outside the visible light spectrum be thought of as colors we cannot see/ comprehend?	[ "* Yes! The different frequencies of visible light are what we detect as colors. You can totally make the same argument for larger differences in frequency. * No! The only reason color has meaning to us is that we have specific structures in our eyes that parse a very small part of the spectrum that way. Since alm...	[ "There are none, we have mapped every frequency in our visual range." ]
Is there an Asian "version" of Marco Polo? Who were the first people from East Asia to visit the West? Do we have first person accounts of their travels?	[ "Though I'm not sure which person was the exact first, I wrote an possible answer about a week ago to [the similar question thread](_URL_0_) to OP's." ]	[ "Off the top of my head: * How, where, when, and by whom they were taught to write * How much practice they've had * How often they actually write by hand * What writing instrument, paper, and surface they're using * Their mental state * How carefully and at what speed they're writing * How old they are * Whether o...
Whenever you get a really big pimple, how can so much pus fit inside such a tiny pore?	[ "It's like filling a water balloon. The opening of the balloon is relatively small, but the balloon can get pretty large. Unfortunately, when you squeeze a pimple wrong it can tear the balloon before the end gets unclogged and the puss erupts from it. You end up with some of the puss still in your skin tissue, but ...	[ "Hello Dr. Nagy! Is it possible that the cells of larger mammals have some sort of awareness, maybe through cell signaling, of the size of the tissue they're a part of and are more willing to enter apoptosis since they're more replaceable? Has there been any study in vitro on cultured tissues? For instance, would 1...
How does a physical piece of memory "store" digital ones and zeros and why are hard drives limited by size?	[ "An actual hard drive has a spinning disk inside - information is stored as a magnetic charge. One direction of polarization means 0, the other means 1. So on this disk that is spinning inside your hard drive, you have millions upon millions of differently magnetized spots, and a head (think a record player) that h...	[ "Both Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne believed that all information was destroyed in a black hole, and in the 70s made a bet with another physicist (Preskill). In 2004, Hawking conceded the bet (postulating that information is preserved in a black hole), but [Kip Thorne has yet to agree with Hawking](_URL_0_). Since...
If Queen Elizabeth is the Queen of England, why isn't Phillip, her husband, the King?	[ "Because she's in charge, not him (since she's a member of the royal family by blood and he isn't). \"King\" is considered a higher title than \"Queen\", so calling him the king would imply that he was the one in charge." ]	[ "Fun fact: the current emperor of Japan published a paper in Science in 1992 ([link here](_URL_1_)—requires subscription; doi:10.1126/science.1411568): the article, which is about early Japanese scientists, is signed \"Akihito\", and there is a little biographical footnote that says: \"Akihito. His Majesty the Em...
Postdam conference help please!	[ "What exactly is not clear about the quote? Why Conference is dated by July and not by August - if so, Potsdam Conference was held from July 17, to August, 2. Bulk of debates happened in July. Source 1. [Potsdam Agreement](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "This is the first time a Pope has ever spoken to a Joint Session of Congress. That's really the historic part of the visit." ]
Why/How can states simply ignore the Supreme Court's rulings?	[ "Alabama had laws on the books banning interracial marriage until the 2000's, but it didn't really matter since those laws weren't actually enforced. It could be a similar situation with those states where they recognize that they can't do it but don't want to bother actually repealing the law. Another possibility ...	[ "A few ways. First thing to know is Company's only pay tax on profits, not revenue. 1. Setup headquarters in low taxing country and shift profits there. One of the big mining company's in Australia sells it's own coal to a Singapore based company they own. In Australia then pay tax on the heavily discounted rate th...
Why do whales have horizontal tails where as fish have vertical back fins?	[ "It's a mammalian adaptation. Spines that flex up and down lend themselves to the ease of movement of terrestrial limbs." ]	[ "It is a function of the actual construction of the device that took the picture. The \"X\" shape is caused by diffraction of light about internal mirror supports in the imaging device (in this case, probably the Hubble Space Telescope). Like this: _URL_1_ The image describes how these diffraction effects become h...
light bulbs in cold weather versus warm weather	[ "It's not your imagination, fluorescent lamps have a range of operation in which they are at their full brightness, most are arround 18°C and 25°C, which could be considered warm weather. I actually couldn't find why but I would guess that the mercury doesn't react as well when it's colder. Let's hope someone can...	[ "Let’s say you’re making cookies. The recipe calls for creaming room temperature butter with sugar. Cold butter will not incorporate well with the sugar, making it grainy rather than fluffy. Then, if you were to add cold eggs to the creamed butter and sugar mixture, the coldness of the eggs would cause that mixtur...
