Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
Why does your part of your hand and forearm get numb and has a burning sensation after hitting your funny bone?	[ "Hitting your \"funny bone\" actually means that you hit the [ulnar nerve](_URL_0_) (illustration) that happens to be exposed at the elbow." ]	[ "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 is beer in a can considered alright, as far as taste goes, while liquor isn't acceptable after three days in a flask?	[ "Beer cans are lined with plastic, and are airtight. Your flask is probably raw metal inside, and in filling it, you exposed the booze to all kinds of oxidation." ]	[ "You could test it. E.g. cover yourself in grease and then shower 1) with water only 2) with water and the product. Compare results. That would be a (pretty crude) experiment, which is how we learn answers to those kinds of questions. Also you could compare two pieces of perishable food, one of them treated with th...
If I recorded a completely silent room for 30 minutes, would the file have no size, or be average in size for a 30 minute recording?	[ "A completely silent room is not really silent, and the recording system will introduce noise anyway. But let's assume you want an artificially generated file with complete silence. Then it depends on how the data is encoded. For an uncompressed PCM format you get the same file size regardless of content. So 30 min...	[ "The telephone network was built a century ago. Most of the standards for audio over that network are decades old as well. Even the new standards like 4G LTE (which has a section on audio encoding, it is still a telephony standard) are built to interface with the ancient network and older standards. Back in those d...
How does relativity affect orbital mechanics?	[ "The scenario is impossible. It's impossible to have a classical orbit with speed greater than c (anywhere on the orbit) and the entire orbit being outside the Schwarzschild radius. Schwarzschild Radius = 2μ/c^2 Maximum speed of orbiting particle = √(((1+e)μ)/((1-e)a)) Minimum distance from central body = (1-e)a If...	[ "The short answer is, we're not moving fast enough to experience any serious time dilation. The longer answer, we're moving roughly 627 km/s relative to CMBR _URL_1_. That means we are moving at roughly 0.002x the speed of light relative to CMBR. As you can see on this [chart](_URL_0_), time dilation wouldn't even ...
Why don't we run out of melodies?	[ "Well, if we exclude all the variations + other layers a melody will have, and use like.. NES-era tech: A 10 note long tune (very short) that can only use say... 9 different tones (including no tone), this gives us ~~10^9~~ 9^10 possibilites, which is ~~a~~ over 3.4 billion. Actual melodies are much more complicate...	[ "If I recall from ecology, basically what happens is that you can chart how many new species have been found each year (adjusted for how many people/man-hours were spent actively looking), and the resulting graph shows a gentle curve and leveling off over time - indicating a point in the future where it's flat (mea...
Assuming we received an audio transmission from an alien race, how would we go about translating it?	[ "They would have to tell us what they were telling us. They'd have to start by demonstrating what they mean by numbers, for example, then go to the elements, possibly send some images. [This article](_URL_0_) in Wikipedia explains a few approaches." ]	[ "There is a National Geographic documentary available on Netflix called Breaking the Maya Code that explains some of the history of that effort. Basically several linguists and anthropologists contributed various pieces of the puzzle over many years, so it was slow and steady progress mixed with a few groundbreakin...
What was Halloween/the Halloween season like in the late 1930s, particularly in the urban United States?	[ "This article answers most of your questions _URL_5_" ]	[ "Unfortunately, this isn't a subject area which I can talk specifically about, hence I felt making a comment would be uncouth, however, all the same, for the sake of other responders, I though it'd be useful to say that I think you'll have to be more specific here (for the sake of getting the response you want) . F...
How do human populations end up having nearly 50/50 male-female ratio?	[ "There is generally a 50/50 chance that a child will be born with male chromosomes and a 50/50 chance that they will be born with female chromosomes. Probability is all that matters." ]	[ "/u/flooey is right, but in addition to that: we have a lot more in common than people realize. For the vast, vast, vast majority of political issues that have been debated through the ages we have essentially a consensus on how to answer them. We are not going back to the gold standard, we don't want a king or que...
Could a dinosaur regrow a severed tail like some lizards?	[ "Neither birds nor crocodiles can regenerate lost body parts, and being the closest living relatives to dinosaurs (in birds case they are direct descendants) it's likely that dinosaurs couldn't regenerate body parts either." ]	[ "Well, there is very little data on this for obvious reasons. However the story of Genie* is one modern case of this happening. Reading about that is probably the most information you'll find on the subject. *_URL_0_" ]
When planes crash, how do most black boxes survive?	[ "Imagine carrying a rock on a flight, and then going through the rubble of the crash to find the rock. That rock is going to probably be fine. Black boxes are stronger than rocks." ]	[ "Many international flights have layovers in countries not in the intended destination. Instead of forcing all of these passengers to first be cleared with the government of the layover country, which is time consuming and costs money, they simply designate an area for these people to board their separate flights w...
Why people rush to board an airplane?	[ "The space in the overhead bins is often scarce, and even when it is not, people often fill them inefficiently, keeping a jacket or something first. Most people do not want to check-in their carry-on and hence the rush to board the plane first." ]	[ "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...
Why don't babies drown in the womb?	[ "As a fetus you get oxygen and other nutrients from your mother, through the umbilical cord. You lungs are filled with fetal lung liquid to keep the alveoli distended, part of which you expel upon birth." ]	[ "There are a few different kinds of moon pools. The easiest one to understand are basically a hole in the floor above the waterline of a drilling platform or ship with multiple hulls that lets you look down into the water. You're probably thinking of moon pools below the water line though. Imagine taking a cup, tur...
What makes nuclear weapons so hard to make?	[ "Partly the materials are hard to obtain—technically and politically—which is why, for example, shutting down Iran's gas centrifuge programme was so important. But mainly, it's just technically very challenging: those centrifuges are very hard to build, the underlying technology took three mid 20^th century super...	[ "Do the best with what you have. Florida and California are US launch sites because they are good enough. There's certainly an advantage to an equator launch, but logistically and practically its far easier to launch from home... and cheaper! Baikonur (Kazakhstan) fits a similar idea... although being the USSR's la...
