Subset (10)

eli5 · 25k rows

Split (1)

train · 25k rows

query stringlengths 20 300	positive listlengths 1 1	negative listlengths 1 1
What happened to British Hong Kong during the Korean war?	[ "It was very tense for a few years. There wasn't really any American protection, however, the Americans neutralized the Taiwan straight. The Chinese did not want to risk escalating the war as they were also fighting an uprising and just wasn't worth engaging the British in Hong Kong. Apparently the British and Chin...	[ "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." ]
What Type of Escorts did the Enola Gay and Bockscar have?	[ "So there were fighters stationed on [Iwo Jima](_URL_2_) to support the heavy bombers. And they did escort the bombers so far as [the coastline](_URL_1_). But the three bombers went on the bombing run by themselves. Likely this is because the force of the blast and resulting shock wave might've destroyed any smalle...	[ "Big [cable-laying ships](_URL_0_). Which is exactly how they do it today. The cables are rather more sophisticated today! EDIT - oh, and they would have been telegraph connections, not telephone." ]
When a music composer writes a piece in a certain key, are they only using the 7 notes in the given key?	[ "No. The seven notes are the \"central home base,\" but the composer isn't confined to just those notes. You can use chords from other keys, in modern music, using the 'flat 7' chord is common. (Song is in C Major, but a Bb Major chord is also used.) What Beethoven did and other composers do is modulate keys. Aka, ...	[ "Look at a book from the top of the spine sometime - you will see that the paper is glued in bundles - 8 sheet/16 pages per bundle. It is very cheap to make books with these bundles, so almost all books are printed this way. This means that the final page count needs to be a multiple of 16. Some of this can be ta...
Why do pictures like the one in the following text make me feel dizzy and my stomach queasy?	[ "It's because your brain, at first sight, sees a face. Since he knows what he sees is a face, he tries to put everything together to create an image of the face you're looking at, but then he notices the double pairs of eyes. What are they doing there? Your brain doesn't understand that, because he knows that the i...	[ "Looking at something exercises the rod and cone cells in the back of your eyeballs which then send the signal down your optic nerves to allow your brain to process the information. If the subject is very bright, then your rod and cone cells get overworked and start to become less sensitive to whatever type of ligh...
What is "Voice Throwing" and how does it work?	[ "[Rob Brydon](_URL_0_) is famous for his \"Small Man Trapped in a Box\" voice, which derived from him watching a ventriloquist throwing his voice. He explains in the linked video that \"you just squeeze the back of your throat and you try and form the words with the soft tissue in the back of your throat.\"" ]	[ "So many of them are overseas using VOiP to make the call over the internet. If someone is in South Africa at a call center and calls Chicago, the call travel over the internet to say Arizona, where they are picked up by a local exchange and then sent on the plain ol telephone system to Chicago. Now Chicago police ...
Why is the Floyd Mayweather v Manny Pacquiao fight such a big deal?	[ "Because it's been over 5 years in the making. There is a lot of controversy over who is the better fighter. Mayweather is unbeaten but Pacquiao was still named best pound for pound boxer of the decade. It's also extremely exiting because they are the greatest opposites you could see fighting. This little documenta...	[ "> how it really amounts to a bunch of bologna I don't have an answer, but I do need to point out that bologna = lunch meat. Baloney = nonsense." ]
Has the discovery that the Universe's rate of expansion is accelerating disproven the Big Crunch theory?	[ "not disproven per se, but yeah, it seems to strongly indicate that Big Crunch won't happen." ]	[ "Redshift isn't proportional to the time between when the light was emitted and when we receive it. Actually, it's closer to proportional to the age of the universe at the time the light was emitted. (Not exactly, though. See [this](_URL_0_).) And the light we're seeing from the galaxy was emitted when the universe...
During Segregation in the United States, how where people of Asian and Latino descent treated? Did they have the same rights as White Americans at this time?	[ "There was segregation against Mexican-Americans, although it doesn't seem to have been as extensive or as formalized as it was against African-Americans in the South. Some examples: Mendez Vs. Westminster was a federal court case having to do with school segregation in Orange County, California, that actually pred...	[ "Setting aside the terminology of \"race\", it's entirely down to selective pressures of the different environments. In equatorial regions where the sun is plentiful, having a lot of melanin is useful in protecting against cancer. The further north/south you go from there, the less sun there is, so having less mela...
Why is so much computational power required for some simulations? Can't these simulations be run with less power, but at a slower rate?	[ "- If you want to predict the weather for Nov 1st, and the simulation gets you the result on Nov 23rd, it's pretty useless. - While the simulation runs, people wait for the results. Salaries are expensive; computers, less so. So, you want the computers to give the results quickly so that highly-paid people can cont...	[ "Imagine a bathtub full of water, the water represents electricity. The bathtub has a faucet, which represents the generation of electricity. Imagine now that there are little holes in the bottom of the bathtub, all plugged up. When ever a home needs power, unplug the drain and let the water flow out. Now imagine ...
If the moon affects our tides, then can anything with a gravitational pull to/from Earth affect our tides? Say two black holes colliding 1.4 billion light years away?	[ "In principle, yes, as /u/RobusEtCeleritas states the tidal forces drop off as the cube of the distance. That is to say that if the Moon were three times farther away, the tidal forces we feel on Earth would be 27 times weaker. Gravitational forces are infinite in extent by Newton's Law, so distant objects do impac...	[ "the effect on the scale you are talking about is very small. our galaxy is cca 100000 light years big. one orbit of our sun around it takes cca 210 milions years. that means, that even if you are looking on from one end of galaxy to the other one, it looks almost the same. stars also evolve on time-scale of bilion...
How do smart phones differentiate touch input between your finger vs any other object?	[ "Usually they react to the electrical conductivity of your finger. This is why electronic stylus work on most touch screens." ]	[ "They don't. Take the ubiquitous 'flashlight' app, that needs access to your contact list, your call history, and all your texts. It's all marketing, that app is phoning home all your personal data to a server somewhere." ]
How do we know that there is an unobservable universe beyond the observable universe if we can’t see it?	[ "We can't know with 100% certainty, but all evidence points towards the universe being pretty much the same everywhere that we can observe, so it would make sense to be pretty much the same where we can't. It is a simpler explanation to say that it simply is infinite and homogenous at large scales (which is cons...	[ "Some things whose explanations most likely outside the scope of QM, GR or the Standard Model: 1. Dark matter 2. Dark energy 3. Neutrino Flavour Mixing 4. Charge-Parity violations by the strong force. One thing we don't yet understand, but will most likely be explained by QM, GR or the Standard Model (it's been tal...
