question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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How was construction in ancient cities prioritized? | Dur Sharrukin was a brand new capital city built by Sargon II from 716 BC to 706 BC. The outer walls measured 1.76 km x 1.635 km, had 157 towers and seven gates. There was a large barracks, built in the south west quarter of the city. The palace and three important temples were built on a terrace on the northern edge of the city. There was a small working class residential district near the cerimonial core of the city. However, more than eighty percent of the land inside the city wall remained undeveloped. Sargon II soon died, and the Assyrian court, which had just recently moved into Dur Sharrukin, moved to another capital city. | [
"The construction of cities was the end product of trends which began in the Neolithic Revolution. The growth of the city was partly planned and partly organic. Planning is evident in the walls, high temple district, main canal with harbor, and main street. The finer structure of residential and commercial spaces i... |
why do most unknown calls i receive on my home phone end up having no one on the other end? | They're usually from call centres where they have a machine automatically call numbers on a pre-assigned list. Then, when a voice is detected on your end, someone is connected on their end to talk to you. It saves them time, even if it does result it people going "Huh. No one there" and hanging up before they get a chance. | [
"Many of these towns have in fact refused to merge, leaving callers with more digits to dial when making local calls. This is partially balanced by not having to dial an area code for the neighboring city.\n",
"Because the SIT is well known in many countries, callers can understand that their call has failed, eve... |
Why is Zeta(0) equal to -1/2? | This is because the zeta function is not defined to be equal to that sum on the entire complex plane; it is only given by the sum you're looking at when Re(s) > 1. The Riemann Zeta function is actually defined to be the analytic continuation of the function given by the sum in the half plane Re(s) > 1.
There isn't one very easy proof of the fact that Re(0) = -1/2 without first developing some tools about the zeta function. If you're willing to assume some equations, then [Wikipedia has a clean proof](_URL_0_). | [
"The Riemann zeta function ζ(\"s\") is a function whose argument \"s\" may be any complex number other than 1, and whose values are also complex. It has zeros at the negative even integers; that is, ζ(\"s\") = 0 when \"s\" is one of −2, −4, −6, ... These are called its \"trivial zeros\". However, the negative even ... |
Why does the metal from meteorites have such a distinctive zig-zag pattern? | That pattern, called a [Widmanstatten pattern](_URL_1_) is due to the crystallization of iron and nickel minerals in the meteorite cooling very slowly. Here, 'very slowly' means a few hundred or thousand degrees C every *million years*. This slow cooling allows for large crystals of these minerals to form. They are actually interlaced crystals of two different alloys of iron and nickel. One type basically grows within the other type. [Here's an excellent review that explains the formation](_URL_0_).
The patterns are visible when meteorites are cut, polished, and etched using nitric acid or ferric chloride. These chemicals dissolve different minerals at different rates so you can eat away at one of the alloys more than the other, giving contrast to the two regions. | [
"When an iron meteorite is forged into a tool or weapon, the Widmanstätten patterns remain, but become stretched and distorted. The patterns usually cannot be fully eliminated by blacksmithing, even through extensive working. When a knife or tool is forged from meteoric iron and then polished, the patterns appear i... |
How does parasitism between a host and a parasite of different domains work? | They aren't really tinkering with the code so much as producing an enviornment that induces the host to do something. It's more like instigating a pearl to form using a bead than genetic engineering (though the analogy isn't perfect). | [
"Parasitism is a kind of symbiosis, a close and persistent long-term biological interaction between a parasite and its host. Unlike commensalism and mutualism, the parasitic relationship harms the host, either feeding on it or, as in the case of intestinal parasites, consuming some of its food. However, parasites a... |
We all used to eats boogers: what effect could/did that have? | Unfortunately I can't find the study, but a while ago (2-3 years ago) I ran across an article suggesting that eating boogers was a pseudo-vaccination, killing whatever got caught and allowing the inert form to be ingested to create antibodies. However, due to the levels of pollution in most places, it's probably not too healthy. | [
"Boredom, stress, habit and addiction are all possible causes of cribbing and wind-sucking. It was proposed in a 2002 study that the link between intestinal conditions such as gastric inflammation or colic and abnormal oral behavior was attributable to environmental factors. There is evidence that stomach ulcers ma... |
when you jump into a cold lake (say 60°f or ~15°c) why does the water no longer feel cold after about 5 minutes? | Your body has mechanisms in place to warm you up should you be in a cold environment. Dilated blood vessels provide a flush of warmth, and shivering also produces warmth. By doing this, your body can increase its internal temperature and keep you a bit more comfortable. Stay in too long though, and your vessels will end up constricting, because your body deems it's too cold and ends up preserving heat for your vital organs.
However, if you're staying in that cold water for too long, it'll cool your blood and by association, the rest of your body and that's how hypothermia happens. Stay comfortable, but stay warm. Old people can die of hypothermia simply by falling onto a cold floor without getting help getting up. | [
"Winter swimming can be dangerous to people who are not used to swimming in very cold water. After submersion in cold water the cold shock response will occur, causing an uncontrollable gasp for air. This is followed by hyperventilation, a longer period of more rapid breathing. The gasp for air can cause a person t... |
what's the difference between nuclear and thermonuclear? | Usuaully Nuclear weapons are basic uranium or plutonium based 1 stage nuclear bombs that function by triggering a single fission reaction which causes a highly radioactive material to "break" apart and release large ammounts of energy.
Thermonuclear is used to describe Fusion devices which usualy fuse Hydrogen in to helium and release energy that way, a Thermonuclear weapon uses an initial fission explosion to "kickstart" a 2nd stage fusion explosion. thats why Hydrogen bombs are usualy refered to as "Thermonuclear bombs"
TL;DR
- Nuclear = Fission = Breaks apart atoms to generate energy
- Thermonuclear = Fusion = Joins Atoms from element A in to Element B to generate energy.
| [
"A thermonuclear weapon, or fusion weapon, is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication over pure fission weapons may afford it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation atomic bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nu... |
Do electric motors in cars have a limited lifespan? | Not forever. Ac motors have bearings which will need periodic replacement, windings with relatively delicate insulation over many turns of thin wire, and a metal cage with a rotor. Stick all this in a bouncy box that accelerates and brakes constantly. Sure must of these issues can be minimized with good engineering but they are still issues. I've seen motors last many years but a car is a pretty tough environment with pretty harsh and variable demands. Motors will fail. I'd say ten to fifteen years of a trouble free running motor will be a good and attainable result.
This is just the motor I'm talking about all the rest of the running gear (suspension, cv's, etc) will have the same issues as a car with an internal combustion engine.
Source: electrician. Been working with AC motors and speed controllers for years.
| [
"In very small vehicles, the power demand decreases, so human power can be employed to make a significant improvement in battery life. Two such commercially made vehicles are the Sinclair C5 and TWIKE.\n",
"Its life cycle is usually far greater than a purely electronic UPS, up to 30 years or more. But they do req... |
Were white British (and Dominion) troops' relationships with non-white troops from the colonies generally positive? | Quite a few from the West Indies served as aircrew
_URL_0_
It should be noted, that these aircrew didnt serve in segregated squadrons and they would often be the only non-white person in their crew, let alone the squadron. For example:
_URL_2_
Otherwise it should be noted that many colonial troops like the Indian Army, Kings African Rifles and Gurkhas had been in existance for an extended period of time and had developed their own set of loyalties and traditions. In this sense, their attitiude towards white troops (and vice versa) would have been no different to business as usual.
_URL_1_
Actually the only major full scale mutiny by colonial troops was the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and even then substantial numbers of colonial troops remained loyal (mainly Sikhs) | [
"All World War I belligerents with colonial possessions went to great lengths to recruit soldiers from their colonies. Germany was the only one of the Central Powers with substantial overseas possessions; it used numerous non-white troops to defend her colonies. Regardless of German attitudes toward the indigenous ... |
the science of coffee | Coffee is a solution - in the same way that mixing salt with water gives you salt water, coffee is bits of coffee mixed in with water.
When you grind a coffee bean, there are some parts of the bean that can dissolve in hot water, and other parts that can't. What you're tasting, then, is the bits that *can* dissolve into water leaving the bits that can't dissolve behind in the filter. | [
"CofFEE states that it seeks to undertake and promote research into the goals of full employment, price stability and achieving an economy that delivers equitable outcomes for all. Its main focus is on macroeconomics, labour economics, regional development and monetary economics.\n",
"\"Coffee: A Comprehensive Gu... |
Does anyone have examples of national anthems that were later abolished/replaced? | I believe the German National Anthem was during the Nazi era.
The Soviet anthem had the words replaced, but kept the rather stirring melody.
S. Africa replaced "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika", but kept a verse of it in the new anthem.
Canada stopped using God Save the Queen.
Czechoslovakia's anthem was split (like everything else) right down the middle, but this is a weak example as it was originally two songs that were fused together (like everything else). | [
"Adoption of national anthems prior to the 1930s was mostly by newly formed or newly independent states, such as the First Portuguese Republic (\"A Portuguesa\", 1911), the Kingdom of Greece (\"Hymn to Liberty\", 1865), the First Philippine Republic (\"Marcha Nacional Filipina\", 1898), Lithuania (\"Tautiška giesmė... |
During the Waco standoff in 1993, why did large segments of the American population rally around the leader of a doomsday cult who was sexually abusing young girls, rather than their own government? | You said during, so I'll try to keep the focus as contemporary as possible to the siege. Nevertheless, I only found one opinion poll taken from before the lethal ending to the Waco Siege and that only polled Waco residents, a small and obviously not-representative sample of the US population. Further, in [this series of polls](_URL_0_), it's interesting to see how radically public opinion shifted against the government as the nineties progressed.
To clarify the "large segment" who supported David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, I found three opinion polls taken from April 1993.
70% of people polled supported the government's actions at Waco, versus 27% who opposed it according to [the ABC Poll from 1993](_URL_0_).
[A poll from the New York Times](_URL_3_) found 8 out of 10 Americans believed David Koresh was responsible for the deaths at Waco.
And finally, a poll taken from the [Waco Tribune Herald (footnote 5)](_URL_1_) has only fifty percent of locals supporting government action against the Branch Davidians, though 82% supported the government's ending of the siege.
As detailed in both the CBS poll and Gore Vidal's *Decline and Fall of the American Empire* those who opposed the actions of the FBI and ATF were largely hostile to what they perceived as government overreach. They saw the Branch Davidians as harmless, "minding their own business," and not doing anything that should provoke the violent repression meted out by the federal besiegers. The fact that it was families pitted against heavily armed troopers with armored personnel carriers and tanks made for pretty poor optics regardless of whose side one took.
The first, ostensible reason given by the Clinton Administration for infiltrating the BD Compound was to seize illegally held arms, a stick in the eye for Americans who hold the Second Amendment dear. When the agents assigned to this mission were repulsed and the situation began to heat up, George Stephanopoulos, the White House Communications Director changed the narrative to one of trying to save the children sequestered with their families. Against this claim, Pastor Robert McCurry points out that [this was an illegitimate use of federal force](_URL_2_) given that child protection falls under state jurisdiction. McCurry, well attuned to the limits of legitimate force, rails against what he sees as a monstrous attack by the government against its people.