What is the difference between street art and graffiti?	[ "Street art is often commissioned or approved in advance, whereas graffiti is vandalism. Example: I pay you $XX.XX dollars to decorate the outside of my house with paint, it's \"street art\" (for all intents and purposes). Now let's say instead of me paying you, one day you randomly drive by my house and spray pain...	[ "Here's a pretty good explainer. _URL_0_ Basically it comes down to different memory, different promises (reliability and service life), and different marketing." ]
why isn't philosophy part of the high school curriculum?	[ "Probably because its relatively useless in this day and age. Also its hard enough to get kids to pay attention and appreciate practical courses, let alone more abstract ones like philosophy" ]	[ "I would check out It's Okay to Be Smart on youtube. They do a good episode on this (im bad at links)" ]
What's the point of fishing tournaments?	[ "No, catching fish is not completely up to chance. Professional fishermen and fishing guides have a tremendous breadth of knowledge about fish habits, where they are, best places, what to put on your line, how to cast, trolling, etc etc. Their knowledge, experience, and skill leads to much higher catch rates than...	[ "School collects box tops & sends them to the company. The company sends the school money. The idea is that people will buy more products from the company if they know it'll help the local schools. It's just an advertising campaign." ]
What is the historically accurate version of the three wise men story?	[ "Since the story doesn't exist anywhere outside of the Gospel of Matthew, you probably aren't going to learn anything more. However, one thing most people don't realize is the popular depiction of the Magi showing up in the manger shortly after Jesus is born is not even biblical accurate. They show up much later w...	[ "Adding to other comments on weather modelling and data, it depends on where the raw data comes from. In Australia, the government weather bureau is not used by most popular weather apps - e.g. Apple weather, Yahoo weather and Android's default weather app. They use a service called Weather Underground, which crowd...
How wide is the very sharp part of a knife?	[ "Here's a (non-peer reviewed) article on sharpening knives: _URL_0_ Shaving razors have incredibly small edge widths, per that article as small as 0.4 microns. So how many iron atoms is that? Well.... there are 8.5 x 10^22 atoms of iron per cubic centimeter (by mass), which means that there are 4.4 x 10^7 atoms in...	[ "It is not a stupid question at all. There is actually a third option too, called open, which is also of infinite extent but \"negatively\" curved. Our knowledge on what the answer is comes from: _URL_0_ Current tests suggest that the universe is incredibly close to flat. This is actually a \"problem\" as that sol...
Do you get more sun burnt when it's hotter out?	[ "No. A sunburn is the result of ultraviolet B (UVB) light in the 280-315 nm range that damages the DNA of your cells, and in severe cases cause inflammation or shedding of irreparable cells. You get more tan because the melanocytes in your skin produces a pigment called melanin, that absorbs light in that range of ...	[ "They can be, if not kept dry. Humans are always affected because they have moisture in their skin (perspiration) that evaporates and causes cooling." ]
if large atoms are caused by exploding stars in space, how can we find them here?	[ "Earth has existed for only about a third of the age of the universe. The two thirds before that was full of stars living, dying, exploding, and seeding the births of new solar systems, including ours. The matter that coalesced into our Sun and its planets (and other nearby star systems) was seeded by a supernova f...	[ "The reason the air is so contaminated from smog is due to the gasses released by cars, factories, ect (known as greenhouse gasses) Currently there are multinational discussions to curb these emissions and thus start cleaning up the air. Unfortunately we're at the point where major and drastic action needs to take...
How do image sharing sites like Instagram remove pictures for policy violation?	[ "individual users report pictures as inappropriate. Moderators (real people employed by instagram) review the reported pictures and check them against official policy, then decide whether or not to remove them." ]	[ "Country specific ones follow the laws of that country. You can search for Tibet freedom on _URL_0_. but not _URL_1_ or Google.can Google was given a choice by Chinese gov. Either you make the search engine follow our rules, or you don't do business in China at all and China blocks _URL_2_ entirely" ]
How can the Wave Function Collapse At All?	[ "The collapse of the wavefunction is a claim made by some interpretations of QM. Your thinking assumes QM describes some objective reality. That is, there is some real physical entity, 'the wavefunction', that undergoes some real physical change 'collapse'. The most famous interpretation that talks of a collapse i...	[ "The full answer to your question depends on some pretty heavy math, which I'll be the first to admit I don't completely grasp, but in a nutshell it comes down to the idea that we can measure the large scale curvature of the universe using the data about the Cosmic Microwave Background recently provided by the [WMA...
During the Tudor dynasty some portraits had women holding a red flower, were they supposed to symbolise the Lancastrian rose? If so, why in the Tudor dynasty??	[ "In the portrait of Elizabeth I, the rose she is holding is a so-called Tudor rose, which Henry VII adopted on his marriage to Elizabeth of York: it combines the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York, symbolising the union of the two houses into the Tudor dynasty. In the portrait of Anne Boleyn, the rose...	[ "You have what is known as an \"s\" patronym, which suggests that you had an ancestor named William - the \"s\" indicating the \"son of William.\" Typically, the \"s\" patronym in Britain is found in either Wales or Cornwall. Both areas were slow to adopt last names, and so when they did, many people used the ident...
Why do people blur out license plates in photos that they post online? Whats honestly the worst that can happen if a stranger obtains a license number?	[ "Someone could go looking for that person and a harass them. You know was movies and TV use 555-1313 for fake phone numbers? Because people will call them. Over and over. For decades. You still can't have 867-5309 without getting crank calls. It is a little harder with license plates. But with a little cyberstalkin...	[ "Headlights improve visibility of your car regardless of whether it is night or day. You may not need them to see, but other drivers can see you better when they are on. Thus, some roads or some weather conditions can require you to have them on. I drive with my lights on 100% of the time. Night or day, rain or sh...
The difference between $300 Ray Ban sunglasses and $20 mall kiosk sunglasses	[ "The difference is that you can lose 15 pairs of $20 glasses for the same price as one pair of $300 glasses." ]	[ "The film \"A Knight's Tale\" is surprisingly accurate to the spirit of the times, apparently. Also, Jurgen Habermas states that during pre-Renaissance (or Enlightenment) times, there was a marked divide between 'private' and 'public.' To Habermas, things and people that were public mattered, and thus, a celebrity ...