How does one tiny little Imodium tablet do such extraordinary work?	[ "There are special receptors in the nerves on the colon that the imodium molecule attaches to and activates. This essentially relaxes the tone of the colon letting the contents of the colon stay in the colon for longer. If it stays for longer in the colon, more water is absorbed by the colon and then you won't ha...	[ "They use a wavelength of light that is cancer causing. Do you want to sit under a cancer causing light? Plus, they aren't all that effective to stop, say a sneeze from transmitting to another person. It takes some time to kill the germs." ]
Why can a baker keep their breads out to exposed air and still be 'fresh' where I take it home and leave it out the bag for an hour and it's rock hard?	[ "I worked in a bread bakery for 6+ years and have no idea what you're talking about. Our bread would be baked from approx. midnight until 8 am or so and a loaf that came out at 2 in the morning would still be tasty at 6pm. I've never seen a loaf get \"rock hard\"; if anything they tend to get softer at first. We do...	[ "Its the way they it was developed and tested. They made sample A and fizzed it up and it tasted like crap. They did the same with b-x. But damn Y tastes good. Lets mass produce Y. No point in testing what your drink tastes like 1-2 hours after opening as that is not what your target market is buying it for. They w...
The UK rules on Bills of Exchange	[ "In regards to the council tax being illegal part unfortunately these people are very ill informed. It is law that you have to pay council tax(based on certain criteria) as per the [Local Government Finance Act 1992](_URL_0_). By living in the UK you are agreeing to the rule of law and as such the act stands." ]	[ "On a related note, here is a modern [postage stamp commemorating the British occupation of the Faroes](_URL_1_). It is not often that occupations are so fondly remembered, so I think this probably goes to show how the populace felt about it." ]
Why do household cleaners only kill 99.9% of bacteria? Why is the 0.1% so bad ass?	[ "It's to cover their ass. Ain't nothing perfect, son." ]	[ "This is a post WW2 phenomena. Tech was becoming a thing. Computers, atomics, etc Planned obsolescence required new, better model names, 1, 2, 3... At some point the univac 4 needed to be better just by the sound. Univac 400 vs the IBM 401. Jump a head to the nth degree. The univac 9000 or the OS X for that mat...
How the value of a dollar can change	[ "There are 100 people in the US. Every single one of them has $10, so there are $1000 total in the US. Some of the people are farmers and decide to sell some of their milk. Everybody likes milk, so the farmers decide to sell a gallon for $1. You have $10 and you say, \"What the heck, I like milk. I'll buy it!\" No...	[ "Issued doesn't mean it goes around alot. You can take a freshly printed bill and withdraw it from the bank and just never spend it. Some people keep an emergency stash of money in their home. They don't touch it for years until they need it for an emergency." ]
Why did the Apollo 11 mission plan to land during a waxing crescent phase?	[ "\"To provide to LM crew with the optimum visibility during the final phase of the descent and landing, the local sun angle had to be within 5 and 14 degrees above the eastern horizon (behind the LM). These lighting conditions allowed the LM crew to visually evaluate the landing area they were headed into and selec...	[ "You mean the Animal Planet one? Hype and marketing. Then it became a euphemism for menstruation (I'll fill you in if you want, but it's gross sex stuff...) and took on a life of its own." ]
Why is Kansas City in Missouri?	[ "Kansas territory included present day Missouri before the two became separate states." ]	[ "[The Straight Dope covered this](_URL_0_). Basically, they started out as being made by two different production teams, but after a certain point, they became essentially interchangeable, but they kept both names going." ]
Are earthquakes only dangerous because of our man-made buildings and infrastructure?	[ "What a weird question to be asked by someone named \"Tsunami\". Earthquakes can produce Tsunamis, which are extremely dangerous, and that doesn't involved human made structures at all. Similarly earthquakes can produce landslides, or open cracks in the Earth like [this](_URL_0_). They could also divert rivers or e...	[ "It's more the association of a warning with something bad. For example, if the first time you met a puppy, it bit you really bad, the next time somebody said lets go get a puppy, you would probably be nervous. The same thing applies when hearing a tornado siren, when in previous times you heard it, there was a tor...
What historically-significant sights should I see on my trip to Israel?	[ "For more modern stuff going from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and seeing all the checkpoints and the wall is pretty bizarre, and gives a kind of 1984 Orwellian feeling." ]	[ "I don't know about topography, but the way the game is styled is fairly accurate. Pripyat has been abandoned since the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, so everything has been left for mother nature to control. But the ferris wheel is actually real and is still in Pripyat and some of the more famous building are a...
How can I make sense of classical music hierarchy and structure (such as "Opus no. and Symphony no.)?	[ "An opus is just another word for \"work\". irrespective of kind of wok it is (a song, a quartet for violin, a piece for piano or whatever). So the first known work for a composer is \"opus 1\", the second one is \"opus 2\", and so on. Symphonies are a special kind of works, namely for a Orchestra. All the instrume...	[ "Most neighborhoods built after the 1950s, ie subdivisions in the suburbs, are built all at once. Meaning they will all be built within a year of each other and use 1-5 building plans. Homes built in cities or on privately owned lots outside the city limits that are not a part of a subdivision are built as the owne...
Why do people who save lives, e.g. Fire fighters, doctors, police, make less money than those who play sports for a living like the NFL, NBA, etc.?	[ "Because nobody is paying for tickets to watch firefighters or buying their jersey or paying for price tv bundles to see all the local fire departments at once." ]	[ "There is actually an explanation for this. All your brain gets is signals without mich further information. So it must decide what problem to fix first. Now there is an alarm for hunger and pain at once. Worst case for hunger is starving. That takes about three weeks. Worst case for pain is fatal injury. That can ...
How hot can the universe get?	[ "* [Hottest ever measured is around 4 trillion C](_URL_1_) * [This article here discusses theoretical upper limits](_URL_0_)" ]	[ "To answer the question literally, our current best measurements of the expansion rate, known as the Hubble constant, are around 70 (km/s) / Mpc with an error of about 2. The unit there is kilometers per second of recession velocity for every megaparsec away from us a given object is. (For example, [Planck results]...
why we can't just disassemble smartphones OS and see what informations they're logging / sending / spying / whatever ?	[ "Why do we HAVE to do this? Companies should be prevented from doing illegal acts. Though, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a line item in the User Agreement." ]	[ "It’s like making your own sandwich. When you buy a sandwich from a shop it’s pretty hard to do stuff to it. The cheese is all melted and the condiments are absorbed into the bread and the meats. But when you make your own sandwich you break it down into smaller pieces. You can put the bread you want, the meat, t...
