Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
How does motion tracking working in programs such as After Effects?	[ "You track the pixels, this is one big benefit of shooting in 4K or higher even if your movie is 2K, this is a reason why most CGI-blockbusters, like say Avengers, shoot in 4K+ but only release in 2K (because 4K CGI takes way too much time/money). You also have to track neighboring pixels as well to make sure you...	[ "Because your eyelids aren’t the same. You have a hood and the bottom one. The hood is far more mobile. The bottom one does follow your eyes up, just not as much." ]
Who are the Kurds and why are they such an important people?	[ "The Kurds are an ethnic group that lives in Northeastern Syria, Northern Iraq, Northwestern Iran, and Southwestern Turkey. They are known for being the largest ethnic group in the world that doesn't have a state. They're important because of their role in conflicts in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq." ]	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
How can a screwball or curveball change direction in flight?	[ "The magnus effect. As the ball spins, the side spinning forward hits the air as it does. The air pushes back on the ball, and pushes it away. This makes it curve in the air away from the direction of spinning." ]	[ "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....
When in flight why does the propeller of an airplane look like its moving really slowly?	[ "This is called aliasing. Basically your eye cannot sample light fast enough to follow the actual speed of the propeller. Instead it samples at a rate, then pieces together the images to produce movement. If the properller spins 1.1 times between images, your brain makes the assumption the propeller moved 0.1 revol...	[ "When you are doing something you enjoy you generally are not thinking very hard about the task at hand. The less you think about something, the less the brain has to work, the quicker it seems. At the same time, when you're suffering you're focusing (and over thinking), your brain is having to process more inform...
Why is being overqualified for a job a bad thing?	[ "They think, often correctly, that the overqualified candidate will quickly leave for a better job. Meaning they will lose the money spent on training the new hire." ]	[ "Basically, they get more experience at writing code for that hardware and learn how to optimize it. It's like getting more practice with a set of paints. You don't get more colors to work with, but you learn how better to use the ones you do have." ]
Why are the segments of a primary telescope mirror hexagonal in shape?	[ "Only 3 regular polygons can be used to tile a surface... Squares, triangles and hexagons. Hexagons probably are just the easiest to manage in terms an manufacturing and fragility." ]	[ "The plumes recently reported on Europa by NASA offer a golden opportunity for investigations based on this notion. Plume around Enceladus were identified and examined by Cassini about 3 years ago, and the presence of salt was confirmed. Even more interesting: hydrothermal silica was identified, a litteral \"smoki...
Tuataras have a "third eye" that is "no longer" used for vision. Was it earlier in evolution? Are there creatures with 3 functional eyes in the fossil record?	[ "I wouldn't overstate the bilateral symmetry you're talking about. We have one heart, one liver, one stomach, etc, none of which are located exactly on our line of symmetry. The third eye ([parietal eye](_URL_0_)) is found in a number of animals (some reptiles, amphibians, and others). While it shares ancestral ori...	[ "The turtle you're referencing is an example of conjoined twinning. There are many types of conjoined twins, and the degree to which the body is shared is highly variable. With this type of twinning, called dicephalic twins (one body and two heads), the body may contain separate spines and organs for each twin, or ...
what liberal arts is and why so many people apparently fail at life after getting a degree in it.	[ "Liberal arts is the study of many fields instead of focusing on a single field. In order to earn a degree at most four year universities a student must take 40 classes total. For students earning a liberal arts degree, all 40 of those classes could be various classes - literature, art history, math, science, etc....	[ "Ask Reddit is for personal opinions, stories, and the like. Essentially subjective answers to questions without hard answers. Something like \"whats your favorite food\" is a good post there ELI5 is for getting a simplified answer or explanation to a question that you don't understand. A good thread here would som...
Why do marriages cost so much?	[ "I may be totally off base, but I don't think it is marriages that cost - in Oklahoma a marriage license is $50 OR only $5 if you complete premarital counseling. WEDDINGS cost a lot. They don't have to (I'm getting married in May and we are going as cheap as possible - for example our venue is pretty ugly but we ge...	[ "Supply and demand. I know this is a simplistic answer, and I'm not trying to be flippant, but that really is the answer." ]
What happens at the microscopic level when you cook food?	[ "cooking, in the general sense, is the application of heat to a mixture. basically what you're doing is increasing the rates of some reactions that begin when your different ingredients come into contact with each other and providing the activation energy necessary for other non-spontaneous reactions to begin. the ...	[ "Generally speaking modern dishwashers dry things off with a heating cycle, which needs to be gentle enough not to damage anything, but still drive off moisture. Your plates and cutlery being metal, ceramic, stoneware, etc... get pretty hot (as you might notice if you try to unload the washer immediately). Essentia...
How much "power" does the president of the United States have?	[ "The president's power is kept in check by the Legislative and Judicial Branch of the government. The president can create executive orders to implement things rapidly, though these can be struck down by the Legislative or Judicial Branch. The president cannot author laws, but his position as the leader of his pa...	[ "In addition to what others have said, sometimes new information can change things. For instance, a candidate might make a campaign promise to never interrogate people. When he gets into office, he finds out that 10 terrorist attacks in the last year were stopped because of information found while interrogating ter...
What would it sound like if every audible frequency was played all at once?	[ "[this]( _URL_0_) White noise is the term used for a special kind of static that contains an equal amount of all the frequencies you are interested in. The youtube video is probably not perfect, but it is very similar to true white noise." ]	[ "Making some simplifying assumptions (eg friction doesn't exist)... yes, all of them become excited. This is true for 1D strings too, not just for circular membranes. To illustrate, let's model a \"pluck\" of a string as meaning that at t=0, the string at rest but is deformed into a perfect triangle shape. Then we ...
Is any research being done by serious mathematicians on finding an easier and more direct solution to Fermat, or is that sort of thing left to the amateurs and hobbyists?	[ "There is almost surely no \"easier\" proof to Fermat's Last Theorem than Wiles'. No one who seriously understands the problem would spend their time trying to find an easy solution to it. Other proofs to it may (and [have](_URL_0_)) pop up, but they will generally rely on something harder than Wiles' proof." ]	[ "Well first you have to ask why these movements purged so many intellectuals. In every case, it's your well-educated people who pose the biggest threat to your regime. Your professionals and college professionals are typically smart, well-organized, and resourceful. They make the most capable critics against the ...
