title list | over_18 list | post_content stringlengths 0 9.37k ⌀ | C1 list | C2 list | C3 list |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[
"How does a computer/device know how much battery life it has left?"
] | [
false
] | I was just thinking about this. Curious about what type of measurement is used to measure time and life. | [
"There are basically two ways to do it. Either you measure the voltage on the battery, and calculate remaining charge based on the discharge curve, or you route charge going into and out of the battery through a low-resistance shunt, and measure the voltage drop across the shunt to get the current draw, and count c... | [
"I designed a circuit that did this while doing another project, but it was just to have a quick battery indicator for the project so this is just how I did it once, not industry practice. Battery powered electronics of any complexity must use voltage regulators to produce a nearly constant voltage or voltages from... | [
"This is actually how it's done for a lot of low-cost devices. Works well for disposable batteries, but not for lithium-ion batteries, which have a flatter discharge curve. "
] |
[
"How is the universe infinite, if it started small and continues to expand?"
] | [
false
] | If we assume something along the big bang theory is approximately correct, and that the universe is still expanding from a singularity that exploded billions of years ago... then we can say, perhaps a few milliseconds after the initial "explosion", the universe was rather small. For the sake of argument, let's say at X... | [
"we can say, perhaps a few milliseconds after the initial \"explosion\", the universe was rather small.",
"That doesn't necessarily follow. It's entirely possible for the entire universe to have \"begun\" in a singularity, but to have been infinite at ",
" times after the initial singularity. See ",
"here",
... | [
"Did you look at the post to which I linked? There I described an infinite string of balls that, despite having no region \"outside\" (there is a ball at all integers), expands. All \"expanding\" means in this context is that the distance between any two points gets bigger. So, for example, imagine you have an infi... | [
"Did you look at the post to which I linked? There I described an infinite string of balls that, despite having no region \"outside\" (there is a ball at all integers), expands. All \"expanding\" means in this context is that the distance between any two points gets bigger. So, for example, imagine you have an infi... |
[
"Can anyone be a scientist or do you have to have an official B.S. (Bachellor of Science) and publish a in a \"peer-review\" journal to be a scientist?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There is a major difference between these things: ",
"1) Doing Science",
"2) Publishing Scientific Research",
"3) Making a living as a Scientist ",
"I guess the first question is how you are defining scientist. If it's anyone who does science, than obviously no degree is needed. Children do science all the... | [
"You certainly don't need a B.S. to be a scientist. It just will likely be harder to get published in a peer-reviewed journal. This, though, would depend on your record and reputation as well as the specifics of what you are trying to publish."
] | [
"A scientist is someone using the scientific method. For some reason, our society seems to want to treat scientists like priests five hundred years ago...people with a special knowledge unattainable by the general public. That's BS. Wasn't that long ago our scientists were writers and politicians and businessmen... |
[
"Looking for papers dealing with behavioral changes via microorganisms"
] | [
false
] | Hello, I'm trying to find a paper dealing with behavioral changes via mircoorganisms. examples: Cordyceps alter ant behavior via interferring with pheromones, but I have never been able to find said paper. I know some microbes affect light receptors, to attract the the host to light. (can't recall any genus names off t... | [
"http://www.jstor.org/stable/3496014",
"http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/752.abstract"
] | [
"\"The mechanism of action by which T. gondii alters rodent behavior is unknown.\"",
"Dang. No wonder why I can never find it. but, it's still good fun reading material. ",
"Thanks for the links! I owe you one."
] | [
"Well that article is from 2007; maybe they found something since."
] |
[
"Why do Microwave ovens set to low cycle high/off in intervals instead of steadily using lower constant power?"
] | [
false
] | I have always wondered when microwaving foods why operating at 50% power for example the food is cooked at 100% power for 50% of the time instead of 50% power 100% of the time. Is it a functional effectiveness? cost saving? Why not supply 500w instead of 1000w? | [
"Microwave ovens utilize a device called a cavity magnetron to produce the electromagnetic radiation used to cook your food. The basic gist of how this device works is similar to how blowing air past the top of a bottle creates sound, only with electrons instead of air. If the voltage isn't high enough, then the ... | [
"This is exactly right. To add a bit more information. you can change the power output in two ways, by varying current, or by varying voltage. Voltage was mentioned above. The magnetron used to produce the microwaves needs a certain voltage to work. if you change the voltage, it stops working. ",
"You can also va... | [
"Panasonic claims that their Inverter microwaves can actually sustain lower power levels. How does that work? "
] |
[
"Are there competing scientific theories to Darwin's Theory of Evolution?"
] | [
false
] | Besides the magical and religious interpretations of literature, has anyone published or hypothesized scientific theories that conflict with Darwin and his theories? Where can I find good information on them? | [
"Nothing that is legitimately taken seriously. Darwin proposed natural selection, but Evolutionary Theory is now the product of thousands of different researchers over decades. Darwin didn't even present natural selection by himself, Sir Alfred Russel Wallace discovered it independently.To be honest, evolutionary t... | [
"Totally. Learning that natural and sexual selection are not the driving forces for the evolution of new species would be like discovering that probability is wrong and dice are not random or that natural decay is not reliable and we don't know how old anything is. Total chaos."
] | [
"Not really. The general principle of change in allele frequency over time driven by natural selection is accepted by almost all biologists. ",
"There are disagreements, to a degree, about whether it is a gradual or a \"punctuated\" process. Punctuated meaning periods of genetic stability \"punctuated\" with peri... |
[
"What is the easiest example of dual nature of light?"
] | [
false
] | How do I understand the duality of nature of light? | [
"Photoelectric effect shows its particle like character, interference patterns show its wave like character.",
"(Remember, both are just models of reality. Science describes models of reality, not reality itself. Those models have applicability in some circumstances but not in others. We are medium sized beings (... | [
"This is really cool. However, the Crookes radiometer doesn't rotate due to pressure due to the momentum of light, but due to the interaction between air molecules and the hotter side. Your link states as much. So I'm pretty sure the Crookes radiometer can be explained with classical physics."
] | [
"Yeah you're right. He asked for the easiest example and I suppose that covers both characteristics in one experiment. "
] |
[
"How do animals without parental figures know what species to mate with?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Animals without parents have the ability to recognize each other either visually, chemically (olfactory), or auditorily - same as animals that experience parental care.",
"Even though an animal may not be raised with parental care, they were still likely briefly exposed to an adult or their siblings (this is of ... | [
"You've got that mixed up, mules are a hybrid between donkeys and horses. Donkeys and horses (and Zebras) all belong to the same family, Equidae. They are all equally related to each other. They have differing chromosome counts which is why we get sterile offspring. Their interbreeding primarily happens due to huma... | [
"Extant primates are not at all as closely related to each other as Equines are, so I would not expect them all to be attracted in the same way as your example (other than humans and chimps). Primate is an Order, three taxanomic jumps above Genus Equus, for Equines (my apologies I think I said family before which i... |
[
"Why does the James Webb telescope sun shield use layers with significant separation instead of a single multilayer insulation sheet?"
] | [
false
] | The James Webb sun shield is complex, and requires intricate mechanisms to allow for the precise tensioning of 5 layers of thin material to ensure separation. Why could it not use a single sheet of multilayer insulation in which the layers are separated by a mesh as per conventional satellite insulation? This would onl... | [
"Just to add to this the shield is bent slightly with each layer smaller than the last allowing for IR light to be reflected at angles that will move it down the shield and ",
"out into space",
"."
] | [
"The sun shield is there to block the sun's rays which will heat up the telescope, this you already know.",
"But that sun shield will get hot, and will start to emit infrared on the other side of it. So you add another layer, but that will get heated by the infrared of the previous layer, and so on and so on.",
... | [
"Ah, thank you! This is the key piece of information I was missing which allows it to perform better than multilayer insulation."