Why didn't the non-GM plants get resistant to pests when they've been exposed to them for millions of years than DDT that they have encountered only since 1945?	[ "Maybe as the plants evolved resistance, the pests were evolving to overcome that resistance. In the same way that bacteria learn to circumvent the effects of antibiotics. I imagine that, given time, the pests will develop a work around against GMO's, and the GMO's will have to be updated. It's a never ending battl...	[ "To add to the overview provided by u/tiredstars , this [previous answer](_URL_2_?) by me covers the parallel developments of armour and gunpowder weapons in the 16th century, particularly attempts to strengthen armour in the face of stronger weapons. It is worth noting that the period from the initial deployment ...
Is sodium necessary for hydration? Why?	[ "Yes your body is capable of surviving on sodium from your diet as long as you eat a somewhat balanced diet. Yes sodium is a necessary electrolyte, it is vital to many bodily functions such as: Nervous conduction - Sodium being transported into nerves is the reason that they generate electrical signals (for the mos...	[ "Incidentally, this is the problem that _URL_0_ is trying to solve. Here is the map of the overall plan: _URL_1_ There is enough solar energy in the Sahara desert in 6 hours to power the entire world in 1 year. From the Sahara, they plan on connecting Europe with underwater high voltage direct current lines. The p...
Why is plasma classified as its own state of matter?	[ "Why is anything a 'state of matter'? As discussed here many times, they're rather arbitrary. But in any case, plasmas behave differently from uncharged gases in many ways, such as how they flow, which is why [magnetohydrodynamics](_URL_0_) is its own subfield of fluid dynamics." ]	[ "Laws usually don't have to make sense. It is what the politicians and the lobbyists can make the people think are concerns." ]
Why is imgur the 'default' image hosting for reddit?	[ "Imgur was designed by Alan Schaaf in 2009 as a gift to reddit users who complained about other image hosting sites being rubbish. The reason its still used very often amongst reddit users is that its most likely what users are most familiar with, and to be fair its easy to use and \"doesn't suck\" more [here.](_UR...	[ "Cooked something really nice? Show it. Lost a few/lot of extra pounds? Show your transformation off. Have kids that make you feel proud to be their parents? Show why you are. Have cats that you love? Sure why not, just show it, people love animals. People like to show others things that they are proud of." ]
If one was to continually put energy into a photon, would it eventually gain enough energy as to have meaurable mass?	[ "Photons have no rest mass, period. You cannot pump energy into a photon. You can absorb a photon with one energy, and emit another with more energy. The frequency of the photon will increase, but it will still have no rest mass." ]	[ "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." ]
How did people move before Uhauls?	[ "Throw everything you can fit into whatever vehicles you have at your disposal, and then make more than one trip if you need to. If you don't want to make multiple trips, then you would either need to find someone else with a large vehicle or pay someone to do so, whether that be a private individual or a company w...	[ "They have a hand accelerator and hand brake installed in their car. [There are lots of companies that can install those kind of controls in almost any car.](_URL_0_)" ]
What is the oldest piece of art that holds a copyright?	[ "In general, [Wikipedia has a good list of different countries' copyright term lengths](_URL_0_). The longest term is 99 years after the author's death, offered in the Ivory Coast. (Mexico offers 100 years after the author's death, but only for works published after 2003.) However, Great Britain has made several ex...	[ "I heard it had a lot to do with the invention / discovery of the camera obscura. This helped people understand perspective / proportions / etc better. Here's a quick article I found about it - but there are a ton of others, videos, books, etc that talk about it in more depth. _URL_0_" ]
The sun's rays and why there's not a "circular ray"	[ "What you call sun rays is actually light that is bouncing of atmospheric particles. The reason the rays appear to emanate from the centre is a a simple perspective effect. It's the same effect that makes it seem like the rails of a railway track appear to converge each other a point in the distance. You know, howe...	[ "It has to do with the shape and number of the [aperture](_URL_0_). Some lenses have 5 or 6 blades in the diaphragm. The flare that you see that are round have an aperture with curved blades or is shooting at the lens' widest aperture. You'll have less flare with a prime lens (fixed focal length) than with a zoom l...
What happened in the balance beam finals after Aly Raisman was placed 4th, appealed and got 3rd	[ "Minor correction: It was the Romanian [Cătălina Ponor](_URL_0_) she tied for bronze, not a Russian gymnast." ]	[ "It isn't one trigger. There is a psychological component. We eat a lot more if served more food on a plate. Another famous experiment was to eat soup that was connected such that it never emptied. People ate a ton more. Stomach expansion is also a factor, thus lap-bands reduce what people eat. There is another sig...
Can a man who had a stroke due to brain clot and then 5 brain surgeries ever drink or do recreational drugs again?	[ "Surely that's something you should've asked your doctor? Or are you looking for a second opinion?" ]	[ "It's called the [Monty Hall problem](_URL_0_). Ultimately, what it comes down is that, from the start of the experiment/gameshow, there was only a 1 in 3 chance that you chose the door with the prize behind it, so if you repeat the experiment a thousand times over, the prize would be behind the other door two th...
Drinking hard liquor before beer and not getting sick.	[ "It's a myth. What's important is how much alcohol you drink, not what order you drink it in. The idea behind it is that if you're a little drunk already, it's a lot easier to go overboard if you're taking shots instead of drinking beers... taking 4 shots is a lot easier than drinking 4 beers, especially if you've...	[ "Words that often appear together are called \"collocations\", and it's simply the way we've learned them. We tend to process them as indivisible units -- phrases, rather than separate words. For example, when we say \"apples and oranges\", we're not thinking of two different kinds of fruit and then putting them in...
