Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
During WW2 how common was "add-on" armor on tanks for both sides? What kind of DIY upgrades would we see?	[ "It's also worth noting that pretty much all the attempts to put this stuff on the tanks actually made matters worse, mechanically. They provided necessary stand-off distances for the primitive shaped charge rounds, or normalized kinetic energy rounds. In order to make the tank sufficiently armored to provide a mea...	[ "If you're new to the thread, please don't post the Mythbusters episode again. Mythbusters is entertaining but it's not history (or more specifically, it's not historical proof of anything.) The short answer is no, not that we know of. /u/davidaop, our pirate expert, and I have both answered [questions about th...
Ancient Chinese Beliefs	[ "How ancient are you talking? Chinese history spans a long history, many groups have come and gone. In all seriousness, first you must realize that there is not one \"Chinese People\" within China there are hundreds of different ethic groups all living in various regions, mostly throughout history completely sepa...	[ "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\"." ]
Is it possible, that while I was a toddler for an infinitley small amount of time I was Pi years old?	[ "Pi is infinite so you could not pinpoint the exact moment. However, we know that at one point you were 3.14 years old, and then some time later you were 3.15 years old. AND you existed for the entire time between, so we can say with certainty that you were exactly Pi years old at some point in there." ]	[ "Nice work, you've discovered Olbers' Paradox :) This was a much-discussed problem in antiquity. _URL_0_ Take a read of the wiki page, it's very good at explaining. And ask away if there is more you want to know." ]
how do we store electricity; on a large city scale what is used to "hold on to" power?	[ "Cities don't really store electricity. Instead, electricity is constantly being generated and fed into the grid. If there's too much or not enough energy being produced, a central monitoring station will send the message to adjust output to generating stations. The reason for this is that it's really hard to store...	[ "> I understand that it stays radioactive for thousands of years but what warrants the construction of storage facilities that need to last longer that civilization on Earth? We don't really plan for civilization to end. If you know how long civilization is going to last then by all means let the rest of us know, b...
Why do NFL team records fluctuate from year to year	[ "If anyone knew the real concrete answer to that then they'd be the world's best general manager There are numerous reasons from player injuries, chemistry, age, etc. Also the first team in the conferences get schedules each year to correlate to their previous year's schedule. This means first place teams last year...	[ "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." ]
How can yeast produce THC?	[ "Disclosure: I know one of the members of the company profiled, though we've never talked about this work. This is done by introducing biosynthetic enzymes into a yeast. If the pathway that a plant uses to make the compound is known, you can clone the genes, insert them into the yeast, and then make sure they have ...	[ "We don't know the details, because it is very difficult to study because it is still an illegal drug in many places or there has not been enough time yet to legally study it." ]
What wars saw engagements between propeller and jet driven aircraft?	[ "Prop driven aircraft are [used in irregular warfare](_URL_0_) so in theory an airstrip strafing run that hits a few jets can happen any-time. This hits the subs 20-year+ limit though." ]	[ "[We don't want to fight, But by Jingo if we do, We've got the ships, We've got the men, And got the money too. Right to this link.](_URL_0_) It has musical files, too, although I don't know if they will suit your purpose. The wording looks original in the lyrics. The cartoons are harder to place, but a lot of the ...
AMA: Selling the Congo and Belgian imperialism	[ "So when the Congo was handed over from Leopold's personal control to the Belgian government what exactly changed in the colony? What improved, what didn't improve, etc? Also how did the Belgians justify the takeover of the colony to their people? It seems like having your government step in because your monarch i...	[ "Unfortunately, AskHistorians only deals with what did happen, not what might have happened and I've therefore had to remove your post. However, your question would be perfect for /r/HistoricalWhatIf, should you wish to cross-post. Thank you." ]
Physics Question: Why is it difficult to inflate a balloon at first, when it's completely deflated, but then becomes much easier to inflate once there's air in it?	[ "There is an explanation on wikipedia under the title [Two balloon experiment](_URL_0_). It seems to confirm that the pressure in a balloon reduces once its radius is greater than 1.38 of the starting point. The physics behind the stretching of a balloon is surprisingly complicated!" ]	[ "A lot of the sensation of being hungry comes from your brain and not your stomach. You often feel hungry in response to changes in your blood sugar level rather than the fullness or emptyness of your stomach or intestines. When you actually do feel pain or discomfort from your abdomen while being hungry, that mean...
Do automobiles go from 60 to 120 slower/faster than they do 0 to 60?	[ "Yes. The faster a vehicle is travelling, the greater the force slowing it down is (it's travelling on more road per second, so there's more retarding force). In the 60-120 region, the car has to maintain 60mph as well as increasing it's speed. Hope that clears it up for you!" ]	[ "I'm familiar with this behaviour in blackbirds in the UK. It sounds as though the birds you describe are doing the same thing. You have correctly identified that not all birds do this - different species have typical responses to threats and flying fast and low is one such response. Unfortunately for the bird it i...
Particle Physicists - Why do we need the strong force to break CP-symmetry?	[ "In addition to jimmycorpse's great answer: The theta term is the coolest thing in the standard model. In principle, as it's a boundary term, you would just disregard it. But the problem is that each different theta means literally a different vacuum. Because of instantons we are able to measure the theta from the ...	[ "The General Secretary, Gorbachev, made the fatal decision to reform the country by allowing some freedom of speech (glasnost') and economics (perestroika) but without backing everything with the same iron fist all his predecessors used. It turned out that force was all that was really holding things together, an...
What is the deal with the newly discovered organ? How come we didn't categorize it before?	[ "The \"new\" organ is the mesentery, which has been known about for many years (it was in my medical terminology classes years ago). What's new is they decided it's structure is continuous enough to be it's own organ, as opposed to being a feature of another organ (the colon)" ]	[ "Imagine you're trying to find a coffee shop in a city. If you've been there recently, it should be pretty easy to find. If it's been 10 years since you've been to the coffee shop or the city, it might take you a LONG time to find. It also might take long to find if you've been to other, similar coffee shops in the...
