Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Where do the suits for playing cards originate from? (Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades)	[ "The playing cards you're talking about were popularized in Egypt around the 11th century. The cards had for suits: polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. The cards were hand made, so the symbols on them evolved as the concept of the 52-card deck moved from the Mediterranean to northern and western Europe over the n...	[ "I will only answer part because I only know about that part. The HDTV Grand Alliance! The HDTV Grand Alliance was formed in the early 1990s by MIT and a bunch of TV manufacturers. They wanted to agree on how to make TV fidelity better and come up with a uniform standard that could be imposed upon media producers....
Why does bamboo grow so fast?	[ "It's actually pretty simple and remarkable. The first thing to understand is that it's a grass. The second thing is that if you look at the base of a bamboo plant there's a cone-shaped bud where it grows from. When this bud is growing, it contains all of the cells it will have through it's lifetime. So as it's g...	[ "The Theory of relativity. The same reason time seems to pass In a blink when you're enjoying a night with friends, yet seems to last an eternity during the last 10 minutes of work." ]
What is the proper way to break in an internal combustion engine?	[ "You absolutely, without question, want to take it easy during break-in. The length of the break-in period is debatable, and it seems to be getting very short to non-existent on modern engines. But that's beside the point. The reason you want to take it easy has a lot to do with friction. Everywhere in the engine t...	[ "Service contracts. BMW used to recommend oil changes every 5000 miles or so, but then the marketing department got involved and offered free oil changes for the first X years, and once the dealers had to pay the cost of the service the interval magically tripled so you needed fewer of them. The effect is that with...
Why was there not already a big city on the site of Constantinople?	[ "There was an independent Greek city state there named Byzantium. It was always a trading city due to its location. These states were highly independent and many did not have far reaching influence so their history is not very well covered. In Xenophon's Anabasis he has an interesting story involving the city. On h...	[ "A smaller population may require the same type (police, fire, etc) services but at a much smaller scale. Mayberry only needed two cops, Atlanta needs thousands. The cost is greatly different. Other infrastructure are scaled accordingly." ]
Why is cigar smoke so much more odorous/long lasting compared to cigarette smoke? Aren't they both tobacco?	[ "Cigar is pure tobacco, when cigarette is chopped up leaves with a lot of other stuff. Also size. If you take just 2 puffs from cigar it will go away just as fast as cigarette. But if you spend 30min chain smoking cigarettes it be pretty long lasting." ]	[ "The longer and bigger the tube the lower the pitch. When you work the keys you're changing the length of the tube that you're blowing (well... going pppbbttttthhhhbbbbbb) through. In the case of the cornet or trumpet, which are higher, the tubes don't need to be as long. In the case of the tuba and french horn, lo...
Why do dentists/doctors only take certain types of insurance?	[ "In order to take insurance from a company, the doctor must negotiate, in advance, what prices they're going to charge for services. They then need to make sure that they have the appropriate billing/reporting policies/procedures/systems to submit bills and actually get them paid. It might not be worth the extra wo...	[ "For colleges there are scholarships and grants that are limited to specific races, ethnicities, and genders. For both jobs and colleges they need to know that information for legal purposes in case they get sued for discrimination in the future." ]
My state (VA) is in the process of possibly running a pipeline through it. Why are so many people either for it or against it?	[ "There is a short-term construction benefit to the job market, but no meaningful long term benefit. The risk of spills is a long-term risk, but a low one. Aesthetically pipes aren't much to look at, and having one near your property could hurt property values some. Some people feel that domestic oil production/dist...	[ "I like this. However, pictures are awesome. Your pictures with the flame on the drawing board? Good stuff. The video with candle/flame? Good stuff. Your face? Great face for TV, but I don't want to see it the majority of the time. It makes the viewer lose interest over a period of time. Personally, I liked learnin...
Is the earths atmosphere suddenly became 100% oxygen, what would happen when the first person lit a match? Would the world just instantly explode? Would everyone get high/die from breathing the air?	[ "Oxygen isn't flammable, it is merely a necessary component in a combustion reaction. You still need something that acts as fuel. So if you light a match in a 100% oxygen environment, it would burn brighter and more rapidly than in normal air, but once the fuel provided by the match is expended, it would just extin...	[ "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...
Which of the four fundamental forces determine concentration gradient movements?	[ "I wouldn't say it's any of the forces that give rise to any chemiosmotic potential, as it arises from statistics (i.e., driven by entropy). Let's examine another case of entropy at work. There are only so many ways that a deck of card can be ordered sequentially. What is the \"force\" that causes a brand new deck ...	[ "It's accidental in the SM given the field content---when you write down all allowed terms in the Lagrangian for the quark sector, you can get rid of all but one unitary matrix, the CKM matrix. You can put CKM in the mass matrix so gauge interactions are diagonal (this is the 'flavor basis') or in the gauge interac...
What did geek types do before the 20th century?	[ "Well, I usually describe geeks as people who have esoteric interests over popular ones - people who have some passionate interest(s) independent of what's popular. Back In The Day this was just as true, but there was less in the way of media or technical hobbies for people. In fact, it seems that a lot of \"geeky\...	[ "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\"." ]
What exactly is buying debt, and how did Occupy Wall Street just do it?	[ "When banks or whoever else might have a bunch of people owing them money decide that they're never going to see enough money from the debtees for it to be worth it - so basically when someone isn't paying any of the debt off for months and they can't seem to get it by force - they offer to sell the debt off to oth...	[ "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...
If time and space are infinite, does that suggest that all of history will repeat itself an infinite number of times?	[ "_URL_0_ Basically, given an infinite universe and infinite time (and assuming that matter/energy/etc. doesn't fundamentally break down and irreparably change over time), then you would expect that any given finite situation would reoccur within a long enough time frame. The amount of time involved for anything of ...	[ "Protecting intellectual property was supposed to foster innovation. To encourage people to come up with new ideas, because new ideas would be profitable for a while (the term of the copyright). However, giving limitless copyright terms causes the opposite effect: Nobody innovates or comes up with new ideas, becaus...