How does alcohol make you drunk?	[ "It's surprisingly complicated with alcohol, since most other drugs have specific receptors, while there is no such thing as \"alcohol receptors\" in our body. Neurons (also known as nerve cells) control our body and consciousness by delivering small electric impulses along their long bodies. To do this, the ne...	[ "Not always but it's usually because your muscles are not strong enough to hold your body in the proper position. So basically your muscles are getting tired holding yourself up and when they relax it feels good. In the long term however, your bones and joints will deteriorate and cause a lot of pain." ]
Can someone explain the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Augment your Preorder debacle?	[ "Large parts of the gaming community don't like pre-orders at all. As they are inherently anti consumer. In combination with the fact that game companies often embargo reviewers so they can't release their reviews until the day the game goes on sale. So if the reviews are all negative because the game is crap, if y...	[ "In most cases I'm aware of, it's simply because the game was developed for consoles and then just ported to PC without taking things like this into consideration. In some cases though, it might be necessary because things like ingame physics are tied to the framerate and they would not work as intended with an un...
Why are popsicles included in the "novelties" section at the grocery store? And what makes them a novelty?	[ "It refers to ice cream novelties. That's anything made of ice cream that isn't just ice cream in a tub. So popsicles and ice cream sandwiches and Klondike bars are all novelties" ]	[ "[This](_URL_0_) previous thread explains it as [entrainment](_URL_2_). When changing the diameter of your lips, the airflow is subject to the [Bernoulli effect](_URL_1_) where it speeds up. When the air moves faster, it draws in more surrounding air which is cooler than your body temperature, thus making it feel c...
How do reporters know the attendance numbers of mass marches or protests?	[ "Someone will take a picture or count the number of people within a given area. More likely in several spots. Then they will work that into an equation that estimates the number of \"areas\" it would take to fill the total area occupied. People tend to distribute themselves fairly evenly at large events, so these s...	[ "It's a mix. There'll always be a human element but new technology is always being introduced. Players do wear things that can track things like how far or fast they're running. When I was in college they always made a big deal when ESPN came to talk to the statistics majors and hire a few to work for the company."...
How many trees would I have to plant in order to make up for the CO2 I emit for having a car?	[ "A large grove.. > Every gallon of gas you burn running your car creates roughly 20 lbs. of CO2. So if my car gets 20 miles per gallon and I do 20,000 miles per year..... yikes, that's another 10 tons of CO2 (you do the math for your car(s)!). Hmmmm...... that's another 2.0 acres or another 240 trees. using that a...	[ "They did do that. Some people just claim that research funded by oil companies doesn't count as \"extensive research\", because they think it's too likely to be biased." ]
How does refraction work if the speed of light is a constant?	[ "The speed of light is constant in a vacuum." ]	[ "That could merely be a subjective experience, but this experience can be helped by the fact that your perception of far-off landmarks is vastly reduced. You measure movement by the movement of landmarks in relation to you, and at night you cannot see far-off landmarks. Because of this, you only see things that are...
Why do we feel "heart ache" after a painful event or a bad break up?	[ "In a study published in 2011, researchers found that emotional pain is caused by the same area of the brain as physical pain. They also found that taking Tylenol would help alleviate emotional pain in much the same way as physical pain. Source: _URL_0_" ]	[ "It's called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon -- your brain wants to look for patterns in things, so when it learns something new, it gets to make all sorts of new patterns appear." ]
What is a permalink and how does it differ from other links?	[ "A permalink is a link guaranteed to point to a certain piece of content forever (or at least as long as the website in maintained). This is generally used to distinguish from links to pages that change all the time, and may have a different piece of content on them in a couple days. For example, I can link you to ...	[ "Proof of work: I trust this because it was \"carved in stone\" and accepted by the community. The work involved in crafting it makes it near impossible to tamper with it. Proof of stake: I trust this because it was created by, and signed by people who have a a personal stake in it." ]
If there is a ToE, then is causal determinism true? If you knew the starting point of the Universe, and causality is true, is there really "free will"?	[ "The answer is an unsatisfying \"not necessarily.\" As far as we can tell, the universe is non-deterministic. For example, it would be impossible to figure out when a given isotope would decay. Bell's theorem puts experimental limits on certain types of determinism, and experiments generally support Bell's theorem....	[ "It is the belief that God controls all thing to such a minute detail that there is no free will. Those that God decides will go to heaven will always go to heaven and everyone else will go to hell. It does not matter how bad you are as a chosen person, and it does not matter how good you are as an unchosen you can...
When you squint really hard, why do you hear a rushing wind like sound?	[ "I believe what you are describing is a contraction of the [tensor tympani muscle](_URL_0_). This is a muscle that actually functions to dampen sounds, particularly those produced by other functions of your head, such as chewing. I am able to contract this muscle voluntarily and create the wind-rushing, or roaring ...	[ "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...
Ireland was famously neutral during WWII. What did they do during that time? Why didn't they get involved?	[ "Having written about Irish neutrality before, you may find [this answer](_URL_0_) to be of interest." ]	[ "It really mainly is the geography, and the cleverness of the inhabitants who learnt how to effectively make use of it in case of invasion. Look at [this](_URL_3_) relief location map. You see, not the whole country is surrounded by mountains, but the [jura mountains](_URL_1_) make for an excellent defense line, as...
Why do my cats either not notice or not care about their reflection in a mirror?	[ "Their brains aren't sophisticated enough to have developed a concept of self-image or to recognize that image in a mirror. Read up about the [mirror test](_URL_0_). Only relatively few animals are capable of passing it, and they're all mammals except for European Magpies. The only non-primate mammals known to be ...	[ "They play as practice for hunting basically. They know the difference, but they are \"programmed\" to play like this, as it has proven beneficial for honing of hunting skills and exercise. They also \"play\" with their prey to wear them down, to avoid sustaining injuries during the killing blow." ]
When did the terms "Allies" and "Axis" come into use to describe participants of World War II, and what were the two sides referred to at the time?	[ "Follow-up question: at what point did people start referring to the war itself as a World War, or another Great War, or something of the sort? And what were people (I assume mostly in the press and in speeches by chiefs of state) calling the war before everyone agreed on the name we have now?" ]	[ "> Why? What are the arguments for each possible \"starting point\", and is one of the options \"more correct\"? Jefferson's Democratic-Republican party \"won\". Hamilton's Federalist Party died out. Factions developed in the Democratic-Republican party in 1824. The Jackson faction was what ended up becoming today...
When we crack our knuckles, what's actually happening? And why does there seem to be a "recharge time" before we can do it again?	[ "A doctor may be able to fill in some blanks. But from what I understand is that during normal movement, like me typing this comment, we get air trapped in our joints. Cracking the knuckles releases this air. I would assume the \"recharge\" time is the air building back up. A common misconception is that cracking y...	[ "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...