What the main differences in file organization of Windows, Linux, and OSX? And their strengths and weaknesses?	[ "Mac and Linux have similar file organizations, so I will treat them as one for now. Windows basically divides everything into drives, both real and virtual, and gives them letters. A drive can be a lot of things, a partition on a hard drive, a cd, a network folder, etc. One drive is considered the main drive, usua...	[ "Used to work as an IT admin for a reasonably large company. Yes I had access to mail stores, network shares and just about every non-encrypted file on the domain. No, never had a good reason to look at anything I shouldn't. Any IT department worth their salt has audit logging for that kind of thing. Basically if ...
If you submerged a powerful magnet in water and then froze it, would the magnet have any impact on the way the ice forms?	[ "Application of an electric or magnetic field can significantly affect the freezing characteristics of water. A DC electric field will tend to induce ice nucleation at a lower degree of supercooling, and there is evidence to show that an AC electric field delays the onset of ice nucleation. Industrial research has ...	[ "Heat transfer depends on the difference between the two temperatures, so a hot object placed in the cold will cool down faster at first and slower later after its temperature has dropped part of the way. (Things like airflow or mixing the drink can have huge effects by pulling heated/cooled air away from the objec...
Why does 80 degrees feel so much warmer when you're indoors than it does outdoors?	[ "Air fluctuations, air pressure and humidity have great influence on how the skin perceive temperature." ]	[ "Another possible answer that has Ben discussed is this: When you are 5, and have a birthday party, you haven't had many birthdays and so your brain is working very hard to remember, absorb, and understand, all of the workings of a birthday. This is why time 'feels' long when we are younger, our brains notepad is w...
COD and COI in french.	[ "Please, let's not have ELI5 turn into Homework Help. And if this isn't homework help (which is definitely is), then please write something like \"ELI5 direct object and indirect object in French grammar\" Also, guideline #1: > Please begin your titles with \"LI5\" or \"ELI5\" if you are looking for an explanati...	[ "As stated already, you always need reception, there's no way around that. To explain the lack of SIM, you need only look at the meaning of the abbreviation: Subscriber Identity Module. A SIM is not actually required to make a phone call, it's just required to identify you and associate your phone with ...
What makes the biology of super carnivores so that they don't develop cardiovascular disease from an all meat diet like we would?	[ "There's decent evidence that humans can go on an all-meat or an almost all meat diet for an extended period of time without developing CVD at an elevated rate. Arctic and east african peoples both do or did live on almost all meat diets for extended periods, without CVD as a major health issue. Instead of CVD - wh...	[ "As a reminder, [top-level answers](_URL_0_) in this community need to be \"comprehensive and imformative.\" Single-links to Wikipedia and unsourced opinions do not clear that bar. This question already rests on a part of history hamstrung by the fuzzy diagnostics of diseases in the past and an almost unavoidable b...
How do websites like silk road ship drugs without getting caught?	[ "Because silk road was an eBay, not an amazon. Users were the ones doing the shipping, not the business. That means regular mail as usual, not shipments from one single location." ]	[ "Most simply, the same reason hundreds of boats do not crash into each other in the open ocean, planning and a HUGE amount of space per object." ]
How do dentist tooth x-rays work?	[ "The lead apron is to protect your organs, especially the reproductive organs, because if they are not looking at these areas it is not worth it to expose them to the radiation. Dental x-rays actually use the least amount of radiation of any x-rays. Dental x-rays put about about the same amount of radiation as you ...	[ "Doesn't happen to people in real life, no. I always assumed that the cartoon version was a joke along the lines of turning the person into a light bulb and showing the bright bones like the filament of the light, glowing brightly." ]
Why the venus project (or zeitgeist if they're both the same) is a bad thing	[ "The people that tell you the Venus project is a bad thing are people that are too happy making money off of others." ]	[ "Hi OP, just a tip: generally speaking, the flaired users here aren't too keen on sifting through hours of posts/blogs/articles/films/videos/podcasts in order to write a critique. Your post will have a better chance in getting responses if you can save potential respondents the legwork by isolating a few items you'...
On what points did Adlai Steveson criticize such a respected and popular public figure as Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election?	[ "In 1952, Stevenson campaigned on the record of the Democratic Party since 1932. The argument was basically that it would be better to trust the legacy of the New Deal to the party that created it than to the GOP, which they called the \"Party of Hoover.\" The problem with that strategy is that it was the same one ...	[ "I have taken an interest in the Pacific Campaign and the history of naval aviation and am now looking for recommended reading. On my shortlist so far: Title \| Authors ---\|--- Pacific Crucible and sequels \| Ian W. Toll Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway\| Jonathan Parshall & Anthony Tully ...
How does one time a photons movement?	[ "You're right that light does not experience time in its own frame (or that it doesn't properly have a frame in the first place). But in our frame, we can think of light as a wave with changing phase. If we observe a coherent light beam at a given point, the angle of the light will rotate at a rate proportional to ...	[ "You can't see it with the naked eye, but special machines can. If you know the exact distance between 2 points A and B, and you can measure how long it takes light to go from A to B, you have all you need." ]
Why are the Republicans winning so many seats (in the both houses)?/ or why are the democrats losing them?	[ "> it seems to me that the Republicans are on the wrong side of most issues when it comes to public opinion [That is not the case](_URL_0_). Some of the Republicans' advantage in the House can be attributed to gerrymandering, but the economy and jobs are the top issues of the day, and generally speaking, that hurts...	[ "There are a few factors at work here : Moſt chairs are deſigned to ſit at about knee height ; they generally ſupport your back, and more importantly, your butt and legs. Toilets are uſually lower, and they are made with a large hole in the middle, into which you ſink a little. This lower height, lack of ſupport,...
Why do shadows have fuzzy edges?	[ "The light source isn't an exact point of origin, but rather (in general) has some size and shape. Your picture, for example, is obviously lit from a lamp or fluorescent of some kind. The part that is 'fuzzy' is the part that only some of the lamp is shining on, where the other part is blocked by the cup. The res...	[ "IIRC it's basically your brain's way of saying \"there's no input, can't determine exactly but here's where I estimate it should be\", and fuzzing that estimation for inaccuracy. Basically, making your toungue seem fat makes it so you are more careful to avoid it with your teeth." ]
What effects are responsible for the light shows of helicopter blades?	[ "Turns out this only happens in [sandy environments](_URL_0_). The blades kick up the sand, striking it, and causing the sparks you see." ]	[ "The thickness of a thin film like that does vary, and the visual appearance of that rainbow sheen that soap bubbles take on is evidence of that fact--the color that a given point appears to be is caused by [thin film interference](_URL_0_). If it were all the same thickness (and viewed from the same direction) the...