Why was Morsi overthrown?	[ "Because the Egyptian people (and the Egyptian army) didn't like what he was doing. Basically what he was doing (and this is very simplified) was making a new constitution for the country without allowing the public to have any input on it. Because the people drafting the new constitution were all members of the M...	[ "Greetings everyone. In the few minutes this sub has been up, it's attracting sub-standard responses. Just a reminder of a few of the rules: * no responses covering events/conditions post-1994, per this sub's \"20-year rule\" prohibiting discussion of current events * no anecdotes * no speculation OP: your question...
why don't porn sites end with .xxx instead of .com?	[ "The .xxx domain only came up a few years ago. Most major porn websites existed long before. They could in theory have their old .com just redirect to an .xxx version, but why bother really? Nothing stops them continuing as-is." ]	[ "Goes back to the days of rotary _URL_0_ guess is 9 was hardest to accidentally enter at since its the last one on a rotary phone, and 1 is the quickest digit to dial on a rotary phone." ]
Why did the Germans seemingly abandon their colonial holdings in Asia during WWI?	[ "They were un defendable these colonies were right on the doorstep of Australia and New Zealand two British colonies with millions of people compared to the German colonies couple of thousands. If they had tried they would have failed. Any attempt to reinforce would have resulted in the ships sinking by the Royal N...	[ "I’d add that I think this is far from black and white. I’ve seen the dynastic imperial terms associated with China applied in a European context, e.g. the Angevin Empire, referring to the lands ruled under the early Angevin kings, a polity made up of separate entities (England, Normandy, Gascony, Maine, etc) or th...
Where does the modern work week (5 days on, 2 days off) come from? What other serious alternatives have their been?	[ "There is an [excellent answer](_URL_0_) to a similiar question by /u/eternalkerri." ]	[ "I recall reading that for complex organisms in a competitive environment, two sex reproduction provides the genetic variability needed for competitive adaptation. Three sexes becomes unnecessarily complex - how can you be sure you'll find all three at once to successfully reproduce? Oh, and asexual reproduction (v...
Why trains in India are so overcrowded	[ "Because a lot of people live there, and there aren't enough trains to take everyone where they want to go comfortably." ]	[ "It follows the same principle as my dog working his way between me and my wife sleeping in bed." ]
If Ireland has Irish, Scotland has Gaelic, the Isle of Mann has Manx, Cornwall has Cornish, Wales has Welsh, and Britanny has Breton, why are there no Celtic languages found in other parts of the world where the Vikings settled?	[ "Because the vikings weren't Celts. Celtic languages were indigenous to the British Isles and most of western Europe before Romance and Germanic languages displaced them to where they are now." ]	[ "I don’t know of any sources contemporary with the invasion itself, but the general term used in Asia from pre-Hellenistic to modern times to refer to both the Greeks proper and to the Macedonian successor-states was “Ionian” (or words derived from it—like “Yauna” in Persian, “Yavana” in Sanskrit, and “Yavan” in He...
Why do the necks of hammers arch inward before reaching the bell?	[ "It's to counterbalance the claw. If it didn't have a narrow neck, the bell would have a smaller area, making it harder to hit the nail. With a tapered neck, you can have it still be the weight as the claw with a bigger head to smack the nail with. The overall weight is irrelevant, the same design is used for a 1l...	[ "Your car acts as a [Helmhotz resonator](_URL_1_), just like when you blow in a bottle, but the frequency is obviously much lower because a car is much larger than a wine bottle. You can also look [here](_URL_0_) for more comments." ]
Why do some films have a well known song feature as part of the trailer/adverts but that isn't in the film at all?	[ "I think part of it also has to do with the fact that one of the last things to get finished on a movie is its musical score. So, you're far less likely to hear music from the actual movie in early trailers." ]	[ "Two methods: 1) Scale models in slow motion. Blow up a 1:64th scale white house with a can of gasoline and replay the film in slow motion. It looks very much like the actual building blowing up in real time. 2) Computers. Airplane crashes and large cityscape scenes are usually done with CGI backgrounds. The actors...
How do devices remember the time as soon as they power up?	[ "So basically, your phone may shut off its components, but like a computer motherboard, there is a little battery specifically used to keep time even when the phone or iPod is powered off. So, yeah. What kind of iPod do you have by the way? I have a 4th gen touch, and it does not keep track when it dies." ]	[ "It's called Magnetic Secure Transmission. Samsung bought the technology from a company called LoopPay. When a credit card is swiped, the terminal reads information from a magnetic stripe on the back of the card. MST sends out a signal with the same-ish information that the terminal is looking for. It won't work ri...
Why is coconut oil considered healthy, even though it is so dense with saturated fat?	[ "The saturated fats in coconut oil are in the form of “Medium-chain triglyceride (MCT)” - this basically means your body burns the saturated fats found in coconut oil in the same way it burns carbs. Carbs (and the sat. fats in coconut oil) are used directly for energy rather than being stored as fat in your body. H...	[ "For a long time, it was the default for Microsoft Word (by far the most common word-processing program), thus becoming the de facto standard." ]
Why are we in such a shitty mood after waking up from a nap?	[ "When you sleep it has cycles, the most effective part, known as 'deep sleep' kicks in anywhere between 30minutes-2hours. it's possible that when you wake up from your nap, you're beginning this cycle. intercepting this cycle will put your brain into a phase known as 'sleep inertia'. Sleep inertia is a physiologica...	[ "Entropy man. It takes more energy to keep something \"clean\" or \"arranged\" than it does to let it go to chaos and become a mess. Put a bunch of strings in a box and shake it. Things will get tangled up quickly, and take more time/energy from you to untie/unknot the item(s). User /u/crnaruka answered this best i...
How did the Persians lose power?	[ "There have been various Persian dynasties throughout history, so it is not clear what time period you are referring to." ]	[ "Enron basically used non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) accounting methods to cover up their massive overleveraged position, (i.e., they had way more debt than equity). By keeping this debt off their books, they could overstate earnings. However, when people, including the SEC (Securities Exchange...
What separates me for making an overpriced "luxury" item?	[ "A buyer. Anyone can make a vodka bottle thats priced at 1million. Getting someone to pay you $1m for that bottle is another matter." ]	[ "Most of the time the people who go to these places are either already successful or some kind of athlete. The majority of the people you are talking about already have a lot of money to finance these trips. The alternative is usually some kind of athlete like the ones you see on YouTube doing extreme sports (base ...
how can websites offer a free stream for (e.g.) a sports game without it being taken offline	[ "They do get taken out and the pirates keep hosting them on different servers." ]	[ "Well, there are often missed or mistaken bits. The frequency varries depending on the quality of the connection. Wifi has far more errors than an ethernet cable, for example. This is solved in two ways. First, the thing you're downloading is split into smaller fragments. Secondly, there's a way to check if the fra...