Do species with shorter reproductive cycles evolve "faster"?	[ "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...	[ "Sometimes a genetic allele that is disadvantageous in one context, is advantageous in another. So gay men might have fewer children, but the same allele in a woman may lead to increased sex drive, and visa versa for lesbians and straight men, or if not sex drive, some other effect on fitness. So the allele remains...
why the Japanese Empire invaded small islands during WW2 and didn't have a larger mainland campaign	[ "You only hear about the island battles because that is were they fought Americans, and thus the only part of WW2 that is \"important\". There were many battles fought on the mainland especially in China." ]	[ "In the ancient near east/middle east in the Hebrew Bible era (say before 1000 BCE) deities were very regional and it was generally held that a certain god held dominion over a region and its people and a different god (or pantheon, like in Egypt) had dominion elsewhere. Common people generally held that a god wors...
How do I begin learning about historical military strategy?	[ "For a good, readable, basic book i recommend John Keegans \"A history of warfare\". It's got info about most of what you seek and it will prepare you well for seeking further information. It's cheap too: _URL_0_ The book has a fairly large treatment of phalanx warfare which is sort of pikemen. Another book of Kee...	[ "Hi readers! Since questions like these often attract anecdotal answers, just a quick reminder: you are in /r/AskHistorians, so do ensure that answers are comprehensive and informative, and based on solid source material. Personal anecdotes or other casual chitchat/speculation/opinion are not accepted as answers he...
What happens after a tsunami?	[ "It receeds just as fast as it went in like any other wave. It just takes it a lot longer than most waves. The recession wave also cause a lot of damage, if not more than the first wave because of all the items it's picked up and everything being waterlogged." ]	[ "Some folks sue and win large sums of money. Some folks get an apology. Some folks get a bill for room and board. It can depend on your jurisdiction, the good/bad faith conduct of the people who established your guilt, and the potency of your legal representation." ]
Why do you move your head back when your blow air out, and move your head forwards when you suck air in?	[ "I am actually the complete opposite.. so I think you got the whole movement thing wrong. When you suck air in, your lung expand and the expansion of your lung/chest causes your neck so move you head back as a slight balancing.. not that you actually need to do it. When you blow, psychologically, you are trying to ...	[ "This question is asked regularly. The simple answer is that the shape of your outer ear alters the frequency response of your ear to a source, depending on if it's in front of or behind you. Assuming the source is somewhat familiar and relatively wide band (a voice, for example), you can determine where the sound ...
How did San Marino and the Vatican become their own countries even though they're both "inside of Italy"	[ "To begin with, Italy as an entity was created long after these two statelets. While San Marino was allowed to remain outside of the unified Italy due to it allowing many of the supporters of unification to take refuge there. Thus their wishes to remain outside of united Italy were listened to. The Vatican is sligh...	[ "Continents sit on continental lithosphere which is part of tectonic plates floating high on Earth's molten mantle. And Islands are either extensions of the oceanic crust, like Hawaii or other volcanic islands, or geologically they are part of some continent sitting on continental lithosphere." ]
Why is it that every time I check in online to flights over 90% of the seats are unavailable?	[ "Specifically so you will pay for better seats. Simple as that. Some people are willing to pay a premium to get the seat they want, so, from the airline's perspective, there is no reason not to capitalize on that." ]	[ "From Quora > Because the Earth is a three-dimensional sphere and not merely a two-dimensional flat, East-West surface. Because of this spherical shape, often times the shortest distance is flying more north and south, up over the Northern latitudes and the North Pole, rather than flying east/west over the Pacific...