Why don't rich tech companies like Apple invest HUGE amounts of cash into battery research?	[ "They do allocate massive amounts of money into the development of battery technology. They develop each upgrade of battery that their various devices use." ]	[ "Even without a cure for cancer or heart disease, there is a need to continuously adjust retirement age based on projected lifespans. I don't see anything really new there. On the other hand, cancer and heart disease have a cost much higher than just the costs of treatment. Individuals that suffer from these condi...
What are those LED-like tubes around the lens of a surveillance camera?	[ "They're infrared lights. They do light up, but their light is a lower frequency than people can see. You are exactly right: they give the camera night vision. Though infrared light doesn't make everything look brighter to us, to the camera it's like any other light." ]	[ "Probably [this](_URL_0_), as seen on a soapy sidewalk. I tried this my phone and saw it too. I then realized it was the your video showing through the phone, haha." ]
Is there such a thing as a "collapsible" polyhedron?	[ "There is something called miura-ori origami that has the properties you describe. _URL_0_" ]	[ "For starters the extra costs to the manufacturer and the customer are not worth it. And second saftey, they could be dangerous closing down on little children & even adults." ]
Why is there no bridge/tunnel spanning the Strait of Gibraltar (7 miles)? There are over 50 bridges in the world that are longer than that, and who knows how many tunnels.	[ "The mere fact that there are other bridges in the world that are longer should tell you that this is not a scientific question." ]	[ "They do. It's called liposuctioning. There are just limits on how much you can reasonably remove. Some of it is cosmetic but the more fat removed the riskier the surgery. Fat is part of your living tissue. It's connected to your blood supply. Nerves. Lots of other things. You can't just remove it like stuffing. Th...
If electricity takes the path of least resistance, then why does a lightning strike appear to be jagged, and not a straight line?	[ "Because it is taking the path of least resistance. It's jumping from charge to charge throughout the air eventually ending up at the ground. If it was a straight beam then it would have to fight it's way through charges that it isn't attracted to. Imagine the atmosphere like a crowd at a party. You are a bolt of l...	[ "[Here's](_URL_0_) an image of the inclination of the Earth that illustrates the angle of sunlight during the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. This is the warmest the north pole gets. Now, think about taking a flashlight on a floor. When you point it directly down, the light is concentrated on a small ci...
How can female ducks have countermeasures to getting raped? Isn't that counterproductive to evolution?	[ "No, because it was selected by natural selection which is part of evolution. It was an adaptation so that not any ol' male could fertilise their very resource consuming eggs. Sperm is easy to produce and and lot of it is produced. It's no big deal for a male to use lots of it in a short time. Eggs on the other han...	[ "Most jet aircraft have \"buckets\". When stowed, these don't interfere with the engines at all. But when deployed, they form a barrier behind the rear of the engine, which directs the jet exhaust forwards, creating reverse thrust. There's a very good picture of the buckets in their deployed position [here](_URL_0_...
Why is it warned to not brush your teeth more than 3 times a day?	[ "Toothpaste generally contains abrasives, so too much brushing can unduly wear your teeth or be harsh on your gums. There could be a possible concern about ingesting unnecessary amounts fluoride as well, but I think this would be a secondary consideration." ]	[ "Several things. On an installation level, each program you install adds 'weight' to the operating system by giving it more tasks. These aren't always removed cleanly when you uninstall, which makes it important to reimage your computer about every year. Additionally, if you use a standard hard disk drive, the driv...
What would happen to the human body if it suddenly lost the ability to sweat?	[ "You would decrease your ability to compensate for heat dramatically, increasing your risk of heat stroke. It's pretty important. As far as dogs, dogs get away with not sweating by panting which exposes their large vascular tongue to cooler air. You'll also notice that when dogs are hot and panting, they produce a...	[ "We don't have to cook our meat. We also could walk around with a heavy parasite load, like most animals do." ]
How do hunters ensure that they do not shoot other hunters?	[ "You do NOT fire your gun unless you are damn sure you'll hit what your aiming at. You don't hear a duck quack and fire blindly in the direction it came from." ]	[ "ELI5: have you been browsing my web history?!? There are certain people who enjoy pie. They form an online community of pie lovers and pie makers. The pie makers get rated on their pies, from appearance to quality. If a pie maker hers a bad reputation, pie lovers will avoid in the future. Sometimes, a new pie make...
How powerful does a nuclear warhead have to be to destroy our planet?	[ "[This](_URL_0_) and [this](_URL_1_) give me a ballpark figure of: 50 & #8239;000 & #8239;000 & #8239;000 & #8239;000 & #8239;000 & #8239;Mt Compare this to the biggest bomb yet detonated by man at: 57 & #8239;Mt Note how one of these numbers is substantially larger than the other." ]	[ "Not enough energy to. It's like lighting a match in a snow storm and expecting it to melt everything. Sure, the match is hot, but theres a lot more cold than there is hot." ]
Why is it that dry-firing (pulling the trigger without any ammunition) bad for airsoft/real guns?	[ "Not sure for airsoft guns, but for some real firearms, there's a piece of metal called a firing pin that will hit a peice of steel, and doing this too much can cause damage. This is only for certain types of guns though, many do not have serious issues with dry firing." ]	[ "In simple terms, most circuits that make sound or play back digitally recorded sounds use a timing circuit (like an oscillator) to send out the sound waves at a constant rate. More expensive toys will use crystal-based oscillators and low-battery cutoff circuits to keep things from getting funky as the power level...
I once had a music history professor tell me that classical music performances today are of a higher standard than they were back in the romantic/classical/baroque periods. Is this true and how would we even know without recordings?	[ "It is due to the birth of recordings. Once recordings were available, people became more focused on being perfect (pitch, rhythm, etc). Glenn Gould is a pianist who basically devoted his whole musical career to just creating the perfect recordings. He would sit at the recording studio re-recording a single piece m...	[ "Well, don't forget that rap has evolved to something of an art form. The same idea from the early days applies: rapping about dominance IS dominance IF you do it well. It's really just a platform on which you can do cool shit with the rhymes and good wordplay. However, if the rapper can spit something really innov...