Remember, this is less than a year after the "[Ruby Ridge Massacre](_URL_4_)" during which a shootout between government agents and a family fleeing the law left a US Marshal, a mother, and a son killed. That event garnered quite a bit of sympathy for the family caught in the crossfire and among certain people, predisposed them against the kind of government "repression" that occurred at Waco. Both Ruby Ridge and Waco were precipitated by Firearms charges and involvement by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms). Given the Second Amendment and the mythology of private gun ownership enabling the American Revolution and protecting "Liberty," the federal government's perceived use of violence to monopolize its control of domestic firearms in these two instances rattled certain segments of the population.
| [
"During recent years, the presence of gangs such as the Latin Kings, the Bloods and the Crips have been recorded at the event. Following the parade on June 11, 2000, a number of women were harassed, robbed and sexually assaulted by mobs of young men in and about Central Park. The attacks, which were videotaped by o... |
How did calibers in uneven numbers come about? Like 152mm, 37mm and 76mm? | The general reason for these odd numbers is that they are conversions from before the metric system. 37mm is about 1.5 inches, 76mm is about 3 inches, 88mm is about 3.5 inches, 152mm is about 6 inches. Early tank and anti-tank guns are particularly prone because many were adopted from naval guns like the [US WWII 76mm] (_URL_0_). However, every country has a different specific reason for specific weapons keeping the old non-metric calibers, and I don't know enough to explain why the Soviets or Germans, for example, kept the odd calibers. | [
"Gun calibers have standardized around a few common sizes, especially in the larger range, mainly due to the uniformity required for efficient military logistics. Shells of 105 and 155 mm for artillery and 105mm and 120 mm for tank guns in NATO. Artillery shells of 122, 130 and 152 mm, and tank gun ammunition of 10... |
if the majority of people are right handed, why does the fork go on the left when setting a table? | Because you want to be manipulating the sharp, dangerous, pointy knife with your dominant hand. Which is why the dinner knife is on the right, and that leaves the fork to be on the left. | [
"The fork may be used in the American style (in the left hand while cutting and in the right hand to pick up food) or the European Continental style (fork always in the left hand). (See Fork etiquette) The napkin should be left on the seat of a chair only when leaving temporarily. Upon leaving the table at the end ... |
why do some people leak pee when they sneeze? | The release of your bladder is controlled by muscles. Those muscles can, for a variety of reasons, be weakened. If those muscles are weak, a sudden jolt like a sneeze can dislodge them for a moment, releasing a small amount of pee. | [
"There is much debate about the true cause and mechanism of the sneezing fits brought about by the photic sneeze reflex. Sneezing occurs in response to irritation in the nasal cavity, which results in an afferent nerve fiber signal propagating through the ophthalmic and maxillary branches of the trigeminal nerve to... |
I'd want to understand how and why Scandinavia became Christianized. | I'll yield to better historians, but my understanding was that it had more to do with trade and politics than natural spiritual inclinations. By the time it happened, Scandinavia had been increasingly in contact with Christian Europe and needed commercial contacts. The era of plunder and conquest was ending as more of the Christian kingdoms became better defended from attack. It became more politically expedient to join them than beat them.
It's not as if this has no precedent in history. Christianity and Islam were sprung from pagan converts. | [
"The Christianization of Scandinavia, as well as other Nordic countries and the Baltic countries, took place between the 8th and the 12th centuries. The realms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden (Sweden is an 11th or 12th century merger of the former countries Götaland and Svealand) established their own Archdioceses, r... |
I discovered this seemingly well-researched video on Christopher Columbus, and why he wasn't as bad as everyone thinks he was. How accurate is it? | I suspect everyone who watches this will see different things. I'll defer to experts on Columbus regarding the content in the first 2/3 but can point to some red flags in the last third related to how he talks about the people indigenous to North America that make me deeply suspicious of his work. When assessing the accuracy of someone's historical claims, it's helpful to start with how they frame issues.
How he talks about "genocide" is an indicator that his work may be not accurate or trustworthy. His suggestion that it's a simple linguistic issue regarding intent, and not a complicated matter that speaks to power, colonization, and patterns, ignores volumes of writing, especially by Indigenous authors and historians. [Parenthetical note that Zimmerman wasn't found "innocent." The jury returned not guilty verdicts on all counts.] [This](_URL_0_) explores the different arguments about the use of the word and despite 6 minutes of earnest talking-into-the-camera by what appears to be a Columbus truther, cannot be simplified it into a yes/no question. That said, the creator of the term "genocide" cited European interactions with North American Indigenous people as an example of the term. From the piece linked above:
> Lemkin applied the term to a wide range of cases including many involving European colonial projects in Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and the Americas. A recent investigation of an unfinished manuscript for a global history of genocide Lemkin was writing in the late 1940s and early 1950s reveals an expansive view of what Lemkin termed a “Spanish colonial genocide.” He never began work on a projected chapter on “The Indians of North America,” though his notes indicate that he was researching Indian removal, treaties, the California gold rush, and the Plains wars.
The second red flag is how he presents the words and images of Native Americans. Saying it's "weird" to hate on Columbus immediately after showing images of Native Americans expressing their opinions about the man is troublesome. More to the point, I feel confident in concluding he did little or no research on the history of renaming the holiday, or if he did, elected to ignore what he found in order to advance his central claim. Given he establishes his ancestors didn't immigrant to America until the 20th century, he's clearly not speaking as an Indigenous person. (Which isn't required for writing about Native American history, but double-checking and researching statements when writing about historically marginalized groups is basic decency and good scholarship. And his statements wouldn't be less troublesome were he Indigenous, but a native identity would shed a different light on how he uses Native Americans' words.) Had he researched the movement, he would have easily discovered the efforts to rename the holiday came from Indigenous people and that they explicitly picked the date as a way to draw attention to their [actions](_URL_1_). He also would have discovered there is an [International Day of the World’s Indigenous People](_URL_2_) on August 9th. In effect, the Indigenous activists working to rename the date are using Columbus as a proxy for the colonization of their ancestral lands by Europeans. None of the other "worse" men that he mentioned have a day that's recognized as a federal holiday.
Finally, Columbus didn't "discover" America. Every time he repeats that, even when saying it's untrue, he's undercutting any historical bona fides he may have earned earlier in the video. And no. We don't need to talk about how "primitive or not primitive" Native Americans were.
Note: I just watched about ten minutes of the video he cites as his source for "Native American Genocide" which contains not only terrible history practices but straight up racism. Which doesn't bode well for the rest of the history in his video. | [
"The most iconic image of Columbus is a portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo, which has been reproduced in many textbooks. It agrees with descriptions of Columbus in that it shows a large man with auburn hair, but the painting dates from 1519 and cannot, therefore, have been painted from life. Furthermore, the inscrip... |
topology/topological manifold | Topology: the study of the geometric properties of a space/surface and which properties are affected by changing that shape/space through a continuous deformation (i.e. no rips/tears and no gluing); or the rules governing a specific topological space or manifold.
Topological Manifold: A surface (or group of surfaces) with given properties (such as a metric, a specific number of holes/openings, etc.)
For example, a doughnut and a coffee mug belong to the same manifold (a solid with a single hole) which can be deformed from one to the other without changing some properties. A topologist would then look at what happens during the transformation to things like distance between points and any changes to a circle (does it get bigger smaller etc.) | [
"While topological spaces can be extremely varied and exotic, many areas of topology focus on the more familiar class of spaces known as manifolds. A \"manifold\" is a topological space that resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, each point of an -dimensional manifold has a neighborhood that is ... |
When did the concept of "refugees" arise? It seems that in the past if your country was at war and you were a male of fighting age you would stay. When did men start leaving their country's conflicts? Is this a modern concept or are there examples of this happening throughout history? | This depends on your definition of 'refugees'.
In 1951, a convention was held in Geneva to give an official definition to the term, and from henceforth it was possible to declare whether a person was a refugee or not. [source: [UNHCR official site](_URL_0_) ]
However, before that there were already large population movements caused by war, famine and other forms of destruction which would cause the peoples' homeland to be inhospitable to them.
In China, one of the earliest records of such a wide scale immigration would be during the spring autumn period, when the Yue 越 king Gou Jian 勾践 destroyed the Wu 吴 kingdom. Due to the demeaning treatment that he had suffered under the Wu king previously, Gou Jian was determined to eliminate Wu utterly. Therefore the Wu people were forced to cross the sea to the Eastern islands, which is now modern day Japan. Future contact between the Han dynasty and the Japanese islands state that the Wa 倭 people claimed direct descent from king Taibo 泰伯 of Wu, and often spoke with a Wu accent and adhered to Wu customs, further supporting the theory of them being former refugees of the Chinese Wu. [source: *the Book of Han* 汉书, *Discourse on Balance* 论衡] | [
"As the war ended, these people found themselves facing an uncertain future. Allied military and civilian authorities faced considerable challenges resettling them. Since the reasons for displacement varied considerably, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force classified individuals into a number of cat... |
In the US Civil War, how realistic is the idea that if the south had won a decisive military victory like capturing Washington, Britain and France could have been tempted to intervene on the side of the south, possibly causing a peace settlement? | Well, the idea that the Confederacy could ever have successfully captured Washington by storm or siege is utterly unrealistic. By 1862 Washington was likely one of the most heavily defended cities in the world, by 1864 it was the most heavily fortified city in the world. Any attempt to take it by storm would have resulted in wholesale slaughter akin to Grant's Cold Harbor battle, but in reverse, and likely much more one sided. Besieging it would have been impossible since it can be resupplied by sea if absolutely necessary and the Confederates have no way of stopping such an avenue of resupply even assuming they could encircle the city.
But I digress, your main point is about the idea of foreign intervention and assuming a hypothetical southern victory on northern soil. This would greatly depend on what year your talking. If 1862, it's possible, France did want to intervene on the side of the Confederates and intimated as much to the diplomats Davis sent. However, they were unwilling to act without a British declaration of war, and it is difficult to gauge how likely such an intervention ever was. Had they won Antietam, it is possible, but following that defeat they never had a realistic chance of achieving foreign support until victory for the Confederacy was certain and by that point what need would they have for such support.
You might be wondering why I don't include Gettysburg or anything following 1862 in my belief and that's rather simple. Had the Confederacy won at Gettysburg consider the situation on July 4, yes you've just won a "victory", but you've also lost 25,000 men, you're still outnumbered, and you can't possibly assail northern cities. To the north you're blocked by a river and the difficulties of crossing such a river. To the south you have only Washington and if you couldn't besiege it when you had 75,000 men you certainly can't now. You've lost a 1/3 of your army and remain deep in enemy territory, now what. Wait, hope the Union after 2 1/2 years just gives in, cause Lincoln wouldn't have and he was still president no matter public opinion. Oh, and about that, you're victory is about to be tempered by the fact that on the same day you won Vicksburg and some 35,000 Confederates just surrendered and the South out in the West is in full retreat. So the situation from your perspective, or even Union newspapers, hysterical at the loss and the mystique of Lee may not change. But in the eyes of the world you won a major battle and then lost a major battle and in doing so lost 60,000 men that you could not afford to lose. The public opinion in England was never high, why would it change now that you just went 1-1 in major battles, from their perspective all you did was just offset by what Grant just did and from a purely strategical sense to the military minds of England, Grant's victory was far more significant. Everyone in the South knew it too and Lee's loss, far from being the injury was merely the salt in the wound. It's also uncertain whether immediate intervention by the British or French would have caused an immediate peace settlement. It takes time to mobilize your forces and get ready for a war, the U.S. even after a loss at Gettysburg would have had a 6 month window before having to worry about British or French troops. In that time the South's fortunes out west got worse not better. Ultimately even as early as 62 such an idea was relatively unlikely, by 63 it was far fetched, and by 64 it was bordering on delusional. | [
"There were secondary reasons as well. The Confederate invasion might be able to incite an uprising in Maryland, especially given that it was a slave-holding state and many of its citizens held a sympathetic stance toward the South. Some Confederate politicians, including Jefferson Davis, believed the prospect of f... |
Violations of the equivalence principle? | > Is this credible?
Yes, quite. It's a nice paper.
> What does it mean if the equivalence principle really is violated?