Isn't Einsteins gravitational field the same thing as the aether that was disproved by the Michelson–Morley experiment?	[ "The \"gravitational field\" you're referring to is spacetime. Orbiting black holes create gravity waves which move through spacetime. And you're right, all matter is embedded in spacetime. The postulated luminiferous aether was a medium through which light traveled which permeated all of spacetime. Spacetime its...	[ "Nobody has anwered this so I'll try. Basically, no. Punk-eek has to do with morphological change. Molecular clocks come from Kimura's Neutral Theory. The NT suggests that most fixed molecular sequence mutations are neutral and are driven by drift. Neutral mutations don't have a big effect on morphology. So one is ...
Questions about energy dispersive spectroscopy (electron microscope) and the atomic structure	[ "1) Yes atoms will emit photons corresponding to all possible transitions, the key is how frequently they occur. The particular shells used are likely a combination of two factors: choosing the most frequently occurring transition for a given element so you get the best signal-noise ratio, and picking transitions f...	[ "You can't just build complex molecules out of atoms as if you're fitting legos together. Certain configurations of atoms are unstable and are very difficult to create, or break apart immediately after you create them. It's as if you were trying to build a lego house, and you could never have just 1,2, or 3 walls u...
How come you can touch your uvula with your tongue, but anything else touching it causes a gag reflex?	[ "Can't tell you for sure, but I would go with the fact your tongue is already, and supposed to be, in your mouth" ]	[ "It's all of that. Our vocal timbre, or the way our sounds, is comprised of two major factors. First, your vocal chords. Everyone's vocal chords are different, but basically, the longer and thicker your vocal chords are, the deeper your voice is. Second, your skull. The shape of your skull and the placement and sha...
How are hills made? For example, how are there hills in central Texas if there is no seismic activity?	[ "There is a fault line that runs along I35 between Dallas and San Antonio. If you stop at Wonder World you can tour the fault line and they do a good job showing the different topography on each side of the fault. So the answer is that the hills were formed due to seismic activity that formed the hills and Balcones...	[ "It gets laid down fast and loose during a flood season and then the top layer dries hard during the dry season. That causes the layers you see. They're so even since the slurry that the layers starts off as is basically liquid and as you know water settles fairly perfectly flat" ]
Why does rendering take so long ?	[ "Depending on the level of detail you want from the final render, you have to calculate the properties of every given point in your 3D model. This includes lighting, material properties and so on. Any surface reflects light differently, they interact with each other, reflecting or being illuminated by different sou...	[ "along with the other users comments, also keep in mind that the ps4 has more headroom. on a pc, the cpu has to manage the OS and lots of other things running while ALSO playing a game. on a console all it has to worry about is the game and the XMB." ]
Humans and their ancestors didn't always have civilization to make caring for one another so easy. When/Why did human babys get so useless?	[ "They have been in tribes and small communities for hundreds of thousands of years. Depends how you define civilization but we have pretty much always had a group of other people to help out (at least as long as we were still considered people)." ]	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
How do the proteins in bacteria that live in extreme conditions like hot springs not denature?	[ "Most of those microbes (extremophiles) are actually in the Archaea domain and their membranes and proteins are [adapted](_URL_1_) to remain stable in extreme environments. For example, hyperthermophiles, organisms living at high temperatures, have membranes dense in saturated fatty acids to keep the membrane in ta...	[ "Any water based life form would require the temperatures and pressures to be around those required for H2O to be liquid. Other life could theoretically exist at temperatures and pressure outside that range, but would have to be based on a different solvent. For example, ammonia based life would require much colder...
What are the main theories for what happens when the universe is overly expanded?	[ "One theory regarding this has been dubbed the Big Freeze. Whether the Universe will continue to expand or if it will ever stop or even reverse is unknown. There are variations of this but one theory is that eventually the Universe will become so large that even light won't able to travel fast enough to reach anyth...	[ "While your assumptions and other things that are being said here may be correct, it is important to remember that the Standard Model is only an effective theory that cannot be assumed to be correct in energy regions that are well outside the what has been explored experimentally so far. Anything involving the plan...
Sleep Paralysis. What is happening in my brain, and is there any way to prevent it?	[ "Its part of sleeping. REM sleep (where dreaming happens) can be pretty violent since your brain can't really tell the difference between a dream and reality. So the brain cuts itself off from the body so you don't end up throwing your arms around or otherwise hurting yourself while dreaming. Its believed to be a ...	[ "Two social psychological concepts come to mind here. State dependent memory encoding and Erickson Arousal theory of learning. State dependent learning states that what ever state of mind you are in during encoding is the state of mind where recall would be optimal. Erickson arousal theory states that learning is m...
How realistic are the levels of violence during prohibition as portrayed in Boardwalk Empire?	[ "It's hard to say specifically but the violence was bad; bad enough to repeal it. Although violence wasn't the only reason--the rise of organized crime and corruption added up to it also. _URL_0_" ]	[ "Hello prospective respondents. Everyone loves to talk about food (and drinks!), so just a reminder of which sub we're in: it's /r/AskHistorians so no personal anecdotes, urban myths or conjecture. Respondents here are expected to have expertise in the subject, offer in-depth information and cite *reputable s...
Why are some people able to open their eyes in the ocean without any discomfort, while other people's eyes can be very irritated by the salt water?	[ "Bitch grade or non bitch grade, Poseidon decides." ]	[ "The temperature sensors in your skin can only detect relative changes in temperature. Not absolute temperature. You can show this by doing a simple experiment with three cups of water. one cup of ice water, one cup of room temperature water, and one cup of hot water. Place a finger of your right hand in the ice w...
Why do dogs seem to be able to nod off whenever they are comfortable?	[ "We also don't have as sensitive senses as dogs do, so we can't wake ourselves up at the slightest sound, touch, smell, change in light or taste. You'll notice that while the dog nods off easily, he'll be awoken by certain things that won't wake us up. Not to mention that they sleep when the need/can, whereas human...	[ "When you sleep it has cycles, the most effective part, known as 'deep sleep' kicks in anywhere between 30minutes-2hours. it's possible that when you wake up from your nap, you're beginning this cycle. intercepting this cycle will put your brain into a phase known as 'sleep inertia'. Sleep inertia is a physiologica...