As a Brit I am taught that the British Empire was a stain upon the earth. But is this true? Did the British Empire do anything good for the world?	[ "The British Empire was arguably one of the vehicles that enabled the virtual extinction of the slave trade. That must rank fairly high in a list of good things. In India, Suttee and the rigid caste system were broken under British rule, and similar improvements could probably be found for most of the other territo...	[ "This question is difficult to parse. What do you mean \"a good example?\" You mean a historical society? It's important to realize that there is significant debate amongst anarchists about what an anarchic society \"should\" be. There are many \"flavors\" of anarchism, all of which oppose, to one degree or another...
Why can I stop my lung function (i.e. hold my breath) but I can't stop my heart and cardio function the same way?	[ "You're not stopping your lung function. While you are holding your breath, your lungs continue to function, drawing as much oxygen out of the air in them as they can before you pass out and/or start breathing again. That conscious control is not over the lungs, but over the mouth, nose, and diaphragm (the muscle...	[ "There is a big difference between those 2 things: One requires more muscle mass. More muscle mass can generate more force. When you lift a weight you can slowly activate more muscles fibres contraction generating more and more force until it is enough to start lifting the object. Running on the other hand is a ver...
Why Microsoft is being fined more than half a billion euros for not giving a choice of browser in windows 7 installation and Apple is not.	[ "Really the reason is that several years ago Microsoft was involved in an antitrust case in the EU over their browsers. As part of the settlement agreement, they agreed to put a message allowing users to chose their browser. This got removed somehow in a Windows 7 update. As per their agreement, they were fined. If...	[ "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...
How were Wine bottles labeled before the advent of stickers?	[ "One would take a parchment and tie it around the neck of the bottle with string." ]	[ "To me, it looks very similar to many [medieval wax seals](_URL_0_) that I've seen. Have you tried to do a rubbing (where you gently press a crayon against a piece of paper over the item) of it? That might pick up more of the writing. Latin was used as the universal language up until pretty recently - really, unti...
Why it is more pleasant to watch big screen from big distance than small screen from small distance even though they are covering same amount of my field of view?	[ "Your eye muscles (muscles in the eye that control the lens ), when relaxed, are naturally focused on what is far away. The eyes also have to turn slightly towards each other to be able to see things that right close to the face. This takes energy and eventually the eyes get tired." ]	[ "Relate it to Coke bottles: 20oz bottle: $1.50 -Easy to carry and drink quickly -Fit in cup holders -Convenient -Good for on the go 68oz (2liters): $1.09 -Large, bulky -Unconventional for casual drinking -Better for taking home Both of the bottles have the same product, but the have different markets, or who they a...
That sensation of falling that occurs sometimes when you're trying to fall asleep.	[ "A hypnic jerk is when the deeper parts of your brain make your body twitch when you're deeply asleep. It's why you end up in a different place when you wake up. Normally, your muscles are kept fairly rigid. The falling sensation? Well, most people say that they are still 'awake' during the lightest stage of sleep....	[ "Picking up a chair you are sitting on doesn’t work because the force you exert upwards on the stair is cancelled by the force your butt exerts on the chair downwards. Instead, picture jumping out of an airplane. While you are in freefall, you can twist, spin, and flip your body in any direction. The earth itself ...
The War of the Roses	[ "Before the War of the Roses was the Hundreds' year war, which weakened england. Furthermore, the next king in progression was Henry VI, who had a mental breakdown and was a super weak king. This shitty king made it seem as if this other dude, Richard the Duke of York, had a more legitimate claim to the throne. Ba...	[ "Is this what Doctor Strangelove was based on?" ]
How can Uber, giving 1bn rides since 2009 be worth $62bn as a company?	[ "The value of a company is not as objective to determine as looking at its sales. It's determined by how much people are willing to pay for it. People will inspect their sales figures, their accounts, and all kinds of objective stuff. But if people think the company is going to be the next big thing, they might be ...	[ "Facebooked used exclusivity at first to drive demand, then learned from MySpace's mistakes. Remember how MySpace was infested with glitter and sparkle, and six billion videos that crashed your browser because some emo 15 year old thought she was original? Remember how Facebook was having none of that shit? They ...
Why does 1/3 equal .333, 2/3 equal .666, but 3/3 equal 1.0	[ "Yes .9999... = 1. This is my favorite proof for it: X=.9999...(infinity) 10x= 9.9999.... 10x-x=9.9999...- .9999... 9x=9 x=1" ]	[ "Handwriting has changed over the years, hasn't it? It would appear that he showed up for service with the 2nd Australian Imperial Force , lasted only 8 weeks, and then showed up for a reserve unit, 3rd Infantry Brigade. The AIFs were Australia's expeditionary force. 1st AIF was WW1, 2nd AIF was WW2. With a term of...
Why is the hijab viewed negatively and not as simply another accessory?	[ "I belong to the camp that thinks that if a woman chooses to wear it because of her volition, no one has a right to tell her she can't. However, the reason why hijab is viewed negatively is partly because it kind of shifts the blame onto a woman for stirring a man's passion, by displaying parts of her body. It does...	[ "\"Just about everyone here\" Where is \"here\" for you? It sounds like your question's premise is based on a small sample set based on personal observation. Before your question is addressed, you should be making sure the premise is valid..." ]
Why aren't more laws created or changed by grandfathering them in years or even decades from now?	[ "Because a grandfathered in law can still be changed before it goes into effect. Sure, now it won't hit hard, but in 10 years when it's about to happen? People in Congress then are going to be de-elected if it actually goes into effect. So, they'll put it off, or scrap it. Besides that, setting a policy to happ...	[ "Simply put for the same reason drinking water when you're not thirsty isn't as refreshing as when you're REALLY thirsty. Anticipating the bodies' needs doesn't trigger the same reward responses in the brain as fulfilling a need that is already present. Your muscles don't NEED to stretch right now, so you can't ant...