Absolutely nothing. The equivalence principle rests on the principle of locality, and it holds whenever that principle is in effect. But the principle of locality is an approximation; it's violated by certain phenomena in both ordinary "first quantisation" mechanics and in "second quantisation" field theory. If locality doesn't hold, the equivalence principle doesn't either … which is less a *violation* of equivalence as it is a demonstration of the fact that equivalence depends on locality, which we knew already.
No, the interesting thing about this paper isn't that equivalence is violated when locality is violated. The interesting thing is that it's possible to *restore equivalence* even without locality. As the gravitational field gets stronger — that is, as you get closer to the event horizon of a black hole *that's only present in the paper to be the source of a gravitational field of arbitrary strength so please let's not turn this into another godawful black hole party* — the apparent violation of equivalence vanishes. *That's* interesting, and serves as yet more evidence in favour of the notion that quantum field theory and general relativity already, separately, comprise a compete quantum theory of gravity; we just have to work out the details.
Insultingly condescending summary: The violation of equivalence is expected. The *restoration* of equivalence in the strong-field limit isn't expected, and comes as a pleasant surprise. | [
"Equivalence allows for simplifying the constraint store by replacing some constraints with simpler ones; in particular, if the third constraint in an equivalence rule is codice_93, and the second constraint is entailed, the first constraint is removed from the constraint store. Inference allows for the addition of... |
how come most 3d games render at 60 fps while it takes a few seconds to render a textureless cube in blender? | There are two ways to render graphics on the screen.
[Rasterization](_URL_0_) - Which is used in video games. The very simple version of this is the world is made up of triangles and all you have to do is figure out if a triangle is visible and if a pixel is in the triangle or not. Many graphics cards have electronics deigned to do this over and over again very quickly. Compare this with...
[Ray Tracing](_URL_3_) - Which is used for static 3D rendering. This **calculates the path light travels for every pixel on your screen** back to the light source. The objects don't have to be triangles and are often expressed as mathematical solids. This gives you, for all intents an purposes, unlimited resolution and detail depending on how much time and CPU power you want to throw at it. Because ray tracers use complex math, the CPU brute-forces the tracing calculations. In fact, with bender, when doing ray tracing, you don't use any of the 3D capability of your graphics card at all.
Upshot:
Rasterizer: "Hey 3D card, draw and fill 532 triangles the make that make up this [isohedron](_URL_2_) and texture it to make it look like sphere
Ray Tracer: "Hey CPU calculate how light will reflect on a [sphere](_URL_1_) of a volume of 4/3*πr^3"
One take much more time then the other, but it also make it much more realistic at infinite scales. | [
"Processing of 3D graphics is computationally expensive, especially in real-time games, and poses multiple limits. Levels have to be processed at tremendous speeds, making it difficult to render vast skyscapes in real-time. Additionally, real-time graphics generally have depth buffers with limited bit-depth, which ... |
how do lithium ion batteries work? | A lithium ion battery uses charged lithium particles (ions) to move electricity from one end of the battery to another. As energy leaves the battery, these lithium ions move from the negative side of the battery to the positive side, forming a conductive lithium layer that releases electricity. When all the ions are on the positive side of the battery, the battery is spent and no longer releases electricity. When the battery is put in a charger, the sides flip temporarily, and the addition of electrical energy to the lithium causes the ions to move back to the negative side of the battery, making the battery ready for use again.
Because of these properties, lithium ion batteries are among the more common rechargeable batteries for home electronic use. | [
"Lithium-ion batteries store chemical energy in reactive chemicals at the anodes and cathodes of a cell. Typically, anodes and cathodes exchange lithium (Li+) ions through a fluid electrolyte that passes through a porous separator which prevents direct contact between the anode and cathode. Such contact would lead ... |
i turned on my old guitar amp with nothing plugged in and it started playing a radio station. how is this happening? | Radio waves are stupid easy to pick up on any basic consumer amplifier. I've picked up radio stations on PC speakers before. Somewhere along the lines, the radio signal is inadvertently translated to an electrical signal that your system can amplify. You don't need a loose wire; just an unshielded system.
Adding to that, I think the FCC mandates that consumer electronics must accept radio interference. | [
"\"Turning Up the Radio\" is a song by the American rock band Weezer from their studio album \"Death to False Metal\". Its genesis came about in 2008 when Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo used YouTube to source ideas for creating a song using video submissions from other users of the platform.\n",
"The players themse... |
what happens with the intellectual properties of a company when they close down? | It gets sold off/liquidated, like physical assets (to take your example further, Disneylands, corporate headquarters, and other things like that). | [
"After closing a business may be dissolved and have its assets redistributed after filing articles of dissolution. A business that operates multiple locations may continue to operate, but close some of its locations that are under-performing, or in the case of a manufacturer, cease production of some of its product... |
why do you see so many saabs and other out of production cars in movies? | Those brands are/were all owned by GM, and GM has made it a point of pride that their vehicles have been showcased in many motion pictures. What you're seeing is product placement coupled with favorable rental rates for fleet vehicles to achieve that effect. | [
"Many of the cars that appear in the 2015 scenes are either modified for the film or concept cars. Examples include Ford Probe, Saab EV-1, Citroën DS 21, Pontiac Banshee Concept, Pontiac Fiero and Volkswagen Beetle. Cars reused from other science fiction films include the \"Star Car\" from \"The Last Starfighter\" ... |
how does a bike stay up when at faster speeds but will fall over when not going fast enough? | The gyroscopic forces created by the wheels mass cause the wheel to fix itself on a plane in turn overcoming to forces of gravity stopping it just falling over | [
"The rider applies torque to the handlebars in order to turn the front wheel and so to control lean and maintain balance. At high speeds, small steering angles quickly move the ground contact points laterally; at low speeds, larger steering angles are required to achieve the same results in the same amount of time.... |
what is infrasound and how can it cause panic attacks in humans? | Human hearing works for tones in the frequency range of 20hz-20000hz. Everything below that is called infrasound, everything above is called ultrasound.
The resonant frequencies of a lot of human organs happen to be in the infrasound range, so a loud/powerful enough tone can cause them to vibrate strongly, resulting in discomfort and nausea. | [
"Cyclospora is a gastrointestinal pathogen that causes fever, diarrhea, vomiting, and severe weight loss. Outbreaks of the disease occurred in Chicago in 1989 and other areas in the United States. But investigation by the Center for Disease Control could not identify an infectious cause. The discovery of the cause ... |
what would happen to a person when they cannot afford payment to a loan/debt. | They default on a loan which means they can't pay it back, they may have to declare bankruptcy. Their credit gets ruined and for most loans the credit bereau is told to basically just forget about the loan and take the loss. This is worst case
If you just miss a payment on a loan then you get a ding to your credit for non-payment however a single non-payment from a late payment won't be too damaging and can even potentially removed from your credit history in some circumstances.
In general, credit bereaus will try to work with people to have lower payments that they can afford because they would rather have a loan take longer to be repaid than to take the loss. | [
"Unless he cancels the contract, or obtains an order compelling the creditor to accept his performance, it is not clear how the debtor can discharge his debt without having to wait until the period of prescription has run, or until performance has become impossible. Consignation (payment into court with notice to t... |
how can a tiny amount of toxic chemical affect a person's entire body? | Let's do some math. Methanol is lethal at a dose of 1-2 mL/kg. So for an 80kg person, say 2mL/kg dose to be on the safe side (or dangerous, as it were) and that gives a dose of 160mL or 5.4 oz. This dose contains 2.38 x 10^24 molecules of methanol. If you have millions of cells, that's still on the order of 10^18 molecules per cell or billions of billions.
EDIT: There are roughly 3.72 trillion (human) cells in the body, so that bumps it down from billions of billions to only trillions of molecules per cell. | [
"Most toxic substances exert their toxicity through some interaction (e.g., covalent bonding, oxidation) with cellular macromolecules like proteins or DNA. This interaction leads to changes in the normal cellular biochemistry and physiology and downstream toxic effects.\n",
"Most toxicants are known to affect onl... |
why the rear wheel in buses and trucks is close to centre? | It's to increase manouverability. The further back the rear wheels are, the longer the wheelbase of the vehicle is, and therefore the wider any turns it will make will be.
If you move the rear wheels towards the front of the bus, then the bus can swing into tighter turns. The tradeoff is the back end of the bus can swing out now, whereas if the wheels are at the back, that can't happen. | [
"They are also used in railways and low floor buses although, in the case of buses, the device is engineered in the opposite way to those fitted to off-road vehicles - the axle is below the center of the wheel. Thus, the inverted portal axle allows the floor of the bus to be lowered, easing access to the bus and in... |
how do first responders or hospital personnel know who to contact if you have had an accident and are unconscious? | I believe this generally sorted out only after you get to the hospital. | [
"Situation awareness for first responders in medical situations also includes evaluating and understanding what happened to avoid injury of responders and also to provide information to other rescue agencies which may need to know what the situation is via radio prior to their arrival on the scene.\n",
"When an u... |
what ever happened to the sequestration? | The simple answer is it happened and almost nothing has come of it. The people that said the sky would fall were wrong, and the people who said it would fix our deficit were wrong. That's it.
Sequestration is the exact prime example of why you cannot just listen to the news and "experts" to determine what is going on. People lie and exaggerate to get more attention. | [
"The budget sequestration in 2013 refers to the automatic spending cuts to United States federal government spending in particular categories of outlays that were initially set to begin on January 1, 2013, as a fiscal policy as a result of Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA), and were postponed by two months by the Am... |
What effect does machine generated wind (i.e. a fan) have on sound waves? | Sound travels at a speed relative to the medium it's in (the air). For example, in the cockpit of a fighter jet, no matter how fast you're going, sound will always travel away from you when you speak at about 340m/s (depending on air temperature/pressure etc) because the air is moving with the jet, but the sound that the jet creates from its engines and emits out into the atmosphere can only travel at about 340m/s relative to the stationary air the jet is flying through, and so the plane zooms passed the sound as soon as its emitted. So all the sound piles up and makes a shock wave and a sonic boom, but that's a different story.
So when you have sound travelling through air that's being blown by your fan, it will be travelling a little bit faster/slower relative to the room (depending on which direction the fan was pointing) than if the fan was turned off.
However, the speed of sound is huge compared to the speed of the air blown by your fan, so the difference is pretty much negligible. | [
"The wind machine (also called aeoliphone) is a friction idiophone, which is a class of instrument which produces sound through vibrations within the instrument itself. It is a specialist musical instrument used to produce the sound of wind in orchestral compositions and musical theater productions.\n",
"The wind... |
why does 101 mean the basics of something rather than just 1 or 001? | In a college curriculum, courses are numbered to indicate both the level (100-level courses are more basic than 200-level courses) and, frequently but not always, the sequence of courses (you have to take Biology 101 before you can take Biology 102).
A course with a number of 101 is typically the first introductory-level course offered in a discipline.
Why isn't it 100, though? Well, first, it's the sequency. If you have to take 101 before 102, it's easier to understand and remember that 10***1*** is *1st* and 10***2*** is **2nd** that it would be to remember that 100 is 1st and 101 is 2nd.