What Happens to the Water Vapour in your Lungs? e.g from showering, being in the rain	[ "\"Stuck\" then absorbed into the blood stream or exhaled as water vapor. I've seen people on trach collars sustained on simply the high humidity supplied to these devices, taking in up to a liter a day through the respiratory system alone." ]	[ "Airplanes do get struck by lighting while in the air and while inside clouds. The airplane is reasonably well protected by the skin effect which pushes all the current around the edge of the plane and not through the middle, it helps that the middle of the plane is also not very conductive compared to the outside ...
internal bleeding...	[ "Sometimes in a car accident the liver is ruptured due to the way it is basically suspended in the abdomen by a ligament. When you are in an accident you have the laws of motion at work. An object in motion will stay in motion, this includes your internal organs. The spleen is structured the same. The aorta can als...	[ "Some dumbass Pi Kappa Alpha at University of Tennessee decided that it would be a brilliant idea to pour alcohol up his ass to get really drunk. Ended up getting hospitalized and once news spread of this idiots actions the story ended up getting picked up by a lot of media outlets. Pi Kappa Alpha ended up getting ...
Is the deep ocean floor littered with the bones of fish and mammals which have died over the years?	[ "There are things that eat up the remains just like on earth. The skeleton of a dead whale can lay there for years before it gets eaten away but most things don't last very long. Some things get buried in the silt before they decay, and turn into fossils." ]	[ "Depends on the material and temperature. Sometimes the surface forms a reconstruction, as dreykevins explains. Other times the surface forms an oxide or some other surface layer, which can prevent recombination. Other times the pieces actually CAN be put back together, and this process is called \"cold welding\". ...
Is it possible for woman to give birth to twins or false twins, each from different fathers?	[ "The answer to your question is yes. Fraternal twins happens a female releases an egg from each ovary, and the two egg both get fertilized by a different sperm. A similar thing could happen when a sperm cell from different males happen to fertilize the two eggs. But no, two sperm cells can not enter one egg. As soo...	[ "The oldest condominium (i.e. territory with a shared sovereignity or territory with several sovereignities) I know about is Andora : basically, a country ruled by two foreign princes (one spanish cardinal, one french count/king/president) for the last 7 centuries. There are others, like an island between France an...
How would the Chinese army compare to the Roman army in 100 AD?	[ "This is really more of a question for /r/HistoricalWhatIf, we deal in what did or sometimes didn't happen." ]	[ "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." ]
Can someone tell me why everybody makes reference about Romney and binders full of women and why it's such a big deal...?	[ "It sounds silly without context; it's easy to understand and repeat." ]	[ "Its a historical comparison. The weather man says \"50% chance of rain\" he means \"half the time the conditions (temp, humidity, etc) are like this, it rains\"." ]
Why didn't medieval armies just walk around castles and attack more vulnerable targets? This kind of applies to lots of different eras.	[ "Bypassing enemy soldiers in order to attack less defended targets would invite counter attack from those same forces in the fortified area. Strategically, it can be very bad to have the enemy behind you." ]	[ "Sorry, we don't allow [\"trivia seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of disjointed, partial responses, and not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about an historical event, period, or person, please feel...
Why is Formula 1 so fast? (in laymens terms)	[ "Straight line speed is due largely to power-to-weight ratio. Formula 1 cars have pretty powerful engines, but they're also incredibly light, giving them an excellent power-to-weight ratio. Cornering speeds are due to aerodynamics. The cars' wings literally push the cars into the ground, enabling the tyres to grip ...	[ "Downforce settings, camber settings, fuel levels, etc. The cars are supposed to be carbon copies of each-other prior to the engineers \"tweaking\" several settings, giving the driver a different feel on the track." ]
We all know about the Rosetta Stone, but what other discoveries or breakthroughs have lead to a greater understanding of lost or poorly understood languages?	[ "[The Behistun Inscription](_URL_0_) comes to mind. Also worth mentioning are the [Oracle Bones](_URL_1_), which not only showed early versions of Chinese characters, but also confirmed aspects of e.g. Sima Qian's history of ancient China." ]	[ "They probably didn't. [Sweet potatoes, a south american crop, are found in Polynesia](_URL_0_), and [chicken, an Asian bird, is found in south america](_URL_1_), both pre-contact. Also, [Polynesia DNA is found in south america](_URL_2_)." ]
Why does one twin age more in the traveling twins paradox?	[ "> If that's true, then technically they are both at rest, aside from the brief period of acceleration. The devil's in the details. When Twin B is coasting, you're right that she sees Twin A aging slower than she is, and concludes that she is the younger twin in her own reference frame. But during that brief pe...	[ "It doesn't. Shelf life is all about the pasteurization process used, and not all dairies do it the same. HTST, filtration, UHT, etc. If the same dairy packaged the same milk into two types of packaging, as long as they were both sterile and packed properly, it would last the same amount of time." ]
Why can we see color?	[ "1. Light from the sun is sent out as a wave. This wave has different wavelengths. 3. That light flies to Earth and hits something, let's say a leaf. 2. That leaf has a chemical in it called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll absorbs all the wavelengths of light except for the wavelength between 495-570 nanometers. 3. Since ...	[ "Part of the reason is that we, like all primates, have a defective gene for producing vitamin C. Unlike dogs, cats, and nearly all other animals, we must get vitamin C in our diet or we die. The mutation must have happened to some proto-primate long ago and allowed to spread because it posed no problem for our a...
Why large coal mine fires can't be/aren't put out after burning for years and years on end.	[ "Coal fires can be extinguished however it is very expensive, and not something the local Fire Department can do. The current procedure is to cover the mine with dirt, then drill holes in a grid every 60 feet, then pump water into the holes for 1-2 years. At the end of that you have a coal well that is very fl...	[ "Captains deliberately going down with their ship is rare. There is a big difference of \"go down with the ship\" and \"being the last man to leave\". The first is more a military thing, based on honor. Some Japanese captains did this in World War 2. Last man to leave is entirely practical, to show that the captai...