How much power does a charger plugged into a wall use if any at all?	[ "Depends on the quality and design of the particular charger. A good design with quality parts will sip so little power that it's essentially nothing, a bad design can have substantial draw and just dumps the power into the room as heat. To get a very rough idea of how much energy is drawn, touch the charger after ...	[ "Generally in the case of smart phones, manufactures typically rely on a coulomb counter embedded within the device to measure the SoC. Coulomb based measurement would be determined by measuring the current flowing from the device/battery, which in tun would be subtracted against the reference battery capacity to p...
Why do we say that people with red hair have "red" hair when in reality the color is usually much closer to orange?	[ "\"Red\" used to actually refer to the color orange in old/middle English. The word orange actually comes from the fruit first. It is actually really strange to think about how color words evolve. The ancient Greeks had no word for Blue, and actually called the sky a shade of bronze. I believe the Romans had no wo...	[ "They're not. Persian cats and Maine coon cats are breeds - all of them are Felis catus. Asian people and Caucasian people are races - all of them are Homo sapiens sapiens." ]
What do other mammals do with their umbilical cord?	[ "Yep. Most mammals chew through it and eat the scraps. Cleans up the den and puts much needed protein back into mamma. And no joke, I know a woman who as eaten the cord and afterbirth of ALL SEVEN of her children." ]	[ "Most likely it will be sold to schools for dissection by medical students." ]
Suggested sources for female musicians?	[ "It sounds like you'll be able to gather enough information on Elizabethan musicians, but in case you still want to broaden your search, I think singer/dancer-slaves are fascinating. They were often found in ancient cultures (Helenistic Greece, [300 BC](_URL_1_); Roman-Era Greece, [300s AD](_URL_0_)), but I'm a bit...	[ "I honestly don't know what's fun with middle schoolers these days, but the University of Illinois has a \"Teaching with Digital Content\" project you might find useful, [here are lesson plans](_URL_0_) and [here's the digital content collection.](_URL_1_)" ]
The Wizard of Oz is widely regarded as one of the best films of all time. Did the film do anything that was revolutionary or was it just a fun, well-done film?	[ "This won't answer your question head-on - so hopefully someone will drop by with more information - but do see this absolutely charming write-up by /u/and_how in * [When 'The Wizard of Oz' was premiered in 1939, was this film most people's first time seeing a film in color, or had most people already had that expe...	[ "Lenses are round because they're easier to manufacture that way and it means they can be rotated to for zoom without that affecting how the lens works. ~~It's also easier to make a shutter that works in a circle.~~ This just gets the light in and focuses it. The light falls onto a light sensitive detector or film ...
How come touch screens only work when they come in contact with skin and not other things?	[ "Most touch screen sense the increase in capacitance when something conductive gets very close to the screen. Metal or conductive rubber can also affect touch screens. Edit: Capacitance is a property of capacitors. Capacitors are made of two conductors separated by some insulating material. The screen has two inde...	[ "Reading cds is done by reflecting light off each bit. I guess it's comparable to reading Braille where you feel for bumps. If you scratch the cd you no longer get an accurate reflection so you don't know what it's supposed to be. Same way if you damage a Braille book you can't read it anymore." ]
why is it that we use petrol as fuel when alcohol is both cheaper and easier to produce?	[ "There is much less energy per gallon in ethanol than gasoline. It's slightly cheaper, per gallon, and slightly more expensive, per mile. Ethanol is not easy to produce. Most ethanol is produced by converting food into fuel. People need food to eat to keep them alive, it's highly expensive, in terms of lost...	[ "Look at the Mafia bootleggers during and after prohibition. The black market booze made them rich and powerful. When it became legal, they didn't suddenly disappear, but it stopped being open war on the streets for the most part." ]
If a Canadian gets an acting role from a company in LA and the film shooting takes place in Europe, how would they pay their taxes/with what government?	[ "You'd still pay taxes in/to Canada. It depends how long you're working outside of Canada and determination of your factual residency. But for a few weeks or months, no, pay taxes as normal to Canada. If in doubt the lovely people at Canada Revenue's help line can sort you out. _URL_0_" ]	[ "Video sites will often cache popular videos on a server that is very close to you. So an advert, which is viewed by many people, will be streaming from a nearby server, but the actual video, which may be something a bit more obscure, is being served from the other side of the world." ]
Why are murders, rapes, committed crimes and tragedies considered news worthy in the U.S.?	[ "I'm not sure if this exclusively a US thing. We get plenty of stories like this in the UK." ]	[ "There are a lot of people in the world who don't care about laws, or the laws of other countries, or the property rights of other people. For example if you stole a piece of art from someone in England that a wealthy member of the royal family in Saudi Arabia wanted they probably don't care at all that it was stol...
[LI5] Can someone explain Usenet to me?	[ "Usenet is a bulletin board system that has been around almost as long as the internet. Service providers used to provide access for free, but now you have to pay to access them. Usenet, like Reddit, has many different areas for conversation about many topics. Some of those areas include sharing files. Users will p...	[ "Some websites that update (webcomics, blogs, etc) have something called an RSS feed, which you can view in an RSS reader. With an RSS reader you can subscribe to sites with an RSS feed, so that you just have to go to your reader to see all the updates you care about and you don't have to go check them all individu...
Why do we come out of school into the adult world knowing useless information, yet most of us don't know basic CPR and how to save a life?	[ "although lots of what we learn may seem useless, it helps you put into context what is happening today. it helps you form opinions about events and experiences in your lifetime and helps give you the ability to reason and what not. that being said, there is no excuse as to why we don't learn more stuff that can be...	[ "Your employer takes money out of your paycheck throughout the year to pay your local, state, and federal taxes. The amount they take out, however, is just an estimate how much tax you will probably owe at the end of the year. There's no way for the state, local, and federal governments to know what you actually do...