Why does forcing pornstars to wear condoms kill the porn industry?	[ "Porn is about fantasy. Safety procedures kind of kill the fantasy. For the same reason you never see the hero's looking for toilet paper, and we don't watch Iron Chef wash the dishes after the meal is made. Reminders about the boring (or even dangerous) parts ruin the fantasy. We want (at least briefly) to suspen...	[ "They've done studies on buses in crashes using crash dummies— passengers in a bus are actually safer and better protected in a crash when they are not using a safety belt. The way the overall bus is shaped, combined with the trajectory of the passengers on impact, combined with the speed most buses go in transit, ...
Can any element be plasma?	[ "Yes, you can remove electrons (ionize) from any element. A plasma is a mixture of free electrons and positively charged ions (atoms that've lost one or more electrons). The amount of energy required to ionize an atom [depends on the element](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "There's actually an extensive list of planetary types on Wikipedia: _URL_0_ that said some like \"rogue planet\" could be a \"rogue terrestrial planet.\" However following the type theme of terrestrial and gas giant there are also ice giants, iron planets, ocean planets, coreless planets, and so on that are simila...
Why is Yellowcake uranium a sulfur yellow color when normal uranium is lead colored?	[ "Yellowcake uranium isn't pure uranium, it's uranium oxide. Just like iron turns orange when it oxidizes, uranium turns yellow. The act of bonding to oxygen changes the electronic structure of both atoms, and changes the way they interact with light." ]	[ "Screw political prisoners, they used ordinary citizens as guinea pigs. [This documentary (NSFL)](_URL_0_) has all the gory details. Basically they set off 456 bombs at a test range in Kazakhstan starting in 1949. They chose this site as being reasonably close (93 miles) to the city of Semipalatinsk, with the i...
Is it true that South Korea started the Korean War by bombing the North and attacking the town of Haeju?	[ "There were reports of South Korean forces capturing Haeju in the first few days of the war, and some people have proposed that this implied the South Koreans started the war. While this may be uncertain (the idea of some sort of exchange of fire certainly being a possibility), what is less uncertain is the fact th...	[ "Our immune cells (T and B cells) form 'Memory cells', once they encounter an infection or antibody. - After a naive T or B cell encounters an antigen/infection it becomes activated and begins to proliferate (divide) into many clones or daughter cells. - Some of the daughter cell clones will fight the infection. ...
Why is it not possible to modify a file's name while it's open?	[ "I can. (Linux) If, for example, I open a handle to a file and then move said file (eg here), it works like you might expect, I keep writing to the new file after the move: _URL_0_ However, bear in mind that this very much depends on the program in question handles files. For example, if I edit a file in `vim`, r...	[ "Depends on the material and temperature. Sometimes the surface forms a reconstruction, as dreykevins explains. Other times the surface forms an oxide or some other surface layer, which can prevent recombination. Other times the pieces actually CAN be put back together, and this process is called \"cold welding\". ...
if the eye is a muscle then how do we strain it and does it relax? Does it not focus when we close our eye, then what’s the black we see?	[ "Entire eye is not one big muscle. It's a complex organ with multiple parts. There are eye muscles there's the retina pupil aqueous humour etc. The eye that you see think of it as a camera lense. The aperture (opening to let the light through) can be adjusted using eye muscles. We contract these muscles when you w...	[ "Historically, gravity was thought of as a force between massive objects. Einstein's theory of general relativity trumped that with the idea that gravity is actually caused by the interaction between space and something called the \"stress-energy tensor\", which basically measures the density of energy (of which ma...
Why does my tv make a cracking sound the moment I turn it off?	[ "I assume you're asking about a tube-style TV, not a flatscreen. The crackle is usually the \"tube\" (Cathode Ray Tube) powering off. It takes a lot electricity to make the pictures, and when the TV turns off the crackling is the high-voltage electricity quickly dissipating/dispersing. It's actually quite similar t...	[ "Crickets, like all other insects, are cold-blooded. They take on the temperature of their surroundings. Many characteristics of cold-blooded animals, like the rate at which crickets chirp, or the speed at which ants walk, follow an equation called the Arrhenius equation. This equation describes the activation ener...
Why do the lights in distant towns/cities flicker at night?	[ "The same reasons the stars \"twinkle\" or you see waves above a hot asphalt road. You're looking through a ton of air some of which is cool other is warm. It refracts light differently so as it passes between you and the light, the amount of light reaching your eyes changes. Imagine like someone is holding a flash...	[ "If you can accept my passing knowledge of the matter before someone more qualified shows up, it's in how digital cameras capture images. Rather than capturing a single giant frame like film cameras, they scan a frame progressively, line-by-line. This results in artifacts with fast-moving objects such as plane prop...
What would happen if you grabbed a miniature black hole?	[ "You couldn't hold it because mountains weigh millions of tons. If you got within a few centimeters of it, its gravity would be much stronger than Earth's (not to mention the tidal effects). This means it would start tearing apart whatever it was near, creating a big mound of rubble." ]	[ "You can, Henry Cavendish did such an experiment in the 18th century. His results were surprisingly accurate. [Cavendish experiment](_URL_0_). However, because gravity is so weak, it becomes extremely difficult to measure the gravitational attraction of very small objects." ]
Byzantine questions (13th century)	[ "Wow! That's a lot of questions! I think, for your benefit, and the benefit of others, it may be better to ask them one at a time (or thematically) over the span of a few days, since some of these require very lengthy answers, and if I tried to answer them all in one go, I would either end up writing several volum...	[ "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 Starcraft 2 so massively popular? And how did it become a "thing" to watch other people play vidja games?	[ "some points that come in mind why it is popular. it is easy to spectate: two guys build an army, the one who has the better army/kills his opponent wins. viewers got all the information: much like poker broadcast, a lot of the enjoyment stems from the fact that viewers got more informations than the players. there...	[ "You can turn on your tap and get water instantly but if you're at a bar and want a beer, you need to wait for the bartender. TV is broadcast like radio. That means that the signal is always running and you just need to tell a TV to start paying attention to it. Modern digital cable TV system complicate some of the...