AMA: 19th Century Western Women's Fashion	[ "Has there ever been a bitter academic dispute in your field? Something like Prof. A traces a certain stitching pattern to the the 1810s, but Prof. B argues that its actually two similar yet distinct patterns that emerged independently in 1815 and 1823, and then the profs spend years sniping at each other in articl...	[ "Related question: how much opportunity was there for divorced women at the time to remarry or find other means of support (by themselves or family)? How much did it vary by region or socioeconomic status?" ]
What is the left and right referring to I'm political context?	[ "Well, orginally the Left vs Right thing came from French National Assembly during the French Revolution. Those that supported the King sat on the Right, those that supported the revolution sat on the Left. Now a days, in the United States, it has boiled down to the left wing being folks that support more governmen...	[ "Your brain is constantly telling how your limbs should move. Because it takes a lot of energy to do the maths for your hands and feet, it gives more detailed instructions to one side than the other side. If both sides were equally good at movement, you'd need to eat more to power the calculations." ]
Why does room temperature water taste so bad?	[ "You’re drinking the wrong water. Properly filtered water with the right Ph level tastes wonderful. Tap water tastes different depending on where you live. I’ve been studying in Austria for some time and the water tastes amazing here." ]	[ "Neural adaption. Basically, your brain only cares about a change in stimuli rather than every stimulus that comes along. Your brain knows how to ignore a stimulus if it isn't changing. So, if you are tasting/feeling the same thing all the time, your brain is going to ignore it." ]
Why does my mouth feel clean all day when I brush in the morning, but filthy when I wake up after brushing just before bed? Much less time has passed since brushing just before bed.	[ "The thing that does the most cleaning of your mouth isn't actually brushing. It's the constant movement of your lips/tongue, the constant production of spit, and the constant swooshing of the spit. That's what does most of the work in cleaning your mouth. When you sleep, those three things come to an almost stop. ...	[ "Everything your brain does requires energy, including \"nothing.\" Specifically, to stop yourself from having certain types of thoughts (let's call them \"dumb ideas\"), other parts of your brain capable of critical thinking, evaluation, scenario modeling & if-then extrapolation have to exert metabolic energy. Lat...
If China is ruled by a communist party, how could it also have so many billionaires?	[ "Basically after Mao's complete political/economic failure of the great leap forward, his successor (Deng Xiaoping) adopted a new economic philosophy for the country. This philosophy can be explained by the following saying of Deng's: \"It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.\...	[ "Mostly because lions are not native to China. Imagine this: one person saw it, and tries to describe it in text, and the artisans tries to create something from the text, pretty much what Chinese lions looks now is what we get. Then newer generations simply copy and add their own interpretations, similar to Burrit...
How do people "discover" new mathematical proofs?	[ "Proofs can be discovered in two ways. First off is jut blind (directed) luck. You start going through some properties and one day it just clicks. Much more commonly I would say is a method similar to those used in science. You have a mathematician that notices a patter. Oh, so far all the triangles I have drawn to...	[ "Through exposure. Put a camera in a dark room and take a long exposure picture. They do the same thing for seeing things far away in space. The reason it takes satellites so long to get a picture is because they have been taking a long exposure shot the entire time." ]
Why do professional football teams (American) make so many simple mistakes such as false starts?	[ "Because there is a ton of mental things that go into every play. Being tired makes thinking very hard. For example a play might be \"Spread Right Y-tight X-orbit 44 smash green,\" that's a lot to remember when you're dog tired and the last thing you might think about is the snap count Source: I played college foo...	[ "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." ]
Why do men have nipples?	[ "While they can still be a source of sexual stimulation, our bodies only differentiate into different sexes later on in the developmental process. Breast tissue is therefore present in both men and women, just to different degrees." ]	[ "It is down to the combination of the genes you get half the genes from your mother and half from your father but those genes are an almost random selection of those genes which go to make up each so can be combined in trillions of different ways. Like saying you get half a pack of cards from one parent and half fr...
Why does meningitis always seem to kill people who are college aged and otherwise healthy?	[ "Bacterial meningitis is extremely deadly, able to kill in less than a day, often under 3 days. You often hear of it in college students simply because they are more exposed to the infection, as bacterial meningitis is usually transferred through saliva. Any age group can contract and die from it." ]	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Why did Russia and China veto the UN resolution on Syria.	[ "Primary/real reason: Because they're getting mighty scared of all this democratic uprising talk and want to nip that shit in the bud before it spreads to their own country. Also Russia has a major military base in Syria and lots of plum arms contracts, which would be jeopardized if Assad fell. Secondary/stated re...	[ "Hi, I've approved the post, but just a note to you and potential respondents: this subreddit has a 20-year rule against discussing current events, so any answers will have to cut off at 1997. If you're looking for answers that can include 1998-2012, do consider x-posting elsewhere, eg. a foreign affairs sub like /...
if the Presidential primaries award proportional delegates, why is the general election winner-take-all?	[ "Primary rules are up to the parties themselves as independent groups deciding how they want to get stuff done. They are not all proportional, for instance, they can vary by party, and by state. Many(most?) of the republican contests, for instance, are winner take all contests. Electors are also not necessarily win...	[ "I'm trying to better understand the historiographical genealogy of John Dower's War Without Mercy. Was a racial understanding of the Pacific War's brutality unprecedented? What are the other main scholarly explanations for the fighting's horrific character?" ]
How come it’s easy to type out a complex word, but when you spell it out loud, it becomes difficult?	[ "When typing, you can see the letters available. When speaking, you are recalling the letters, and perhaps visualizing as well. Your brain is multitasking, slowing down your ability to correctly spell out the word Of course, different people may or may not have this problem, but considering I also have the same is...	[ "These are probably things that have no definitive answer yet. I would imagine it is almost entirely psychological. Our mind tends to try to do things the most efficient way possible, and an action that requires minimal cerebral processing would be preferred, using muscle memory. So doing something the requires thi...
How does a pilot manage cruising altitude when local geography/elevation changes?	[ "Cruising altitude is relative to sea level, which does not change. The plane measures it by air pressure, which gets thinner as you go higher, and doesn't really change whether you are flying over an ocean or a mountain." ]	[ "The HUD is just a computer display device combining the information from several instruments, which will also be shown on the instrument panel. The panel itself might be more computer (\"glass\") displays or could have traditional, physical instruments (\"steam gauges\"). The actual horizon instruments you're aski...