Why do TV shows and films often have their characters using fake social media websites/search engines on screen?	[ "It is considered advertising and there are a few reason they avoid it. 1) It being advertising they want to be paid for it. Most will not pay so they make imitation products. It is the same reason they invent soda or beer brands, and why apple computers will have the apple logo covered or altered. 2) If the prod...	[ "Scenes are carefully choreographed in advance, including the camera angle. That's the behind the scenes you see of the cinematographer walking around holding a lens to their eye. Sometimes, particularly with mirrors, they shoot with a non-plano camera that has a distortion opposite the the effect of shooting at an...
Why is it cheaper power wise for my cell to talk to a GPS satellite vs a local cell tower?	[ "The difference is that the GPS chip in your phone is a receiver. It listens to signals from satellites, then does some calculations based on those signals - but it never transmits. Whereas when your phone connects to a cell tower, it needs to transmit as well as receive. Transmitting is the thing which uses power ...	[ "Satellites are on a set orbit. The scientists put the satellite into that orbit to begin with, so they know when and where in space the satellite is going to be. When they launch a new satellite, they just calculate the appropriate trajectory and launch time to get the new satellite into space without hitting the ...
[astronomy] Is it true that the closer you are to a black hole, the faster you get sucked in?	[ "Every object's gravity is stronger the closer you are to it. Until you get close to its event horizon, a BH's gravity is almost the same as that of ay other object with the same mass." ]	[ "Well, disregarding any physiological effects, drag is proportional to the square of the velocity, so your required energy expenditure will be exponential with an increase in velocity. So super fast would not be good. That being said, there will be some optimum point as going super slow will most definitely not be ...
can a wave be longitudinal and transverse at the same time?	[ "Ocean waves have this. The bits of water move in circles so there's both transverse (uo and down) and longitudinal (back and forth) motion. Similar waves in solids are called Rayleigh waves. Either way, these waves are associated with a boundary between two different materials, for example water and air for ocean ...	[ "Quoting [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) (a bit naughty, but it's a nice way to express what I think): > The proposed theory is inconsistent with quantum mechanics and critics have ruled it out on those grounds. Which is essentially saying what you pointed out, yes. If what they're doing is as easy as it sounds - just runnin...
When someone dies "peacefully in their sleep," what actually happens?	[ "If you think about it, we really have no idea if they actually failed to wake up or not. All we know is they went to bed and we found them there in the morning. Professionally, I've had a lot of patients die, but none that weren't unconscious for a couple of days to begin with. I always put a heart monitor on end ...	[ "Ok, so in the chest cavity between the ribs and lungs there is space, which normally has lower than the atmospheric pressure. This allows the lungs to expand and fill with air when we open our airways and use our breathing muscles. If there is communication between this space and the outside (from a stab wound etc...
What "Socialist" Economies are	[ "The most important lesson is that there is no such thing as a 'capitalist' or 'socialist' society, there are only societies with capitalist or socialist tendencies. When the US government bailed out the banks and auto industry in 2009, that was as close to the definition of nationalisation as you can get. Venezuel...	[ "To add a concrete example to what's already been stated: [The Sahara desert fertilizes the Amazon rainforest.](_URL_0_) Equatorial trade winds carry mineral dust (carbonates and oxides, mostly) from the Bodele depression in the Sahara to South America, significantly increasing the productivity of the Amazon basin....
Why do Reddit servers go down so often, are servers difficult to maintain online status?	[ "I have not spent a very long time in the industry (4 years out of college), but from the companies I have interned at and am now employed at, Reddit must have one of the worst systems administrators of all time. Downtime is considered to be a massive problem, and one that really does not require all that difficult...	[ "Computers run on sets of instructions telling it how to run all the parts of the computer and build an interface so you can use those parts. Say you're following a recipe for a cake. Then you finish the cake and someone comes along with a better way to make a cake by adding another ingredient and changing how muc...
How significant to WWII was Hitler's death at the Le Gamaar cinema in 1944?	[ "If the Allies had failed, Hitler's most trusted scientist, Wilhelm \"Deathshead\" Strasse, would have been able to complete his research concerning large-scale mechanical combat units and the Nazi war machine would come into world domination by about 1950. London would become occupied by a giant, somewhat implausi...	[ "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 /...
Why is it easier to sync a turbine generator system to the grid mechanically rather than just take whatever the output is and sync it to the grid using power electronics?	[ "The frequency of the generator is determined directly by how fast it's rotating. In order to use power electronics to do the job, you would have to generate AC, controlling for frequency and voltage, rectify to DC, then put it through an inverter where you would again have to control for voltage and frequency. Tha...	[ "most producers and DJs, including the ones you've mentioned, are mixing on stage. Live electronic dance music (EDM) is not performed in the same manner as say a rock band, where the performance is split into many parts by the start and end of a new song. EDM is almost always performed as a single non-stop composi...
Were American cowboys as racist as the rest of the country towards black slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries or did they hold a more liberal viewpoint?	[ "Cowboys were never a completely Caucasian group, there were Indian, Mexican and black cowboys. Census records suggest that about 15% of all cowboys were of African-American ancestry—ranging from about 25% on the trail drives out of Texas, to very few in the northwest. [According to this source](_URL_0_), a good ma...	[ "digifox appears to have you covered on the dating of horseshoes. In terms of horses as a work animal, until the advent of the [Horse Collar](_URL_0_) horses weren't super useful for tasks such as pulling plows, carts etc, as they would choke. In Europe this takes a fairly long time to develop (less time in Asia). ...
Why hasn't the price of CF cards gone down with flash drives and SD cards?	[ "Demand. Well, lack of it. Compactflash is a much less popular format than SD cards, and thus the market is much less competitive. Competitive markets mean you can sell a lot of something for razor-thin profit margins, but if you sell less, you need to charge extra on each to profit." ]	[ "Because neither party wants it. For the Republicans, they have a substantial portion of their base which is opposed to minimum wage hikes -- or even a minimum wage at all. For the Democrats, they want the wage raised, but the don't want to lose the issue. Every few years they can run on the idea of raising the wag...