How do we get snot from crying?	[ "When you cry, tears come out of the tear glands under your eyelids and drain through the tear ducts that empty into your nose. Tears mix with mucus there and your nose runs." ]	[ "Your body is perceiving the spicy food as a threat and it is using mucus production to flush the offending material out of the system." ]
How do deaf people learn to read?	[ "It depends on the amount of hearing loss. If it is a profound loss, a lot of it becomes memorization instead of phonics. A hearing person would sound it out. Some deaf just have to memorize. There is a new \"visual phonics\" system, however. In which each phoneme (sound in the English language) has a representativ...	[ "The same way they do now: using satellite and microwave transmissions. Using the internet is kind of sketchy, because of a lack of control of the bandwidth that can cause the connection quality to drop, which is why other technologies are preferred when feasible." ]
What would hurt more saltwater or freshwater?	[ "As I see it, there are two considerations: surface tension; and, density. Surface tension will be a minor element, but for completeness, the surface tension of salt water as measured in a lab over various concentrations averaged around [0.22 mN/m](_URL_0_). Whereas, for pure water, is around [73 mN/m](_URL_1_). So...	[ "> Especially in movies Kinda killed the question right there with that bullet. Movies tell stories. They very very seldom are perfectly representative of reality, and that really applies to action films where people are shot, because those people blow up BMW's by kicking their fenders, or jump from fifty foot buil...
The "edge" of the universe, and why there isn't one.	[ "The best approximate explanation I've heard was from an astronomy 101 professor. He described it like so: imagine a stick figure, drawn on a chalk board. The stick man is limited in space by the edge of the board, so there is an edge to his universe. But if the stick figure is drawn on a balloon and the balloon is...	[ "Because then we would also have to add * Communism/socialism/Marxism * The speed of light * Black holes * How computers work * Monty Hall problem" ]
In biology textbooks, it is often said that Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) 'transfers' or 'stores' energy - but the precise mechanism for this is usually passed over, as if it is some kind of magic. Can anyone shed some light?	[ "Here's [one example](_URL_0_), a sodium/potassium pump. The key is that the third phosphate was put there in another reaction, leaving it in a somewhat precarious position, like it's spring loaded because of all the electrons in the phosphate groups. This makes it easy for the phosphate group to pop off through hy...	[ "> Our Brain holds information that tells our body what to do, but why don't WE instinctively know what our brain knows. Because your brain doesn't \"know\" these things. Your brain is hard-wired to do certain things, to engage in certain chemical reactions, in a way that completely bypasses the entire concept of...
Is storing energy mechanically (like winding a watch) less efficient or expensive than batteries?	[ "Springs can be very reliable and efficient over a small travel range when unimpeded. However, they're not very dense – particularly if you're trying to use them over their more-efficient range or in an open, unimpeded arrangement. Watch springs are fine if you're only trying to store a couple joules. You only need...	[ "The key thing here is [Noether's theorem](_URL_0_), one of the most beautiful results in all of physics. Noether's theorem connects symmetries of nature to conserved quantities. For example, when physics is independent of spatial position, momentum is conserved. Or when physics is unchanged by rotating your view, ...
Why does your metabolism slow down with age?	[ "During puberty, the brain flips a switch to \"flood\" the body with hormones such as testosterone and/or estrogen, to induce physical and mental developments to the body. The increased flux of hormones in the body is the reason why growing boys and girls have fast metabolisms. The hormones have different effects b...	[ "Every time you make a copy of a cell, there is a chance for errors. For example when you photocopy a first print, it is pretty crisp and close to the original, but there are a few minor discrepencies. Now if you photocopy the copy, it gets more distorted, and so on until some letters get hard to read, it gets diff...
Why does every popcorn bag tell me "NOT to use the popcorn button?"	[ "Amount of time differs for popcorn buttons. And I don't think I've ever owned or used a microwave that had a popcorn button that popped my popcorn to the standards I look for in a popped/unpopped kernel ratio." ]	[ "When you cook the pizza, you drive water out of the outer layer of dough making it crispy. When you microwave it, you create a whole bunch of steam which redistributes the water to the otherwise crispy dough. In effect, it's the same thing as putting toast over boiling water, it would get soggy." ]
If one consumes an excess of sodium during a meal, could he offset it by drinking an excess of water?	[ "Sodium controls how much water is in your body. If you eat more sodium, you hold onto more water. This can increase your blood pressure but your kidneys try to compensate. Many anti-hypertensive medications act on the kidneys, causing them to lose more sodium and water. The concentration of sodium in your blood i...	[ "For Hoover Dam (or the three gorges dam in China): During dry season, when water flow is light, dig a detour that runs parallel to the original flow path. Block off the original path bit by bit, by reclamation with rocks. Empty the blocked \"pool\" that is formed at the original route by pumping the water away. Or...
Why are stains like those from curry, yellow ginger so difficult to remove despite numerous cleaning?	[ "It's turmeric - which is indeed a plant in the ginger family. I don't know why turmeric hangs on as well as it does, but it's been used as a dye forever. It's the curcumin in turmeric which produces the color. Interestingly, Indians have used turmeric as an antibacterial - you may wash your vegetables in turmeric ...	[ "_URL_0_ Excellent article that gives more detail: * Everyone uses it, and want to keep to one brand, so someone in better times gets used to using Tide, all of a sudden can't afford it, either steals or buys it on the black market, rather than buying something cheap. * Since everyone uses it and sales volumes are ...
In one thousand or one million or ten million years, would the nuclear age of mankind (1945+) be evident to geologists studying soil samples?	[ "Yes. Bomb tests generated a wide variety of radioisotopes that will be detectable for a long time, but just to focus on your one thousand year timeframe, the \"carbon dating\" technique uses the decay of radioactive carbon-14 to establish the age of plant matter and wooden artifacts. Atmospheric bomb testing [roug...	[ "The earliest manuscripts won't provide the evidence you want to date the composition of the text; all it can do is give you a terminus ante. We have tons of texts we know are older than the earliest extant manuscript. In fact sometimes the entire manuscript tradition has been lost and the earliest copy is a printe...
Why do our fingernails grow faster than our toenails?	[ "nails grow faster being exposed to sunlight. most likely, your hands are exposed to sunlight much more than your feet, so your fingernails grow faster." ]	[ "It's probably related to how busy the week was. Busy = time flies. So as a group you typically would all be equally busy or not, but that can vary of course." ]
Why does this image look like it's in 3D?	[ "You might have an eye issue that causes each eye to see different wavelengths as different distances from you. I know some one who would have that issue with red and blue lights on top of buildings that way." ]	[ "Your eyes are perceiving that your body should be in one position (lying down in case of the linked gif), yet the signal from the balance centers in your ears are sending a different signal to your brain. This dissonance causes your brain to try and make you feel how you should based on the signal from your eyes."...