Why are battery voltages selected at the values they are? What is special about 12, 5, or 3.7 volts?	[ "First, you should differentiate between battery and cell. A battery is composed of many cells. A cell is an individual electrochemical cell. Thus, battery voltage will always be a multiple of the cell voltage for that given chemistry. 12V is common in vehicles. It's low enough not to be dangerous, and require rela...	[ "For Infrared Remote Controls: The RC5 standard specifies a 5 bit address before the command is send. The NEC standard specifies a 16 bit address before the command is send. So by giving the different appliances different addresses, the remote control only works on one. The \"shortage\" of addresses in RC5 (only 32...
Are there EM waves (noise) being constantly produced by a DC current on a real conductor?	[ "> So, my question is: Shouldn't they produce EM waves because of that? And of what order would be frequency of those EM waves (the frequency in which they suffer these collisions)? Forget about the DC current and the average drift of the electrons. Even when no net current is flowing, the electrons are bouncing ar...	[ "Microwave oven work through something called Dielectric Heating. It only works on stuff that is made of a Dielectric Material. When a dielectric material is in a magnetic field, the molecules turn to face the direction of the field. A microwave from the viewpoint of a stationary molecule is a rapidly changing m...
If Earth was a perfect sphere, how deep would the water be?	[ "[Wolfram\|Alpha](_URL_1_) gives the volume of water as 1.386x10^9 km^3 . I'm working on an integral using the [radius](_URL_2_) of the earth (given by Google) now to solve the depth, but I feel like I won't have enough time. Here are my results: I didn't need the integral except to think about it, but the depth wou...	[ "This type of question is known as a fermi question. You need to estimate... -average displacement of a vessel -number of vessels -surface area of the ocean ----- If you can get it within a factor of 10 you win!" ]
How are countries named?	[ "Usually one of four ways: * It's based on the names that the people living there have given themselves since before recorded history, e.g. France (home of the tribe called \"Franks\") or Uruguay. * It's based on the name of the person (usually European) who \"discovered\" the country or was otherwise strongly asso...	[ "By measuring the distances on the ground and the angles between these lines, roughly speaking. Even right now, when you want to make a map of a terrain (say, for selling it, knowing the acrage), you don't go get the satellite imagery for that, you measure on the ground, sometimes without any high tech: take a long...
Why did the English alphabet get rid of letters like þ and æ even though they are still used today?	[ "In many cases before then printing press came along, the english language was in huge flux. People did what was convenient, or what they thought was more true to latin or greek origin (even when it wasn't). Pronunciations weren't uniform and spellings less so, and they could change dramatically in only a few short...	[ "The word \"per\" implies \"divided by.\" For example, miles per hour can be represented as (miles)/(hour). Newtons per square meter (the SI unit of pressure, also known as the Pascal), can be represented as (N)/(m^2 ). m^2 is the SI unit of area. Also, to directly answer your question, a/b is equivalent to ab^-1. ...
How do the oceans of Europa stay warm without violating Newton's First Law?	[ "That's not Newton's first law, Newton's first law is that objects in motion remain in motion in the absence of an external force. Anyway, the energy for the tidal friction heating ultimately comes at the cost of Jupiter's rotation, which is very slowly slowing down because of these effects." ]	[ "When they do business within the eu they are bound by eu law and vice versa. There are also reciprocal agreements wrt copyright laws, such that we agree not to infringe things that have been copyrighted in each other’s territories within our own territory. Edit: When it comes to websites and such, eu laws have no ...
Back in the day you had to refresh a website to get an update but nowadays you don't have to. How does it work?	[ "This particular technology is called AJAX, which is more of a set-method-of-doing-things which evolved overtime. Basically it's a series of function calls that allow a Javascript script running on your browser to make a call to a website and get new information. AJAX has been around for a while, with Microsoft add...	[ "We are all subject to a circadian rhythm which dictates our sleep timings. A couple of factors include exposure to light and our body's release of supplement called melatonin. Many babies, for example, are naturally nocturnal. That is why parents have to sleep train them. After that, they will typically get tired...
If light has no mass, then how is it affected by the gravity of a black hole?	[ "Two ways to think about this: (1) anything with energy is affected by gravity (rest mass is just one form of energy) (2) gravity is a curvature/distortion of space-time, so light follows paths that reflect the presence of the black hole." ]	[ "So, you don't actually observe the astronaut crossing the event horizon. What happens, from your frame of reference, is that the astronaut gets more and more time dilated, and moves slower and slower as they approach the event horizon. This means that the light gets dimmer and dimmer, because the time between each...
If Libertarians run as Republicans in the US, why aren't more Socialists, Greens, and others openly running as Democrats?	[ "\"libertarian\" is a philosophy, \"Libertarian\" is a political party. Some libertarians feels there political goals are best met by being active in the Libertarian party, some do not. Similarly, \"green\" and \"socialist\" are philosophies, and many who hold to those philosophies are Democrats. \"Socialism\" has ...	[ "The insurance companies need to have people paying premiums before they need payouts in order to stay in business. The control that by not letting people sign up whenever they need it. Also it is not just one time a year, the open enrolment is only once but if you had insurance and lost it (say quit your job) then...