How does hypnotism work? Can it really make someone believe they are a chicken and be switched on and off with a finger snap?	[ "It is about a lowering of social inhibitions so that people feel acceptable behaving in ways that they normally would not. It isn't that the hypnosis can make someone believe they are a chicken, it is that it can make someone willing to act like they believe that they are a chicken. In that sense the snapping of...	[ "This has been done before, with animals. Here is a video allegedly showing an old Russian experiment done with a dog. It looks real to me, but, then so did The Wizard of Oz. Warning, it might be disturbing and upsetting to watch. _URL_0_" ]
Is the concept of a "multiverse" falsifiable and scientific?	[ "The answer depends on what you mean by \"multiverse.\" To my knowledge there two main distinct uses of this word in science and popular science. The first refers to the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which, like all other interpretations of quantum mechanics, is currently not falsifiable. However...	[ "Before I answer, may I ask who the speaker is for this particular lecture? Or if you have a link for me to listen to? I would like to know where they are coming from in their argument." ]
What is a mortgage? A reverse mortgage?	[ "A mortage is just a loan for a house or other piece of real estate. It is similar to a car loan except that it is usually for a much higher amount. They are generally for 15 or 30 years (because they are often for hundreds of thousands of dollars) and have an interest rate between 3% and 6%. A reverse mortage is s...	[ "Multi Level Marketing. Basically pyramid scam. For example tupperware parties, arbon, mary kay, isagenix, sentsy to name a few. Most will not make money." ]
What is the difference between astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology?	[ "Astronomy and astrophysics study everything in space. Cosmology is a subset of that which focuses on the early universe and the large scale structure of the universe. \"Astrophysics\" is often taken to refer to the theoretical side of things while \"astronomy\" is often taken to refer to the observational side of ...	[ "When crimes are investigated there are different professions involved. There are your standard beat cop who is the first to respond. Then there are specialist cops called detectives who are assigned depending on the type of crime. These would be the division that deals with homicides, or in the case of SVU deal w...
The Universe is expanding constantly but what is it expanding into?	[ "The universe isn't expanding due to redshifts, we observe redshifts because the universe is expanding and galaxies are moving away from us. But the answer to your question is we don't know. There are many hypotheses, but we don't know what the universe is expanding into if anything." ]	[ "Congrats, you've stumbled upon a major open question in astrophysics." ]
What made the Rhodesians so effective during the Bush War?	[ "You may be interested in [this previous answer](_URL_3_) about the romanticization of Rhodesia in the English-speaking world as well as [this post about the Bush War](_URL_0_) to look at the larger strategic picture. We also have [Two](_URL_2_) [podcast episodes](_URL_4_) on the history of Zimbabwe. [This answer](...	[ "Awesome question, you’re right that the research about this kinda sucks. If you are good at interpreting/understanding research articles then check this out, if not then I’ll cover the details below so don’t worry: _URL_0_ Generally, research of this nature is done using model organisms, in the case of this study...
Where do bugs go in Winter?	[ "Many will crawl into tiny space to wait it out in a torpid state. Many will die but enough survive into the next year. Recently in the south of England, lots of Ladybirds (aka Ladybugs) are just emerging as the weather warms up. We keep having to open windows to let them out!" ]	[ "Wow, lots of grammar nazis here. For lack of better words myself I'll leave this here for them: _URL_0_ There's a discusson on this here: _URL_1_ ...but I've also heard it is because your blood is flowing away from the cold areas, which exposes your nerves to the skin. Don't know about that now that I read that ot...
why does the US Navy have planes and ground forces? Do other countries do this?	[ "The Royal Navy also has this. The Royal Marines are a part of the Royal Navy. Here the marines are much more trained in beach landing, boarding ships that are maybe populated by pirates or carrying drugs, they also fight on land just like the army. The Royal Navy also has air support in the form of the Fleet Air A...	[ "Sort of - when flying an airplane, we use indicated airspeed, which is based on the difference between ram and static air pressure. The indicated airspeed remains the same at all normal operating altitudes. However, the groundspeed of the aircraft will be higher for a given indicated airspeed at a high density alt...
Why do cows have hooves instead of feet?	[ "Evolutionary adaptation and natural selection. You ever spent your entire life wandering around rocky fields? It would make sense that the animals with the harder covering for their feet would suffer less infections and then be less likely to die off." ]	[ "[The Straight Dope covered this](_URL_0_). Basically, they started out as being made by two different production teams, but after a certain point, they became essentially interchangeable, but they kept both names going." ]
why do most mammals come with a second pair of eyelids and why is it humans lack them?	[ "This isn't exactly an answer but it's in cases like cats and dogs where there's a third, interior eyelid, for those confused." ]	[ "I don't know for sure, but the configuration of the arm and hands (one bone, two bones, lots of bones) is ancient and originated in our fish ancestors. It is shared by virtually all vertebrates. The bones of our hands correspond to the lateral fin bones in ancient fish. The different bone lengths are what shape th...