Defeated crusaders were often presented with a choice: convert to Islam or die. What happened to the ones that converted to Islam? Did they assimilate into their societies?	[ "> Defeated crusaders were often presented with a choice: convert to Islam or die? Do you have a source for this assertion? I can’t claim that the crusades are a specialty of mine, but I’m not familiar with this claim." ]	[ "You ever wonder what Willy-Coyote would do the day after he catches Road Runner? He has spent decades, his whole existence, building elaborate traps and now the reason for doing it is gone. You think he might build traps (or design them) for old times sake? That is you. We won the evolution game. For our whole exi...
Is there a simple, cheap, relatively clean reaction to turn isolated H+ into hydrogen gas?	[ "Isolated H^+ ? The reaction you stated is a half reaction that usually occurs in solution. Isolating H+ by itself is no easy feat. If you are looking to take an acid and turn it into H2 there's tons of ways of doing that. Even throwing in aluminum foil or zinc will do it. Most metals will react with a strong acid...	[ "I like the dry ice and water idea, and then put a balloon in the water too (underwater). Then all you need is a mechanism to pop the balloon, the water will muffle the pop into a poof, and you should get a nice burst of vapor along with it." ]
If I rode a bike on a treadmill, would I be able to stay upright?	[ "The main reason the bike stays upright with such ease, even when not holding the handlebars, is that the construction is self stabilzing. When the bike starts to lean, the curvature and angle of the front wheel causes the bike to steer towards the direction you are leaning. This causes your bike to straighten up. ...	[ "It really depends on what reference frame you're talking about. In the reference frame of the Earth, obviously yes. In the reference frame of the galaxy, no because it is moving very fast along with the sun. In the reference frame of the sun, it will be in a similar but not exactly the same place, due to the prece...
If NASA built a giant, empty storage tank in space, is there a means to pressurize it (with breathable air) without bringing air from Earth.	[ "Sure. Space is full of stuff that could be made into breathable air. The simplest way to do it would be to find some ice (probably in the form of a comet) and use electricity (generated with solar or nuclear power) to crack the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen can be fed into your storage tank for breath...	[ "The suction effect is caused by a difference in pressure. The surface of the water is presumably at atmospheric pressure, which is thus the largest possible pressure difference. In other words, the atmosphere pushes down on the water, which is then pushed up through the straw because of the pressure difference bet...
How did the Germans in WWII treat non targeted populations in conquered areas?	[ "A problem with your question is that the Poles were in fact a targeted population." ]	[ "I would hazard you're being down voted because you're unflaired and taking 1 course doesn't really qualify someone to give a full answer. E.g. I studied I and while I may feel qualified to answer basic questions I would never presume to give a detailed nuanced answer on a controversial topic. This is especially ...
Why did civilizations start occurring simultaneously around 4000 years ago in China, Egypt, India, Middle East?	[ "According to James Burke's Connections ([Youtube Link](_URL_0_)), part of the reason was due to drought around that time forcing people to stop nomadic hunting/foraging and instead concentrate on areas near water. This led to the development of the plow, agriculture and ultimately human civilization. It's from the...	[ "[Here](_URL_0_) are Roggeveen's logs during the time he visited Easter Island. Nowhere does he mention 'whites, indians and Polynesians living in harmony'; he does, however, describe the natives' complexions as varying, some paler than others. Also, 'Polynesia' was not a word until 1756, 27 years after Jacob Rogge...
How do electrons pair up if their charges are equal (especially in the first shell)?	[ "One electrons spins in the \"positive\" direction and the second spins in the \"negative\" direction. This decreases the overall energy of the pairing. Also all sub-orbitals receive one electron before any electrons are paired." ]	[ "[Here's a strike in slow motion](_URL_0_). The initial \"feelers\" follow randomish paths determined by which nearby bit of air happens to have the least resistance. As soon as one of those paths reaches the ground, it becomes the path of least resistance to the ground because it has left behind a trail of ionised...
Why does sleeping from 2am - 10am feel like “sleeping in” while 10pm - 6am doesn’t?	[ "Your body clock finds it easier to sleep 1 hour later each day than 1 hour earlier (basically it is set on a 25 hour cycle not a 24 hour one)" ]	[ "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...
Why couldn't they just shoot the Cincinnati gorilla with a potent tranquilizer instead of killing it?	[ "Because they risk the chance of the gorilla getting upset and/or ripping the kid to shreds before the tranquilizer completely sets in." ]	[ "It mainly has to do with routing. A lot of rails are going to and from Chicago. Bloomington happens to be on the route already, so it was inexpensive to add a station. The demand does not need to be too high to justify the stop. Meanwhile Louisville isn't along any route. The tracks exist, but there are not any Am...
If you duplicate the pixels, can you achieve the same quality at a higher resolution as the original?	[ "Depends on the interpolation you use, and what you define as \"quality\". If you use the most naive interpolation, which is basically what you describe as \"duplicating the pixels\" (which is also called Nearest Neighbor interpolation), and you define \"quality\" as the amount of non-duplicate data contained in th...	[ "Cloning a sheep was not 'no problem' it took a lot of effort and still has a substantial failure chance. It took 434 attempts before they got a successful embryo, and even then they had 1 successful live birth per 277 fertilized embryos. By and large, attempts at human cloning have more hurdles due to ethical cons...
Why is it so hard for developers to just make circles instead of jaggy square-circle bastard children?	[ "Here, look at [this](_URL_0_). See how the smoother the circle, the more triangles needed? The more triangles, the harder the computer has to work to draw them, so you can only have so many triangles on the screen at once before it gets unacceptably slow." ]	[ "[Quake III looked like this](_URL_1_) and ran at, what, 800x600 max? It also had very little by way of a physics engine for anything other than the player characters. [Far Cry 4 looks like this,](_URL_0_) and runs at 1080p (or higher!). It also simulates real physics for every object you see on screen." ]
why is it when I'm about to fall asleep but have to pee extremely bad, I'll say screw it and go to sleep, but won't pee my bed or even when I wake up I won't have to pee for another 20 mins?	[ "When you're sleepy, certain hormones increase in your bloodstream and calm your sympathetic nervous system which controls urinary function among other things and your \"fight-or-flight\" response (which is why you shouldn't feel the need to pee if you sense you're in peril). That is, the neurons in your bladder ev...	[ "I'm only speculating but it could be Pavlovian response. You've probably heard of Pavlov's dog where the scientist would ring a bell and then give the dog some food, repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually the dog would associate the bell with food and begin salivating at the sound of the bell, whether there was any fo...