How did we deal with the VanAllen radiation belt for the manned mission to the moon, and the other mechanical probes we launched?	[ "[By getting through them as fast as possible](_URL_0_) - the less time spent in them, the less damage is done." ]	[ "Math, and the laws of Gravitation. We know that a certain amount of Mass will exert a certain amount of gravitational effect. From there we can extrapolate the Delta V for just about any target. As long as all the designers are using the same units, that is." ]
What happens to the body when sleeping only once every 2 days?	[ "The most sudden effects of sleep deprivation occur in the eyes, night vision and pupil dilation speed are noticeably reduced after only 18 hours awake. Also eyes become bloodshot. Next to go is long term memory, as long term memory is mostly solidified during deep sleep. Issues focussing on tasks and short term me...	[ "Yes it will stretch the bladder allowingyou to go longer between bathroom breaks. Though it will eventually lead to incontinence due to over stretching of the muscle tissue that makes up your bladder." ]
Questions about Quarks	[ "Quarks are what protons and neutrons and some other less important things are made of. There is no evidence or other reason to suggest that they are made of anything smaller. Quarks either have plus or minus 1/3 or 2/3 the charge of an electron. The most important quarks are up and down quarks, which protons and n...	[ "Some research suggests that quantum mechanics plays a role in how we detect smells: _URL_0_" ]
Electrons have mass and therefor curve spacetime. Why can't we measure that curvature to find position or speed without collapsing the wave function?	[ "Measurement in quantum mechanics doesn't really have anything to do with our ability to measure things. It's referring more to what information is physically possible to obtain and what happens when that information is obtained. In other words it doesn't refer to any specific means of obtaining the position or mom...	[ "Sure, you could create a stress-energy tensor for the hydrogen atom, plug it in to the Einstein field equations, and see what you get, but the question is \"are the Einstein field equations still valid on the quantum scale?\" We don't really know how gravity works on really small length scales." ]
the reasoning behind sentencing a criminal to 1000 years behind bars.	[ "A person might go to one trial for multiple crimes. For simplicity's sake, say \"murder\" has a maximum sentence of 100 years. And a person killed two people, and he's on trial charged with two counts of murder. The judge can give him up to the maximum amount allowed by law for each crime (in this case, 100 years)...	[ "People care less about obeying rules when they are about to die. At this point what do they have to lose? Did Jerry over in cell D12 make a rude comment about your mother? Maybe Jerry should get stabbed 12 times with a sharpened tooth brush. What are the guards going to do about it? Kill you? lol!" ]
Were five US presidents in fact members of the KKK?	[ "1)There is no evidence that McKinley was, considering the fact that he died before the second big Klan revival. 2) Wyn Craig Wade makes the case that President Harding was initiated as a Klansmen in the Oval office, but only quotes a sworn statement by a Klansman. Judging by some of his speeches he was quietly ant...	[ "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." ]
Could American Independence have been achieved without the Revolutionary War?	[ "This is a counterfactual question. I suggest you try /r/historicalwhatif." ]	[ "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." ]
How does a black hole adhere to Pauli's Exclusion Principle and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?	[ "For the Heinsenerg part: When you try to localize an object within a very small space, the energy of this object will be very big. That's actually something more fundamental than H.U.P., it's actually related to the fact that very localized functions have very broad fourier transforms. Essentially, you cannot have...	[ "We don't really. Flawed models are always an option to explain weird phenomenon, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time it happened. The reason the leading theories include Dark Matter and Dark Energy is because we can't find the error. Everything we can measure in scales we have access to seem to be matching...
Were there any significant battles or other events that demonstrated the obsolescence of armor against firearms?	[ "You seem to be setting up a divide between armored troops and firearms in the question, assuming that adopting the latter means disbanding the former. While any weapon and armor technology always exist in a state of tension, armored soldiers continue to be used alongside firearms up to the present day. The adoptio...	[ "Sorry, we don't allow [\"trivia seeking\" questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of disjointed, partial responses, and not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about an historical event, period, or person, please feel...
How do you cool something with lasers?	[ "Basically, all the atoms are moving around at different speeds, some faster than others. A laser is aimed at them at a frequency slightly above or below the frequency that atoms absorb light at. The faster moving ones, because of the Doppler effect, see the light at a frequency that they absorb, and they absorb th...	[ "The other guy was close: it's called supercooling and you can read about it on [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) or here's a good [video explaining supercooling](_URL_1_)." ]
Why are peanuts banned from schools but not workplaces? Does the danger of an allergic reaction decrease with age?	[ "Schools are responsible for the safety of their students. Businesses assume you are capable of managing your own allergy in the real world." ]	[ "Hi there, the mod team has already had to remove several responses in this thread because we do not allow [personal anecdotes](_URL_3_). While they're sometimes quite interesting, they're unverifiable, impossible to cross-reference, and not of much use without more context. [This comment](_URL_3_) explains the rea...
Why are there losses when transmitting high current vs high voltage if the power is the same?	[ "Power delivered by the source is P = VI. The question is what the power is going to be used for. For a resistive element in a circuit, V=I/R, so P_res = I^2 R. This shows that the power lost to resistance goes like the square of the current, so to cut down on resistive loses one wants to minimize the current. If ...	[ "Let's say you have a 7 lane interstate. At each end there is a toll booth. In the past payments were processed manually and there was a receipt that had to print, but the printers were slow. Only do much traffic could get through. Fast forward to the future where you pay with the touch of a button and get an insta...
Why are all the mysterious deaths around the Clintons virtually unheard of?	[ "This one has been pretty thoroughly debunked: _URL_0_ The gist is, that when you are a public figure, you are going to come into contact with a lot more people than the average person, and those contacts are going to be a matter of public record. If some random person I met ten years ago wound up dead in mysteriou...	[ "\"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..." ]
What temperature is a black hole?	[ "Black holes are states at thermal equilibrium at a temperature equal to the temperature of the Hawking radiation they emit, which is in natural units T = 1 / (8π G M) where M is the mass of the black hole, or more practically T ~ (6 \\* 10^(-8) K) / (M in solar masses)" ]	[ "Special relativity tells us that the mass of an object is simply its energy divided by the speed of light squared (m = E/c^2 ). That energy includes all kinds of energy, even thermal energy. The colder an object is, the less thermal energy it has, and the less mass it has. So yes, the object gets lighter as you c...
If animals where to of never evolved and the planet was still entirely inhabited by algae how would they receive carbon dioxide to make their food?	[ "Plants and other photosynthetic organisms also release CO2. Oxygen is produced in the process of turning water and CO2 into sugar. The plants then produce ATP through oxidative phosphorylation in other tissues, which releases CO2. This is why a sealed terrarium can function, as light is all that's needed to keep t...	[ "I'll hazard a guess and say that it's not that you're incorrect, but rather that the professor thought that the mention of the source of atmospheric oxygen was not appropriate for the talk. I don't know what level you're at, or what level you'll be presenting to, but based on the use of the word \"populistic,\" it...
Why does having both an inductor and a capacitor make a circuit AC?	[ "Putting a capacitor or an inductor into a circuit doesn't automatically make it AC. Whether or not current \"bounces around\" in the circuit depends on how you drive it (in other words, your power source). When you drive inductors and capacitors with AC, you get that characteristic \"bouncing around\" but you can ...	[ "Oceans are in constant motion. This means that they surge up and down. Because the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean aren't connected anywhere but the Panama Canal, you're channeling the entire difference in wave height at any given time through the canal. Without the locks, that means you'd mostly get a fast running c...
Why is it easier to view things indirectly when in the dark?	[ "The center of your retina (which corresponds to the center of your vision) has mostly cones and very few rods. Your peripheral vision involves a higher proportion of rods than the center of your vision. Cones are photoreceptors that are good for color vision and high visual acuity when in bright conditions. Rods...	[ "Several insects navigate using the position of the sun (and moon) as a reference point. Sun is relatively stable on the sky, only moving as the earth revolves during the day, so when you move 100 meters in one direction, the sun is still in the same place relative to you. But if you have a lamp and move 100 meters...