] |
[
"Why do we see double when drunk ?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Your eyes converge to varying degrees depending on how far away the object they are focusing on is (you can easily test this by focusing on your finger and moving it back and forth in front of your nose.) When you get drunk, the very fine control of the muscles of your eyes gets a little sloppy, so they don't con... | [
"part of the explanation is loss of good motor control. the other part is that many of us have an underlying imbalance in how the two eyes point at things; if this imbalance is always manifest, we call it a tropia, but if it's usually hidden it's called ",
"phoria",
". a phoria is considered latent so long as t... | [
"It's a combination of things. Others have mentioned convergence, but another pieces of this puzzle is the vestibuloocular reflex.",
"The semicircular canals in the ear are a form of gyroscope. When you get drunk, the fluid becomes lighter, sending faulty signals. (The brain itself also starts sending faulty sign... |
[
"In winter bugs like spiders, flies and mosquitoes, seemingly die off. How is it that after the winter they're able to come back in such numbers? A layman would think the winter would cause an extinction of some insects."
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Insects survive the winter months in a variety of different ways. Some migrate, like birds and other animals, to warmer climates from which they will return at the end of winter. Others can enter a sort of hibernation. A lot of insects will \"overwinter\" in some sort of non-adult stage of development, either as a... | [
"Many types of insects lay eggs before winter and then die off and those eggs hatch in the spring and give life to a new generation of bugs ",
"https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/ever-wondered-where-do-bugs-go-in-winter/2019/04/18/f09b3a10-563d-11e9-814f-e2f46684196e_story.html... | [
"So if you had a few very cold months, a few warm weeks and more very cold months you could kill much more insects and have a nicer summer?"
] |
[
"Does iron stop being attracted by magnets when it gets hot enough?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Above the Curie temperature, it just becomes paramagnetic rather than ferromagnetic. So still attracted by external magnetic fields, but much more weakly than in the ferromagnetic phase."
] | [
"Interesting, thank you. I had wondered if it went both ways after learning the curie temperature is how cheap rice cookers work."
] | [
"To expand on the other answer. There is a competing interaction between the energy in magnetic dipoles and an external field.",
"\nAs temperatures get higher the magnetic dipoles become harder to magnetise because their energy exceeds the orientating energy of an external field (plainly put), so a stronger magne... |
[
"How far from the Sun would you need to be before you could safely look at it with the naked eye?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This has been asked before.",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/qzkgd/how_far_away_from_our_sun_would_you_have_to_be_in/",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/nz6qh/at_what_distance_from_the_sun_is_it_okay_to_look/"
] | [
"One thing the previous questions didn't include - no matter how far you go, the brightness per solid angle doesn't change.",
"If you assumed that you had perfect lenses in your eye, then the intensity on the specific rods and cones that received the sun's light would be the same at any distance. The question of... | [
"You don't mention a period of time which is clearly integral to your question. You also don't mention what \"safely\" is defined as nor \"naked eye.\""
] |
[
"Why don't hydras die of old age?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Ok, sorry I need to interject here. ",
"/u/inkheartandwings",
" is mostly incorrect (Sorry!)",
"Hydra don't die of old age because their cells don't senesce. Plain and simple. It is unknown how they maintain their telomeres. It is thought that hydra avoid aging in part due to a gene called ",
". ",
"A... | [
"Wait, I thought this was a joke. What the fuck is a hydra? Aren't they mythical creatures with 9 heads?"
] | [
"I'm probably going to explain this incorrectly but from what I recall when studying them in bio class, you are dealing with a very simplistically constructed animal. ",
"You can think of hydras' life cycles as a continuing change between two phases. The first is called a madusae (sounds like madusa) phase. At th... |
[
"If superman were to keep running faster and faster, would he fly off the earth eventually?"
] | [
false
] | My friends and I are having a discussion about whether or not, for example, an entity such as a sci-fi era plane could theoretically travel fast enough to "fall of the earth" as it were. The opposing argument is that rockets fly upwards for a reason, but isn't this the ideal? If someone runs fast enough, wouldn't they ... | [
"Yes. Once he hits the ",
"escape velocity",
" (which is really the escape speed, no vector direction implied), then he will leave orbit."
] | [
"A potentially negative issue would occur before he actually reached escape velocity. As each stride got progressively longer he would essentially be jumping hundred of feet each step and it would be harder and harder to make sure he didn't hit something and then aim for the next step. Depending on how long it wou... | [
"Also air resistance would be a problem as he's have to reach escape velocity starting from a horizontal plane.. running on flat land. This means he's have more air resistance to over come .... unless he ran up a huge ramp.... like Mt. Everest. This presumes he's relying solely on running and not flight or jumpin... |
[
"Are fears hereditary?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"I'm taking the question to ask if simple phobias are hereditary. That is, if one of your parents was terribly afraid of dogs, then are you likely to inherit the same fear of dogs.",
"The answer to this is no.",
"There is some heridetary component to simple phobias and other fear/anxiety disorders. The exact pe... | [
"Good articles, could the eating of spiders and snakes be part of a hierarchy of needs situation where the need to eat is more important than the fear of spiders?"
] | [
"Possibly, but that doesn't explain why people ",
"still eat spiders",
" when other food is readily available. Same goes for other predatory foods such as alligator/crocodile and snakes.",
"The idea of heridity is also not able to account for the lack of specific phobias for mushrooms/fungi, which are more le... |
[
"How does a wild animal population naturally recover from an STD outbreak?"
] | [
true
] | Wouldn’t a population be perpetually infected and/or die off as a result of STIs? In the case of animals that engage in casual sex or polygyny, I’d expect STIs would be even more easily spread. This NCBI article concludes that extinction events due to an infectious disease is relatively unusual… Without any anthropogen... | [
"It’s very much the same science as any other diseases, STIs just tend towards more chronic infections and lower rates of transmission. Diseases spreading through populations are often described using mathematical models that take into account births and deaths of the hosts, and the proportion of susceptible, infec... | [
"This is an excellent response. I did a lot of mathematical epidemiological modeling in undergrad, so this is exactly how I think about the issue as well.",
"My question - is the key factor controlling the spread of STDs simply that the rate of interaction between entities is too low? If we're talking about coron... | [
"Unfortunately I can't quote my source because it's a book I don't have with me (",
"The Origin of AIDS by Jacques Pepin",
") but there have been deceased tribes of some primates found who were theorized to have been wiped out by variants of SIV, the simian immunodeficiency virus - that is, the non-human primat... |
[
"How is hearing protection from impulse noise different than that from continous nose?"
] | [
false
] | Hi,I'm curious if someone with background in audiology and/or hearing protection could explain the following: | [
"The question I have is following: how was that limit established and how accurate it is?",
"The most commonly cited work is this:",
"Taylor, W., Pearson, J., Mair, A., & Burns, W. (1965). Study of noise and hearing in jute weaving. ",
", ",
"(1), 113-120.",
"Basically, looms are loud, produce predictable... | [
"There is a difference between acoustic tolerance to impulses versus steady-state sound that are spread out over time. The brain/ear has an automatic reflex mechanism whereby if very loud sounds are detected the muscles in the middle ear “lock up” so that they don’t transduce too strong of mechanical energy to the... | [
"Hearing loss in very noisy environments is a crazy problem. On military flight lines, for instance, people usually wear two sets of ear protection at the same time and can still suffer hearing problems. If sound intensity is large enough, it can damage your hearing by traveling through your open mouth into your E... |
[
"I can't visualize how cords tangle themselves? Does any research exist on how it happens?"
] | [
false
] | I have searched through a few databases, but haven't found any research on it. | [
"Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string",
" is a neat paper dealing with knots. Starting at page 4 is more along the lines of what you want with the section \"Simplified model for knot formation.\" There are also a few sources referenced in that section (particularly Adams CC 2004 ",
") that might interest ... | [
"There certainly is, here's a video about it: ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNWEuMJCMEk",
"Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith won an ig noble prize for their research."
] | [
"nice! thanks for this....watching right now"
] |
[
"What is the mechanism by which an atom or molecule conveys smell? (x-post from r/chemistry)"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"A molecule acts on receptors in the nose. \"Olfaction\" or smelling is something not completely understood (at the molecular level) as the receptors have not been mapped out completely. Essentially its a lock and key mechanism that allows certain molecules to bind to receptors. "
] | [
"An answer I posted in another thread:",
"Olfactory receptors are exceedingly complex. Compared to three cone cells for color vision in the eye, it is estimated that humans express ~400 olfactory receptors. Each odor receptor can detect a variety of structurally related compounds. Furthermore a compound can trigg... | [
"So then, how many receptors do we have? Wouldn't there be a limited amount of smells we can smell? Only so many locks for all of the keys."