Also, at some institutions, the number 100 is reserved for remedial courses. So as a typical first-year student at a US university, you would be likely to take English 101 in the fall and English 102 in the spring ... but that assumes that you have the basic skills in reading and writing from high school. If testing shows that you aren't quite ready for the college-level English courses, you might have to take an English 100 class to brush up those skills before moving on to 101 and 102. That's only at some institutions, though, and not as consistent as the 101, 102 style numbering. | [
"BULLET::::- 101: (pronounced 'one o one') used to indicate basic knowledge; e.g., \"Didn't you learn to sweep the floor in housework 101?\" (from the numbering scheme of educational courses where 101 would be the first course in a sequence on the subject).\n",
"It is variously pronounced \"one hundred and one\" ... |
I've read that in the 1800's, US military officers were drawn from the upper class. If so, was it possible that a lower class citizen could perform well in school, go to college and be commissioned regardless of his prior social status? | Yes, it was possible. The prototypical example would be Andrew Jackson, the son of recent Irish immigrants (his older siblings were actually born in Ireland - that's how recent his parents had immigrated before his birth). Jackson rose to the rank of Major General in the Army and, of course, eventually reached the highest office in the land in 1828 (inaugurated 1829). | [
"BULLET::::- Officers who had fought in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps of the United States in the suppression of the Rebellion, or enlisted men who had so served and were subsequently commissioned in the regular forces of the United States, constituted the \"Original Companions of the First Class.\" The eldest di... |
Did the discovery of the Higgs particle actually prove or disprove either Super-symmetry or the Multiverse theories? | Nope. It confirmed a prediction of the [Standard Model of Particle Physics](_URL_0_).
The Standard Model doesn't say anything about supersymmetry (often abbreviated to SuSy) or the multiverse.
SuSy is a hypothetical extension to the Standard Model. It's a pretty extension, but to date there is absolutely no experimental evidence for it. In fact, the Large Hadron Collider has substantially constrained the properties of SuSy - but has not disproved it.
The multiverse is a prediction of string theory, which is currently so far beyond the realm of detection by any imaginable experiment as to place it almost outside the bounds of science. | [
"The resulting electroweak theory and Standard Model have correctly predicted (among other discoveries) weak neutral currents, three bosons, the top and charm quarks, and with great precision, the mass and other properties of some of these. Many of those involved eventually won Nobel Prizes or other renowned awards... |
why are arabs and people from north africa (egypt, libya, morocco, tunisia, etc.) labeled as "white" or "caucasian" in the us census? | Race is a construct. There was a time when Russians, Irish and Italians weren't considered white themselves. | [
"North African Arabs ( \"‘Arab Shamal Ifriqiya\") or Maghrebi Arabs ( \"al-‘Arab al-Maghariba\") are the inhabitants of the North African Maghreb region whose native language is a dialect of Arabic and identify as Arab. This ethnic identity is a product of the Arab conquest of North Africa during the Arab–Byzantine... |
why do older tvs have a weird screen effect while being viewed on another camera? | because the refresh rate of the TV screen collides with the frame rate of the video resulting in an "animation" of said refresh rate - the line moving up or down the screen. It's similar to the way rims on a car often look like they are going on the wrong direction on film, or how in a strobe environment water droplets look like they are travelling up instead of down. | [
"Early analogue televisions varied in the displayed image because of manufacturing tolerance problems. There were also effects from the early design limitations of power supplies, whose DC voltage was not regulated as well as in later power supplies. This could cause the image size to change with normal variations ... |
why do some offices have a pc connected to a virtual machine? | For my firm, working from a virtual server means that updates are significantly easier. Having to update a program individually on 600+ computers would be an IT nightmare (for obvious security reasons, workers do not have the rights to install programs themselves). Working on a virtual machine allows IT to update much more quickly and smoothly. | [
"Some systems provide user interface remotely with the help of a serial (e.g. RS-232, USB, I²C, etc.) or network (e.g. Ethernet) connection. This approach gives several advantages: extends the capabilities of embedded system, avoids the cost of a display, simplifies BSP and allows one to build a rich user interface... |
how can a state be projected to be won by a candidate with only 1% of the polling reporting in? | How can so many idiots ask the same question without reading the goddamn sub? | [
"This article is a collection of statewide polls for the 2016 United States presidential election. The polls listed here provide early data on opinion polling between the Democratic candidate, the Republican candidate, the Libertarian candidate, and the Green candidate. Prior to the parties' conventions, presumptiv... |
why is democracy the go to political system despite its inherent instability with every election. what made it a better choice than something else? | The instability of every election is the strength of a democratic process. It means that, at least in theory, one person or group of people can't entrench themselves and turn the government into their own machine and the country into their own kingdom.
The people gets a mandatory opportunity to replace those in power every few years, again in theory meaning that if we are dissatisfied with them, we can replace them.
Of course over time people who crave that kind of enduring power have created all sorts of different ways to remain in power despite the rules, either by coup or by election fraud or simply by having a dual party system where both parties talk very differently, but act very similarly, and we get to pick a different figurehead every few years. | [
"More recently, democracy is criticised for not offering enough political stability. As governments are frequently elected on and off there tends to be frequent changes in the policies of democratic countries both domestically and internationally. Even if a political party maintains power, vociferous, headline grab... |
How many calories does the human brain consume in a day? | Your brain runs around ~~10 Watts~~. 10 Watts = 10 Joules per sec. There are 4.184 Joules in a calorie (little c, not Calorie, which is 1000 calories). That's 2.39 calories per second. There are 86400 seconds in a day. 86400 x 2.39 = 206496 calories, or ~~**206.5 Calories per day.**~~
EDIT: I was going off of some research that I had done about a week ago, namely [#30 in this list](_URL_0_). Being lazy as I am, I didn't read into it and just remembered the 10 watts. As several people in the comments are saying, the power is closer to 20 watts. [WolframAlpha](_URL_1_) is one source of this other wattage. So double my original estimate = 413 Calories.
**tl;dr: 413 Cal, not 206.5** | [
"A number of theories in evolutionary psychology that are hinged on the assumption that sheer number of calories constitute the only important bottleneck in nutrition are challenged by research on hidden hunger, types of malnutrition in which deficits of specific essential micronutrients cause diseases or even deat... |
Can a computer simulation create itself inside itself? | A computer can emulate another computer (check [this](_URL_0_) out!). A computer can, in fact, emulate a simplified version of itself. The only problem is, as the usage of the emulated computer (or CPU) approaches the maximum speed/usage of the *real* computer, the number of states that can be simulated approaches one.
Eventually, with the emulated computer under 100% load, the emulation will halt - unable to continue because it will require more memory and power than the *real* computer is able to provide it. /u/Begging4Bacon explained it very well:
> The computer would have to be able to simulate itself in a random state. The random state would take up all the memory, leaving none for the hardware itself. | [
"Simulation is also used in computer games and animation and can be accelerated by using a physics engine, the technology used in many powerful computer graphics software programs, like 3ds Max, Maya, Lightwave, and many others to simulate physical characteristics. In computer animation, things like hair, cloth, li... |
Why does a curling rock turn the same direction the rock is spinning? Why does sweeping reduce the curl? | > Why does a curling rock turn the same direction the rock is spinning?
I could not find any conclusive evidence either. However, I will point out that the section in Wikipedia article mentioned several alternate explanations of increased friction as skating speed increases, including different skating techniques. I will also point out the surface of a curling sheet is not a smooth surface - it is roughened by the introduction of pebbles. This makes it behave very differently than on ice (in fact, you can't throw a stone very far on smooth ice because the stone forms a nice seal on the ice, and that has a suction effect that drastically slows down the stone).
The explanations I'm familiar with is that the quasi-liquid layer is mainly responsible for reducing friction, and this layer affects the front of the stone more than the back, because the contact pressure of a 42 pound stone will increase the thickness of that layer. This makes any friction at the back dominate over that of the front. For a clockwise curl, the back of the stone is pushing _left_ on the ice, which makes the stone curl right.
> Why does sweeping reduce the curl?
The answer to this is more certain. The friction from the broom heats up and softens the pebbles on the ice, and this reduces the friction of the ice. This has the effect of extending the distance of the stone, and also reduces the curl as there is less friction on the stone. | [
"The player can induce a curved path, described as \"curl\", by causing the stone to slowly turn as it slides. The path of the rock may be further influenced by two sweepers with brooms, who accompany it as it slides down the sheet and sweep the ice in front of the stone. \"Sweeping a rock\" decreases the friction,... |
Is damage of radiation linearly dependent of radiation exposure? | It's a difficult question to answer, but for the purposes of radiation protection, cancer risk is considered proportional to dose and is not time dependent, in accordance with the [Linear No-Threshold model](_URL_0_). Now that is certainly not true with biological damage in general. For instance, the spreading out of the UV dose will prevent you from getting sunburned. Radiation-based cancer treatments are usually spread out over the course of multiple days or weeks to allow for normal (non-tumor) tissue recovery. But for *cancer risk specifically*, yes, with caveats you can look up in the Wikipedia entry.
Interestingly, some folks think that very small doses of radiation may actually REDUCE your cancer risk (hormesis). But there's not enough evidence to support that at this point, so we still use the linear no-threshold to predict excess cancer risk from radiation. And excessively high doses, well, that will kill you, so I guess at that point it's not really linear anymore... | [
"The most common impact is stochastic induction of cancer with a latent period of years or decades after exposure. For example, ionizing radiation is the sole cause of chronic myelogenous leukemia. The mechanism by which this occurs is well understood, but quantitative models predicting the level of risk remain con... |
Flat or disc-shaped planet | The shape of the object doesn't matter. There's no aerodynamics in space because there's no air. However, a naturally formed planet can't be any other shape due to the laws of gravity. | [
"A disk-shaped planet similar to an Alderson disk (though far smaller) served as the home world of the fantasy \"Aysle\" setting (or \"cosm\") of West End Games' \"Torg\" roleplaying game. In contrast with the Alderson disk, the Aysle \"diskworld\" works according to fantasy physics, including a \"gravity plane\" t... |
why more recently than ever do webpages refresh and not actually go back when you hit the back button? | It is more and more common mispractice to include a 0 second redirect in a site, which as soon as you load a page, redirects you to a slightly different page they actually want you to see. So far, this isn't a bad thing, it helps site design. The problem is, if you hit the back button on most browsers, it will take you back to the page with the instant redirect instead of back PAST that page to the page you came from. It is bad design, and SHOULD be easy to avoid, but some web designers are idiots.
Source: I'm a web developer. | [
"BULLET::::- If a page redirects too quickly (less than 2-3 seconds), using the \"Back\" button on the next page may cause some browsers to move back to the redirecting page, whereupon the redirect will occur again. This is bad for usability, as this may cause a reader to be \"stuck\" on the last website.\n",
"Ma... |
why do people tie shoe laces and toss them over power lines? | Three reasons:
1. Gang members do it to mark their territory ([supposedly](_URL_0_)).
2. Bullies steal someone's sneakers and throw them over power lines to taunt their victim.
3. People take their old sneakers and throw them over power lines because they are inspired by (1.) or just think it's cool, funny, or exciting to do. | [
"With both ends tucked (slipped) it becomes a good way to tie shoelaces, whilst the non-slipped version is useful for shoelaces that are excessively short. It is appropriate for tying plastic garbage or trash bags, as the knot forms a handle when tied in two twisted edges of the bag.\n",
"Self-tying shoes (also k... |
What is the difference between Enthalpy (H) and Heat (Q)? | Enthalpy is a Legendre transform of internal energy. It's a state function, so the change in enthalpy between two states doesn't depend on the path you take between those two steps (in fancy words, it's an *exact differential*).
Heat is not a state function; a system doesn't "have" a certain amount of heat in it (whereas a system *does* have a certain amount of enthalpy). Furthermore, the heat added or removed from a system between some initial and final state **does** depend on the path you take between those states (it's an *inexact differential*).
For a reversible process at constant pressure (like a lot of the things you do in chemistry), the differential enthalpy during some process is the same as the heat transferred into or out of the system during that process.
So that's why in chemistry you often hear terms like "latent heat of fusion" and "enthalpy of fusion" being used as if they're interchangeable, because they often *are* in chemistry.