Does gravity affect liquid density?	[ "The pressure that a liquid is under affects its density. For example, the water at the bottom of the Mariana Trench is 4.96% denser than water at sea level. The pressure at the bottom of the Mariana trench is a direct result from gravity. So, gravity does affect the density of a liquid. However, for a single mol...	[ "[According to this article](_URL_0_) most of the degradation of DNA is due to water and the rest is due to enzymes. Since metabolic activity is basically none during suspended animation its safe to rule out enzyme degridation. Now depending on where the tardigrade is during its suspension becomes the biggest facto...
Why are wooden houses more prevalent in US?	[ "Essentially because wood is cheap, abundant, easy to transport, and easy to work with. In North America there is plenty of lumber that makes very good construction materials so there isn't much call for stone or concrete construction. In areas of the world where construction grade lumber is more scarce you see man...	[ "Ease of use. Becoming proficient with a bow could take years and requires a certain amount of strength. You could teach someone to use a musket in a fraction of the time." ]
Why does the US account for almost half of worldwide box office income for movies?	[ "The US has one of the largest populations in the world. The US is #3 behind China and India. The US is also one of the richest countries in the world. We've got twice the population of Russia or Japan and nearly 4x the population of Germany, the other large wealthy (ish) countries. A large, rich population with lo...	[ "Because there are no laws that govern the entirety of the internet. There are laws in countries that limit what the people living inside of its borders can do with the internet, but those laws dont apply if you arent in that country. All pirate bay has to do to stay operational is to find a country that doesn't ca...
How fast does momentum transfer? If there was a Newton's Cradle stretching to the sun, how long would it take for the end mass to receive all the momentum?	[ "Mechanical forces are transmitted at the speed of sound. That's what sound is - a compression wave travelling in air. If the balls were made of iron, then forces would be transmitted at the speed of sound in iron, or about 5,000 m/s. It would take about 340 days for this force to reach the sun." ]	[ "It's not a stupid question, energy is a difficult concept to grasp. Think of energy like indestructible money.^(Note) When you buy something with money, you give that money to someone else and now they can spend that money. When I hit a baseball, kinetic energy from the baseball bat goes into the baseball. When yo...
How many people would you need to self-sufficiently populate a planet without inbreeding being a problem?	[ "Not sure on how many but you could reduce the number needed by starting a woman only colony and taking many frozen sperm samples with them." ]	[ "There was a whole show made about this called Life After People. It's on NetFlix, can't find a link as I'm on my phone. The short answer to your question is: not very long." ]
Why do cats wiggle their butts before they pounce?	[ "I think it's them checking their footing, to make sure not only what they're jumping off is stable, but to make sure they won't slip as they pounce." ]	[ "The dance language is universal but there are regional dialects. While the specific parts of the dance language are the same, such as the waggling of the abdomen to represent distance and the the angle of rotation to represent direction, the exact translation between waggles and angles to specific distances and di...
How come when stars explode, they gush their matter out in 2 dimensions?	[ "Doesn't that image [look familiar](_URL_0_)? The spectral matter is chasing the magnetic field." ]	[ "You're right to be confused. It is 100% wrong as depicted in the movie, and a lot of people of wondered about why they made such a grave error considering the rest of the movie was somewhat realistic. It is likely that the reason this happens in the movie is that it makes things more dramatic. Artistic license i...
Drugs that intoxicate people, like meth, were they discovered by accident? Or are there drugs that were formed with the goal of getting people high set in mind? How are new, apparently more potent drugs formed?	[ "LSD was an oopsiedaisy. Albert Hofmann was investigating chemicals from the Ergot fungus to find one that might not be toxic and might also induce labor. Ergot had been used as a folk remedy for some time. Hofmann broke down the chemicals extracted from the fungus to get Lysergic Acid, and then started 'adding' to...	[ "Heat is produced when parts of your body are functioning. When you move muscles, when your stomach digests stuff, when your liver processes stuff. All of this takes energy. As the energy is used heat is produced. When you drink alcohol your liver goes into overdrive to metabolize the alcohol. This produces a lot o...
Why can't we remember exact smells but can remember how they made us feel?	[ "Our olfactory pathway (pathway from the \"smell\" to what our brain does with it) is tied much more closely with our limbic system (emotion system) than all other senses. There are structures called the fornix, cingulate gyrus, amygdala, and septal area (among others) that our smell information runs through. These...	[ "This sounds like an extreme example of \"Tip of my Tongue\". _URL_0_ I can't really give an overly scientific answer as to what causes it (some interesting articles on that page, though), but I'd imagine that it's just a \"brain fart\", kinda like deja vu. It's a problem with long-term semantic memory recall. (Se...