] |
[
"I can't seem to find a definitive conclusion to the safety of Genetically Modified Organisms for human consumption. Can someone please clear out the fog?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This Wikipedia entry",
" summarizes the controversies surrounding GMOs really well. According to the article:",
"There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.[1][2][3][4][5][6] No reports of ill effects have been documented in the... | [
"But it's important to know that, in the US, the FDA must still approve any new GMO, and they do their full analysis regardless of the speed of scientists making changes. The safety net is just as tight as ever."
] | [
"An argument could indeed be made that way. However, it is always a question of whether benefits outweigh the costs. Studies suggest there are no ",
" effects. Also, GMOs are, in fact, beneficial to the health and environment in many ways. Again, check out ",
"this section on the Wiki article on GMOs",
". Som... |
[
"Are there any other known viruses that are as similar as SARS-COV-1 and SARS-COV-2?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"You should ask if there are any known viruses that do ",
" have similarly close relatives. It’s virtually universal to have phylogenetically close family members and essentially every family of viruses has clouds of relatives that are similarly related. Look at ",
"lyssaviruses",
" or orthomyxoviruses like t... | [
"\"I can’t overemphasize how ordinary this virus seems to a virologist. It’s utterly generic, doing standard virus things in a normal virus way just like the average virus.\"",
"Why has the global response been so extraordinary?"
] | [
"Because it has high transmissibility, relatively high morbidity and mortality, and an immunologically naive population to infect."
] |
[
"What happens in the area where nuclear weapons are tested underground?"
] | [
false
] | Does it create a giant cave? Is there just a giant glass sphere from the heat/energy? Is that where the aftershocks come from, from the sphere collapsing? I've always wondered because in videos like below, they say the land permanently rises, what is put there to hold it up? | [
"The explosion breaks up rocks, so they take up more space and allow fluids (water) to move into those spaces. This forms a mound that can remain for an extended period of time. For larger, deeper tests this can extend into the ground water and provide a link which was not otherwise present (the aquifer usually bei... | [
"The explosion breaks up rocks, so they take up more space and allow fluids (water) to move into those spaces. This forms a mound that can remain for an extended period of time. For larger, deeper tests this can extend into the ground water and provide a link which was not otherwise present (the aquifer usually bei... | [
"There's a full ",
"report here",
" \"Evaluating the Effects of Underground Nuclear Testing ...\"",
"Some of their conclusions:",
"\"Scoping calculations show that if low permeability rocks surround underground nuclear tests, \nwhich initially pressurize the disturbed zone, an elevated hydraulic head mound ... |
[
"Is there any living human subspecies?"
] | [
false
] | I've just read an awesome book by Tom Knox called The marks of Cain that was inspired by this topic so my question is: Is there any known living human subspecies in world right now? If not, how long would it take for evolution to make one? | [
"There used to be ",
"many subspecies of humans",
": the extant ",
", which is what we are, ",
", which are commonly referred to as the Neanderthals, and ",
", who lived about 160,000 years ago in Africa. There are ",
" different species in the genus ",
", but I'm being literal in that the above menti... | [
"Interesting: ",
"according to Wikipedia's definition",
", if Neanderthals and Cro-magnons interbred, then they weren't subspecies - they were just part of the same species."
] | [
"Going by Wikipedia's definition of ",
"subspecies",
" (essentially a sub-group that would be capable of interbreeding with the rest of the species but for geographical or other factors that prevent it), there are no living human subspecies. The Aboriginal population of Australia might have qualified as one bef... |
[
"When does a piece of bubble gum turn from calories gained to calories expended?"
] | [
false
] | If a piece of how many chews until I start burning calories in excess of the 50? For instance, if I chew it for an hour am I burning calories at that point? And another question I just thought of.... Anyone know if the 50 cal value is if a person swallows the gum or just chews it? | [
"I read once that chewing gum burns approximately 11 additional calories per hour, depending of course on the person. In this case, it would only behoove you to chew the gum if you planned on keeping it going for 5+ hours. ",
"If you eat sugar free gum like extra, for example, which is 5 calories per stick, you m... | [
"If you take account of the appetite suppression qualities chewing that has been reported in some studies I imagine it could have a reasonable effect on weight loss. "
] | [
"Bouncing off of the original question. I'm sure we've all chewed 2, or 3, maybe even 4 pieces of gum at once, and I'm sure we all noticed it gets harder and harder to chew. So my question is; When we chew more than one piece of gum, although you add more calories, does it burn exponentially more calories for every... |
[
"What preoccupied the minds of the first humans to gain consciousness?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"We have no way of knowing"
] | [
"Yet or forever?"
] | [
"How would one ever know?"
] |
[
"Has a Formula One car got enough down-force to go round a loop-the-loop, considering it has a very low ground clearance and therefore the loop would have to be massive?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"One - Shameless plug for ",
"/r/Formula1/",
"Two - ",
"It's been done with a hatchback",
"Three - You may have noted that in the above video example the car couldn't maintain driving upside down, and this is what the claim with the F1 car is all about. F1 cars easily produce more downforce than their weigh... | [
"Oil starvation - oil sprayed into the heads and undersides of the pistons relies on gravity to return to the sump. If the engine is upside down, oil will collect in the heads and under thr pistons, the sump would run dry, and the crankshaft journal bearings would seize. Bang!"
] | [
"The rules specify a standard \"driver weight\" amount. Actual drivers have an annoying habit of not being cookie cutter clones for the rule book, that's what he means by \"driver weight variance\"."
] |
[
"Some carnivores have this notch near the front of their upper jaw that interrupts the tooth row. I can't seem to find any satisfying reason for why it's there. Anyone got an answer?"
] | [
false
] | The only examples I've found so far are in reptiles like crocodiles and a couple of dinosaurs like Spinosaurus and Dilophosaurus. I've seen it referred to as a "subnarial gap" in dinosaurs.It seems like it's there to make space for larger teeth in the lower jaw to poke up through an overbite but I'm curious as to why t... | [
"Evolutionary traits do not need to be advantageous to continue to exist. ",
"The ones that put the animal at a disadvantage are likely to eventually disappear. But the ones that have no real effect either way often stay around."
] | [
"Tbh I'm not sure that I buy that.",
"Jaw structure and dentition is going to be a major factor in a predator's fitness. If this kind of notch conferred even a slight reduction in fitness, even something like slightly reducing skull integrity or bite force, it would be selected against quite quickly in evolutiona... | [
"They stay around as vestigial traits, but for a trait to be selected ",
" it needs to give some advantage. So the question then becomes, why is it so prevalent? Even on animals which aren't descendant from the ones mentioned in the OP."
] |
[
"Why is it assumed there was a mass extinction of the dinosaurs?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"They disappeared suddenly from the fossil record. They weren't completely eradicated. It seems more likely that there were food shortages due to the ash cloud caused by a meteor strike, blocking out the sun and reducing the availability of plant matter, thus disrupting the food chain. These food shortages would ha... | [
"Wouldn't a mass extinction of the dinosaurs have resulted in the eradication of their DNA so that nothing could have evolved from them, like birds are thought to have?",
"TL;DR: Birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, birds are dinosaurs. ",
"\"Among the features linking theropod dinosaurs to birds are the three-... | [
"A mass extinction definitely ",
" happen. This has to be, since for millions of years you have dinosaurs and then suddenly (geologically speaking) you don't anymore.",
"It could have been climate change, it could have been a meteor, it could have been a flood (ಠ_ಠ), it could have been ",
"aliens",
". No on... |
[
"Will flowing water and stagnant bodies of water freeze the same way and at the same rate?"
] | [
false
] | When it gets chilly, my family runs the tap at night to prevent our pipes from freezing. It's something we've always done, but I've never understood why it works. This got me thinking about the way water freezes in nature. If there is a flowing stream and a stagnant pond in the same area, affected by the same freezing ... | [
"AFAIK, you run the faucets in winter because home plumbing, is not as well insulated/heat regulated as it would be coming from the grid/watertowers/reservoirs.",
"If water sits in a pipe that is 32°F or below, it will freeze when it reaches that temperature, moving or not, but when you run the water, you are mov... | [
"Thank you. That was a helpful answer. :)"
] | [
"Happy to help friend, stay tuned though. Someone else may give a better answer or correct something I got wrong :)"
] |
[
"Quantum question about spin..."