Why do contests have skill testing questions	[ "It is done to make the contest a game of skill and not one of luck. It is done to avoid facing laws against gambling. This is also why many contests will have ways to enter without purchasing anything. That too avoids the label of gambling" ]	[ "They usually provide, in the very small print, a second way to enter, such as by mailing them a post card. Clearly they'd prefer you buy the product. :-)" ]
Grad Student Studying for Exams	[ "First, you can do this! Exams are pressure filled, but absolutely survivable. As to advice, here are a few things that helped me. Have a system of note taking that includes the following (include page number found for as much as possible): * Thesis * Major source type * Strengths (an example) * Weaknesses (an exam...	[ "Is there something in particular you need to know? Otherwise, I'll just end up burying you under my library in a while." ]
How do speakers work?	[ "Sound waves are basically just vibrating air. If you can vibrate air, you can make sound. This is what, for example, stringed instruments like a guitar do: strings vibrate rapidly from a pluck, and they then cause the air around them to vibrate, creating sound you can hear. Speakers work similarly. They have a pap...	[ "As far as I know, it's the blood flow in your ear amplified." ]
How does propulsion work in the vacuum of space?	[ "We use conservation of momentum. You can gain momentum in the direction you want to travel if you throw mass the other direction. In most cases, we use the gas that the thrusters expel. The momentum of the gas points backwards, and to ensure that the total momentum sums up to zero, the rocket must gain momentum fo...	[ "What about erm... ejaculation? Would that propel you?" ]
How does turning a computer off and back on solve so many problems?	[ "It clears out problems caused by stuff being incorrectly stored in cache/ memory. When you restart it forces all those programs to recommit items to memory in the hope that it does a better job the next time around." ]	[ "The outside of cells and virus cells are covered in chemicals. Different cells are covered in different chemicals. Specific chemicals stick to other specific chemicals. Other chemicals don't do anything. It can help to think of it like many different colors of velcro. Blue velcro only sticks to blue velcro, it doe...
How can Microsoft implement Bash in Windows if it is licensed under GPL	[ "Microsoft isn't modifying Bash burying it inside of Windows, they're modifying Windows so that you can run Bash on it. The GPL (v2) wouldn't prohibit MSFT from shipping a modified copy of Bash with Windows anyways. The GPL just requires MSFT to share their modifications. If they took part of Bash & included it in ...	[ "Basically from what I understand there's a few simple reasons. One, it's too make sure there is no risk of those people making money off of their IP. Two, that runs the risk of bad press." ]
If sunspots are cooler areas on the sun, wouldn't having more sunspots make the earth cooler?	[ "You're right that sunspots themselves are (slightly) cooler than the rest of the sun, but they're also indicative of high levels of activity on the sun's surface. It's these high levels of solar activity that heat the Earth, not the actual sunspots. Also, not related to your question, but I wouldn't take these pre...	[ "UPDATE! A colleague with superior google skills figured it out. It's caused by many nocturnal species of birds that tend to migrate southward behind cold fronts. Their nocturnal migration appears around radar locations as a circular formation with radars that are behind a cold front showing larger, darker formatio...
Now that Mother Teresa is Saint Teresa, how does her image change in the minds of Christians?	[ "Catholics and Christians already held Mother Teresa in a Saint like regard, so her getting actual Sainthood doesn't actually change very much. As for her position, technically she isn't \"worshiped\", but she will be prayed to for people seeking guidance, and she now has a \"Feast Day\" (September 5th) where Catho...	[ "You know how glass can fracture, but still kind of stay in place until someone touches it? Yoko Ono can be seen as that touch. But really, she was an easy scapegoat that allowed the Beatles to break-up without it being the fault of any one Beatle." ]
How is the price of stock determined?	[ "A company needs money to operate. To earn money, it can sell \"ownership\" to people for a price. Those bits of \"ownership\" are called stocks. Once the company has sold its stocks to a person, he can sell it to another person, who can sell it to another person, etc. All these people selling each other stocks ...	[ "They hire a guy and record him saying a bunch of popular names." ]
Why are sage and salt used to keep "bad spirits" out?	[ "Centuries old connotations derived from folk lore and religion. Salt is used to purify and preserve food, so it is seen to do the same in a spiritual manner. Thus you can purify an area with the ritualistic casting of salt in some belief systems, and impure things (such as ghosts) cannot cross a boundary line dra...	[ "You could test it. E.g. cover yourself in grease and then shower 1) with water only 2) with water and the product. Compare results. That would be a (pretty crude) experiment, which is how we learn answers to those kinds of questions. Also you could compare two pieces of perishable food, one of them treated with th...
Why do people like knowing celebrities' life?	[ "Because their recognition of those celebrities makes them unconsciously think of them as part of their social group. So they're interested in their activities in the same way they're interested in the activities of their friends and family. Moreover, unlike their actual friends and family, celebrities have PR reps...	[ "So we can see the light from the parent star. We watch stars for the very slight dimming that occurs when a planet transits (crosses the face of the star relative to Earth). By watching the planet transit the star, we can find out about its orbit and its mass by watching how much the parent star wobbles due to b...
What makes some photos grainy, and what can I do to prevent it?	[ "Photos become grainy when there is not enough light being captured so the signal to noise ratio is low, typically it happens in low-light environments like at night. You need to open the aperture more, or if that is not an option, increase the ISO (sensitivity) or lengthen the exposure time. If you have the option...	[ "A lot is also due to comparison. When one watches the news, they see footage from 10,000$ + studio cameras. These shoot full HD and are tripod mounted, so a shaky camera phone, which isn't the same quality as the studio will be noticed more." ]
How do Penny Auctions like _URL_0_ work?	[ "Quite simply it's a scam. From what I understand, you join the site but have to purchase 'credits' to bid on stuff. You can bid on things only in small increments, therefore penny auctions. Often times by the time you bid on something and win it, with what you paid in credits you may as well have just bought the i...	[ "They have a pre-authorized list that people select from, and it has a pretty wide selection, meaning that there are songs for everyone. Other people like \"Pants on the Ground\" make their own songs, which they would obviously have rights to." ]
Okay r/askscience: What are these mysterious blue spheres?	[ "Wow... they're water beads/water pearls/hydrated polymer beads. _URL_0_ They're used to decorate flower arrangements or hold water in potting soil. Either he had them in his garden soil or his wife/neighbor threw them there. MAYBE they got sucked up in the air, but I'd bet money against it." ]	[ "[Floaters](_URL_0_), little bits of the jelly in your eyeball that clump together and become visible." ]
Is it really possible to "steal" electricity from high voltage lines via induction?	[ "depends on what you mean by practicable, if you want a reliable and safe source of power you'll need a lot of expensive equipment, if you just wrap a coil around the line you'll receive low power high voltage wich is very hard to work with and electrocuting yourself in the process of assembling your construction i...	[ "For that you need mountains, with two lakes above each other, and a river to replenish the evaporated water. Most, if not all suitable sites are already used for that. *Construction is expensive, and the energy content is relatively low. As a theoretical exercise you can calculate the 'lake' sizes and heigh...