Why do men have no legal say in whether a woman can have a child or not yet a woman gets to decide if a man pays child support for the rest of their life?	[ "You're conceptualizing the situation incorrectly. A woman can't \"force\" you to pay child support to her. A court can order a biological parent to pay child support to the guardian of the child--which could be the other parent. (There are many mothers who pay child support to the father.) This is fair to the *chi...	[ "All species have a typical \"litter size\" for when they successfully breed. It depends greatly on the amount of care the offspring require (this includes the energy put into the eggs). There is a trade-off between how many offspring you can make and the quality of those offspring [(Source)](_URL_4_) For example, ...
How can hard drives get bigger without them actually getting bigger in size?	[ "It's increased density; the manufacturers are finding ways to write and then read the individual bits on smaller and smaller areas of the platters." ]	[ "Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe it has something to do with cookies. They store your search history and saved data (like when you ask a website to save your password, or when you search something in Google and something you searched before comes up as an option) and ad websites gain access to this so...
If I go scuba diving, why can't I fly in an airplane within 24 hours?	[ "It has to do with your bloodstream. When you go underwater, the nitrogen in your blood gets compacted down and dissolves. If you go to a high elevation quickly, the nitrogen escapes your blood, sorta like how fizz escapes from pop. This can lead to broken blood vessels and many horrible symptoms. This is called th...	[ "We live in a 3 dimensional world. This results in something called the \"square-cube law\", which states that as an object grows in size its volume grows faster than its area. For example if we have a 1 foot cube it has 1 foot in volume. But a 2 foot cube has 8 cubic feet in volume. A 3 foot cube has 27 cubic feet...
Was there any point in the last 1000 years where a colonial power 1) colonized an area, 2) the colony rebelled and secured its independence, and 3) the colonial power returned and annexed the former colony back into its empire?	[ "Depends how loosely you want to define \"colonize,\" \"annex,\" and \"empire.\" Here are the ones that come to mind: Russia: Lost (with German help) Poland, Finland, the Baltic States and Ukraine during 1917-20, re-annexed the Baltic States, and part of Poland and Finland(as the USSR) over 1938-45. (While we're at...	[ "It depends on how much value you place in all of the technical transfers of power and obligations which exist and your estimate of what would happen if people decided to break with ceremony. The ruling monarch has a significant amount of technical authority, but doesn't exercise it. If a ruling monarch chose to ex...
How can Oxygen form both O3 and O2? Under what circumstances would it form O2 vs O3?	[ "Just to add more possibilities, at very high pressure (roughly 10,000x pressure at sea level) you can also form [red oxygen](_URL_0_), which is O8." ]	[ "The same way that astronomers find out almost everything. They use [spectrography](_URL_0_). Absorbtion colors - the specific colors of light that get emitted when light is absorbed by matter - tell you exactly what element or molecule did the absorbtion and emission. This process works with suns, atmospheres, pla...
Is there a limit to how many calories the human body can absorb in one sitting?	[ "This is askscience, Respond with sources and credentials please." ]	[ "The other posters have explained why the stats cap-out/end at 255: It's a function of the data-type used to store this number. Why use a single byte? Why not more? A larger number would mean more storage space required. Now, one might feel that given the size and power of contemporary computers it shouldn't reall...
using steel to get rid of smell	[ "Some smells (Garlic, fish, onions) are because of sulphur (sulfur) based chemicals/compounds. These sulphur compounds bind with some of the molecules of the steel (chromium oxide, produced when the chromium plating on the steel reacts with water), producing new substances which do not smell as strongly. This only ...	[ "Bacteria on/in your skin metabolize the minerals in your sweat and create a by-product. TL;DR: sweat is bacteria farts." ]
How to whistle through your hands.	[ "Im assuming you mean the one where you put your hands together and blow through? If not this will be a waste of time: Cuff your hands together, which doesnt need to be precise at all, the most important part is where you blow. The place that best works for me is the knuckle of the thumb. You are not breathing int...	[ "_URL_0_ The TL;DR version is that our throats are lined with special cells that use the wet mucus to trap the dust particles and little cellular \"hairs\" called \"cilia\" to transport them back up the windpipe and into the mouth, where we swallow them." ]

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