] | [
false
] | I am trying to understand a little about quantum mechanics for fun but, I am slightly confused about one thing so far .Lets say we have prepared a a bunch of electrons so that they are all facing one way by using magnets then we rotate them by switching on another magnet. Lets say we rotated it 90 degrees. Now from wha... | [
"The situation you described is more of a classical picture because you assume that you know all three components of the spin. In actuality, you do not. Even if you know one component, you can't claim to know the other components."
] | [
"Okay, I think I better understand your question.",
"Susskind assumes that there is only one electron. When you talk about the use of multiple electrons, it is only useful insofar to make the idea of the probability meaningful. You can prepare multiple electrons the same in separate experiments, and half the time... | [
"U can make this question meaningfully however by considering just one component of the spin, the question is is still valid with this adjustment",
"Im not really sure what your getting at with the last part of the question, perhaps you would like to elaborate a bit",
"Perhaps this will help. When you prepare a... |
[
"What happens to the fructan in garlic when burnt?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Fructan is an oligosaccharide, essentially, it's a big chain of fructose molecules joined together. During cooking, those big chains are randomly broken into smaller and smaller chains or random length. It's exactly the same as trying to cut a string into small pieces by only using random cuts.",
"This is one ... | [
"Thank you for the help!"
] | [
"Here's ",
"an article that reports",
" their own and previous experiments showing that the amount in other foods drops significantly when cooked at a high enough temperature for long enough. Unfortunately they don't report the temperature the samples got to during the cooking so it's hard to know how to figur... |
[
"If evolution occurs over a long period of time, how and why do the individual creatures adapt themselves?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"how does it occur in that specific giraffe's lifetime?",
"It doesn't.",
"Since the evolution occurs over such a long period of time I don't understand how it occurs in individual creatures, and therefore at all.",
"Individuals in the population will have mutations that benefit them slightly, for instance, a ... | [
"(not a biologist but studied it in university)",
"Creatures don't choose to evolve. Evolution happens when you have two things: variation and selection. For example, in the arctic you'll have a bunch of rabbits of varying fur colours. The darkest rabbits are the easiest for predators to see, so they tend to get ... | [
"Am I saying this correctly?",
"That's a reasonable explanation. If you want to learn more, check out these. They are crucial to an appreciation of evolution.",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift"
] |
[
"Why is breastfeeding so difficult and unintuitive for many women? Why aren't humans like other animals that seem to do it with ease?"
] | [
false
] | It seems that many new moms and babies have to struggle to learn this basic function. How does this make sense evolutionarily? | [
"It seems that evolution conspired to make breastfeeding something that has to be learned for all primates. There are studies that show monkeys, chimps and apes all have to be shown how to breastfeed successfully. Humans are in that group as well, and because of modern life we have other problems that confound what... | [
"Do you mind linking a reference? It sounds like an interesting paper to read."
] | [
"A correllary question would be: do new mothers in societies where toplessness is common have less problems than in places like the US, where women can't casually expose their breasts?",
"IOW, maybe young females in most species are used to seeing adult females help their babies \"latch on\", Cows just have to st... |
[
"Why do bubbles form after you mix soap/cleaning detergent/shampoo with water?"
] | [
false
] | Relevant: | [
"Soap acts as a ",
"surfactant",
". Surfactants go between the interface of two phases, in the case of soap, water and air. Normally chain molecules, one side of the chain has a higher affinity for air, and the other a higher affinity for water, sit between the two, and they make the two phases happier to stay ... | [
"Surfactants actually lower the surface tension of water; the polar/ionic ends of the surfactants interact with water, disrupting hydrogen bonding. I believe this might just be an issue of wording in your sentence but I just wanted to clarify that to anyone curious about it."
] | [
"Yeah that is my bad. Tutoring O-chem this semester so forgetting some of my surface chem."
] |
[
"Is it better to spit out phlegm when coughing, or is it fine to just swallow it?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Depending on how sick you are, if you swallow too much phlegm it can make you feel nauseous from the volume of mucus entering your stomach. It definitely won't make you any sicker though. Phlegm is coming from your lungs (delicate and very vascularized) and going to your stomach (tough and extremely acidic) where ... | [
"Just to play devil's advocate: if we're advising people to search ELI5 before asking questions, why not just have them search google and do away with the subreddit altogether? Surely there's a simple enough explanation for most of these questions available on google...",
"EDIT: I thought this post was submitted ... | [
"Just to play devil's advocate: if we're advising people to search ELI5 before asking questions, why not just have them search google and do away with the subreddit altogether? Surely there's a simple enough explanation for most of these questions available on google...",
"EDIT: I thought this post was submitted ... |
[
"Why do spicy foods like horseradish sauce or wasabi clear your sinuses?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Most commercially produced \"wasabi\" is actually horseradish paste with green coloring added.",
"Genuine wasabi is related to horseradish, but it's very difficult to cultivate, even under ideal conditions. You aren't likely to find it outside of japan.",
"The spiciness of horseradish, wasabi, radishes, mustar... | [
"Wow, thanks for the explanation. "
] | [
"Wow, thanks for the explanation. "
] |
[
"Where/how was the first cell created? According to cell theory?"
] | [
false
] | According to cell theory, cells are not spontaneously made but instead produced from other cells. How was the first cell created? | [
"As ",
"u/AsAChemicalEngineer",
" said, we do not know. And there may have been more than one primitive cell that emerged from non-cellular material. However, all life on earth appears to be descended from a common ancestor cell."
] | [
"Ph.D in biology here. \"We don't know\" is correct, however, we have really good hypotheses. Interestingly, we don't \"know\" anything for sure in science.... we just have varying degrees of trust in our hypotheses. So, read on...",
"What you're talking about is called \"abiogenesis\" --the process of life ar... | [
"As already mentioned we don't know how but we do know the when (roughly); it must have occured some time between 3.5Billion and 4.5Billion years ago.",
"It's roughly belived that self-replicating molecules (probably RNA) appeared before cellularisation occured. How cellularisation occured is widely debated and t... |
[
"Why do radiologists always keep it dark in the room where they take x-rays? Does visible light affect the x-ray exposure?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"The region of the patient's body that will be exposed and visualized through x-ray based imaging is commonly shown in the room by a light beam projected from where the x-rays originate. By keeping the room dark, a radiologist or x-ray tech can see whether the patient is properly positioned with respect to the bea... | [
"For the most part, the image on the film is not due to x-rays striking the film but due to the x-rays striking a phosphorescent screen that surrounds the film.",
"Depends on the film. Some types of film are sensitive to visible light and use phosphorescent screens. Other types are sensitive only to x-rays (e.g... | [
"Ignore the stuff about films. If we are talking about Radiology in a developed country, the imaging is done digitally using one of two types of detectors. Both types of detectors have a low sensitivity to the visible spectrum, and have a protective cover anyway. Even old fashioned film was kept in a cassette, so t... |
[
"How does qubit work?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"As far as I know, qubit is a term in quantum computing, where some information can be 1, 0",
"A qubit can have more states than that. It can be in infinitely many states that can be visualized with a sphere that has the |0> state on one pole and the |1> state on the other. This sphere is called Bloch sphere and ... | [
"It is important to realize a qubit still ends up being a 1 or 0 in its output (when it is measured).",
"What makes it different from an ordinary bit is the way it can be manipulated before it is measured. ",
"For instance, a single bit can only be switched: 0 to 1 or 1 to 0. Single qubits can be controlled in ... | [
"Qubits are based on quantum mechanics. If you have a particle with two different energy levels, 1 and 0, and perturb it with a magnetic field, then you don't know for sure whether the particle ends up in the 1 or 0 state until you measure it. By choosing the magnetic field correctly, and entangling multiple qubits... |
[
"Do phosphorescent/fluorescent materials glow in daylight?"