What were some of the great duels and rivalries between historians?	[ "I'll be a jerk and not give names, since I can't remember them, but a buddy and me wrote a treatment for a film about dueling paleontologists during the heyday of bone hunting. these guys would reconfigure the other guy's skeletons into different animals, and once even hopped onto a moving train in order to steal ...	[ "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 the fuck can someone simply resign from a government office to dodge legal accusations?	[ "> adultery is still punishable under the UCMJ > Don't comment on this particular case. But the UCMJ is not enforceable on civilians. Once his resignation was accepted, he was no longer accountable under the UCMJ." ]	[ "I'm not normally one to naysay a request for knowledge, but this is not exactly a topic that can be explained like you were five. It requires a fairly extensive level of prior knowledge and understanding just to pose that question, and any answer posted is likely to be incomplete, wrong, or misleading. Sorry, but ...
Why American films/tv shows look so different to others...	[ "It's partially a technical issue, America has always had a different TV system to most of the rest of the world. Traditionally it was 525 lines and 30 frames a second, whereas almost everywhere else was 625/25. Therefore American programmes have always looked a bit odd here in the UK and there's presumably the sam...	[ "1. Hardware became much cheaper and faster. Your PC has graphic card more powerful than most of render farms in 90s. 2. Software became easier to use and more \"smart\". Some effects are now templates and not required to be done by hands. 3. Footage and skill reusing. People that already put research into how to d...
what is consumer debt?	[ "Consumer debt is the debt that everyday people have (credit cards, home loans, auto notes). It is differentiated from business debt (money borrowed to expand/run a business) and sovereign debt (money borrowed by governments by selling bonds) because the three have very different implications to an economy." ]	[ "Can someone please just eli5? I don't understand any of this. What does this mean for me? A citizen of the United states." ]
How practical is it to duel wield guns?	[ "its pretty terrible. Especially since pistols are already difficult enough to shoot straight" ]	[ "We do. Google \"washer dryer combo\". The reason they're not common is that they are expensive, and you can wash and dry two separate loads at the same time. Edit: typo" ]
Are there any medical benefits to ‘suffering through’ a minor illness without taking medications such as steroids and antibiotics?	[ "No this is one of the big myths that antivaxxers spread. They think you'll be stronger for withstanding the sickness. The immune system isn't like a muscle though. The only long term benefits it gets from fighting an illness is the memory b cells that will produce antibodies against that illness far into the futur...	[ "We weren't always obsessed with terrorists; that's the biggest difference. When we had military engagements, we went in, took care of business, and left. While there might have been government spying then as well, it would have been an even bigger deal when it was uncovered, instead of even somewhat justified. So ...
How do they so accurately determine animal populations?	[ "Generally the scientists studying these animals have a pretty solid understanding of what areas they live in, and so by measuring the population in a few smaller areas, you can make reasonably valid extrapolation as to their overall population. If you know that the range of some species of snake encompasses about...	[ "How do you know a year has passed without looking at a calendar? I imagine they sense the temperature/climate changes like anything else." ]
Why does prolonged screen time make me feel so drained?	[ "A lot of the tiredness comes from your posture. When we sit in front of a screen (or lay down in the same posture for a long time), our muscles strain and tense up. There needs to be movement in our muscles for proper blood flow. The strain in muscles is why we feel tired." ]	[ "Contrary to what people tend to think, sleep quality matters just as much as sleep quantity. Are you sleeping in noisy environment? Is your sleeping environment dark enough (beware of computer lights and whatnot)? Do you drink alcohol often? Do you smoke? All of these things can make you sleep long enough, but...
Why if I drink out of the same glass more times having flu i do not risk to reinfect myself?	[ "Each flu has it's own \"strain\". A type. A shape and identity. Once it gets into your body and starts reproducing, it doesn't matter much if you get a few additional cells of influenza in your body, it's a drop in the ocean. And once your immune system identifies and develops a resistance to it (based on it's s...	[ "Not sure if this helps but what you describe is common for two things. A pan can be old, usually passed down through generations having been seasoned over the years from every meal that was cooked in it. Usually cast iron. The other thing that seems more likely to your question is when someone uses a traditional s...
What happens if Roy Moore refuses to concede his Senate seat?	[ "The loser conceding is a courtesy, not part of the actual election. It doesn't matter whether they concede or not. Whoever won the election by the official count takes the seat." ]	[ "Chivalric romances often played fast and loose with who was and wasn't Muslim. The most famous example of this is the Song of Roland, where the author claims Roland's rearguard was killed by Moors when in fact they were Basques." ]
Why don't fast food chains sell alcohol?	[ "Liquor licenses. Also, most of them are profitable enough that it isn't worth the headache, but I'm pretty sure Chipotle sells beers" ]	[ "Go watch the movie Supersize Me and report back your findings." ]
How was Pi discovered?	[ "Initially, it was done through geometry. If you think about a stop sign, it's sort of round-ish, and it's also very easy to calculate the circumference of an octagon. If one were to double the number of sides (16 instead of 8) it would appear even more circular. Ancient mathematicians simply kept calculating the c...	[ "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 do some stores have a blast of hot air near the entrance?	[ "It doesn't necessarily hot. Any kind of wind at the entrance would kinda separate both environment, usually the temperature difference. Like an air curtain." ]	[ "Someone correct me if I am wrong but it goes back to when we had much hairier bodies and when alarmed we as well as a lot of other mammals would puff up our hair to make ourselves look bigger. Think of how when you scare a dog or a cat it hunches up and its hair stands on end, same thing happens to us just we dont...
When we see pics from Hubble of gas clouds, etc, how dense are these areas? If you were in the midst of it, would it be a noticeable presence, or would it still appear as empty of "regular" space?	[ "There are fewer particles in those clouds than in the best vacuums we can create here on earth. The only reason we can see them is because of their immense size and distance from us." ]	[ "I'm just thinking here: if everything expanded along with space equally, how would we know the universe is expanding?" ]
Why does frozen meat thaw out so much faster when placed in room temp water than if it's just left out on the counter?	[ "Water has a higher specific heat than air, meaning that it can hold more heat than air. In essence, the water has more heat to give to the frozen item than the air does, letting the frozen goods thaw faster." ]	[ "It has do to with what is the most favorable lattice formation (crystalline structure) for the atoms to arrange themselves in. In a liquid, the molecules can pass over each other and pack together to fill the volume. Similar to a gas, without expanding to fill the volume. In solids, the molecules have to arrange ...