Time it takes for object to fall through a non constant acceleration environment (i.e. time it takes to fall to the Earth from the moon)	[ "The time it takes to fall towards a pointlike gravitational source is basically half the period of an extremely eccentric orbit. You can either add up time from the acceleration at each point numerically, or use [this](_URL_0_) equation." ]	[ "Think about things bouncing around. Imagine a box with a fan in it. Put 20 balls in ithe box. Now imagine a basket to one side just the right size for the balls. Turn on the fan. The balls jump around randomly. At some point a ball will fall into the basket. This will happen at a given rate which will depends on h...
Why does Steam Burn but Not Smoke?	[ "Smoke is what’s left after the hot reaction (fire), Steam is water so hot it started to jump out of the pot. A little more in depth... the steam is a physical phase change of water from being sticky to being gassy, while fire is an chemical reaction that just so happens to also produce heat while it’s doing so. Th...	[ "Hot air is less dense than cold air so there is actually less oxygen present in it for your lungs to pass into your bloodstream" ]
What the heck is your “inner ear” and what does it do?	[ "It's the part of the ear which makes it actually possible for you to hear something. Soundwaves hit your eardrum which moves stuff in your middle ear. Inner ear converts it to electrical impulses that brain can understand and interprets it as sound. Also inner ear contains tubular system with liquid and hair insid...	[ "Sound waves usually come out in circles (or spheres) from the point where they originate. A circle is the same when viewed upside-down. So if you invert that source, or you invert yourself, the sound is the same." ]
Why do we close our eyes when we,sleep?	[ "Partly because this helps reduce distractions so your brain can relax more easily and partly because of protection so our eyes don't dry out if we are in deep sleep or accidently brush our had across our face and scratch then when we are in light sleep." ]	[ "You heighten your sense of touch on your lips for brief moment by blocking your sense of sight, making the kiss feel more intense." ]
How do we process what we're seeing while talking? Viewed from the point that humans can't multitask. Are we not really processing or is talking/processing like walking?	[ "The concept of humans not being able to multitask as an absolute is a flawed premise. We can for example, walk and talk. Even for processes in the brain, we can multitask. When people say that humans can't multitask, that generally relates to conscious thought processes and tasks that require conscious thought pro...	[ "This law is not applicable everywhere, and the justification for it may vary. Also, these laws aren't necessarily made at the same time, or even any time close to one another, and it is entirely possible one is made without any consultation on any other law you might consider relevant. Also also, many locations r...
How far could a small group travel in medieval Europe per day?	[ "In the Roman Legions, soldiers were expected to travel 20 Roman miles (about 30 KM) with a fully loaded pack in 5 hours. This was the standard step. There was also a quick step, which required a distance of 25 Roman miles (35.5 KM) in those same 5 hours." ]	[ "depends on your measuring stick. people did what was best for them given the amount of natural resources, environment, etc around them. for example, maybe europeans had guns, but tomatoes originated in central america. where would you be without tomatoes? guns have little to no effect on your life, but i bet youv...
What would really happen if bees went extinct?	[ "I think they're major pollenators for almost 90% of our grown food. Without them things don't grow. We could find another way but it would be costly, not to mention all the other plants that would die besides human food resources. Anything like lumber and cotton would become exponentially more expensive too." ]	[ "If you have Netflix there's a very good documentary titled \"the world without US\" It explains your exact question." ]
Why should regular people care if presidential nominees aren't confirmed?	[ "Appointees to agencies of the executive branch are made by the President but need to be approved by Congress. This is a Constitutional check and balance against executive power, so the President can't just go around doing whatever he wants. For most nominations, the President probably isn't doing anything sinister...	[ "The idea of Net Neutrality is that all internet traffic has equal access to bandwidth/speeds. Doing away with it would be akin to allowing for highway speed limit signs that read \"Speed Limit: 65, BMW Owners Speed Limit: 85\" if BMW decided to pay for such access as a selling point. Or conversely, it'd be like a ...
How do i know the Luftwaffe markings on a plane aren't fake (picture)	[ "I had spend 2 hours writing up a long post about 3U+AB and how it would probably be a picture of that plane taken during ZG26's deployment to Greece during April-June 1941, including a cunning deduction from me showing that the plane in the background most probably is SB+GO. It was all very pretty with links to so...	[ "Because Clarkson's Porsche had 'H982 FKL' written on the license plate, and Argentinians though it was a provocation because Argentina lost the Falklands War that went down in 1982. _URL_2_ _URL_2_" ]
If Australians are so unhappy with their PM, why don't they take him out of office? Is that not possible in the AU government?	[ "> Does he have to be caught doing something wrong before he's taken out of office? Yes. Or resign, or lose an election." ]	[ "It makes it easy for the mother to stop providing nutrients for their young. It is relatively hard for placental mammals to stop development, since the fetus is inside them and attached to them. With marsupials, the mother can just stop producing milk. This gives marsupials an advantage in extreme environments w...
Breaking of Color Barriers in Professional Hockey?	[ "\"A color barrier\" (to me) suggests a situation where a significant number of athletes in an ethnic group are playing the sport, but are being kept out of leagues due to bias. Hockey presents a different situation. Hockey is not a very ethnically diverse sport; there aren't that many black hockey players at any l...	[ "Back then people still needed jobs, now they dont and can practice harder for longer. And science helps by showing then methods on improving motions. You cam find cool videos on youtube" ]
How can lawyers have peace of my mind while defending criminals?	[ "The point of a defence lawyer is to ensure that the state reaches the burden of proof necessary to deprive someone of his liberty. It's not about trying to traumatize anyone, it's not about trying to trick the jury, nothing like that. The point of it is that the state has to meet the obligation of \"beyond a reaso...	[ "It's arguable whether it's really worth it, but because a teacher is meant to teach you so that you really understand, not so that you can just spit out the answer given to you by another resource. Even if a mechanic would never need to do so in the real world understanding an engine to the point they could make t...