] | [
false
] | I've read up a little bit on fluorescence and phosporescence, but I don't definitively have an answer to this - I have a pair of shoes which are partly glow-in-the-dark. Even in somewhat dim light they seem to not glow the least bit, while in the dark they are remarkably bright. So is it the case that the glow is simpl... | [
"Yes; its also easy to test, get a glass of tonic (as in gin and tonic), and hold it up next to a piece of white paper. There will be a tinge of blue this is the fluorescence caused by the UV in sunlight. I you do this inside with a normal light bulb the tonic will not have this faint colour. ",
"the reason that ... | [
"That's a really cool picture - so let me ask you something unrelated - what constitutes a \"healthy\" plant, as far as amount/distribution of chlorophyll goes? Is the one above healthy?"
] | [
"Thanks; to make sure - is this definitely also the case with phosphorescence?"
] |
[
"Is there a reason why phone screens are made of glass and not something harder to crack, like plastic?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Glass is harder and isn't scratched as easily as plastic. This at least was the reason ",
"Apple",
" screens were made from glass. "
] | [
"Apple wanted to use artificial sapphire, but couldn't get a supply cheap enough. BTW super market laser scan windows are made of sapphire. It is the next lowest hardness on the Mhos scale from diamond. Harder than quartz. They really need it there, where all manner of things are dragged across them every day.",
... | [
"That's very interesting, apparently it's also used on some Apple Watch screens."
] |
[
"Why are volcanic erruptions causing volcanic winters even though they emit CO2?"
] | [
false
] | Hello, student here, dealing mainly with climatology and GIS. Recently I've had a quarrel with a client at the shop I am working at. He denied climate change so I tried to talk to him about it. I couldn't answer the question you see in the title. Now that I think about it I am guessing that volcanoes emit volcanic ash,... | [
"The volcanic ash prevents part of the solar radiation from reaching the lower layers of the atmosphere where we live. Hence, decreasing the temperatures, as you said. It can stay in the stratosphere for a very long time (=rain doesn't clean it). Look the Pinatubo eruption up.",
"The radiation from the sun is abs... | [
"I'm glad you're confused about this stuff--it means your brain juice is flowing!",
"/u/CrustalTrudger",
" provided a ",
"great response",
" to a ",
"recent thread",
" on the topic of volcanic emissions of CO2 versus anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The quick answer is that the sulfur dioxide aerosols relea... | [
"But wait, window glass is opaque to light of infrared wavelengths, so your car gets hotter and hotter. Now substitute car windows with CO2 and that's how the greenhouse effect works on the globe.",
"This is actually a super common misconception. It's understandable because, believe it or not, the \"greenhouse ef... |
[
"Humans and chimpansees diverged some 6 million years ago. This was calculated using the molecular clock. How exactly was this calculation made?"
] | [
false
] | Please be very specific but understandable to laymen. I want to understand how divergence dates are estimated by use of a specific example. | [
"Molecular Clock Hypothesis tries to estimate how far apart organisms are evolutionarily by means of using specific proteins. Some proteins, such as cytochrome c (present in almost all organisms) seem to have a fairly consistent time between neutral mutations, meaning that if most mutations are neutral (have no eff... | [
"One of the coolest methods I know is the use of endogenous retroviruses as molecular clocks to date divergence between species. First off, what is an endogenous retrovirus? HIV is a retrovirus and all retroviruses incorporate their DNA into the DNA of the host they infect. If a retrovirus does this in a sperm or e... | [
"I'm an evolutionary anthropologist!",
"They compared the genomes of humans and chimps, estimating the total number of divergences (changes). Then they calculated the average number of mutations (changes) in one generation (by comparing the genes of parents and children). ",
"Then they performed the following... |
[
"How is glass made, which is a mirror from one side, and a window from the other?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"You basically coat one side of glass with a reflective coating (thin, semi transparent reflective material like aluminium). This is done very sparsely, so the reflective molecules don't cover half of the glass.",
"The glass works as normal and people see each other, but if the surrounding area on the side with t... | [
"The one-way-mirror isn't actually a one way mirror. It's a trick of the lighting. Glass reflects a fair bit of light anyway so just keep the interogation room bright so that a lot of light reflects off of the glass and the observation room dark so that not much light gets into the interogation room. That way, some... | [
"A mirror that you have at home is typically a thin layer of metal, typically aluminum, that has been layered onto a sheet of glass. The process is called ",
"silvering",
", since silver used to be more widely used. If you make the thickness of the aluminum very thin, you will ",
"reflect less light and allow... |
[
"My Pyrex baking dish exhorts the user to both \"Avoid sudden temperature changes\" and \"Always preheat oven.\" That seems like a contradiction. What property of the glass accounts for this?"
] | [
false
] | Taking a dish from a refrigerator (roughly 38F) and placing it directly into a preheated oven at 400F seems like a worse "shock" than placing it into a room temperature oven and slowly bringing it up to temp. Yet, the instructions clearly indicate otherwise. What gives? Happy Thanksgiving, to those celebrating. | [
"They probably mean dont do things like take it from the oven and put it in the sink with water. The dish will heat up slowly in the oven because air is a poor conductor of heat...but if you take it from the oven and run water over it, water is a much better conductor so the dish will cool rapidly and could crack.... | [
"Pyrex today is made of tempered glass. Pyrex used to be a low thermal expansion borosilicate glass, according to Wikipedia. Now glass subjected to a fast change in temperature breaks because glass is a thermal insulator. If you cool a surface of the glass quickly, you induce a large variation of temperature along ... | [
"Do you know if anyone makes cookware like the old Pyrex?"
] |
[
"Are electron bonds \"real\"?"
] | [
false
] | I understand basic chemistry and how atoms share electrons to complete their shells. Are the bonds real, or are they a figure of speech/an analogy? I prefer to think that the atoms are held together by their electric field acting on the electron which is in a potential well, am I losing any detail or rigor because of t... | [
"On the bottom left of ",
"this image",
" is an atomic force microscopy image of a pentacene molecule. The brighter the colour, the stronger the interaction between the molecule and a little pointy tip. As you can see, there are regions between where the atoms are where the tip feels attraction. As to whether t... | [
"You can't look at the electron as a tiny ball. In quantum mechanics it can't be interpreted as living at a definite position or travelling in some nice orbit. The electron is in fact spread out over the entire molecule.",
"Eventually that level detail won't be sufficient to understand chemistry, though it should... | [
"They're as real as much as you put stock into the math correctly describing the system. The bonds represent low energy configurations of electrons between multiple atoms--the evidence for such bonds is about as strong as the evidence for cells or gravity."
] |
[
"Why does the moon seem to have significantly more craters at the poles?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Some of that is in the word \"seem\", like the moon seems to be bigger when at the horizon. It isn't actually bigger, but a trick of perception. The angle of view at the poles mean you're seeing more land in a smaller area of view.",
"Here's a good video about the Moon's craters: \n",
"https://youtu.be/mCzch... | [
"Take a piece of paper and draw some uniformly distributed random dots on it. Look at it straight on representing the equatorial view. Then tilt the paper 89 degree to represent the polar region view. You will perceive that the dots to be much more dense on the polar view even if they are the same paper you are loo... | [
"You see a circle, but on a sphere the center of the circle is closer to you and the edge is further away. A (for example) 100 km² square patch of the moon in the center of your field of vision will appear to be more or less square, while the same sized patch near the horizon will appear to be much smaller in one d... |
[
"Why do nuclear bombs create a 'mushroom' cloud?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Whenever a less dense substance moves through a more dense substance, it creates instabilities and vortices like those created in a mushroom cloud. This is known as ",
"Rayleigh-Taylor instability",
". ",
"In the case of a nuclear weapon, the fireball is very hot and much less dense than the air around it — ... | [
"I'm too lazy to go looking, but FYI there are plenty of youtube videos of non-nuclear explosions of various sizes producing mushroom clouds. "
] | [
"There are actually two things happening in a mushroom cloud. The first is a large, spherical explosion. Energy and matter move outwards in all directions. ",
"There are no issues moving up, forward, backward, left or right. Going down isn't going to happen. There might be a crater formed, but a lot of that ... |
[
"Why doesn't the midpoint formula(divided by 3 instead of 2)find thirds of lines?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Why should it? If (",
"+",
")/3 is ostensibly the endpoint of the first of the three equal-length subintervals of [",
", ",
"], then it must be the case that ",
"-",
" = 3*(",
"+",
")/3 = ",
"+",
", i.e., if and only if ",
" = 0.",
"If ",
" < ",
", then the length of any of the ",
" e... | [
"Well, the reason that you divide by 2 is not because its length is divided by 2 but because we take the average of 2 points. So if you want a third, you don't divide by three because you aren't looking for the average of 3 points, which is what you seem to be suggesting by doing the math that way. ",
"So the hal... | [
"Sorry, could you explain in layman's terms?"