The first law of thermodynamics says:
dU = ~~d~~Q + ~~d~~W, where the strikethroughs indicate inexact differentials.
And the (pressure-volume) work can be written as ~~d~~W = - p dV.
But maybe you want to think about energy as a function of pressure rather than volume. That way if you can keep the pressure constant (like in a laboratory environment), it'll simplify things.
If you replace the internal energy U with the enthalpy H = U + pV, you find that dH = dU + p dV + V dp.
Now replacing dU with what we have above, dH = ~~d~~Q - p dV + p dV + V dp.
The two terms in the middle cancel, and all that remains is dH = ~~d~~Q + V dp. At constant pressure (dp = 0), this says that dH = ~~d~~Q. | [
"Since the 1920s, it has been recommended practice to use enthalpy to refer to the \"heat content at constant volume\", and to thermal energy when \"heat\" in the general sense is intended, while \"heat\" is reserved for the very specific context of the transfer of thermal energy between two systems.\n",
"Enthalp... |
Would the water pressure be the same at 100 metres under the surface, even if the water was located in a water tank on land? | Yes.
The pressure at any point in the water body depends on three things given negligible air pressure changes. Density of liquid , gravitational constant and height below the surface. Given same g and density , at same depths no matter where kept, the pressure will be same.
| [
"The density of water causes ambient pressures that increase dramatically with depth. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 14.7 pounds per square inch or around 100 kPa. A comparable hydrostatic pressure occurs at a depth of only ( for sea water). Thus, at about 10 m below the surface, the water exerts twice ... |
what's the possibility of puerto rico becoming the 51st state of the us? | This is a complex issue so I failed miserably at ELI5 so I did an ELI15 instead. I hope that you're OK with this.
---
In order for Puerto Rico to become a state two things would need to happen.
1 - Puerto Ricans would need to reach a consensus.
Presidential elections are periodic events where things remain pretty much the same. Because of this the best strategy for the losing party is to wait 4 years and try again. A change in status, however, is a life changing and potentially irreversible permanent event. And if a Puerto Rican group felt that an illegitimate status definition had been imposed on them a cascade of events that would mirror the [assault on the house of representatives](_URL_0_) and the [Ponce massacre](_URL_1_) could unravel. And no American politician would want to risk that.
And you have to keep in mind that in Puerto Rico the main political parties are tied to status definitions. (That's why Puerto Rican politicians make some noise on the subject every once in a while. They're just pandering to their voters.) In the island there is no Democratic or Republican party but a status quo political party (PPD), a statehood political party (PNP), and a minority independence political party (PIP). The status quo party and the statehood party have rougly the same number of supporters so they switch seats in the government once every few years and as a result the status of the island is in a permanent political stalemate.
2 - The US government would need to reach a consensus.
The political status of Puerto Rico is a very risky political issue for any American politician. However, the US government knows about the island's political stalemate so they don't have to take any meaningful actions. But in the unlikely event that Puerto Ricans reached consensus every relevant politician would have to ask himself the two following questions:
a - Would a Puerto Rican state add more votes to my political party or would it benefit the competition? Keep in mind that in Puerto Rico there are no Republicans vs. Democrats although the local politicians do affiliate themselves loosely to some extent with those political parties. Republican politicians would reject a new Democratic state and vice versa.
b - Would my constituents approve of adding Puerto Rico as a new state? Keep in mind that although many Americans consider Puerto Ricans to be marginalized and underrepresented American citizens others consider them to be a culturally incompatible burden for the American taxpayers.
So, even if Puerto Rico could reach a consensus the issue could remain in a stalemate in the US government forever.
There's a third option but it is very unlikely so I didn't mention it as a plausible path to statehood. The US could just force a status definition on the island like it has done many times before with many territories. But the political repercussions would be too great in this age of ubiquitous communications so unless a very dramatic series of events occurred this won't happen.
tl;dr: It is very unlikely but it makes good news so you'll continue to hear about it regularly.
// Disclaimer: I am a Puerto Rican | [
"If this status were granted, Puerto Rico would become the 51st state of the United States. The state would have due representation in the United States Congress with full voting rights; Puerto Rico would be represented in the Senate by two senators and the size of its delegation to the House of Representatives wou... |
would it be possible to replace all of your bones with some sort of metal replica? | Short answer: no. For a couple reasons.
Firstly, there's all the biological functions bone has in the body - as a store of calcium, a site for red and white blood cell production, a fat storage location, and probably more I'm forgetting.
Secondly, there's the material reasons - bone is an amazing natural composite, a living material. It's constantly breaking itself down and rebuilding in response to your needs, which is what makes replace parts with metal so complex. With bone, it's rare to have to deal with fatigue fractures, from years of constant cyclic loading (your leg joints take multiples of your bodyweight in load each time you take a step), as your body rebuilds the bone constantly. Metal isn't doing that, so it can eventually crack.
There's also the ways it would be held - our body knows what to do with bone, how to attach soft tissues to it, how not to attack it with the immune system - with metal (or any other material really) these things have to be taken into consideration. | [
"As an organic material, bone often does not survive in a way that is archaeologically recoverable. However, under the right conditions, bone tools do sometimes survive and many have been recovered from locations around the world representing time periods throughout history and prehistory. Also many examples have b... |
who's in charge of coming up with street names and is there any approval by a committee? also, if you were someone that decided street names how did you come up with them? | In private developments in Ohio, it's up to the discretion of the developer. For example, the development I live in AND the street I live ON are both named after the developer's grandson... who lived in the development. The development I used to live in was interesting because every street was named after a winner of the Kentucky Derby. I would guess that the county commissioners name the public streets. This is probably different in all fifty states and I'm sure it's different in other countries. | [
"One notable feature of the town is the naming of some of its streets, and also its occasionally idiosyncratic numbering system. Some streets which pass through the town may thus bear two names (in whichever language). For example, Jean Talon Street, a large East-West thoroughfare crossing Montreal for kilometers, ... |
what happens to our mind when you spin around? | Nothing happens to your brain. You have fluid in your ear that helps your brain recognize what is up and what is down. When you spin the fluid has to re-equilibrate and while this is happening your brain is confused and the result is nausea, vertigo, and that weird effect where your eyes continue to follow whatever direction you were spinning in. | [
"The most common general symptom of having the spins is described by its name: the feeling that one has the uncontrollable sense of spinning, although one is not in motion, which is one of the main reasons an intoxicated person may vomit. The person has this feeling due to impairments in vision and equilibrioceptio... |
why is there two ways of writing "4" and "a" ? | The '4' and 'a' you see on your screen right now (unless you're using an odd font) are the technically correct glyphs, which is why they appear that way in most typefaces unless it's specifically mimicking handwriting. The "open 4" is use in handwriting because it's easier to distinguish from a 9. When writing quickly, those two digits can often look similar. The other way of writing 'a' is more because it's easier and faster. | [
"Linguistically, it has the alphabetical usage in texts for \"b\", \"a\", or syllabically for \"ba\", and also a replacement for \"\"b\"\", by \"\"p\"\". The a is replaceable in word formation by any of the 4 vowels: \"a, e, i,\" or \"u\".\n",
"The pronunciation of the digits 3, 4, 5, and 9 differs from standard ... |
how are movies that were recorded in a lower definition able to be released in higher definitions? | They were recorded on film, which isn't limited to an amount of pixels- for the most part.
Remember that they were broadcast on a huge screen.
As long as you can get the original print you can re-release the movie as HD. | [
"Depending on the year and format in which a movie was filmed, the exposed image can vary greatly in size. Sizes range from as big as 24 mm × 36 mm for VistaVision/Technirama 8 perforation cameras (same as 35 mm still photo film) going down through 18 mm × 24 mm for Silent Films or Full Frame 4 perforations cameras... |
why does the us armed forces have an army, navy, marines, and coast guard, instead of just an army and navy. | Back when they first started making militaries, there were two kinds of fighting people:
* People who fought on land. When they got around to inventing the English Language, they called them *Armies*.
* People who fought on water, from ships. We call them *Navies*.
Now around the time of the American Revolutionary War (late 1770s), navies fought using wooden sailing ships with lots of cannons firing solid iron balls. These guns were pretty powerful, but they were pretty inaccurate unless you got really close, and unless you got really lucky and blew up the enemy's gunpowder magazine, they couldn't really do enough damage to sink another ship quickly.
So if you were willing to sail through cannonball fire for a little bit, it was possible to get close enough to the enemy ship to board it with your own men. However, most sailors were good at sailing, and not as good at shooting or hand-to-hand fighting, so they decided to create groups of soldiers who specifically trained to fight from ships. These are called *Marines*.
Some countries kept them as part of their armies or navies, but in the US, they put them specifically under the authority of the Department of the Navy, and slowly over time they gained more and various responsibilities- Presidential guard, Embassy guard, etc. Also, because they were on Navy ships all the time, they were usually the first ground troops to show up when the government was trying to flex its power overseas, so they also started doing amphibious warfare (invading beaches from ships), which is their primary mission today.
Around the same time, many countries saw a need for a nautical police force. Using the Navy for that was in most cases overkill; you want to enforce tariffs and catch criminals, not blow merchant ships out of the water. So *Coast Guards* started becoming a thing, tasked with seagoing law enforcement and search and rescue. In the US, it was put under the authority of the Department of Transportation in peactime, and the department of the Navy in wartime. (there was no Department of Defense then). Recently they've been put under the Department of Homeland Security.
So, finally, years later, airplanes were invented. Immediately all the armed forces saw a use for them; mainly spotting for big guns at first (Navy battleships and Army artillery), but later they started carrying guns and bombs and torpedoes and missiles. In some countries, they managed to create a separate *Air Force* right away (the UK did this with the RAF), but in the US, the Army and Navy each handled their own aviation, arguing (accurately enough) their needs were different. So it wasn't until after World War II that the Air Force was split off from the Army into a final branch. The Army still maintains its helicopters for transport and close air support, and the Navy argues that aircraft carrier operations are too different from the land flying that Air Force personnel are used to, so they each have their own aircraft. The Coast Guard needs aircraft for long-range search and rescue. And the Marines have their own aircraft because they're supposed to be a self-contained, independent and fast-moving fighting force once the Navy drops them on the beach.
As for why they haven't merged them back? Politics, money, and tradition. There have been several attempts made--the Air Force argued in the 50's that nuclear weapons made all surface forces obsolete; the Army has tried to absorb the Marines several times; the Air Force has tried to take the Navy's planes, etc. But it seems unlikely in the near future. | [
"As of 2017, the U.S. Armed Forces consists of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force, all under the command of the United States Department of Defense. There also is the United States Coast Guard, which is controlled by the Department of Homeland Security.\n",
"Along with the U.S Coast Guard, the U.S Navy is... |
What happens to bones when a big animal like a shark or an orca eats and swallows another whole animal? | Sharks have a digestive system that's designed to primarily digest meat and fat, so larger bones, chunks of sea turtle shells, things like that are usually vomited back out.
And orcas have a three-chambered stomach, so the food takes more times to pass through, and gives the stomach acid more time to digest everything, including bone | [
"Crocodilians are unable to chew and need to swallow food whole, so prey that is too large to swallow is torn into pieces. They may be unable to deal with a large animal with a thick hide, and may wait until it becomes putrid and comes apart more easily. To tear a chunk of tissue from a large carcass, a crocodilian... |
how do hooves make animals better at climbing mountains? | Mountain goats have special hooves that are like a pirate's hook with soft padding to help adjust. They suck at running long distance running but are great at scaling verticle surfaces because of this. | [
"Many animals climb in other habitats, such as in rock piles or mountains, and in those habitats, many of the same principles apply due to inclines, narrow ledges, and balance issues. However, less research has been conducted on the specific demands of locomotion in these habitats.\n",
"Perhaps the most exception... |
Would phlegm be digested if swallowed? | The mucous is digested further down in the gut by enzymes in the small bowel and bacteria in the large bowel. | [
"Pharyngeal aspiration is often performed on mice and rats. Prior to introduction of the stubstance, the animal is anesthetized and its tongue extended, preventing the animal from swallowing the material and allowing it to be aspirated into the lungs over the course of at least two deep breaths. A liquid suspension... |
Have there been periods of greater or lesser volcanic activity on earth, and if so, what causes this variation? | In the past there have been more volcanic activities since the Earth was much hotter after accretion. The whole surface would have been a barely cooled crust covered in volcanic pustules.