If we ever colonize new planets, how would we create a navigational map of the universe?	[ "There already is a system that uses the periodic X-ray signals from pulsars to triangulate galactic coordinates, called [XNAV](_URL_0_). The period of a pulsar's signal is constant, so once it's known you can identify any pulsar by its period from anywhere in the galaxy and use it as a reference point. Amazingly, ...	[ "They literally walk everywhere and charted what they saw. It took a massive amount of time, but it got the job done as accurately as they could have during that period." ]
M. Night Shyamalan's demise	[ "He made ~2 good movies and then most of his later work was subpar. It happens sometimes, people get lucky and do amazing work a few times and then remain subpar the rest of their life. Also, another issue is that M. Night Shyamalan movies usually have a twist, which made his first movies interesting but after a wh...	[ "MPAA send a request to google to stop showing results for a specific subreddit, /r/FullLengthFilms, because in it they found links to cam recordings of Tom Cruise's newest film 'Edge of Tomorrow'. That subreddit had like, 300 subscribers prior to this but this move made a huge number of people visit it." ]
Did "the Great Game" between the Russian and British Empires actually occur? Or is it a myth?	[ "Peter Hopkirk has probably written more about this than any other generally available scholar. His books are accessible and interesting, and he's researched the heck out of the Great Game. I would highly recommend them. * Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Cen...	[ "This question is getting a lot of traffic after being [tweeted by @reddit](_URL_5_), so I thought I'd welcome those of you that haven't visited /r/AskHistorians before to the subreddit. Please do bear in mind that in order to keep the quality of answers here high we have [strict rules on comments](/r/AskHistorians...
Is there a limit to how small an organism can be?	[ "If you count a virus as an organism the smallest organism would be some type of virus, as they doesn't require cellular structure or a metabolic system, just some DNA to replicate. Accodring to wikipedia (ref: Leppard, Keith; Nigel Dimmock; Easton, Andrew (2007). Introduction to Modern Virology. Blackwell Publishi...	[ "We aren't really sure why, but it doesn't seem that something like that can be done. Think about it like your bladder; you can build up a need to urinate, but you cannot urinate so much that your bladder is more than empty." ]
Why are we afraid of things that go bump in the night? Or to put it another way: Why are we afraid of things we know aren't real?	[ "This happened to me this morning, lol Basically it's how our brain deals with superstition. The first humans needed to be careful during the night in order to detect possible predators or potential danger, this ability has prevailed, but now there's very little chance of a cougar jumping on us while we sleep. When...	[ "Reading, fiction or non fiction, is an experience of being in another person's head. Reading thoughts from others are understood in our brains unlike a tv show where we usually only see the actors actions rather than thoughts. Studies on reading fiction has shown that readers have a better ability to have empathy ...
With all the advancements in technology, why does the dentist need a metal pick to clean my teeth still?	[ "Because it's cheap, easy to use, and gets results. We totally are able to have all of that fancy equipment. But it's just more logical to go the cheaper route if it works well." ]	[ "How can [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) have different amounts of information on it if both are just pages? If you can find a way to make smaller 'marks' on a medium and read them again later you can fit more of them in the same space. At some point you can't make your handwriting smaller because otherwise yo...
If the US is around 17 trillion dollars in debt, how can people continue to live their everyday lives without any noticeable change? What is the problem that the debt is actually causing?	[ "National debt is not the same as personal debt. In fact, national debt is a very very good thing. All of those debts that add up to 17 trillion dollars have hard-set timetables for completion, no, China cannot \"call it in\" and ask for all of their money back. National debt is a good thing because it means that ...	[ "You have a car that is worth $15,000 trade-in value, but your loan is still at $20,000. You take your car to a dealership. You want to buy a $25,000 car using your current car as a trade-in, and have no money for a downpayment. Instead of financing $25,000 for your car, you will be financing $30,000 (the differenc...
Why is it that Windows needs drivers and installations, but most accessories automatically work on Linux?	[ "There could be 2 things going on here: A) linux has a way to know which webcam you are using just by plugging it, it will look around and find the driver for you. (in my experience its very rare when this happens) (windows updates does this, or at least it should) B) linux has a generic webcam driver already built...	[ "They make money in one of two different ways. 1. Donations - (Firefox). Pretty much your standard charity works. 2. Support Contracts (Red Hat) - Imagine a grocery store who offered you unlimited free food, but if you want any of it cooked, have to hire one of their chefs to cook it for you. You can still eat it r...
In transcription, how are introns sorted from exons?	[ "The very short, simple answer (in case this doesn't get to the front page): It happens in the same way that almost everything is transcribed. There are highly conserved sequences in the beginning and end of introns which signal spliceosomes ( to attach, excise, remove the intron, and then reattach the loose ends."...	[ "Rule 1. First, examine at the atoms directly attached to the stereocenter of the compound. A substituent with a higher atomic number takes precedence over a substituent with a lower atomic number. _URL_0_" ]
Why does GTA5 use P2P servers for their Online suite when it's the reason hackers are so abundant? What are the benefits of not using dedicated servers?	[ "I'm far from an expert on this so I might be 100% wrong. I think it's the cost, having dedicated servers means you basically have a dedicated area full of processors managing all the player activity, where as with p2p the processing load is handled by the players. Source: some guy bitching about youtube and talkin...	[ "Contrary to what others have said here, the blood normally given for transfusions is not whole blood and does not contain white blood cells. Blood given for transfusions comes in the form of packed red cells. This is whole blood that has been spun down and most of the plasma has been removed. These red cells are ...
If each year is 365.25 days, why aren't we off by 12 hours 2 years after a leap year?	[ "You are. The Earth has gone around the sun twice ~12 hours before the new year at the midpoint between two leap years. It doesn't affect the time of day because our day length is set properly to the rotation of the Earth - it's just that an orbit isn't a multiple of the day length." ]	[ "That has been done by Congress. The US officially switched in the 1970s. It did not stick. Those industries like the Sciences where it is much more useful switched, but general society where there is virtually no difference in the usages as we do not need to be that accurate in things there is not enough of a bene...
Why does the compass point North even in the southern hemisphere?	[ "Because the Magnetic North Pole is near the Geographic North Pole. A compass follows the field lines of [the earth's magnetic field](_URL_0_). On the surface of the earth, those field lines go from the South Pole to the North Pole, so a magnet will always point to the North. If your question is, why the compass ...	[ "This question is pretty tough to imagine. Here's something that might help: Imagine you live on a [Möbius strip](_URL_0_). You're facing straight down at all times. You leave a ghost image of yourself as you go around the strip. Travel fully around and you get back to where you started, still looking the same way....

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