] |
[
"Is data sent through the underwire wires in the ocean sent digitally or is it modulated and sent as an analogue wave?"
] | [
false
] | I just cant understand how so much Internet traffic could flow through that one wire. I would assume it would be sent as a wave and be demodulates at the other side so that you could do frequency multiplexing. Or is it time domain multiplexing and everything is just sent as 1's and 0's? | [
"Optical fiber can carry lots and lots of data thanks to ",
"wavelength division multiplexing",
". Basically, different data streams are sent as different colors of light. This can be done even with simple on/off signaling."
] | [
"Ultimately, ",
" long-distance data transmissions use an analog carrier. For instance, digital cellular telephone transmissions are analog, but the analog encodes a digital signal. Which is an encoded version of an analog signal (at least, the voice part). ",
"Pure digital transmission is used over short-dist... | [
"So bright/dim as in 0's and 1's being directly sent down the wire, no modulating the signal with a carrier wave?"
] |
[
"Theoretically, what is the largest object a human being could move, disregarding weight, before air displacement becomes too great?"
] | [
false
] | I think the title sums up the question just enough. I thought of this lifting large empty cardboard boxes at work. | [
"Theoretically the answer is infinity.",
"If we ignore gravity (weight) then F=ma. With \"a\" approaching zero and \"m\" approaching infinity the force required is approaching zero.",
"Then again \"air displacement\" is meaningless so I have no idea what you mean."
] | [
"If you are talking about the viscous adhesion, it is proportional to the velocity at which you are lifting the box., so you should be fine as long as you go slow enough.",
"For reference the force is given, for a circular plate (and for a small gap between the plate and the floor) by:",
"F=-6 * pi * mu * V * (... | [
"You can move any size object, if only by a tiny amount. Air resistance increases with speed, so if you keep it slow you can still move it."
] |
[
"Is there a point near a black hole where the amount of gravity is pulling with the exact same force that light is moving away from it, rendering the light in a stand-still, only view-able from within that distance?"
] | [
false
] | In other words, would there be a point where the black hole would actually be an extremely bright light? | [
"Can you go into more details about this? Are there diagrams or equations used to represent this phenomenon? The idea of photons in orbit is fascinating "
] | [
"Can you go into more details about this? Are there diagrams or equations used to represent this phenomenon? The idea of photons in orbit is fascinating "
] | [
"Light cannot stand still in any reference frame. If you're the observer who falls into a black hole, you see nothing special until the point where you reach the singularity. You don't even know when you've crossed the event horizon because the event horizon at R=2GM is no more a special place than crossing at R=4G... |
[
"Can Somebody Please Explain This? (Question Inside) x-post from /r/AskReddit"
] | [
false
] | I posted this to awhile back and did not get a response. Help me, ! While reading some of the goofs for The Core (2003) on . I was reading one of the factual errors: " As a body enters the interior of a large mass, such as the Earth or any other planet, the force of gravity begins to decrease at a linear rate, and reac... | [
"When you are outside the Earth, the attractive force between you and the Earth is as if your are being pulled toward the middle of the Earth. However, once you enter the Earth, there is matter all around you exerting gravitational attraction on you; if there is the same amount of material on your left and right an... | [
"Well, I'm glad I asked. It seems so simple when it's spelled out, I kinda feel stupid for asking! Could there possibly be any instances where this is not true? For instance, what if the object was not a sphere?"
] | [
"I believe all statements anastas made would still be true, just if you replace \"center of the Earth\" with \"center of mass\"."
] |
[
"How do they get consent for testing medication/vaccination specially made for children?"
] | [
false
] | If they want to make Covid vaccination for very young children, they have to test it first. To get volunteers, they need consent. Obviously a 5 year old can not give consent legally (I assume), so how does this work in the medicine industry? Obviously the parents have to give the consent, but the test could endanger th... | [
"It’s complicated. Here’s an article on the topic (",
"Testing vaccines in pediatric research subjects",
") - a decade old, but as far as I know not much has changed. One point -",
"parents actually have less than a straightforward power-of-attorney in making choices regarding their children’s participation i... | [
"That makes sense. Thanks."
] | [
"Theyll be having the same trials of the same mRNA vaccine in children whose parents consent. After seeing the efficacy of the last vaccine trials with adults, there will be a lot of parents excited to possibly be getting their child the vaccine first. (There will be control groups with placebos)"
] |
[
"In what ways does dark matter interact with other dark matter?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Gravitationally, which keeps it loosely clumped together through space. It's possible that it interacts through the weak force, but this is currently unknown. Obviously we would have a better answer if we knew what dark matter was made of."
] | [
"(Assuming WIMP dark matter) It does, but because it doesn't interact via the strong or EM forces it can't collide with other matter (including other dark matter) (or at least almost never collides with itself), or lose energy via emitting light, it can't lose energy, and will thus carry on out the other side. ",
... | [
"What balances gravity? How does it not fall onto itself indefinitely?"
] |
[
"How come we can see our planet so clearly in the 'Pale Blue Dot' photograph?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"The other planets and Sun were not in frame. They used a narrow angle camera pointed at the Earth. They had separate pictures of other planets taken during the same photo shoot. Some planets could not be photographed at all due to being too close to the Sun.",
"This page has a detailed breakdown of how the ph... | [
"FTA they used a narrow-angle camera for the photo (and for a similar photo of venus). The wide angle shot contains the regions where both planets are as well as the sun (though in the wide angle shot the planets are not visible)",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_System_Portrait_-_View_of_the_Sun,_Earth_... | [
"Perfect, thanks for this."
] |
[
"How do scientists continue to discover new species?"
] | [
false
] | I am particularly refering to land species, but in general. Also, are we finding anything bigger than a thumbtack anymore? | [
"Keep in mind, \"discovering\" isn't the same thing as \"scientifically cataloging\". It's unlikely there are species that have ",
", but there aren't armies of biologists swarming every corner of the earth to study/classify them. So just because something hasn't been discovered in the sense of being added to t... | [
"Niche species, that inhabit very small isolated environments. Also species that closely resemble other species and may have escaped notice previously. And ultimately, there's just a lot of species out there and we can only count them so fast.",
"Also, are we finding anything bigger than a thumbtack anymore? ",
... | [
"Also, more and more species are being genetically sequenced or further studied. From the studies, we have learned that what was once categorized as one species is really two or three or more, so they are separated out. For others, biologists who study something like, say, ants may find a new species out in the fie... |
[
"Is the correct energy of a confined particle related to n^2 or 1/n^2?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"ok so the potential mainly describes the energy spacing the particle can have?"
] | [
"ok so the potential mainly describes the energy spacing the particle can have?"
] | [
"Is the hamiltonian somehow different for an electron in an finite square well compared to an electron bound to a nucleus? Wouldn't the potential be the only thing that is different?"
] |
[
"Can light collide with itself?"
] | [
false
] | If I shined two torches which crossed paths, is there a chance the photons would hit each other and bounce off? See the link below for a detailed diagram I've composed to help explain the experiment. | [
"Quantum particles don't really \"bounce\" off of each other. Particles are actually waves and interact with each other based off of their properties. Since photons have no charge, for normal, low energy systems they will not interact. However, if you have a higher energy system they can. You can look up two ph... | [
"So when two photons occupy the same point in space, is it like when two ocean waves intersect and the intersection point gets twice (actually a little less) as high?"
] | [
"Yes.",
" It's very unlikely for two photons to collide though, and this has never been directly observed.",
"Also, \"collide\" isn't exactly what you think when dealing with quantum physics. Basically, the two photons can cause a particle-antiparticle pair to be created and reabsorbed, resulting in the photons... |
[
"How to tell the difference between \"Very Coarse\" and \"Coarse\" when identifying igneous rocks?"