Gaseous Planets, is there a core? Can we technically fly through them?	[ "Yes, they have cores, usually described as rocky. Most of the rest of the planet is not actually in a gaseous state either; in Jupiter and Saturn it's liquid metallic hydrogen (when compressed sufficiently, hydrogen starts to behave like a metal) transitioning to liquid but non-metallic hydrogen and finally hydrog...	[ "There's little to no air inside you, other than your lungs. So you can't reduce the volume of your intestines, but you can move them elsewhere. When you suck in your stomach, notice that your ribs move. This sucks your insides up toward your chest cavity." ]
What does a cpu core do when no program is using it?	[ "Unused cores are \"idling\". They are basically doing nothing (actually doing \"NOOP\"=\"no-operation\" commands every cycle, afaik) while waiting for some work to arrive. Modern CPUs are often able to underclock them on the fly, i.e. run idle cores at lower speeds, which preserves energy and helps with cooling." ...	[ "The Cerebral Cortex is the highest area of your brain, and where all of your consciousness is found. Any higher complex conscious thoughts, and any conscious perceptions, thoughts, or actions all occur in/originate from the Cerebral cortex. Obviously this requires a lot of neurons, and these neurons are all found ...
Why do we use tires full of air instead of solid rubber tires or another type of tire?	[ "If it was made of solid rubber we would feel every rock and divit, the air helps with shock." ]	[ "Inflatable beach balls are mostly empty space, too. The thing is, light bounces off the outside surface of the beach ball and back into our eyes, just like it bounces off the electrons around an atom's nucleus." ]
The holographic universe theory	[ "The amount of information that's possible to store in a given chunk of space depends on its surface area instead of its volume. This is weird; the number of hard drives or sheets of paper you can store depends on volume, so why would a more efficient storage medium only scale with surface area? You can mathemati...	[ "_URL_0_ The Geography of Time by Robert Levine. Blew my mind the first time I read it." ]
Why does the rest of the world have to change it's behavior if the US re-imposes sanctions on Iran? What consequences do other nations face if they continue to trade with Iran?	[ "The consequences are that the US will impose fines, seize assets, or even imprison those who are engaged in trade with Iran. Enough companies which do international business have operations within the control of the US (or US allies) that this is a credible threat. The extensions are a grace period to allow compan...	[ "The simple answer is to ask another question: what would you allow through this firewall and what would you block? A firewall isn't automatic and it isn't magic. You can't get a firewall which blocks \"bad stuff\". It works on rules. You tell it what to block and what to let through. China has made one which block...
Why is the first episode of a tv series called “pilot”.	[ "adjective 1. done as an experiment or test before introducing something more widely. * \"a two-year pilot study\" * synonyms: experimental, exploratory, trial, test, sample, speculative; preliminary * \"a pilot project\"" ]	[ "Stage 1's cost a TON of money. Basically, the Stage 1 in all previous missions was destroyed and landed in a random position in the ocean, and that means things were VERY expensive and unorganized. It's like, if you were going to buy flights to another country, someone would have to rebuild the entire plane from s...
It's 2015... why can we still not bold and italicize text messages?!?	[ "part 1: encoding & transmission. Tags for italics and bold aren't big in their own, but give a few hundred million people access to it and you'll suddenly have a pretty noticeable spike of data usage across a given carrier, just for the perk. part 2: ease of doing it. Texting is a pretty well learned art. We've al...	[ "Cost, safety which is a component of cost, and the reception of the consumer to having to order and pay in some kind of interface when a large group of people can't even figure out credit card terminals at the grocery store. Additionally, wherever the food comes out you'd have to make sure it got I the right perso...
How is powerful acid stored without eating away its container?	[ "Highly inert materials are used. Frequently glass or a dense polymer. \"powerful acid\" simply describes a highly reactive solution that reacts in a certain manner. You simply have to pick a material that resists the particular chemical reaction the solution favors." ]	[ "The photovoltaic installations I know about don't have batteries. They store energy in the electricity grid by selling excess power. IMHO the biggest danger would be falling off the roof while installing them, or being sued if somebody else falls off the roof." ]
Why do the GBA versions of SNES-ported games have washed-out colors?	[ "Because they were designed to be displayed on a GBA screen and not a TV screen which almost certainly doesn't have the same color depth, among other physical hardware differences." ]	[ "Now, I am not an expert, but I know a bit about wine. I do wine and beer brewing and have read up on the subject fairly extensively. With wine there can be sulfur compounds added to it. Some people are allergic or react to it and it can cause headaches. The entire reason to do it with wine is for sterilization. Wh...
Why is fish (specifically salmon) always served with a piece of lemon?	[ "Historically lemon helped reduce the fishy odor of seafood. So it’s just become a tradition. Like fries and ketchup." ]	[ "Imma answer your question, but first let me tell you about this time I watered the lawn on a warm july afternoon, there were clouds in the sky and childrens laughter.... ok seriously, who knows, maybe they just like to hear themselves type, or create an emotional connection to the recipe, perhaps they are just kil...
Why are all animals symmetric, yet plants are not?	[ "Actually, not all plants are asymmetrical (think of flowers like the Tiger Lily, or palm trees, or vines, for example), and not all animals are symmetrical (think of sea sponges, or flatfish, or placozoans). And no animal is truly perfectly symmetrical, of course. But I get your point. Some degree of symmetry is...	[ "Disclaimer: amateur astronomer. I have a clue, but no guarantee that I'm right! In the past, large telescopes like the 200\" at Mt. Palomar would be just one large circular mirror. When you try to scale up much beyond that, you get problems like the mirror sagging under its own weight, ruining the image. The moder...