Labor Unions, how do they work, what are the laws surrounding them, etc.?	[ "Neighbor across the street: \"Hey Tommy, will you mow my lawn?\" Tommy: \"Sure, I'll do it for $5/hr.\" Neighbor: \"How about $3?\" Tommy: \"I want $5.\" Neighbor: \"OK, well I'll just ask your brother.\" Tommy: \"My brother and I and all the neighborhood kids decided together that we weren't going to mow lawns fo...	[ "This question has been asked and answered already: _URL_4_ _URL_6_ _URL_5_ _URL_3_ _URL_1_ _URL_0_ _URL_2_ If you have any questions that aren't addressed in those links, feel free to clarify." ]
Why "crazy people" have that distinctive look to their eyes	[ "In many psychotic individuals, the wide eyed look is because of their intense anxiety levels. It's more than just the eyes though. In someone psychotically agitated, you'll see facial grimacing and body postures indicating stress or aggression as well. The scariest patients are the ones that have a flat affect, me...	[ "Think of a marbel in a field at night, you know it is somewhere on the field but you just cannot make it out. Now imagine it's moving. On the other hand, imagine a street light with a fly buzzing around it. You cannot see the fly but if you look at the light long enough you can just make out something changing in ...
What do cell phones do with the information it gets from SIM cards in order to make a phone call?	[ "Take it roughly the same as how authenticating yourself on a private, wireless network. Your SIM card ID is a username, your PIN unlocks the SIM card's \"password\" equivalent (your pin isn't used on the network, it unlocks the second encrypted part needed to complete the authentication). Once the SIM full ID is u...	[ "Satellites are on a set orbit. The scientists put the satellite into that orbit to begin with, so they know when and where in space the satellite is going to be. When they launch a new satellite, they just calculate the appropriate trajectory and launch time to get the new satellite into space without hitting the ...
how is that people who do Parkour don’t compete in the Olympics in long jump, high jump and floor gymnastics? Are they not actually jumping that high or far?	[ "Because most people who do parkour might be pretty good at jumping, but Olympic athletes are freakishly good at what they do." ]	[ "The farthest we've ever been from the surface of the earth is 248,655 miles, and that was by accident (Apollo 13). The closest Mars gets to Earth is 33,900,000 miles. The escape velocity of a planet is much higher than that of the Moon. We would need to send down a landing device that would have the capability of ...
Who owns space debris? All that scrap metal and stuff musts be worth serious money	[ "IIRC, objects launched into space remain the property of their original owner, even when decommissioned/tossed into a junk orbit. TBH, seeing as all the old manmade stuff up in orbit poses a serious hazard to future spaceflight and will need to be (likely expensively) cleaned up, I don't see anyone rushing to say ...	[ "I believe someone forgot to pay the rent on a system and when another group came in to claim it, the original group that forgot to pay the rent started fighting them. And...yeah. It's become what it is now." ]
How can you physically 'seize' a bitcoin?	[ "You don't seize bitcoins technically, but you can gain control of a copy of a walet ( basicly a small digital file that is a \"key\" for the coins). Anyone with access to a wallet can do anything they want with the associated coins, including transferring them to a private wallet." ]	[ "I actually applied for a job doing this exact thing a couple years ago. What they did, was to have the contractor send the reasearch facility a small sample of the wall, which was prepared and studied under a [Scanning electron microscope](_URL_0_). Known as a SEM, these types of microscopes bombards your sample w...
why mammal females often are smaller than males?	[ "Mammals typically live in groups, and males typically compete for mates. Both this competition and the need to defend territory and protect the group leads to natural/sexual selection favoring typically larger males. A larger male can defend against threats better, can fight other males for mating rights better, a...	[ "Evolutionary response. It's good that feces and rotten fruits look disgusting so you don't eat it and girls are pretty so you make babies with them. Bot of these traits help you reproduce and send these genes to your children." ]
How did butterflies evolve?	[ "Many insects have a larva and adult stage of life. In the larval stage, the main goal is to aquire as much food as possible (while avoiding being eaten). The adult stage is generally purposed for finding mates and reproducing. In the case of butterflys, caterpillars are great at consuming vast quantities of leaves...	[ "They didn't. This is a myth, and not a particularly good one. [This page](_URL_0_) does a good job showing how silly the idea is." ]
Are there any neurotransmitters that are unique to humans?	[ "Not that I am aware of, but of course proving that would be rather difficult. As far as I am aware, all mammals have all the same neurotransmitters. If you go back to invertebrates, you will see the same neurotransmitters, but often used in a completely different way. For instance, in vertebrates, the neurotransmi...	[ "You are not a mirror image of your twin. You and your twin share the same DNA. This means that you both develop according to the same \"plan\"/genes. Like building a house: if you build two houses using one set of blueprints, the houses will be identical, not mirror-imaged. The fireplace will still be on the left ...
How much money do I need to start investing in the stock market?	[ "To make a million in stock market, its best to start with 2 million. Don't play the stocks. Invest in the market. Set your goals for 30 years return" ]	[ "[Research paper](_URL_1_) Conclusions: In both sexes, smoking 1–4 cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from ischaemic heart disease and from all causes, and from lung cancer in women. So even 1-4 cigarettes a day won't keep the probability of increasing health risks \"ra...
How does Platypus venom vary from other venoms in the animal world, and what is it's effect and purpose?	[ "Platypus venom is believed to have evolved independently from other mammal venoms, and is unique in several respects. It is similar to some reptile venom, although this is thought to be a result of convergent evolution, not due to their relation. Platypus venom is composed of several types of peptides, enzymes tha...	[ "These shows are always a bit of fun and play creatively with the truth. Indeed ballistics isn't as cut and dried as \"every gun has a unique fingerprint, no two can ever be the same\". Marks are compared by eye, very similar guns will have very similar marks. Even much real life courtroom \"science\" is pretty poo...
What US news events of the 1970s had television coverage interrupt regularly-scheduled prime time programming for the sake of a news bulletin?	[ "There was a multimedia book that came out in 1998 called [We Interrupt This Broadcast](_URL_1_) which discusses the main news events of the 20th century and contains CDs with the radio or TV bulletins. I wouldn't call it a serious historical work, exactly—it's basically a coffee table book—so there may be some bad...	[ "[This site](_URL_0_) pretty much sums it up: \"In 1848, as a result of the Mexican-American War, citizenship was granted to those living in territories gained from Mexico, and while the new citizens gained voting rights, they were aggressively and violently intimidated and the English language was used as a tool t...
Why did playing Portal make my GF throw up?	[ "Motion sickness. Basically, this is caused by a disconnect between what you are physically seeing and what you are physically feeling. I'm not entirely sure about why this causes sickness exactly but I think it has something to do with the brain believing this sight/feel disconnect is caused by a hallucination, po...	[ "They're extremely tentative about new foods they discover themselves. If a rat they trust offers or leads them to food, they're less tentative, but still have a strong association between the smell of the food and how they feel after eating it. Ninja edit: does anyone know the name of this phenomenon? (aversion t...