] | [
false
] | Alright, so in my Geology lab we've been looking at igneous rocks when the professor starts to show different samples, I always get confused between Porphyritic and Pegmatic. I was just wondering if there was an easier way to tell the difference between the two other than looking at countless samples. | [
"Pegmatites contain ",
" large crystals - several centimeters across at least.",
"Porphyritic and pegmatitic are also not simply a difference in size. A porphyry has at least two distinct crystal sizes - usually a fine grained groundmass, with larger phenocrysts of one or two minerals. A pegmatite is made up of... | [
"To confirm - a rock can be ",
" pegmatitic and porphyritic, correct?"
] | [
"Yeah, I don't see why not."
] |
[
"When I open a non-text file with a text editor a bunch of symbols and text appears, where does this come from?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Every file on your computer is stored in binary, that is, as a sequence of 1's and 0's; those 1's and 0's are called bits. If you open a file in a text editor, each byte, or string of eight bits, gets mapped to a character (sometimes multiple bytes are used for a single character), which includes the usual upper a... | [
"From the file. All files contain just a sequence of bytes, and then it's up to the program that reads the file to make sense of it according to some specific file format that defines what the bytes mean. Text editors don't usually check whether the content of the file looks like sensible text, they just assume you... | [
"As you might know, computers store data in binary, that is 1's and 0's. Each text file has a specific encoding, that means that chunks of data, usually 8 1's or 0's are mapped to a letter. So for example, 00000001 could mean 'a', 00000010 is 'b' etc. So if you open a file that is not meant to be a text file, the e... |
[
"Why do we get hungry sooner after a small, high-calorie meal than after a large, low-calorie meal even if the net caloric content is the same?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"Hunger is a physiological response to a range of chemical markers in blood changing, such as depleted blood glucose and reduced blood amino acid content. When you eat, you trigger a number of chemical pathways, such as through stretch receptors in the stomach wall, which stimulate secretion of gastric juice, and G... | [
"Calories have very little to do with hunger/fullness. Imagine eating 1 pound of lettuce-you would feel very full for almost no calories. But if you ate 400 calories of butter and sugar you wouldn't feel very full. Volume (usually from water and fiber) make us feel full acutely. Protein and fat (but not their calo... | [
"A small, easily digestible meal won't sit in your stomach for as long, and once your stomach is empty you will start to get hungry again."
] |
[
"A math question with multiple probabilities"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"This question would be more appropriate in ",
"/r/learnmath",
" or ",
"/r/cheatatmathhomework",
".",
"You can multiply and add probabilities according to the rules of ",
"conditional probability",
".",
"For this problem, you have a 1 in 2 chance of getting heads followed by a 1 in 4 chance of selec... | [
"Is this a homework question? If so, please try ",
"/r/HomeworkHelp",
" instead.",
"Guideline 2.8:",
"AS is not here to do your homework for you."
] | [
"No, I am a math nerd. :P",
"I was just thinking about answering a question \"There's a 50% chance I'm 50% sure, but there's a 50% chance I'm 75% sure. How sure am I?\" This just sounded like a more suitable question."
] |
[
"How did Ole Christensen Rømer calculate the speed of light?"
] | [
false
] | I understand that he used the orbit of io but I seriously don't get how it's orbit or precived orbit can change based on distance alone since the sun is constantly emitting light and all orbits are constant. I could see how it could be calculated if the sun sent light in pulses, what am I missing? | [
"I understand that he used the orbit of io but I seriously don't get how it's orbit or precived orbit can change based on distance alone since the sun is constantly emitting light and all orbits are constant.",
"They had quite accurate predictions for when io would disappear into Jupiter's shadow, and when it wou... | [
"His measurements simply weren't accurate enough for a better result.",
"Yes, if you repeated the same method today, you'd get a significantly more accurate result - especially if you leveraged existing history of observations of Io rather than making your own fresh ones."
] | [
"One issue back then was the time-keeping. The relative shift is just 1 in 10,000, so you need a clock that is much better than that. If a clock is off by 1 second per day (1/86,400) this is a relevant error source already.",
"You have to determine the time when Io enters the shadow with a precision much better t... |
[
"I recently read an article by Ioannidis titled \"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False\". Do you, as a scientist, feel that this is a very significant hindrance to your field? How do you deal with it?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"What field is that that you're in, if you don't mind my asking?"
] | [
"This is a much bigger problem for science journalists and their readers who read a publication and believe or portray it as absolutely true whereas a scientist views it only as evidence."
] | [
"Essentially the paper explains the statistical problem of ",
"the prosecutors fallacy",
". Briefly, if you have some procedure which can detect a relationship when one does not exist at some rate (say 0.05) then you apply this procedure over and over randomly looking for the relatively rare true relationship, ... |
[
"When do cells with epithelial characteristics first appear in embryonic development?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Are you asking for flies, frogs, mice or humans? And what do you define as epithelial characteristics? Epithelium is ectodermal lineage, those cells start to differentiate away from mesoderm and endoderm very very early. In mice it’s about 7.5 days after fertilization, and mice have a 21.5 day gestation period. Fo... | [
"Follow-up question: is senescence exclusive to ectoderms during organs and vestigial structures like limbs and digits formation?"
] | [
"Humans. I put a flair on the post, sorry I will specify next time. ",
"Thank you a lot, my guess was also around gastrulation."
] |
[
"Does rain fall for a long distance as distinct drops, or do the drops constantly recombine on the way to the ground?"
] | [
false
] | How far do individual raindrops fall? Do they remain relatively unchanged on the way to the ground, or are they constantly re-forming in mid air? | [
"There are 2 different types of rain depending on your cloud type. Stratiform clouds will produce a constant rate (continuous rain) with same type of rain drops while cumiliform clouds will produce a larger and various size raindrop (mostly tropical type showers).",
"To answer your question though, rain drop form... | [
"What is WX?"
] | [
"Abbreviation for \"Weather\""
] |
[
"Can you become addicted to placebo?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"In the sense of a physical addiction I would have to say no. Physical dependence requires the drug to be integrated into the body (or change the body) to the point it can't function normally without it. Addiction comes from trying to avoid the withdrawal symptoms associated with physical dependence as taking more ... | [
"Do you think it could be addictive in the same sense that gambling can be addictive to people with impulse control disorders? It seems that psychiatrists regard it as a disorder instead of an addiction, but the symptoms can be very similar. Needing larger stimulation, withdrawal, irritability, lying, frequent thou... | [
"I would definitely say it is possible. For example, in ",
"Munchhausen Syndrome",
" patients are obsessed with the advice and attention of doctors. They are severe hypochondriacs in every sense of the word, even so far as to go beyond the defined levels of a hypochondriac. If a hypothetical scenario were to oc... |
[
"How does a hydrocolloid bandage actually work?"
] | [
false
] | I’ve tried to Google this but I can’t really find a straight answer and I don’t necessarily trust the very basic explanations given on Tiktok. Thank you!! | [
"Wounds like to have a kind of protein soup on top of them which is protected from germs and provide optimal protection for the regrowth of new cells. Hydrocolloid plasters provide a perfect medium for the wound to develop a soft protein rich gel which allows for the perfect conditions to regrow cells."
] | [
"They mimic the environment of a scab or blister to protect the injured tissues, keep the tissue from drying out and cracking (opening up more places for infection to set in) and basically keep the area sterile while healing takes place."
] | [
"There are various types. During my MS I was at a lab where a postdoc developed such a product. His was based on ",
"hydrophobically modified chitosan",
", where hydrophobic groups crosslink with components of blood to form a gel network. This ",
"stops bleeding quickly",
" and isolates the wound from co... |
[
"If there was a way to have a person born blind have an \"eye\" transplant to see, would their brains be able to process images?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"would their brains be able to process the images they see or would that be too much for them and drive them insane or severely depressed?",
"I can't speak for the exact scenario you mentioned, but Oliver Sacks wrote about a similar scenario in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (Chapter 4, ",
"). The subject ... | [
"Pawan Sinha, at MIT, does essentially this. In India, there are lots of children born with cataracts who are essentially blind (they can process light/dark, but not much else).",
"He has a project that removes the cataracts, providing them with mechanically intact vision for the first time. Then he studies their... | [
"\"At First Sight\" Starring Val Kilmer was made from the book i believe. the story above matches the plot of the movie rather closely.",
"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132512/"
] |
[
"What is the mathematical function for getting a negative reciprocal?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"-1/x"
] | [
"Ah thanks so it is just -f(x)",
" ?"