Why does your hands burn more once it stops touching what's hot?	[ "When you get a burn, you've killed the sensory nerves that supply the signal. It takes a while for the body to sense and assess the damage done by the burn. Thats how the body distinguishes a burn from just hot. Try this experiment. Take 2 butter knives and hold them side by side with the blades like 1 cm apart. ...	[ "When you tell a child \"don't ever lick cold metal\", you'll often find the kid with his tongue stuck to a metal pole as soon as you turn your back, even though it would never even think to do that if you said nothing. It's called reverse pshychology, and it applies to most people. You could say we just don't like...
Why do pages in online books have the "page is intentionally left blank" thing?	[ "As another note, real books have blank pages because it is cheapest to print books with a multiple of 16 pages. If you look at a boo from the top or bottom, you will notice that pages are grouped together into little bundles, which are then bound. Binding with a different size bundle increases the cost massively. ...	[ "For any given flight, typically 5-10% of the people with reservations won't actually fly. So instead of having empty seats and charging everyone more, the airline try to guess how many people won't show, and sell some extra tickets. When you buy one of those, you wan't get a seat assignment until you get to the ga...
Why is SpaceX attempting to land a Rocket on a drone ship?	[ "They're trying to develop a rocket that can land vertically and be used again. Due to laws regarding airspace and (mainly) safety regulations, they can't try this over land, so they built a barge out in the water where they can legally develop the technology." ]	[ "You would be the first person from earth to visit another planet. You would have your name in the history books along with every other great explorer we currently celebrate. It's a chance to do something that litterally no other human has ever done. As for ethics, well what's unethical about it. Everyone who signs...
Why does the moon look bigger when it's rising or setting?	[ "this diagram shows the illusion well, _URL_3_ Basically we all interpret cues associated with perspective. things far away get smaller so if it's big in the distance it must really be big up close. In the picture the moon is the same diameter but it's position in the scene makes the one up front looks tiny. Same...	[ "This is because of what is known as moment. Pick up an axe by its head and it’s rather easy to lift, try and lift the axe head up from the far side of the handle and it’s much more difficult. The axe head exerts more of a moment the farther away your hands are (ie the fulcrum). The same thing happens with flat sca...
Why when you get sunburnt is drinking a lot of water a huge importance?	[ "Basically sunburn is inflamed skin and its going through the healing process. Our body uses water as a transport mechanism to provide nutrients and remove waste products. Sun burnt skin needs to be replenished with nutrients and have the injured skin bi products removed. More water means more transport and removal...	[ "Spice is carried on an oil, which is hydrophobic. Most it will do is spread the heat around. Something with fat in it, like milk, has a better chance of washing away the spicy oil." ]
What is the purpose of humans having different blood types?	[ "Having different blood types, and having a significant amount of genetic variation at the molecular level in general, prevents parasites and infectious diseases from being able to spread as easily from person to person. That's not to say that it's impossible for a parasite to adapt to multiple \"environments\", bu...	[ "This is a very common question. You can use search to find [all the other really good answers](_URL_0_ ). This is instant, and faster than ust typing in your question every time. It's a way of cheating elections. Read the others, and then ask a more specific question." ]
Should I be worried when experiencing turbulence in an airplane?	[ "During turbulence keep an eye on the stewardesses. Their actions will tell you all you need to know. If they panic or look worried you are fucked." ]	[ "A brain is constantly bombarded by input from the senses (sights, sounds, smells, temperature readings etc). One of the things it does is filter that information and only passes on information to other parts of the brain which it thinks is important. An example is when two people are having a conversation a little...
is there a speed limit at which current GPS technology becomes useless to ascertain the objects current location with accuracy?	[ "Only kind of relevant, but I remember reading on Reddit that if a GPS is going over 1,000 MPH it, by law, must shut off because it is likely guiding a missile. So to narrow down your speed window (assuming the above is true), a GPS is able to track at over 1,000 MPH." ]	[ "Imagine you are a travelling salesman, and you spend most of your time driving from place to place across the country. Today you need to get from Denver to Dallas. You could use High Level Navigation. You know how to get from Denver to Wichita, Wichita to Oklahoma City, and Oklahoma City to Dallas. String those to...
How exactly are plays called in both college and professional football?	[ "In the NFL (I don't know about college football): The coach does talk to the QB (the QB can't talk back). That's why the QB has that green sticker on the back of his helmet, to show that that's the helmet that has the radio receiver in it and to ensure that each team only has one such helmet on the field. The radi...	[ "They don't, it is up to the handler to k ow that information and call off the dog if necessary." ]
Since video and photograpic is so advance, how will courts be able to determine what evidence is real?	[ "He means video and photographic editing. It is extremely advanced now and with the top people, you won't be able to tell. They do have computer algorithms that can tell if an image was doctored and how much, but I believe that goes off of what it knows how the previous compression algorithm works. If you carefully...	[ "I'd like to add this. In WWII they retrofitted some Spitfire airplanes with up to 5 cameras that used this exact same principal to take 3D areal recon photos of Europe. The cameras were aligned just right (and pilots trained just right) take take photos that could be put under a special viewing device bringing the...
Wormhole (Einstein - Rosen bridges)	[ "Let's say you are in the United States and wanted to get to China, how would you do that? Flying, straight there, of course which would mean circumnavigating the globe. Now say, you could just cut right through the center of the earth to cut down on time. That's essentially what a wormhole would allow you to do. E...	[ "Getting light to travel in a circular path isn't anything super exciting and is done routinely. These structures are called [optical ring resonators](_URL_2_). No perpetual energy here, but it does have widespread applications in fiber optics. [Here's what they look like](_URL_0_) [and an animation](_URL_4_) and [...
A flowers and bees question i always been afraid to ask, n..n	[ "Some plants genetic structure mean that they don't allow it to self pollinate, even if pollen from the same plant is delivered by a bee or other creature only pollen from a different plant will actually cause fertilization to occur. Other plants use time as a differentiating factor in that the pollen matures at a ...	[ "It's for quality. Even if it doesn't spoil when stored properly, honey can develop an off flavor over time. The date is a conservative estimate for when it might start to go off - not in the sense of being unsafe/spoiled, but in the sense of not tasting as good anymore. It also helps stores and warehouses with sto...