It was much hotter and we have evidence of it from komatiiates which only form at higher temperatures than we see today (1).
So during the early Earth was more volcanically active but different from the volcanoes we see today.
Another thing that continues to influence volcanic activity is thought to be glacier cover. The increased pressure on the volcano from meters worth of ice can depress eruptions (2).
References:
1. _URL_0_
2. _URL_1_ | [
"The 1991 spike is understood to be due to the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in June of that year. Volcanoes affect atmospheric methane emissions when they erupt, releasing ash and sulfur dioxide into the air. As a result, photochemistry of plants is affected and the removal of methane via the tropospheric hydr... |
Have there ever been memes similar to the modern memes? | "Kilroy was here" is the only thing I can remember. Basically, during ww2 American soldiers would leave these marks on beaches they stormed, places they visited, etc. | [
"The idea of memes, and the word itself, were originally speculated by Richard Dawkins in his book \"The Selfish Gene\" although similar, or analogous, concepts had been in currency for a while before its publishing. Richard Dawkins wrote a foreword to \"The Meme Machine\".\n",
"Richard Dawkins, who originated th... |
nuclear arms race | they dont just stockpile the same type of nuke, with time other nations can come up with newer and better delivery methods that cant be stopped or intercepted or your older nukes become incapable of delivering/entering the target area so they make more nukes with better technology.
sometimes they upgrade previous systems , other times its complete new systems.
since those weapons dont ever get used they stock pile into the thousands. | [
"The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none eng... |
Can any scientists comment on the debate in /r/science regarding a new Alzheimer's vaccine? | Based on the abstract (for some reason my institution doesn't have access to the full paper) of the [Lancet Neurology paper](_URL_2_), I'm not too impressed. This was an extremely preliminary study establishing the side effect profile, as well as determining whether the vaccine actually induces an antibody response. According the abstract, they didn't even look at efficacy in their outcomes. Their overall conclusion was that 1) this vaccine does induce some sort of immune response and 2) it doesn't seem to have serious adverse effects. They listed "Immune response, cognitive and functional assessments" as one of their secondary outcomes on their [_URL_1_ page](_URL_0_), but don't report on it in the abstract.
As this was merely a phase I trial, the n is also very small (58 total). I think it's quite a number of steps from anything clinically useful.
edited to add: the principle that they're working with is inducing antibodies against the Aβ-amyloid. I'm not convinced that this would actually be effective. Aβ-amyloid makes up the 'senile plaques' that is so characteristic, but I don't think it's very indicative of cognitive defects. I think the tau proteins (that make up the neurofibrillary tangles) are much more prognostic. I'm also not convinced that an antibody response against these plaques would be helpful, since they would have to penetrate the blood-brain barrier to reach the amyloid. Once there, it's not like the antibodies magically make them go away, since there would still need to be some mechanism of clearing them (possibly via microglia). So I guess my point is that this is an important step towards eventually possibly developing a vaccine or treatment, but there's so much that we don't know yet that it's hard to see it happening in the near future. | [
"BULLET::::- Alzheimer's Disease: West Virginia University's Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute has been chosen as the first site in the world to participate in phase II of a new clinical trial using ultrasound technology to help reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease, and allow doctors access to parts of the b... |
how are people/groups of people legally allowed to place "bounties" on others? | They're not "bounties" like in the Boba Fett sense. They're rewards to turn over information which would lead to arrest/prosecution. Boba Fett bounties ("Capture and/or kill this person") are illegal. | [
"The reasons may include neglect, but also tax evasion and/or avoiding arrest for a crime. The downside for the person is that he cannot get benefits such as (for a Dutch person) getting a passport, and for anyone still living in the country, being allowed to work and to send his children to school, getting social ... |
lots of people barely eat vegetables and never take multivitamins, and still seem to be in good health. how is the daily recommended amount of micronutrients calculated, and why do people seem just fine even if they don't get it? | Pretty much everyone in a developed country gets enough nutrients to stay reasonably healthy unless they are on some kind of super restrictive diet.
The RDA's are *very* conservative and you have to be *very* deficient for a long time before you'll start seeing serious health effects. | [
"According to the Harvard School of Public Health: \"...many people don’t eat the healthiest of diets. That’s why a multivitamin can help fill in the gaps, and may have added health benefits.\" The U.S. Office of Dietary Supplements, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, suggests that multivitamin suppleme... |
If gravitons exist, then is it possible for anti-gravitons to exist and would that mean that the matter they interact with will gain negative gravity? | The graviton would be its own antiparticle in the same way that the photon is also its own antiparticle. No negative gravity needed. | [
"If it exists, the graviton is expected to be massless because the gravitational force is very long range and appears to propagate at the speed of light. The graviton must be a spin-2 boson because the source of gravitation is the stress–energy tensor, a second-order tensor (compared with electromagnetism's spin-1 ... |
How does a globe storm glass barometer work? | It is open to the atmosphere! That glass pipe off to the side is open, and when the air pressure increases it pushes down on the fluid in the pipe. Through the wonderful nature of hydraulics, the water in the globe then rises. | [
"A barometer is a scientific instrument that is used to measure air pressure in a certain environment. Pressure tendency can forecast short term changes in the weather. Many measurements of air pressure are used within surface weather analysis to help find surface troughs, pressure systems and frontal boundaries.\n... |
What happens to a morbidly obese individual during hydrated starvation? | Similar - and I emphasize SIMILAR things have been done, although I frankly don't know where to find the study. Googling might pull up something for you.
They took a fat dude, kept him supplied with fluids and vitamins and the like, and successfully kept him alive and relatively well. Think he lost a totally insane amount of weight, too. | [
"Early symptoms include impulsivity, irritability, and hyperactivity. Atrophy (wasting away) of the stomach weakens the perception of hunger, since the perception is controlled by the volume of the stomach that is empty. Individuals experiencing starvation lose substantial fat (adipose tissue) and muscle mass as th... |
Is it possible for a planet to exist in our SS that we have yet to discover? | No, any body large enough to be a real planet would leave a gravitational footprint that could be observed. | [
"HD 162826 has no known planets. The current state of knowledge excludes hot Jupiters and suggests that a more distant \"Jupiter\" is unlikely, but terrestrial planets are possible. A rocky terrestrial planet situated in a Mars-like orbit at about 1.525 AU could potentially be habitable. However, more studies on th... |
why do radio stations sometimes have two frequencies playing the same thing? | They would probably be broadcasting from different locations, giving the station a wider range. | [
"Two-way radios can operate on many different frequencies, and these frequencies are assigned differently in different countries. Typically channelized operations are used, so that operators need not tune equipment to a particular frequency but instead can use one or more pre-selected frequencies, easily chosen by ... |
Is there any known species that can see other parts of the electro magnetic spectrum? | Tarsiers and Chameleons can see in the Ultraviolet. Dragonflies can see polarized light (Not a different part of the spectrum, but still cool). The Mantis shrimp is my favorite though. It has the most complex eyes known in the animal kingdom. Like many flies the mantis shrimp has compound eyes, but each row of ommatidia have specific functions (i.e. one for light intensity, one for color, etc) Their eyes have twelve different types of color receptors (humans only have three) as well as Ultraviolet, Infrared, and polarized light. Let me also say that it doesn't necessarily help to see light in other parts of the E/M spectrum except infrared because although stars emit light from ultraviolet to radio, about 50% of the light is in the visible range and about 20% is infrared. | [
"Another less general type of magnetic sensing mechanism in animals that has been described is electromagnetic induction used by sharks, stingrays and chimaeras (cartilaginous fish). These species possess a unique electroreceptive organ known as \"ampullae of Lorenzini\" which can detect a slight variation in elect... |
why do your lips peel when you’re sick? | lip skin is different than regular sin & doesn't make it's own lipid.
It comes from the skin around your lips & those pores could be clogged. As an experiment you could try AHA cream on that skin, or just get good chapstick. | [
"Inflammation of the corners (angles) of the lips is termed angular stomatitis or angular cheilitis. In children a frequent cause is repeated lip-licking, and in adults it may be a sign of underlying iron deficiency anemia, or vitamin B deficiencies (\"e.g.\", B-riboflavin, B-folate, or B-cobalamin, which in turn m... |
Japan was separated from their Axis allies by numerous Allied countries. How did they communicate with other Axis powers? | For the most part, they didn't. Top axis and allied leaders met and hammered out agreements at conferences. The Axis leaders often didn't even tell each other which countries they were going to invade, much less had joint strategy sessions. | [
"As the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan cemented their military alliance by mutually declaring war against the United States by December 11, 1941, the Japanese proposed a clear territorial arrangement with the two main European Axis powers concerning the Asian continent. On December 15 they presented the G... |
what is the purpose of so much pollen everywhere? | > So why do plants give off so much pollen?
To make sure they have enough. Way out on the edges of the most distant spread of the pollen there may be just enough for fertilization, and the ground covered increases greatly as they put more and more out there. It isn't a group effort; each tree is trying to spread its genes individually. It doesn't matter if other trees have "enough" pollen, it matters if they have the pollen of a given tree. | [
"Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.\n",
"Bee pollen is a ball or pellet of fi... |
How can a counterexample to the Collatz(3n+1) conjecture be for a sequence to go towards infinity? | You can't use statistics on math. For example, half of numbers are even, but there's only one odd power of two, and only one even prime. Similarly, you might end up getting (3n+1)/2 as being odd over and over again even though it statistically shouldn't happen. | [
"For each of these, multiply the distance to the closest line with integer x-coordinate by the distance to the closest line with integer y-coordinate. This product will certainly be at most 1/4. The conjecture makes no statement about whether this sequence of values will converge; it typically does not, in fact. Th... |
What did Vikings do with all their loot? Was the loot divided equally among the raiders, given to one man, or somewhere in between? | It certainly did. I recently finished my masters on these lovely individuals and while I do not have all the sources handy with me, hopefully, someone else here will.
To give you a brief, non-cited explanation, there were several places that the loot from Viking raids/expeditions had a serious effect. Towns like Dublin were completely established by Viking raiders and therefore would have been affected greatly by the influx of coinage. In addition to that, those Vikings that served in the Varangian Guard and returned to Iceland often did so as rich men. I believe there is a man named Bolli Bollason (or something similar), who serves for a time in the Varangian guard, then returns and is so wealthy he is known as Bolli the Grand.
As far as the division of loot goes that is a much harder and less studied question. There are no primary sources that give us a percentage break-down of what a raiding band would receive. Often, all we have is that the entire force was paid x pounds of silver and other such goods. In order to really find out something about how much the average Viking warrior took home would require examining graves. Even then though, it would only be a rough estimate of how much a raider could obtain over time and not be an accurate reflection of how much a particular raid earned them.