Why isn't combination therapy long term?	[ "Combination therapy will increase the number of generations needed to achieve resistance, but it will not increase it to infinity. Pathogenic bacteria will still slowly evolve resistance to the antibiotics, but it gives us more time to come up with novel treatments." ]	[ "This article looks pretty relevant, Neural Correlates of Reexperiencing, Avoidance, and Dissociation in PTSD: [\\[PDF link warning\\]](_URL_0_). Quote from article: > As predicted, state reexperiencing severity was associated positively with right anterior insula activity and negatively with right rostral anterior...
Just what is Burning Man?	[ "The idea is to go to the desert and do whatever, with an art-based focus in mind. Nobody is a spectator, everyone is expected to participate in some form, and people just go bananas in the desert and do drugs and hallucinate vividly and make pieces of installation art or performance art or pretty much any kind of ...	[ "Thank you for your submission! Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): You can find the basic answer with a google / wiki search. Please start there and come back with a more specific question. If you disagree with this decision, please send a [message to the moderators.](_URL...
Why is "suction" not considered real in science terms?	[ "If you put your hand over the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner you feel something pulling your skin into the hose. We call this feeling suction. But, there's nothing actually applying a pulling force. What you're actually feeling is the difference in air pressure between the inside of the hose and the ambient air. The p...	[ "Find a kitchen sponge. Soak it with water. Now try drying it out with a syringe. If you spent enough hours to succeed, the sponge would fall apart from the huge number of holes you've made. And lungs are much bigger than kitchen sponges and the air cavities are smaller. And there are ribs and things in the way too...
Does chugging water hydrate us the same as drinking the same amount slowly?	[ "Your body can only process a certain amount of water within a certain amount of time. Anything extra gets pushed through the system faster. Think of it like putting a bucket under a faucet and another bucket under a waterfall. Your body can only process one bucket at a time, so even though the waterfall will fill...	[ "Hi, this question was asked not too long ago, I recommend you check out this link: _URL_0_ That should answer your question. In short, I believe you would nut suffer from dehydration in the traditional sense, but various other problems arise, which I suggest you explore that link for more info." ]
Why can't we put all our mathematical knowledge into a supercomputer to solve things like the Riemann hypothesis, instead of offering a reward of a million dollars to the human that can?	[ "At this level of mathematics it's not a matter of the math being too hard, it's that no one has ever thought of doing the math in that way. If no one has ever thought of doing the math in that way previously, there's no way we could have a supercomputer do it. One way we have computers solve problems like this is ...	[ "billion dollars industries spend a lot on security. the answer is the same as if you'd have asked \"now that all money is digital, how come someone just doesn't hack millions of dollars into their account\"" ]
What causes the satisfying "pop" in our ears after we yawn from being sick or dropping altitudes?	[ "The uncomfortable feeling that makes you want to yawn is a difference in pressure between your outer ear and your middle ear, which are separated from each other by your eardrum. The act of yawning opens up the Eustachian tubes, which connect the middle ear to the mouth and nose. This allows the pressure in the ea...	[ "Orthopaedic surgeon here... The real answer is that we have no idea. Some people will say that it has to do with pressure changes in the atmosphere and how that effects scar tissue or healing fractures. However, this doesn't pan out when you actually try to look at it. Not everyone gets this sort of pain, and even...
Why do we have eyebrows?	[ "People with eyebrows got laid more than the weird looking baldies so their genes got passed on." ]	[ "Empathy! In humans earlier stages it was important for us to care of our tribe and to care for each other. Thus creating a system for young and old to survive." ]
Is the frozen water on the Moon, Mars and Mercury considered drinkable?	[ "Well, there's no bacteria or viruses, but who knows what other chemicals are dissolved in it." ]	[ "Would depend on what the weather is like and how big the methane lakes are. Not sure but interesting question." ]
Is 95% confidence in a result the same as "the result is 95% likely to be true"? Or are confidence and probability different in this aspect?	[ "There are two viewpoints on this, but neither of them is that the result is 95% likely. In frequentist statistics, the true value of something you are estimating is fixed (albeit unknown) so it doesn't make sense to assign a probability for it to be in a certain range. The 95% means that 95% of the time you make a...	[ "A can beat B in arm wrestling. B can beat C in arm wrestling. So we can deduce that A can beat C in arm wrestling. A has bigger arms than B, so A beats B in arm wrestling. B has bigger arms than C, so B beats C in arm wrestling. A (by deduction) has bigger arms than C, so A beats C in arm wrestling. So by inductio...
Mathematic Intergrals	[ "Consider a graph in the X Y plane. You want to find out how much area is under that graph. So you draw a series of little rectangles under the graph so the bottom is on the x axis and the top has one corner touching the graph. If you make these rectangles really skinny you get a good approximation of what that are...	[ "Have you checked [Wikipedia's article on line integrals](_URL_0_)? There are two animations over there (both created by me, actually - [my Wikipedia gallery](_URL_2_)) explaining the line integral [on a scalar field](_URL_1_) and [on a vector field](_URL_3_). Click on those links to go to each image's description ...
Why does Israel have difficulty with attaks in the Gaza strip? It seems to be a small area that Israel could invade quickly and easily	[ "It's not as though there's a Gaza military that they need to deal with. The problem when fighting terrorists is that you don't know who is a terrorist until they start shooting at you. So, your options are to go in heavy and kill a lot of people who aren't actually threats, go in cautious and sacrifice your own ...	[ "In no particular order: - Loss of revenue. People are installing, and in some cases paying for, apps, whilst bypassing the App Store. - General security. The fact that it's possible to jaolbreak at all shows that there is a hole in their security, which they want to fix before it gets used for nefarious purposes. ...
Why are microwaves used for Microwave Ovens instead of visible or infrared light?	[ "No, a 600 watt incandescent light bulb would not last as long as a magnetron. The heat would be dissipated mostly in the oven walls. It would not penetrate the surface of the food. It would be a conventional oven. Microwaves penetrate around 10mm and they don't heat the walls. The GE trivection oven uses convecti...	[ "They are [smoke rockets](_URL_1_), which are launched to give a reference point for photographic analysis of the bomb's shock wave. Basically they make it easier to see exactly where the shock wave front is, since the shock wave is invisible but it causes the refractive index of air to change (similar to a mirage)...