What's the big deal about sex with virgins that Islamic Extremists are promised this in heaven??	[ "Historically, it was important to men that any children their wife (or wives) bore were in fact theirs, and until recently, there was no direct way to test. So instead they would control their wives, and this starts with ensuring they only married virgins. Women who were not virgins (widows, unwed mothers, rape v...	[ "They don't. It's a marketing ~~lie~~ gimmick. I used to work for a company that did a similar thing by mail. New customers were supposed to sign up by a certain time for special rates but as a specific matter of policy we'd give those rates to anyone who mailed back the special offer." ]
How can human eggs be frozen? Wouldn't they die like every other human cell?	[ "They're not just tossed in a freezer. They're cryogenically preserved with something like liquid nitrogen. It puts the cell in a state of suspended animation of sorts." ]	[ "The \"grandmother hypothesis\" is one that has been put forward to explain why women go through menopause and spend a significant portion of their lives post--menopausally. That is, grandmothers do a lot to help raise their grandchildren, and in that fashion, reproductive success is increased through women living ...
Mein Kampf. I actually haven't read it, but I have often heard historians say, "Hitler promised to do XYZ and nobody believed him at the time!" So -- why did nobody believe him at the time?	[ "The thing you have to remember is that Hitler was relatively young when he wrote Mein Kampf he was in his mid 30s and it was more then 10 years before he came to power. Whilst he never repudiated the more extreme points in the book he didn't speak of them once he became a \"respectable\" politician. So most people...	[ "This is a request for clarification: In what sense didn't things turn out so great? Was Napoleon a worse ruler than we should reasonably expect?" ]
Did people make paper airplanes before the airplane was invented?	[ "There is an answer to a similar question [here](_URL_1_) by /u/cthulhushrugged." ]	[ "Your asking essentially the chicken or the egg. Example, Did you stomach evolove first and create your brain and extremites to feed it. Or did your brain grow your stomach to power it. Har to say, as without something to feed the stomach, we would have no stomch. Without the brain to run everything, we wouldn't ha...
for some reason, when people are talking about strict or harsh laws, they call it Byzantine. Whats the reasoning for this? Did Byzantium have insanely harsh or ruthless laws?	[ "Byzantine doesn't mean harsh or strict, it means complicated and labyrinthine. Perhaps you are thinking of Draconian?" ]	[ "First off there's a wide variety of modern concrete. The portland cement part of concrete is the same but what you add to it and the water/cement ratio can vary quite a bit depending on what properties you want out of your concrete. Roman concrete had volcanic ash added to it. That's similar to modern concrete tha...
Have all the manuscripts saved from Antiquity been read?	[ "All that we know of, sure. But then you have things like the [Dead Sea Scrolls](_URL_0_), which survived stuffed in the back of some very dry caves in the Southern Levant, and turned out to contain never-before seen variants of biblical texts (and you would think the Bible would be the best preserved document from...	[ "on Antarctica, here are some previous posts to check out for previous responses: [Do we know or do we have any evidence of any Peoples or societies that existed on the Antarctic landmass before it got covered in ice?](_URL_1_) [Is it possible that the native inhabitants on the Tierra del Fuego peninsula explored o...
Why are so many basic Physics formulas in the form of 0.5ab^2?	[ "You've more or less answered your own question. The form 0.5 c x^2 is obtained by integrating the expression y = c x. And \"y = c x\" expresses that one variable (y) is proportional to the other (x). Two variables being proportional to eachother is rather common, so the relation y = c x appears often and by extens...	[ "Custom and practice. If you build it and it falls down, you do it again differently. When it works, you keep it like that. That, and people weren't stupid or uneducated - the Greeks were fairly capable mathematicians, as were the Egyptians" ]
What causes “post-concert depression”, or the feeling of mild depression after a very fun or big event you participated in?	[ "Probably your endorphins dropping from very high levels back to normal. They feel lower than they should because it's such a spike." ]	[ "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...
Were genetically modifying everything, why can't we genetically modify our trees to grow faster and repopulate our forests quicker?	[ "PhD student in Forestry here. There are GMO trees, but they are much more highly regulated than GMO crops, mainly due to fear of escape into wild populations. This is not as much of a concern for ag crops, since there aren't wild populations of, say, soybeans in the midwest. While GMO is out of my realm of study, ...	[ "The Royal Society evaluated various methods of geoengineering options to mitigate global warming, along the criteria of effectiveness, affordability, timeliness, and safety. In particular, afforestation was rated as having a limited potential for carbon dioxide removal, and was given a low effectiveness rating and...
How are people calculating Pi?	[ "There are many [formulae, series, sums and continued fractions](_URL_0_) with infinitely many terms that represent pi. As these functions have more and more terms added to them they accurately give pi to more and more decimal places." ]	[ "You know how authors write long stories using letters and words and the rules of grammar and writing? Its just like that. With enough knowledge of how to read (math), these kinds of explanations make sense. Dont feel bad that you cant read it. Its just like if you tried to read a story in a language you dont know....
in movies, what makes the difference whether a miniature model looks real, or looks like a toy...?	[ "There's a bunch of things that allow a good model unit to sell scale. Camera position and movement needs to be believable (as in theoretically achievable if the scale was true), and as you were maybe guessing, wider lenses are often used. You also need to shoot at higher frame rate so that moving objects look corr...	[ "The sets and props weren't expensive. Foam, plaster, and plywood are cheap. The artisans to build them were expensive. Good people with marketable skills are expensive. That hasn't changed. Now instead of hiring a bunch of set guys and prop guys and costume guys you're hiring a hoard of CGI guys and renting hundre...
Why does spicy stuff actually feel hot, and minty stuff actually cold?	[ "Spicy stuff contains a chemical called capsaicin, which triggers the nerve endings in your skin that detect heat. This tricks your brain into thinking that your mouth is hot. Similarly, minty things contain a chemical called menthol, which triggers the nerve endings that detect cold. This makes your brain think th...	[ "The flavor of the toothpaste has nothing to do with the change in taste of the OJ. Most toothpaste has Sodium lauryl Sulfate in it [or something similar] to give the toothpaste its \"frothiness\". The downside to this chemical is that it blocks your sweet taste buds. So without the sweet taste buds tasting the sug...