Could you make water if you had enough Hydrogen and Oxygen?	[ "We could. Burning hydrogen in the presence of oxygen creates water and heat as byproducts. It's a tremendously expensive way to create water though. Since hydrogen is a real pain to store and transport. Shortages of clean water on Earth have everything to do with economics and logistics and very little to do with...	[ "The opposite of that is more likely to be true. What you're asking is roughly analogous to suggesting that melting all the crayons together would give you more colors." ]
How does a company provide faster internet? Is there an internet speed knob they turn?	[ "They change a bunch of scheduler policies and bandwidth configurations in various devices on their network, then they coordinate with third party transport providers like Verizon or TWC who provide fiber or ethernet to your house, they make those same changes in their network, resulting in faster network speed." ]	[ "You may have a flag on your account that says you qualify for the promotion while he doesn't. If you've had your account longer, have better credit/payment history, or if he's locked into another kind of contract he may get different offers. Basically the computer looks at all the accounts and says \"Accounts with...
What's the origin of brunch (the meal)?	[ "The origin of the meal itself is murky. But the word \"brunch\" was coined by Guy Beringer in 1895 in an article entitled \"Brunch: A Plea\" in a periodical called Hunter's Weekly. He claimed it as a meal for \"Saturday night carousers.\" _URL_0_" ]	[ "_URL_0_ Reportedly cows tend to feed more around sundown when the nutritional content of plants is higher. > “A series of USDA studies looked at animals’ ability to choose different forages. The researchers cut hay in the morning and in the evening and used this in the choice tests. They’ve done it with cattle, g...
Is the rodent the common ancestor of all mammals?	[ "See [here](_URL_0_) for a study showing the divergence times among the major lineages of mammals. It shows that most orders of mammals branched off from each other in the Cretaceous, and that most within-order diversity post-dates the end-Cretaceous extinction. The order Rodentia, which contains rodents, didn't ac...	[ "As always, I recommend Roger Pearse's [excellent pages](_URL_0_) on [Mithras and Christianity](_URL_2_) and myths about [Mithras and Jesus](_URL_1_). In short, as /u/ctesibius already notes, so much is unknown. The Mithras cult appears in the Roman context between the 1st and 4th century, so overlapping with early...
If nothing can escape a black hole, how come there are two jets coming out of it?	[ "The polar jets associated with an active black hole aren't actually coming out of the black hole itself - they're formed by the accretion disk of matter falling towards the black hole. Some of that matter is accelerated and energised by the gravity of the black hole and blasted away from the accretion disk before ...	[ "So, do you mean on the edge of the event horizon? (some one will be able to sort of answer you on that.) Or do you mean inside the event horizon, on the possible surface of what is believed to be a singularity? cause we don't know that one at all, it gets weird in there." ]
Why do wildebeests run away from predators if there is so many of them?	[ "Because this is how it works... Every animal seeks to survive to pass on it's genetical code. This is why in a bank robbery one man with a pistol (let's say 13 rounds) can hold down 30 people, because no one wants to be one of the (worst case) 13 people who get shot before taking the bad guy down." ]	[ "Imagine a huge crowd of people trying to get into a building with two doors. For them, the doors look identical, but inside the building, one of them leads to a nice, wide corridor, but the other leads into a tight maze. You dont know that one path is much easier than the other, but since the tight path is clogged...
Is a single neuron like a sophisticated computer or more like a simple logical gateway?	[ "You ask a great question, and one that would require quite sophisticated measurements of the inputs to a neuron and its outputs. My favorite study that bears on this question is by Wei r. Chen. He built a special 2-photon imaging rig fast enough to visualize the entire membrane voltage dynamics in mitral cells in ...	[ "Flash memory comes in a few different flavors and it's kind of difficult to understand how it works: _URL_1_ If I were to ELI5 the above I would say: Imagine you have these microscopic swimming pools arranged in a grid, millions and millions of them. When you want to use them to store data, you fill some of them u...
Why do special effects in movies and tv shows cost so much? Isn't it just using a program they already own?	[ "Buying the program is cheap. Using it takes time. The time of many highly skilled people..." ]	[ "It's not the guacamole, it's the avocado's therein. They only grow in frost-free zones, which limits production. Also, they grow on trees, a costly and risky endeavour for farmers, that take a long time to see a return on. Next time you're at the grocery store, take a look at the cost of avocado's, aside from exot...
why the school system fails in america compared to some other regions in the world.	[ "Just to put things into perspective. In Chinese language forums the longest thread often involves why \"our school system is failing and why American education system produces students who are much more independent and creative.\"" ]	[ "This is more of an opinion or discussion question than a concept you're looking to have explained. Not really a topic for ELI5. Maybe /r/askreddit" ]
Do we see at the speed of light?	[ "We are not seeing it in real time. If you're looking into a mirror the light has to bounce off of you, into the mirror, back to you eyes and then your brain has to interpret the signals. You are not seeing in real time, you are seeing into the past (sorta), similar to when you look at a star and you see it as it w...	[ "If we did we would eventually slow the Earth down which would have disastrous effects." ]
How come worn credit cards work when swiped with a plastic bag around them?	[ "Card readers have a small induction coil that detect magnetic and non-magnetic zones in your card’s magnetic strip. When the card is pulled through the reader, each magnetized zone makes a small electrical pulse as it passes the over coil. Scratches or other defects in the magnetic strip can cause a spike in the r...	[ "[Striped shirts](_URL_0_) tend to cause problems with video recording and, if the pattern is fine enough, photos. It is due to the creation of a [moire](_URL_1_) pattern where 2 sets of parallel lines that are not quite parallel (the lines on the shirt and the pixels on the sensor) create a illusion of density wav...
How is "fashion" a thing?	[ "People are all around variable, just like all other aspects of life where there is variety comes preference. There's certain music, accents, speeches, habits etc that people love or don't. Fashion is just another one. There are some humans that will think a kimono is just the most elegant and practical thing ever....	[ "Its just the results of observation plus math. More recently also computation and virtual modeling." ]
If white rice is starchy, high-carb "empty calories," why was obesity not traditionally prevalent in Asian countries where rice is a staple?	[ "There are a lot of factors to consider. Portion size, overall diet, typical amounts of daily activity. A culture having a food that is high in calories is a small piece of the puzzle." ]	[ "Squinting is the equivalent of stopping down a camera lens. Your iris automatically adjusts to the amount of light present and will open up in low-light situations. Lenses, including your eye, are at their worst when wide open because the whole lens is in use and an imperfections will impact on the image. By squin...