Why do people typically have exclusively one hair colour while other animals like cats can have patterns of varying colours?	[ "Apes, which are our nearest kin, almost entirely have monochromatic fur. Animals evolve colored fur and skin for two reasons- stealth and sex. Apes have little need for stealth and evolved other characteristics to attract mates besides colors or patterns. Basically, like apes, humans don't need colored hair to pro...	[ "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 is pancreatic cancer so deadly? Can’t the pancreas just be removed completely?	[ "One answer is we only find pancreatic cancer after it has spread. Yes, a surgery can be properly curative but that is very uncommon." ]	[ "Computers run on sets of instructions telling it how to run all the parts of the computer and build an interface so you can use those parts. Say you're following a recipe for a cake. Then you finish the cake and someone comes along with a better way to make a cake by adding another ingredient and changing how muc...
What does the microwave (oven) do differently when heating normally vs defrost mode?	[ "It generally just runs at a lower power and actually cycles being on and off to give the heat it deposits more time to conduct and melt. Otherwise you'd end up with a burnt ~1 cm thick outer layer and an icy inside." ]	[ "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 is it that when listening to music at a fairly high volume its tolerable if you only have one earbud in, but when you put on the second earbud, not only does it increase the sound in the second ear, but the sound seems to increase exponentially for the first ear as well?	[ "Because when you put the second earbud in, the sound waves resonate with your head (which acts like a subwoofer case) and it amplifies." ]	[ "As far as I know, it's the blood flow in your ear amplified." ]
How hard is it to create a software that zooms in on pictures without loosing to much information?	[ "Imagine you made a painting out of little colored plastic squares (a mosaic). To zoom in on the picture would be just getting closer to it. Would you see more detail? No, the individual squares would just be bigger and easier to distinguish from each other. There is no more information to gain by looking closer." ...	[ "I like to think of it like this: Lets say you are fixing a roof on a house (you are the only one that can do this), right after you tear off the roof, but before you you start rebuilding the roof, you get shot. Damn no one can use that house, as you are the only one that could fix the roof. * \"You\" -- Update Pro...
As an American, how necessary or evil was the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings?	[ "> the fact that we do not view this as horrific as is should be seen. 80,000 innocent people demolished in the blink of an eye...and us young Americans only see it as, \"it was necessary\" but we see the Jewish holocaust as disturbing because it was Germans doing it to them...but when we, America does something JU...	[ "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." ]
Why did the month of September in 1752 miss out 12 days	[ "A solar year lasts 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes. We add in the 5 hours 49 minutes with leap days, but there's still a missing 11 minutes. We had been using the calendar for 1300 years, so those 11 minutes extra added up to 10-12 days or so. In 1752 all the western countries finally switched over to the new, mo...	[ "Could you perhaps present us with your original source so we can see what the author writes about it? I think I know the answer, but I would like to know what exactly the author wrote. Also, could you remove the bonus question? We do not allow discussions of events after 1993." ]
How do scientists determine the size AND distance from its star of a distant planet?	[ "Even with one transit, they have two data : The decrease of apparent luminosity from the star and the time it takes for one transit to happen. The first is proportional to the apparent area of the planet, the second depends on the period of the planet. With these two informations, you can find the size and distanc...	[ "They treat the atmosphere as individual packets of air both laterally and at different heights. Computers track the movement and interaction between them to build up predictions of the future movement, change in temperature, precipitation etc. The difficulty of doing this means some of the most advanced and powerf...
Theory Thursday \| Academic/Professional History Free-for-All	[ "Not sure if this is history-related enough, but I'll give it a try: Does anyone know a good introductory text on cosmopolitanism? When researching the concept I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of sources from politics/sociology/literary studies on this. I'd be especially interested in post-colonial approaches,...	[ "Just to clarify what namer98 told us mods when asking if it was okay to post this: All questions need to be submitted to Professor Sarna by email before the AMA. It is not \"live\" like the AMAs we host here in AskHistorians. So, please go to that r/Judaism thread to post your questions before the time of ...
How greenhouse gases don't shield the planet from heat.	[ "Greenhouse gasses absorb and re-emit energy in the infrared, but not energy on wavelengths near visible light. The sun emits quite a lot of energy near visible light. That energy goes through the greenhouse gasses, strikes the Earth's surface, is absorbed, and re-emitted as infrared. Which can then be trapped by g...	[ "> A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the r...
How do gift cards make a store any money?	[ "Simple. You give them money in exchange for a gift card. The store now has more money. The person who receives the gift card uses it and gets a product from the store. If you ignore the middle part... you give them money, they give someone else the product. It's basically a straight-forward sale with a card in the...	[ "Advertisers pay them according to how many people watch...measured by ratings. This is commercial, network TV of course. Many people think they are in the business of delivering programs to viewers, and advertising pays for it. Actually, they are in the business of delivering viewers to advertisers, and the progra...
Interaction of Light with Matter: Only the Electric Field component?	[ "The interaction usually looks like eE for the electric field, and evB/c^2 for the magnetic part. If I remember right (the book I remember from is [this one](_URL_1_)), the contribution of the magnetic field term is usually about a 1000 times smaller than that due to the electric field, for typical electronic veloc...	[ "The equation E=mc^2 is the exact equation for the energy of a massive particle at rest. You're absolutely right that for this equation to make any physical sense the units must balance out, so that the equation does not change when you choose to use different units. Indeed, this is the case: a joule is defined to ...
Who is Webster and why is his Dictionary the most accepted and used dictionary by the general public?	[ "Noah Webster was the person who created the American English Dictionary around the same time that Oxford was standardizing the British Dictionary. His work was adopted by the US as the standard spelling for American words, so to Americans it is the authority on spelling and defining words. The Oxford English dicti...	[ "There was a good programme about this on the BBC a few months ago. Bill Bailey successfully campaigned to get Wallace's portrait put up in the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately it's not on iPlayer any more but you can watch some clips here - _URL_0_" ]
What was an average day like for a Byzantine cataphract in 1182?	[ "What do you mean by \"cataphract\"? Cataphract was a type heavy armored cavalryman, regardless of what he was actually doing. By being a cataphract one could be: 1. An akritai - basically a border guard, involved in watch duty and permanent low intensity warfare consisting of raids and counterraids, increasingly c...	[ "I do not wish to discourage answers, but as brought up [here](_URL_0_), the Great War Channel is actually pretty well researched and fairly well respected, if with a couple reservations on precision from earlier on in the series (which I imagine are mostly due to the format of short videos for each week). The exam...