Why is the Mississippi River used as the dividing line for "best of" or "worst of" i.e. "Best BBQ East of the Mississippi "?	[ "Back when the USA was still growing, that river was seen as the symbolic boundary of the known part of the country. \"Best x east of the Mississippi\" basically meant \"best x in the whole civilized part of the United States.\"" ]	[ "Conservation of angular momentum. If you're standing on the edge of a platform, your angular momentum is zero. If you start wheeling your arms in a clockwise fashion, your trunk will have to start turning in a counterclockwise fashion so that the total angular momentum of your body is still zero. This is what you ...
Why are some people able to fall asleep faster than others?	[ "Differing Alpha and Beta levels within the brain. Everyone is wired differently and most likely the time you go to bed affects the said levels. This also changes when you age as well. There's a japanese article that goes into detail about this but I can't find it" ]	[ "It depends on many factors: * Energy consumption rate * Body weight and fat * Age * Genetics * Many, many other ones" ]
How do you analyze a sample of something to find out what molecules are in it?	[ "As Dubanx says, the arrangement of electrons in a molecule dictate what frequencies of light it absorbs and emits. So if you shine a light through a sample while varying the frequency, and you see which frequencies are more strongly absorbed, you can match that to the absorption frequencies of known substances. Th...	[ "As well as what the other guy said, some captchas will track mouse movement over the captcha box. If your mouse pointer moves smoothly, not in a direct straight line, and pauses before clicking then you're much more likely to be human than a program." ]
Why do humans have buttcheeks?	[ "The intergluteal cleft (what you crudely called “buttcheeks”, though it's actually the “butt crack”) is present for a good and simple reason. Humans walk upright, and that's the best way to make sure everything in that area still works like it should, such that we can still defecate (“poop,” if you will) without...	[ "There is a back door into every house. People put alarms all over their house. Have a key? You can get in the front door. When you need to break in you use the back door. Now only bad people use the back doors. So when someone comes in the back door, the alarm goes off. Your crack is a bad person, technically. He ...
Is there an integral of position? If so, what is it, and what are some real life examples of its use?	[ "The integral of position is used often in motion controls in order to have zero steady-state position error (you generate a force or torque proportional to the integral of the position error)." ]	[ "Math. After we were able to accurately monitor and figure out the body's course it was simply (not that simple) math and physics that told us where it would go. (EX: at day 12 month 5 yr 1981 it was here, on day 27 3rd month yr 1984 it was here, insert big math problem, and we now know that on day 1 month 1 yr 198...
Why would a restaurant only accept cash if not for money laundering?	[ "It costs businesses money to accept credit cards. Specifically, a small fixed fee, plus a percentage of the transaction. If a restaurant is operating on a very thin margin, and especially if their merchant agreement with a credit card processor is especially disadvantageous to them, it's possible that accepting cr...	[ "I don't know where you experienced this but I do it all the time. I bought a tv one day. It came up to $500 and something. I handed the dude 4 100 dollar bills, and told him I was going to put the rest on a card. He punched in the $400 and got my new Total of $100 something. Then I ran my card like normal." ]
How would the uncertainty principle affect relativistic velocity measurements?	[ "Even quantum-mechanically it's never possible for a particle to be going faster than light. You're right about the energy-time uncertainty, but using the relativistic energy formula to convert to a velocity will always put you below c. For position-velocity, it's important to phrase the uncertainty principle in te...	[ "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...
If we were to colonize one of Jupiter's moons, would Jupiter have cycles the same way our moon has lunar cycles?	[ "Yes, if you were on the side of the moon facing Jupiter, you would see Jupiter cycle through its phases every day. Jupiter's location on the sky wouldn't change during the course of the day, but the fraction of Jupiter's face illuminated by sunlight would cycle through the full set of phases. If you were on one of...	[ "You are right that the location of the JWST makes a service mission incredibly difficult. It is impossible for any current (or past) manned spacecraft to reach the L2 point and thus carry out any repairs to a broken design. Nevertheless, the design for the JWST does include the ability to dock with other spacecraf...
What exactly are the extra lines and colors I see in a picture if I use my phone's camera to take a picture of a digital screen?	[ "The primary source of lines is caused by the refresh rate of the screen not syncing with the camera frame rate on your phone, thus creating \"traveling\" lines across the screen. This is similar to why car wheels appear to spin backwards on some video, and is a [stroboscopic effect similar to this one](_URL_1_). T...	[ "Actually, Isaac Newton studied the exact thing you are talking about. It's called a phosphene, and it's created by the stimulation of the retina by means other than light, such as a magnetic field or an electric current. In your case, it's simply the physical pressure exerted on your retina. [Source](_URL_1_)" ]
Why didn't the Maurya Empire conquer all of India?	[ "Two reasons: 1) By the time the Mauryans had reached far south enough to have a border with the Tamilkam states, Ashoka had already converted to Buddhism. So for religious reasons, he did not want to wage any more wars. 2) The Tamilkam states and Sri Lanka were effectively all vassals of the Mauryans. So even if...	[ "Not enough energy to. It's like lighting a match in a snow storm and expecting it to melt everything. Sure, the match is hot, but theres a lot more cold than there is hot." ]
What was life like for people with poor eyesight during the pre-modern eras? Were there any odd solutions people devised prior to the invention of eyeglasses?	[ "Yes! I think about this often. As someone with horrible eyesight, I tend to think that in early human history, I’d have just been eliminated in a Darwinian way. How/when did poor eyesight not mean you were evolutionary dross?" ]	[ "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 does a rocket stay stabilized (vertical) when its taking off?	[ "The nozzles of many rockets can swivel about, which would help the rocket stay steady before there is sufficient airflow over the fins for them to be useful. That's my reading of it anyway." ]	[ "They 've got something like this _URL_0_ It has a lot of cameras on it, capturing every angle. Then, the video is processed so that you can turn your phone and change the angle." ]
What exactly was a "Banzai Charge" and how was it different than a regular bayonet charge?	[ "The main difference between a Banzai Charge and a bayonet charge is that the Japanese soldier expected to die and wanted to cause as much damage as he could before he did. In Japan (and China), it was arguably seen as more honourable to die in battle than to return home a coward. The soldiers would usually preform...	[ "I have a question for you. Do you want the version that is super, super long and includes a write-up on what actually went down at Munich, and the subsequent responses back and forth? Or do you want the shorter version that only talks about media coverage of the incident and how it changed things?" ]
Why does my banana ripen at superspeed when it's in my backpack?	[ "Bananas are a fruit that if it's surrounded by the chemicals it emits, will ripen much faster (you can turn green bananas to yellow quickly if you wrap them in a plastic bag). In an open area, these chemicals spread out and the fruit ripens at a more 'normal' rate." ]	[ "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...