If I walked out of a spaceship naked, into the near vacuum of space, would I be hot or cold?	[ "Are you exposed to sunlight or shielded from it by a shadow? In a vacuum the temperature difference between lit and shaded sides can get very extreme." ]	[ "I don't have the requisite knowledge to fully answer your question, but: > Would the oxygen in your suit be enough for the blood to spill red, or will it be blue? Your blood is never blue. Oxygenated blood is bright red. Un-oxygenated blood is dark red. Your veins look blue because of how light is absorbed and sc...
Canada vs. The Colonies	[ "I have answered a similar question before [here](_URL_0_). And there is also a section in the FAQ about [Canada's involvement in the American Revolution](_URL_1_) that might shed some more light. The TL;DR version is that, yes, they were viewed as separate because Quebec was populated by French-speaking Catholics,...	[ "For clarification: are you asking about what battle strategies/tactics were like, or are you asking if we know pre-Colombian American war history (what battles were fought between whom, when, etc.)?" ]
When I kill an ant with my finger what is that smell it leaves behind?	[ "My guess would be formic acid. That is the pain caused by their sting." ]	[ "It's called the oligodynamic effect. Here you can read about it, but usually it's pretty easy to google these types of questions: _URL_0_ Apparently several heavy metals do it including copper (Brass is an alloy of copper) and silver. Basically heavy metal ions bond with bits of proteins in bacteria and make them ...
Why is the life expectancy of foxes so short?	[ "Essentially nature is a cruel bastard, and life is hard. In the wild foxes (and other canines) are subject to many diseases, parasites, and competition from other predators cutting their lives shorter than their potential maximum. In captivity foxes live roughly as long as their domestic counterparts, with access ...	[ "Depends on what level the study is at. Look at people who regularly eat lots of red meat and bacon, and compare it to people who don't If there is a difference in cancer rates between the two groups, something is causing a higher rate of cancer. Maybe work place exposure, food, lifestyle etc. Then take genetically...
Does the concept of physical beauty exist in the animal kingdom or is it all about non verbals?	[ "You may want to look into sexual selection, specifically intersexual selection: _URL_0_ Sorry I cannot provide a more elaborate answer right now." ]	[ "I think they base their flight-instinct more on touch, and sense your approach through the disturbance in the air." ]
Why are you hungrier the morning after an abnormally large meal?	[ "There was a thread about it a few weeks ago and IIRC it's that if you don't eat anything your sugar level rises during night so you wake up without need to eat. Whereas when you eat a lot your body doesn't have enough time after digesting to reach optimal level and you wake you with a low one and you have a need t...	[ "Dude, I typically experience the opposite, usually you're wiped out before making the trip back, and energized and active on the way there." ]
Why was the NYC transformer fire blue?	[ "The core of the transformer is usually solid iron, or iron-infused ceramics. Atomic iron (II) burns gold in normal flame, but bright blue in an electric arc, such as in a damaged transformer. I would guess that the transformer used iron-infused ceramics, since the smaller pieces of iron would burn much easier, exp...	[ "I've found out what it was - orange-ish dust has been picked up by Hurricane Ophelia and spread across the atmosphere." ]
What does “life at low Reynold’s number” mean?	[ "It refers to a paper that details motion for microscopic life. The Reynolds number is a science/engineering term for the amount of inertia in a moving fluid. Low Reynolds number means low inertial forces, which means viscous flows (like molasses or tar). At microscopic scales, there’s very little inertia. Swimming...	[ "Basically if you plot the image density versus integrated energy on a pixel, you will find that no system is perfectly linear. Even the time of exposure (shutter speed) can affect the results. Film was especially bad in this respect. And lead to things like [\"Black lightning\"](_URL_1_) on photographs. Caused by ...
What is the difference between threads and cores of a cpu?	[ "Cores and threads are 2 different things. I think you're curious about why sometimes a quad core processor (for instance) can show up in your system as 8 cores. Think of a thread as a stream of data. Data streams down a thread to the core, where it is then processed. The core is a processor, and it does the proces...	[ "Trademarks are for things to do with branding, like logos, slogans, brand names etc.. Copyrights are for creative works like books, films, music, web sites etc.." ]
when we walk or press surfaces hard are we killing viruses and bacteria like some unseeing giants of a microverse or are they too small for us to physically affect?	[ "Yes and No. Bacteria are small enough that the surface of the bottom of your shoe (and the surface you are walking on) are full of relative valleys and troughs - very much large enough in which to be kept away from the crushing forces. That said, it's certainly true that some are killed - e.g. that bacteria sitti...	[ "Context. The thought was formed in one environment and an association created. When you pass through a doorway you're passing into a new context and the association is lost." ]
How do people sequence DNA from fossils?	[ "You generally can't. DNA has a pretty significant decay rate, and anything that has reached the point of being fossilized likely lacks anything approaching a recoverable genome. Low temperatures can slow this rate, but even below freezing you still see almost complete loss within a few million years." ]	[ "Go to a new area of Australia (or wherever). Comb one acre very carefully, cataloging every species. Figure out how many new species there are. Do this in a few different places, figure out about how many new species there are in general, and extrapolate." ]
Why does butter soften before melting, while ice just goes from solid to liquid?	[ "Ice is (reasonably) pure water. Butter is a mix of water, milk fats, and other dairy solids, all with different melting points. As it comes up to temperature, some of those molecules melt earlier than others, and the butter becomes softer as a result." ]	[ "Water is really great at transferring heat energy out of you (that's what the sensation of cold is, the transfer of heat out of your body). Air, not as good. & #x200B; Put 2 benches in a room at, say 20 degrees C. One is made of stainless steel, one is made of wood. & #x200B; Both of them will measure at 20 degr...
Books on the U.S.S.R.'s decline and the Soviet-Afghan war?	[ "There is a huge book called The Wars of Afghanistan by Tomsen which which does a great job at covering the Soviet/Afghan portion of Afghan history. The Soviet/Afghan relationship was ridiculously complicated but Tomsen explains it more precisely than I usually see it explained." ]	[ "That is a question with a very big answer. Fortunately there exists online sources which can provide such information in an in-depth manner. The first of these is the Circle of Iranian Studies: _URL_0_ There is also this extensive list of material by Kaveh Farrokh: _URL_2_ The last of these is a text called Persia...