Is the Monty Hall Problem just a statistical problem to spark debate between statisticians or does it mean something about the human mind?	[ "The Monty Hall problem is a striking demonstration of the fact that human intuition is completely incompetent at conditional probability. It would appear that pidgeon intuition is at least less incompetent." ]	[ "_URL_0_ \"The Milwaukee protocol (MP), a procedure reported to prevent death after the onset of rabies symptoms, has been performed over 26 times since its inception in 2004 but has only saved one life. Overwhelming failure has lead health officials to label the protocol, a red herring.\"" ]
How does a record produce a sound at constant speed but the record needle travels smaller and smaller circles?	[ "Think of it this way-the record was recorded with the same discrepancy between the speed of the inner and outer portion of the disc as it has when it is being played. As others have mentioned, the groove is filled with little bumps for the needle to roll over, and that produces the sound. Like the comic talks abo...	[ "Music albums are a lot more expensive in Japan than in the U.S. So to entice buyers, they add the bonus tracks. This also attracts buyers outside of Japan. Back in the days of vinyl, before CDs, \"Japanese pressings\" were of higher quality than American records, so enthusiasts would favor them. These days CDs ar...
Out of Africa - How does that explain the diverse cultures, body types, eyes, and skin colors present today?	[ "It's simply that enough time has passed between humans leaving Africa (though this was very possibly done in a few waves rather than one event) that different cultures and those differences in appearance (which genetically speaking are all really minor) had enough time to evolve." ]	[ "Most people copy ideas. If the tribe A comes up with a good idea, then tribe B next door will copy it. Or tribe A's good idea may make it powerful enough to conquer tribe B and force them to adopt their idea. Isolated communities may not be exposed to outsiders' ideas (like modern technology) so they don't copy th...
Why do certain machines need helium? Can't there be an alternative?	[ "Helium is particularly good for cooling things to very low temperatures. There are occasions where (until we come up with higher temperature alternatives) very low temperatures are unavoidable. Mostly these are connected with making very strong magnetic fields, which require very large currents in electromagnets. ...	[ "Wikipedia seems to have an interesting answer: \" Prior to the 2002 baseball season, studies determined that it was more the dry air rather than thin air which contributed to the more frequent home runs. It was found that baseballs stored in drier air are harder and therefore more elastic to the impact of the bat....
How can they "confirm" a Tornado and the intensity after the fact?	[ "> How can they know there was a tornado? I'm sure all of the visual sightings and reports and path of destruction is a big clue. Unless it was a tornado-shaped herd of rampaging elephants. > Then, how can they deduce the level from that? The basic tornado intensity scale - the Fujita scale - is measured based off...	[ "They often have a number of people who fill in viewing diaries in return for a small payment. Extrapolation to the whole population, similar to opinion polls, gives the total audience. Other methods use recording boxes to work out what channel the tv is timed to over time." ]
Why do members of Congress get paid during a shutdown?	[ "To prevent money from playing a part in political decisions. It would hurt poor up-and-coming members of Congress while not affecting establishment members. It would make them more susceptible to lobbyist, and more likely to act not in the interest of their constituency." ]	[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to anyone who mailed back the special offer." ]
Why hasn't colonizing mars been really considered	[ "The difference is that America could be survived at by a handful of uneducated city dwellers who had assistance from natives. In mars the average person couldn't survive, there's no local food, no useful resources for building and no water. There are no natives, and it's a lot harder to get there, to return, to br...	[ "We can and do, but it is far too complicated and expensive a process to be practical. _URL_0_" ]
Does a constant loud noise at frequencies of sound that you cannot hear still damage your ears/overall hearing?	[ "Ultrasonic noise exposure does indeed cause hearing loss. The literature is somewhat sparse and [this](_URL_1_) is a review on the topic. The catch: the exposure must have a very high intensity or occur over a very long period of time. This is likely due to the fact that noise induced hearing loss is a function of...	[ "If you are adding waves together from unknown sources you get what is called \"Incoherent addition.\" Which is to say, you don't know if you have \"constructive\" or \"destructive\" interference between all of the sources. The average interference is what gives you the \"incoherent\" value. The normal value we use...
Why is it when you speed up a voice it becomes higher pitched?	[ "Another word for 'pitch' is 'frequency', which is measured in Hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. If you speed up music, it goes through the same number of cycles in a shorter time, therefore more cycles per second, therefore a higher frequency. Music is made up of many frequencies played simultaneously, but all of ...	[ "Imagine lots of tiny bugs on a birthday balloon. They crawl really slow. But blow up the balloon bigger, and as the balloon gets bigger they might move away from each other faster than they can crawl. They aren't really crawling faster, they're just getting more balloon between them." ]
How does Mosquito repellent work?	[ "Mosquitos are attracted to us by the heat and sweat we produce, typically it is only the females that are attracted to us. This is because she needs our blood to feed her offspring, thus the only way to make us not attractive to the female population of mosquitos is to mask this. The repellent is known as DEET (no...	[ "It doesn't. Scientific studies on neuro-linguistic programming have shown it to have no effect. _URL_0_" ]
why is ice melting directly from a solid to a liquid while metals become progressively softer as they heat up?	[ "all metals do reach a melt point at which they change from solid to liquid. Heating metals to temperatures below that phase-change temperature soften them. Metals have stronger inter-molecular bonds than water, so they have higher melt temperatures, and more gradual changes in physical properties in the solid stat...	[ "Imagine a solid object is a group of girls holding each others' hands in a circle dancing. Now a group of guys rush over and each of them wanting to take a girl from the group as their partner for a waltz. If the girls hold each others' hands tightly, they stay in the circle and can't be pulled away individually t...
What's happening in this gif?	[ "It is a simulation of a star passing very close to a black hole. A star is effectively a giant ball of gas, held together by its own gravitational pull. A black hole is a former star, which has collapsed on to itself.you can think of it like a star that had been crushed into the smallest size possible.because it h...	[ "[The grooves](_URL_0_) in a record are basically the [audio waveform](_URL_1_) that needs to be played. A needle runs along the grooves, being wiggled by the grooves, and the needle then uses that wiggling to wiggle air, which is sound." ]

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