I can promise you though, it is *very* unlikely that only one man received the loot, and even if he did, he soon split it up amongst his men or else paid the price. Gift giving was extremely important and played a massive role in keeping together raiding parties.
tldr: very much yes. | [
"The hoard consists of a variety of silver items including 27 coins, 10 arm-rings, 2 finger-rings, 14 ingots, 6 brooch fragments, a fine wire braid and 141 fragments of arm-rings and ingots which had been chopped up and turned into hacksilver, which was used as a form of currency in Viking times. Together they weig... |
we have a huge sea which is evapourating all the time which comes back to us in the form of rains. we can create artificial rains. why do we worry about water shortage in future? | First of all, I'm not sure what you mean by creating "artificial rains." It's possible to seed clouds and make them rain, but it costs money, and only works if there's sufficient moisture available. We can desalinate saltwater, but it's expensive and time consuming. Personally, I think that it's a really important scientific pursuit and more people should be working on the problem of how to do it cheaply, but as it stands, turning saltwater into freshwater is not easy or cheap to do at volume.
So, what we're left with, you may be surprised to hear, is 2.5% of the earth's water. That's what percentage is NOT saltwater. Of that, less than half is easily accessible (from lakes, rivers, or aquifers close enough to the surface for wells). We're talking 1% of the planet's water is not salt and available for people to reach. Now, if we let industry dump waste products into that water, we have less and less potable water for future generations, and we have to invest more and more money into cleaning up the freshwater that's available to us.
Now, we're looking at a population that continues to expand. Many people are already at a disadvantage when it comes to acquiring water. They either live in arid regions where there is little freshwater to start with (that's another problem with desalinating saltwater--it's terribly expensive to ship it to people who don't have access to water) or else in places where there is little water regulation, and the "fresh" water available to them is dangerous to drink.
Every year, the planet's water usage increases. There are more people, more factory farms, more industry. This all decreases our available freshwater, as do the increased pollution that comes with an increased population. Now we have situations where places that already experience drought/water shortage find that industry has more right to the water than people do. We have companies like Nestle pumping water out of drinking sources, bottling it in plastic (and I'm pretty sure the plastic industry uses a lot of water, too), and selling it back to people.
If you have a good idea for taking large quantities of saltwater and purifying it quickly and inexpensively, you should get on that right away, because you will save lives and probably get rich. But don't believe, right now, that humanity has an unlimited supply of drinking water at its fingertips, because we don't. It's limited and shrinking and if corporations like Nestle have their way, water won't be a human right anymore. It will be an expensive privilege. | [
"Floods effects are exacerbated due to greater erosion by the sea caused by human interventions to facilitate port activities (e.g. through the construction of jetties and artificial canals); establishment of the industrial Porto Marghera area; and increased wash from motorized boats, which all aggravate erosion of... |
is artificial photosynthesis not viable? | Photosynthesis (PS) involves harnessing light (photons) from the sun for energy to drive chemical reactions. Here's an abridged version of the process:
1. A photon strikes an electron that is chilling in chlorophyll (or some other pigment depending on the wavelength of light the organism harvests)
2. The electron absorbs the photon
3. The electron gains the energy of the photon, becoming 'excited'
4. The excited electron is chemical reactions that require a lot of energy (called 'energetically unfavorable reactions')
5. The cool part: light is used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen and build carbohydrates from CO2
When the excited electron forms a new chemical bond, that chemical bond stores the energy of the excited electron. That stored energy can be used to drive other energetically unfavorable reactions, many of which happen at night. These are aptly called the dark reactions (the reactions involved in harvesting light for energy are called the light reactions).
We know pretty well how PS works, but we're nowhere near technologically advanced enough to replicate the process artificially. There are tons of steps involved in harnessing that light energy - sort of like taking the stairs from the top floor instead of jumping off the roof. Each step is a separate chemical reaction facilitated by a unique protein. It's hard to build that from scratch.
Here's a simple breakdown of the process: _URL_0_
One last thing: the majority of carbon fixation (utilizing atmospheric CO2) is done by microorganisms, especially marine microorganisms. Scientists are trying to genetically modify photosynthetic microorganisms so they'll take atmospheric CO2 and convert it into useful organic compounds like ethanol and other biofuels.
I lied, here's the last thing:
> Chlorophyll? More like BOREophyll!
> Right? | [
"The purpose of artificial photosynthesis is to produce a fuel from sunlight that can be stored conveniently and used when sunlight is not available, by using direct processes, that is, to produce a solar fuel. With the development of catalysts able to reproduce the major parts of photosynthesis, water and sunlight... |
Would a handful of marbles released in empty space exert enough gravity on each other to clump together or even orbit one another? | If you started them off stationary with respect to one another, they would move together and end up in a clump, because their only acceleration would be towards one another. Of course, the accelerations would be very small, and the time to clumping very large.
If you started them with velocities with respect to one another, they could enter orbit, clump together (or at least hit each other, with behaviour depending on the elasticity of the collision), or move apart forever depending on what those velocities were. My quick calculation suggests that escape velocity for a 5g marble at a distance of 5cm is about 4 microns per second.
Edit: I confirmed my escape velocity calculation using [Wolfram Alpha](_URL_0_). At a distance of 5cm from a relatively heavy 5g marble, it's about 4x10^-6 metres per second. So each marble wouldn't need much velocity to escape the others. | [
"In contrast to Rachel Whiteread's procedure of making positive volumes out of negative space, Chromy constructs a negative space out of a solid volume: the human body. The marble therefore becomes a material of strength, a structural material, rather than one that engages in the illusion of weightlessness — in thi... |
how can most low-end phone have a better processor speed than higher-end laptops? | number of cores and clock speed (GHz) do not necessarily indicate raw processor power. You also cannot add the GHz of multiple cores to get a number that means anything. | [
"For Internet browsing and typical office applications, where the computer spends the majority of its time waiting for the next user input, even relatively low-end laptops (such as Netbooks) can be fast enough for some users. Most higher-end laptops are sufficiently powerful for high-resolution movie playback, some... |
what's happening in my head when sound gets drowned out while falling asleep and then a minor disturbance "opens" up my ears? | Your brain differentiates between expected and unexpected noises. So the hum from the fridge or the music you left on is expected, but broken glass or some other noise is unexpected and your brain wakes you up. | [
"The occlusion effect occurs when an object fills the outer portion of a person's ear canal, and that person perceives \"hollow\" or \"booming\" echo-like sounds of their own voice. It is caused by bone-conducted sound vibrations reverberating off the object filling the ear canal. When talking or chewing, these vib... |
why is e85 85% ethanol? | E85 has between 51 and 83% ethanol, by law (in the U.S.). Outside of the US it has 85%, and you can get 100% ethanol in some places too, mostly in warm areas.
You have to mix it because it won't ignite in cold weather without some gasoline - the exact mix of ethanol and gas is often changed depending on where you are (the weather!). | [
"E85, a mixture of 85% ethanol and ~15% gasoline, is generally the highest ethanol fuel mixture found in the United States and several European countries, particularly in Sweden, as this blend is the standard fuel for flexible-fuel vehicles. This mixture has an octane rating of 108, however, the Ethanol molecule al... |
why are nitrites toxic to tank fish, but nitrates are okay? | That one oxygen atom changes the shape, structure, and function.
For example Nitrates are used in many fertilizers and explosives. Nitrites are used in food preservation.
Nitrates form strong acids and nitrates form weaker acids.
That one extra oxygen atom in Nitrates makes a huge difference. | [
"Nitrates and nitrites have been used for hundreds of years to prevent botulism in fish and ensure microbial safety. Nitrates help kill bacteria, produce a characteristic flavor, and give fish a pink or red color. The use of nitrates in food preservation is controversial. This is due to the potential for the format... |
why is cancer the most common disease associated with dna mutations? | Of all the things that mutations cause (that is, mutations that happen *after* a person has been born), most of them probably just end up with the mutated DNA getting repaired or removed, or the cell that contains it being destroyed through programmed cell death. Cancer is the result of a mutation that removes the cell's ability to repair or quarantine mutations. It isn't that so much of DNA is devoted to reproduction that any one mutation is likely to damage that section of the DNA. It's that, of all the mutations that happen, the ones that can survive and reproduce are necessarily the ones that alter the normal reproduction/cell death processes (and these are the mutations that cause cancer.) | [
"The likely major underlying cause of mutations in cancer is DNA damage. For example, in the case of lung cancer, DNA damage is caused by agents in exogenous genotoxic tobacco smoke (e.g. acrolein, formaldehyde, acrylonitrile, 1,3-butadiene, acetaldehyde, ethylene oxide and isoprene). Endogenous (metabolically-caus... |
why are some drink powders white but then turn a bright/deep shade after adding water | Artificial food coloring is extremely concentrated. A couple of granules, hidden among the white granules that make up most of the drink mix, are all it takes. | [
"Reflecting its slightly hydrophilic character, the white powder is moderately soluble in alcohols and can be recrystallized from hot water. In the presence of a base, it oxidizes readily. The methylated derivatives \"N\"-methylaminophenol and \"N\",\"N\"-dimethylaminophenol are of commercial value.\n",
"Ouzo is ... |
how and why are books like the great gatsby and of mice and men chosen for reading in english classes? | *Finally, my degree is useful for something!*
So educators are usually really *bad* at explaining why you read the things you read for school. The core concept to grasp here is the *literary canon*: that is, the body of works that are the foundation of [Western] literature. They are the most historically and culturally significant pieces of literature being studied currently. But how do works get added to the canon?
The surface layer is that they get into the canon because old stuffy [usually white, usually male] scholars *want* to study them, so they do, so it's expected that their students study them, so they do, so it's expected that to prepare for college you have to study them, so you do. It's not like a few Ivy League professors sat down in a dark, smokey room and discussed the future of the literary canon...but also it kind of is like that? Keep in mind, there are multiple "sub-canons". There is the American literature canon (featuring Anne Bradstreet, Thoreau, Emerson, Faulkner, Hemingway, Whitman, etc.); the British literature canon (Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne, Jane Austen, etc.), the poetry canon (Frost, Emerson, Whitman, Donne, Herbert, Shakespeare, etc.), the historical foundational canon (Homer, Virgil, *Beowulf*, *Gilgamesh*, etc.), the science fiction canon (Mary Shelley, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, etc.). I know I'm throwing a lot of names at you; the point is that there is *the canon* and then there is "I'm studying English poetry in the late 1800s, *these* are the people I should be reading".
Which then **raises** the question, why do those scholars want to study those works? We have the benefit of hindsight, so *today* we might read Hemingway and [rightly] think he's boring and dry. But at the time his writing style was revolutionary. Before Hemingway, prose was all very *eloquent* and had propensity for verbosity. Hemingway wrote in a short, clean, *different* style. You may not like it, but he made it ok to *not* write in the old, stuffy way that everyone had been writing before him. That's not to say Hemingway was the first, or the best, but he was *good* and he was famous and he showed everyone that you could write in a different fashion. Suddenly everyone was writing in this new minimalist style, which in turn led to other changes in literature that allowed for the kinds of books we read today for fun. Without Hemingway, our literature today would look *very* different. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson did the same thing for poetry. Those are some very specific examples, but I hope they can demonstrate how authors can influence literature, and sometimes they're a part of the canon for those reasons.
The very old part of the canon is in there for much the same reason, but more in the sense of *inventing literature at all*. Homer's Odyssey is the foundational work for *so much* of western literature. Literally everything you've ever read, **ever**, was influenced by the Odyssey. And Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest great work of literature - the oldest version of That Movie That Everyone Saw. It's the first ever example of real literature, which is kind of a big deal. Studying them can help you understand how storytelling evolved, by showing you how it started. I won't go into too much detail here about what, exactly, you would learn (narrative structure, framing devices...) because I don't need to give you an English lesson, eh? Suffice it to say, there's a lot there to unpack.