Why does sunburned skin feel warmer than usual?	[ "Because it is. Blood has moved to it (just like any other injury) in an attempt to heal it. It also increases the temperature to acceleration the healing process (biological processes generally happen faster in the warmer environments)." ]	[ "Basically, the people/objects absorbed some of the radiation and acted as a shield. The 'shadow' is the part of the surface behind them that was shielded by the body/object and not burned as much as the rest of the surface." ]
I have a history degree and I will have a computer science degree next December. What can I contribute to the field of history?	[ "A huge amount of historical data needs crunching--but there are also a lot of GIS applications in history, and that's just if you want to be self-directed (which can be hard to get money for, I know). But as /u/bitparity points out, creating tools may be quite lucrative if you go to work for an organization that d...	[ "> TL;DR If you looked at some point and moment in/after the heat death, could you reverse the clock and reconstruct the universe as it was before? Or, is the heat death a kind of point of no return for information? You could theoretically do this, but you would have to know literally every piece of information in ...
How does a ballbot (a robot that balances and navigates on a single ball) stay balanced? They look like they could easily tip over.	[ "Have you ever tried balancing a long pole or stick on its end with your hands? You have to move your hands towards the direction the stick is falling to keep it upright, and with a little practice your can do so pretty reliably, even while you walk around. Now imagine if we replace your hand with a motorized ball...	[ "So, the fact that the earth is rotating fast compared to the position of the moon causes tides in our oceans. Simplified, the presence of the moon is dragging a lot of water all around the planet every day. This costs energy, of course, and that energy is taken from the Earth's rotational speed. Simplified, the pr...
The reason for the fear of global warming when climate changes such as the Ice Age have occurred before	[ "Fear of climate change is fear for ourselves, not for the planet. Earth will survive until the sun engulfs it regardless of the changes we are responsible for, but mankind is only capable of living through so much." ]	[ "Because critics are full of shit. Most of the art world for example called Jackson Pollock \"Jack the Dripper\" until a wealthy hotel magnate bough one of his works and put it in the lobby. Then Pollock was a genius. Critics hate to be on the wrong side of history so they never have an issue it seems changing thei...
Why do we cook steak to certain degrees i.e. medium rare or well done, but not other meats like chicken?	[ "Uncooked meet can make you sick because of bacteria or parasites that are present in the meet. Chicken, for example, can be contaminated with Salmonella. The kinds of bacteria that exist on beef, require access to air in order to live. Therefore the bacteria can only exist on the outside of the meet. This is the o...	[ "Non-musicians don't give a shit about solos, they just think they're boring because they don't know how difficult it is for the musician to do what they're doing. Back in the day it was all about \"what band has the best guitarist?\" \"What band has the best drummer?\" Now it's all about \"What band has the catch...
How did we get back from the moon?	[ "The lander and command module both had rockets on them. They of course could be a lot smaller as they have to launch much, much smaller objects and don’t have as large of a gravity well to overcome. [Video of the Apollo 17 lander leaving the moon.](_URL_0_) [Picture of the Apollo Command module](_URL_1_)." ]	[ "They use [reaction wheels](_URL_0_) in most cases, which run continuously and only need some electrical power to run. The main drawback is that they wear over time and eventually fail, so engineers often put spares if missions are expected to last for long time." ]
Can you use an iPhone in space?	[ "You'd probably get no signal, though that doesn't interfere with scrolling through pages and opening apps. The absence of gravity could confuse your phone's accelerometer. I don't know if iPhone shows horizonal screens the way other smarphones (like Androids) do, I assume yes. You'd probably get unexpected layout ...	[ "How would you get it there? Pound for pound, going to the moon is expensive. Really expensive. How would you service them? Getting a technician up there is really really expensive. How would you protect them? Earth has mild temperatures and magnetic protection from solar flares. The Moon doesn't." ]
Was Japan's Meiji Restoration inevitable?	[ "Whether or not it was inevitable is impossible to argue, because we don't know how Japan would have turned out if Perry didn't arrive. However, the major political driving force for the revolutionaries was without a doubt caused by, directly or indirectly, western contact. The actions of the sonnō jōi movement, ...	[ "I'd like to ask a follow-up question. When do the Medes start disappearing from the historical record? I recall Atilla called himself \"King of the Medes\" (among many other titles). Were they assimilated into the \"Iranian\" (or Persian) identity of the Sassanid Empire?" ]
Kaiser's reaction to WWII?	[ "Wilhelm left Germany in November 1918 and spent the rest of his life in Doorn, a small Dutch town. During the remainder of his life, he remained ambivalent towards the Nazis. He expressed his distaste when the \"Reichskristallnacht\" took place in 1938, but sent a congratulatory note after the German victory over ...	[ "There was a quite good documentary ([Kanalinseln im Krieg](_URL_4_)) on german television a few weeks ago (I just found, it's at least a year old), and I don't know if those ever get translated into english. But it might be a starting point, and maybe you can find a subbed version on the net the [BBC](_URL_5_) has...
How Japan is JUST NOW banishing Child Pornography	[ "Simply answer: Different culture means different views on stuff like that. Opinion: Even now, I feel like it was done as a result of foreign cultural influence." ]	[ "Hi there -- while we've approved this question, we would like to remind potential respondents of our [current events](_URL_0_) (AKA \"20-year\") rule -- it's fine to discuss events through 1997 (inclusive) and their effects, but not events after 1997. Thanks!" ]
What in history made Mexico so different from Canada and the U.S.?	[ "not discouraging more contributions on the topic here, but FYI there are some responses in this earlier post [Why is Mexico less powerful and less affluent than Canada or U.S.A.?](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "This submission has been removed because it is [soapboxing](_URL_1_.), [promoting a political agenda, or moralizing](_URL_0_). We don't allow content that does these things because they are detrimental to unbiased and academic discussion of history." ]
Do portable magnet detectors exist?	[ "There are portable magnetic detectors, but a small REE magnet at 2 meters is... a lot to ask of them. Maybe a metal detector would be a better choice, but even that is going to have to be a hell of a lot close than 2 meters; you can't escape the rapid dropoff of EM intensity with distance." ]	[ "search askscience for a better answer but it would have to be very strong, I think there might be affects before you get strong enough to make the dimagnetism of water what kills you" ]

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