Why does spinning make you dizzy? Why does spinning the opposite way fix it?	[ "I wonder how many people are now on the floor just testing to see if spinning the other direction works 😏" ]	[ "Grab a tennis ball and a lamp. Turn off every other light in the room. Hold up the tennis ball. Half is lit, half is dark. If you are looking from the side (you can see the lamp and the ball) you can see some of the dark side of the ball. The ONLY way to see nothing but lit ball is to have the lamp directly behin...
How MtGox got away with losing over $620 million dollars worth of bitcoin, and where those bitcoins went.	[ "I'd add: [I just read this](_URL_0_) and still don't undertand how they can find bitcoins in old hard drives??? Are bitcoins litterally that easy to stock? I dont get it..." ]	[ "Imagine a bully at school. It's the same one each day, taking the lunch money of the same handful of kids. You take note that kids seem bullied, and it's very easy to identify who the bully is, after all you only have to talk to a handful of kids to get something of note, plus everyone is pointing the same direct...
Why are some people naturally submissive to authority, but others are resistant? What causes this?	[ "variance is a mechanism of evolution. You do not want all of a species to be the same so they don't all die out at the same time. So any quality you want to pick will have variance." ]	[ "Hi OP, this is a cultural question, so it would greatly assist anyone considering answering if you could specify which culture you're asking about. For example, the name of a cultural group / country / geographic region, plus a rough time period. Otherwise, this question is simply too broad, as it encompasses almo...
How do the bots on Reddit work?	[ "I assume they don't have any help from reddit, and are just third party bots. If so, there will be a program written that will search all the new posts for certain parameters, such as a wiki link or a misspelled ghandi. Then they will process it, in the case of wiki bot, it will scrape the first paragraph from wik...	[ "Hi there! This question has been asked numerous times, so I hope you won't feel brushed off if I refer you to a couple of past threads: _URL_0_ _URL_1_ If these don't answer your questions, let us know!" ]
Why is wind colder than still air?	[ "As a mammal, you produce heat. When you feel cold, it's because some of that heat is leaving your body to heat up whatever you're touching. Touch cold water and it sucks the heat out of you. Touch room temperature stone, it does the same. When the air is still, you heat the air around you until it's just a little ...	[ "The air pulled into the room by closing the door escapes the window when it is open. When it's closed, the air resistance on the door is greater." ]
How do scientists aboard the ISS ensure no water ingress on electrical equipment?	[ "They do try to seal up electrical components. Not only from water ingress but also dust. However it is not a much bigger issue on ISS then on Earth and a lot of the equipment they have is regular off the shelf components that you likely have at home. They do have a ventilation system that they have turned on quite...	[ "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." ]
This hypothetical scenario	[ "It's called the [Monty Hall problem](_URL_0_). Ultimately, what it comes down is that, from the start of the experiment/gameshow, there was only a 1 in 3 chance that you chose the door with the prize behind it, so if you repeat the experiment a thousand times over, the prize would be behind the other door two th...	[ "You seem to have a bunch of different questions here. For the questions in the last paragraph you might consider /r/HistoryWhatIf ." ]
What is 4chan and why is it being banned in so many places? Isn't 4chan just like reddit?	[ "4chan is where smart people go to pretend to be stupid, and Reddit is where stupid people go to pretend to be smart." ]	[ "Google is faster, because Google has already done all the searching ahead of time, and built an index. Imagine you have a thousand page book, and I ask you to tell me every page with the word \"cat\" on it. The way your computer does the search is by flipping through each page one by one looking for the word \"cat...
Why do teenagers sleep so late in the day, seemingly regardless of how early they go to bed?	[ "Teenagers circadian rhythm (body clock) simply runs slightly out of phase (compared to the rest of us). It has been shown scientifically that you sleep 'better' when you sleep in synch with your circadian clock. Going to bed a few hours early might not equate to waking up a few hours early, because those beginnin...	[ "Becaus for most if them their frontal lobes aren’t developed yet and are very easily molded by repetition and hype. Adults have the ability and experience to see the BS in ads." ]
How does South Africa have - at least in law - such strong LGBT rights? (compared to the rest of Africa)	[ "In the post-apartheid era, all forms of discrimination is against the law. The constitution that was written in the new Democratic era has a bill of rights that says “everyone is equal before the law and has right to equal protection and the benefit of the law. Prohibited grounds of discrimination include race, g...	[ "The article actually has a pretty good ELI5 inside of it: > Antiretroviral therapies target and suppress active infected cells but they leave millions of dormant infected T-cells lying in wait throughout the body. This means existing treatments can effectively control HIV but do not cure the disease. > The new t...
I have a string attached to a rock, and I start spinning it. The piece of string closer to the rock travels faster that the piece of string closer to my hand. Does this means the string is travelling through time at different speeds in different sections of itself?	[ "Sure, the atoms at your hand observe the atoms at the rock to experience time more slowly because the atoms at the rock are moving faster relative to the atoms at your hand. But this effect is so absolutely minuscule it's not really worth mentioning. A relative velocity of, say, 10 m/s gives a time dilation factor...	[ "The Doppler effect happens with radio waves too, not just sound waves. This is very useful and gave way to pulse Doppler radars which were widely used in aircraft in the 70s to 90s and are still popular today, for fire control radars and weather radars. Imagine you fire 5 pulses of radar waves towards a target, w...
How does light act as a particle?	[ "Another phenomenon where light acts as a particle is the atomic spectum you see of an element. In the particle theory, you have the energy and frequency of photon linked by E = hf (where h is the Planck constant) Atoms have discrete (fixed) energy levels. When an electron in an atom gains energy, it is promoted ...	[ "It's not voodoo magic. It's kind of like brushing your hair. When you get up in the morning, your hair (assuming you have more hair on your head than I do) is all tangled from tossing and turning and all that other jazz. This is what regular light coming from, say, a light bulb looks like. It's all tangled and sca...
Why do people who have mono have to sit out of sports? What happens to the body?	[ "This happens mainly because one of the effects of mono can be an enlargement of the spleen. When that happens, a blow to the abdomen can cause it to rupture, which is very serious and can be fatal. Since sports tend to involve an elevated risk of blows to the abdomen, people with mono sometimes don't play until th...	[ "In cold weather we spend a lot more times indoors, in close quarters with a lot of people. It makes spreading the virus very easy" ]

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