Some works are a part of the canon because they're just easy to digest. F. Scott Fitzgerald is fairly easy to analyze and understand on a more abstract level, mostly because all of his symbolism is the same (that is, everything represents the "unobtainable American Dream"). It wouldn't do any good to say, "Here kids, learn how to analyze literature by *analyzing the most difficult literature possible*". Of course, unfortunately that's often *exactly* what English classes do. It's akin to saying, "Here kids, let's learn how to do math. Shall we start with calculus? No? Trigonometry then..." Which is unfortunate, because literature is awesome and there's some really cool stuff to learn...once you learn the tools you need to do it. But I digress.
But most of the canon boils down to be cultural icons of the time when they were published, or sometimes later when people rediscovered them. They can be both a window into the culture surrounding the person that wrote the works, why they wrote what they did, what symbolism they were using at the time, how they thought and viewed the world; and also a window into how that one piece of literature or author or movement changed the culture they were in, which trickled down to influence our own culture. They can also be ways to understand ourselves by analyzing our own reactions to what we're reading, and the literature in the canon often elicits strong reactions in its readers.
None of that is to say that the canon is perfect; far from it! I studied English and I hate huge chunks of the canon ([don't even get me started on *Catcher in the Rye*](_URL_0_)). But that's the idea of it: important literature that had a powerful influence on people and the times they were from, which encourages others to study that literature, which is itself a strong reaction that encourages others to study why the first people studied it, etc., so that it continues to have influence and continues to be important literature worth studying. TL;DR: The literary canon is literature that is "worth studying".
EDIT: Important thing I totally missed. The literary canon is also supposed to be an introduction to your own national identity. When you so much as watch cartoons you'll be getting [references to cultural icons](_URL_2_). Seriously, as an adult go back and watch Animaniacs (it's on Netflix!) and see how many references you *didn't* get when you were a kid. When you read the American literary canon it's in part teaching you what it means to be an American. It helps build a unifying web of understanding, because when you make a joke about how painting a fence is "fun" and someone else laughs, you think *This guy also read Tom Sawyer* and you feel a connection with that person. Enough of those cultural connections help form the glue that is our national identity. It kind of sounds like indoctrination...and it kind of is. And that's not *bad* because it's teaching you about your country and how to be a citizen of that country, which is perfectly fine as long as it doesn't get out of control.
EDIT: Hemingway has one m. I derped *so hard*. Thanks for the guys that caught it. EDIT: and Emerson, dammnit. I am a derp, sorry for the typos. Eventually I'll run out of names to misspell.
EDIT: for the pedants: ~~begs~~ raises
EDIT: Obligatory Thanks for the Gold, but [I think they misspelled Emmerson](_URL_3_). ^^/s
Because people have been asking: [This is my scifi reviews/essay blog](_URL_1_). The responses have really been really encouraging, so I'm going to try to revitalize it and get to posting there again. If you're into aquariums, [I also have a blog about aquariums](_URL_4_). I do most of my writing on Reddit, though - right here in ELI5!
I have been convinced to reread *Catcher in the Rye* to see if age will give me a better perspective. I stand by my dislike of Hemingway, but if you enjoy him don't let me stop you.
**TL;DR - Like the rest of this comment, the books you are assigned to read in class are probably worth reading for reasons that will be made clear if you read the rest of that book/this comment.** | [
"John Steinbeck's \"Of Mice and Men\", first published in 1937, is considered an American classic and listed as the 12th best novel of the 20th century by the Radcliffe Publishing Course. It has remained a popular choice for teaching in English curriculums because of its simplistic nature, but profound message. Reg... |
sarcasm and irony | Irony:
The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning or an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
Sarcasm: A sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark
So sarcasm is an ironical remark used to taunt someone.
[_URL_1_](_URL_0_) | [
"Sarcasm does not necessarily involve irony. But irony, or the use of expressions conveying different things according as they are interpreted, is so often made the vehicle of sarcasm ... The essence of sarcasm is the intention of giving pain by (ironical or other) bitter words.\n",
"A feature of satire is strong... |
Why are there tigers in Primorye and historically throughout Siberia, but none in the similar ecosystem of Alaska? | There were a number of large cats that formerly inhabited North America, such as the American Lion: _URL_2_ And the Saber-toothed cat: _URL_1_
The only species to survive in North America into modern times is the Cougar. _URL_0_ | [
"Siberian tigers used to be common on either side of the Amur River in Russia and China, as well as in northeastern Mongolia and South Korea. Caspian tigers lived around the Caspian sea in Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkmenistan, and also further away in Armenia, Georgia and Turkey and Kazakhstan all the way to the Altai... |
What does it mean for a substance to have 0 viscosity? | It's been a few years since I last did matter at low temp, but IIRC there are a few things that characterise such a state:
- Film flow: superfluids are capable of climbing out of open beakers, even against gravity. Here is a cool [video](_URL_2_)
- Superleaks: Superfluids can leak through incredibly small holes which normal viscous liquids would be unable to do. So one example would be a narrow tube packed with loads of cotton wool.
- Fountain effect: [video](_URL_1_) and [link](_URL_0_) will explain better than me
- Also quantised vortices but I don't know enough about them, maybe someone else can fill in | [
"The intrinsic viscosity of the material, found by extrapolating to zero concentration of relative viscosity to concentration which is measured in deciliters per gram (dℓ/g). Intrinsic viscosity is dependent upon the length of its polymer chains but has no units due to being extrapolated to zero concentration. The ... |
Is there an infinite number of wavelengths on the EM spectrum between 2 wavelengths? | No, it's infinite. All wavelengths are allowed.
Planck's constant cannot do that, and you can deduce that without knowing the physics. The theory of photons is free quantum electrodynamics, which has only two dimensionful constants: c and hbar, respectively from relativity and QM. c has units of length/time, hbar has units mass×length^(2)/time. If you had some kind of discretization of wavelength, which has ofc units of length, the step should be a pure number times a length obtained by combination of powers of c and hbar. But as you can see, there is no way to build a length multiplying powers of c and hbar. | [
"The electromagnetic spectrum extends from below frequencies used for modern radio to gamma radiation at the short-wavelength end, covering wavelengths from thousands of kilometers down to a fraction of the size of an atom. That would be wavelengths from 10 to 10 kilometers. The long wavelength limit is the size of... |
how come after only a couple days of not working out, i feel and look like i'm not in good shape anymore? | It's honestly a mental thing. If you think you look/feel good, then you will (if you're pretty healthy). I know that I feel like I'm in a funk when I don't work out for a few days. It's all in my head, though. | [
"Dr. Pope said that when individuals have a regular workout regimen, but sustain an injury, they can't wait to get back to working out and that it has a psychiatric protective effect for them. He also said their instincts are to get back to work and if they allow their working out to lapse too long then bad things ... |
how and why exactly does anxiety affect your whole body? (eg. digestive system, feeling cold, etc) | Stress causes your adrenal glands to release adrenaline which causes a wide range of physical symptoms. | [
"The behavioral effects of anxiety may include withdrawal from situations which have provoked anxiety or negative feelings in the past. Other effects may include changes in sleeping patterns, changes in habits, increase or decrease in food intake, and increased motor tension (such as foot tapping).\n",
"Researche... |
Why was Portugal accepted into NATO? | While both regimes shared very similar outlooks (Corporatist, authoritarian, conservative, anti-communist states) both had significantly different reputations after the 2nd world war. Salazar was an incredibly well regarded statesman, who had a great dislike for Hitler and who stayed neutral during the war due to a strategic issue (Anglo-Portugese alliance stayed intact as a strategic issue, as Portugal was poorly defended and the British did not need more reason to draw the Spanish into the war.) Franco had presided over an incredibly bloody civil war and had only stayed neutral in the 2nd world war because the Germans thought his conditions for Spanish military help were unfeasible (Rumor is Hitler once stated he'd rather have teeth pulled than continue to deal with Franco).
Four years after the end of the 2nd world war, when the North Atlantic treaty was signed, few people had forgotten had close Spain was to becoming a full-fledged member of the Axis.
| [
"NATO's focus on preventing a conventional Soviet attack against Western Europe was to the detriment of military preparations against guerrilla uprisings in Portugal's overseas provinces that were considered essential for the survival of the nation. The integration of Portugal in NATO resulted in the formation of a... |
why do politicians owe favors to their donors? | Let's look at it at a "before presidency thing", first. To get to that point you have held one office or another multiple times. You would not have gotten past the first if you were known not to "repay favours", as you would get no donors the second time. Now, to the presidency. Let's assume you decide "OK, I'm here, no more sucking up". Can you get any work done? Not really because EVERYONE else needs to still suck up to those campaign funds. So you get nothing done and when your one term is over you find no jobs waiting for you on the other side.
As for evidence? It is hard to tell. Being able to "follow the money" in a lot of cases is difficult, although others are less so. | [
"Although the political science literature indicates that most contributors give to support parties or candidates with whom they are already in agreement, there is wide public perception that donors expect government favors in return. (such as specific legislation being enacted or defeated), so some have come to eq... |
How far can an ant be removed from the anthill and still find its way home? | This has been asked a lot before so if you want deeper answers you can look them up. Basically if an ant doesn't know where it's trail home is it will start wandering around in random(ish) directions trying to find it. IIRC, they also have a good ability to remember landmarks, so that can help too.
If they are really far away and can't find their home then yes, then they may wander until they die. They may find another colony that they can assimilate into, but more than likely they ants their won't accept the foreigner and will attack and kill it (even if it's the same species possibly.)
So to answer your question of how far away, it depends. If they are a really long ways away, but get lucky in their random search they can find their way back. In general, I've seen estimates hover closer to 100 or less meters. It's actually a neat direct application of some of the algorithms in computer science if you want a more rigorous way to think of it. | [
"Then let it move Northwards, over \"the hill\", then towards the Northwest so that it starts sliding down towards the \"x = 0\" axis. As soon as the ant crosses this axis it will find itself \"inside\" the Northern lobe, standing right side up. Now let the ant walk towards the North. It will climb up the wall, the... |
why do planes take what seems like huge detours instead of straight lines to the destination? | Airplanes take [Great Circle paths](_URL_1_), the shortest distance between two points on a globe, effectively a straight line. And when you look at the globe, they do look like straight lines. But when you flatten the globe into a map, [they get distorted](_URL_0_) | [
"The path that a vessel follows over the ground is called a \"ground track\", \"course made good\" or \"course over the ground\". For an aircraft it is simply its \"track\". The intended track is a \"route\". For ships and aircraft, routes are typically straight-line segments between waypoints. A navigator determin... |
seriously, how do cell phones work?! | First of all it's not instant. It's something like one twentieth of a second from the time you speak until the other person hears you, and it depends on how far away you are from each other. It takes time to transmit information, so no kind of communication is instantaneous.
Step by step here is a basic overview. If there's any specific part of this you are curious about I can explain more.
The sound of your voice goes into the microphone.
The microphone converts these sounds into electrical signals.
A part in the phone called a ADC converts these signals into a stream of numbers.
A tiny but very fast computer in the phone does lots of math with the numbers to process the signal, compress the information so there's not too much to transmit, and package it into a format that the phone company can understand.
A radio in the phone transmits these numbers onto the airwaves.
The nearest cell tower receives the radio signal.
A computer at the cell tower then retransmits the numbers, in the form of light waves, into cables that run all over the country. Lots of fancy equipment in big air conditioned facilities all over the world pass this information along to its destination.
At the other end, the reverse process occurs until the sound you made finally exits the other person's phone through its speaker.
| [
"A cell phone is a wireless portable telephone that connects to the telephone network by radio waves exchanged with a local antenna and automated transceiver called a cellular base station (\"cell site\" or \"cell tower\"). The service area served by each provider is divided into small geographical areas called \"c... |
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