How are hackers able to hack into major companies, steal tons of data, and get out without a trace?	[ "Companies have security measures commensurate to their perceived risk. Sure, some GoT scripts leaked, but that's not going to keep people from watching. HBO can't afford the sort of IT that would be more hacker resistant. Even the NSA has insiders who leak stuff, that's a much harder threat to deal with that simpl...	[ "Here is a very detailed Question and Answer with a Blood Passport panelist. If you read the entire thing you will understand how one can get away with it. _URL_4_ Highly simplified you take a performance enhancing drug. You then take other drugs to mask that performance enhancing drug. Then you take another drug ...
Why a lot of people say drinking Milk is bad for you?	[ "Milk has a significant amount of fat. Some kinds can be high in things like sugar. Additionally, the production of milk typically involves cattle, and some people support agendas that disapprove of animals in confinement, or animal husbandry whatsoever. That being said, food is not good or bad in isolation, you h...	[ "A cattle farm produces as much waste as a small city. Meat production is highly inefficient; they have to grow grain to feed to the cattle, and the animals produce waste and gaseous emissions. It takes 3 times as much crops to feed the animals we eat than if we just ate the plants we grow. Animal farms use a third...
Why do US universities favor professors who are better at research than teaching?	[ "Guess which one makes them more money, and gains better publicity, which brings more students.... and more money." ]	[ "Antibiotics mainly comes in 2 flavours, The penicillin (or beta-lactam) class of antibiotics block the action of the protein DD-transpeptidase, this protein is responsible for building the bacterial cell wall, without this protein, when bacteria divide, they are unable to cover the breakage point and the bacteria'...
What would you see if you where inside a perfectly spherical mirror?	[ "Michael Stevens saves the day yet again. _URL_0_" ]	[ "This video created by Vsauce 3 (Jake Roper) does a very good job explaining this: _URL_1_ I hope this answers your question. He also did another video on a simmilar line of - could you survive: _URL_0_" ]
What's the difference between quantum tunneling and escape over an energy barrier?	[ "Quantum tunneling is when an object does not have enough energy to surmount an energy barrier but is able to still pass through. Escaping over an energy barrier is when an object gains enough energy to go over the energy barrier. They are very different. Escaping over an energy barrier is effectively instantaneous...	[ "Work is being done on getting spinal nerves to regrow and attach. So far its still in the rat testing stage but they are having good results. Also, there have been experiments with jumping the gap with electronics technology that are also showing promise. Turns out, if your can transmit the signals reliably across...
How do government officials justify trading 5 terrorists for Bowe Bergdahl, who's now facing charges, but not making trades for all the aid workers that have been killed?	[ "The government has a responsibility to recover American soldiers. The government does not have an equivalent responsibility to secure the release of people who voluntarily entered a combat zone." ]	[ "Israel is supposed to hold to the borders that existed in 1967, before the [Six Day War](_URL_0_). The settlements are in areas outside that border, and are seen as an encroachment on lands that the international community recognizes as belonging to the Palestinians. The issue of the borders is also why the US ref...
How do one-time pads work and why are they impossible to crack?	[ "A simpler explanation of why one-time pad encryption can't be cracked: Let's say our adversary is sending encrypted text messages in English. With most encryption systems, you can try decrypting that message with every possible key. Most keys will just give you random-looking characters, and one will give you a pr...	[ "> If you could preserve a single file on say a partition that could not be over written and you knew the exact location of an identical file that was over written could the two files be used as Rosetta Stone to decrypt the whole computer? In principle, maybe. In practice, usually not. What you're describing is (ba...
What's the difference between having a heater on 72 degrees and having an air conditioner on 72 degrees?	[ "The selected temperature isn't necessarily the temperature coming out of the vents. If you're trying to warm/cool a room to a certain temperature, it puts out more extreme air. Room is 70, you want 72, the heater comes out at 75. Room is 75, you want 72, the AC puts out 70." ]	[ "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...
What is happening when an engine is warming up, and why does this affect performance?	[ "When things get hot they expand (get bigger). Inside your engine are a lot of metal things that work best with a very specific amount of space between them, measured in thousandths of an inch. When your engine is cold the metal bits are smaller and those exact spaces aren't the size they are supposed to be. Get th...	[ "A hot plate of food does in fact have more energy (technically), but it has the same amount of \"food energy\". Food energy is the energy stored in chemical bonds within your meal, which is where the energy you body uses comes from. Check out [this](_URL_0_) thread! Richard Wrangham has written a lot of current ...
Why lotto winners almost always take the smaller cash prize instead of the annuity?	[ "It's smart to do if you plan to invest the money - you can do a lot better than a 50% increase over thirty years, which is roughly the difference between the lump sum and the annuity (at least with Powerball). More realistically, winners want a lot of money and want it immediately." ]	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
If geological activity (volcanoes and earthquakes) stopped right now, would erosion eventually render all the Earth's lands into a featureless plain? If so, how long would it take?	[ "Erosion would render all of Earth into formations that conform to the medium causing the erosion. For example, some strong rivers would erode lands into canyons, as seen in the most famous example of the grand canyon which still has the river eroding it today. What I mean to say is that erosion is not uniform, so ...	[ "Eating uncooked vegetables and rougher food in general helped, a much lower intake of sugar helped, and an expected lifespan of thirty or forty years meant your teeth didn't need to last nearly as long as we hope they do today. Animals in the wild never brush their teeth and they last." ]
Why did Facebook's IPO fail so badly?	[ "Whether or not it was a failure is arguable. Generally speaking, the issue is that the value of the stock was greatly over-estimated and over-hyped. Facebook had been such a huge media giant for so long and was so inaccessible to investors that people were REALLY excited to buy stock when it was first available. ...	[ "This is like asking \"why does a fire burn itself out - what's the point of using up all the fuel if it can't sustain itself?\"." ]

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