] | [
"The negative reciprocal of ",
" is -1/",
"."
] |
[
"Why are humans one of the only animals to have so much of the \"whites\" of their eyes showing?"
] | [
false
] | It occurred to me today that almost all other animals (at least the ones I could think of quickly) hardly have any of the "whites" of their eyes showing. It also occurred to me I have no idea why that would be. So, my question(s): Why do we have so much more of the whites of our eyes showing than other animals? Is ther... | [
"My understanding is that it evolved under selection pressure related to social function, as part of a mechanism for communicating mood, intent, and to help direct others' attention or reveal where one's own attention is directed.",
"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10652522",
"\"Do the eyes have it? Cues to ... | [
"Interestingly, while dogs don't use this manner of communication themselves, they recognize it in humans."
] | [
"Interesting question. This guy was wondering the same thing, thought this article might provide some food for thought, assuming it wasn't your inspiration...",
"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/13/opinion/13tomasello.html?_r=0"
] |
[
"Are we sure that an emitted photon is only absorbed once? Could it not be absorbed once on average? (and sometimes be absorbed several times)"
] | [
false
] | Forget about the photons being lost into space. Assume the emitted photon is emitted in a closed space. What I'm really interested in is an experiment that could point this out. Side questions: What about the theory in quantum physics? The photon wave function collapse when it is absorbed, right? Can we detect a photon... | [
"I think you better stick to the theory. You seem to know it.",
"Somewhat. I'm an engineer and I know classical physics well. But quantum mechanics, I only studied as an amateur, and what I know I'm not confident that I understand it well.",
"Because what you are asking indeed violates energy conservation. Supp... | [
"I think you better stick to the theory. You seem to know it.",
"Somewhat. I'm an engineer and I know classical physics well. But quantum mechanics, I only studied as an amateur, and what I know I'm not confident that I understand it well.",
"Because what you are asking indeed violates energy conservation. Supp... | [
"I doubt that you are going to find what you are looking for.",
"You're probably right.",
"Perhaps you have access to the text book \"quantum mechanics\" by Bransden and Joachain?",
"Not really... Maybe I'll buy it on amazon... But I already have so many books to read. I'll add it to my TOREAD list.",
"I ga... |
[
"Why do things proceed toward equilibrium?"
] | [
false
] | Why exactly do particles, atoms, molecules, temperatures, whatever, continue to react and change until equilibrium is acheived? I cannot think of a reason that I've been taught in chemistry, physics or biology courses. Thanks a bunch | [
"OK, lets get temperature out of the way first.",
"Temperature equilibrates because of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that a system will end up in a state of maximal entropy. The highest entropy state is the one with the most degenerate microstates. This is the famous Boltzmann Equation (S=k.lnW) ... | [
"Perhaps, what Im asking then, is why the 2nd law of thermodynamics works. Being a chemistry major, I understand the Enthalpy approach a little better, but heres an example of my frustration:",
"2Na + (Cl)2 = 2(NaCl)\nwhy? because the Cl2 electrons will grab an Na, thus breaking both original bonds and forming 2 ... | [
"I can't tell you why the 2nd Law is what it is. I had an extended argument on here about it with someone some time ago. They said 2nd Law is because ",
", I said maths is a tool we use to describe our universe and doesn't tell us why anything is the way it is. You can decide whether you agree with him or me.",
... |
[
"What don't we understand about water?"
] | [
false
] | I was just watching a television show on The Science Channel called "Wonders of Life." The host of this show was talking about how life on earth depends on water. (duh) But then he said something like, "I've heard it said we can never understand biology until we fully understand water." Which got me wondering what we d... | [
"for more information on how proteins fold due to hydrophobic effects, you can take a look at ",
"foldit",
", a videogame set up so you can help scientists by trying to optimally fold a protein."
] | [
"One thing thing that was being researched at least recently is the hydrophobic effect- the repulsion between water and non-polar substances such as oil. In chemistry they say \"like dissolves like\", but the actual dynamics of substances mixing or repelling at the molecular level is more complicated. Important ... | [
"Some interesting points here: ",
"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18473-the-many-mysteries-of-water.html#.Um-MalNZhdM",
"I also remember reading an article a few years ago explaining how water boils to an unprecedented level of detail which was previously unknown to science."
] |
[
"Since swamps produce huge amounts of methane gas, is there any sort of chance of one catching fire?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There are occasional small flames or lights on swamps, where a steady stream of methane has gotten lighted by a static spark. The volume of methane mixed with oxygen is too small however for the fire to spread.",
"Most methane evolves and \"flies away\", so there's no large accumulation at the surface (as oppose... | [
"alright, cool. I was just wondering if any natural phenominon was connected to that. What would these flames be called cause I'm interested in seeing a photograph of this."
] | [
"Well, ",
"here",
"'s a mockup. I can't find any real pictures. Peter ackson also used some fakes in ",
"\"the two towers\""
] |
[
"What causes the natural heating and cooling of the earth? What causes ice ages?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"As gradientso alluded to, one of the primary drivers of long-term climate cycles are called \"Milankovitch cycles\". These cycles result from the slight imperfections in the Earth's orbit. The ",
" of the orbit is how elliptical the orbit is, the ",
" is how much the Earth's tilt varies (between 22 and 24 degr... | [
"Thats exactly what I said. Maybe my wording was slightly unclear. Consider a 1km by 1km area at 60* N and 60*S. In summer the area at 60N recieves more solar radiation per day than the exact same latitude in the southern hemisphere. That is what I meant by amount of Solar Radiation/Area/time."
] | [
"Ok you're both partially correct and partially wrong. A better way to think about the cause for seasons is that the hemisphere which is experiencing summer is tilted towards the sun, so gets more sunlight per day. (At this distance, sunlight is very evenly distributed, so \"falling over a larger area\" doesn't mak... |
[
"What happens if we delay the second dose for AstraZeneca vaccine to 12+ weeks after the first one?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"It improves the efficacy. ",
"https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00528-6/fulltext",
" \"Modelling analyses showed an increase in vaccine efficacy after two standard doses from ",
".(95% CI 33·0 to 69·9) with an interval of less than 6 weeks to ",
" (60·3 to 91·2) with an int... | [
"It’s common for delaying boosters to lead to higher-quality immunity. One important reason is probably that as B cells are pruned following the first exposure, the highest-affinity B cells last longest (as they can compete best for remaining antigen) and over time they’ll become a larger component of the second re... | [
"Could it also be possible to give the higher risk people, who got it early, a third booster when everyone else has got their second?"
] |
[
"Why does sliced roast beef sometimes have an iridescent sheen on the surface?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"This effect was just recently described in an ",
"Optics Picture of the Day",
". Quick description: the cellular structure of the meat has a repeating pattern, which can produce interference effects in the reflected light. Some other pages on the site describe ",
"iridescence from clouds",
" - check those ... | [
"This is an immaculate answer, thank you."
] | [
"I too have been puzzled by this same effect with Canadian bacon. There are irregular patches of iridescent rainbow patterns on the cut faces of the meat. Is this a property of the meat, the slicing, or something else altogether?"
] |
[
"Is molten metal still electrically conductive?"
] | [
false
] | Is molten metal still electrically conductive? | [
"Stuff dissolved in water is often great for conducting. In pure water, small amounts will dissociate, which can also conduct electricity. Pure H2O doesn't, though."
] | [
"To some extent yes, but not really. As you apply energy (heat) to any atom the electrons jump to higher energy shells. With the outer most shells mimicking being stable, the material is less likely to accept and transfer electrons. Hence a rise in resistivity. It depends greatly on the exact metal and the temp... | [
"Deionized means that you take the ions out. Namely the dissolved metals and non-metals.",
"You typically do this by distilling. You can dissolve more things in the water that aren't ionic compounds, like glucose. This would result in something that is deionized and not conductive."
] |
[
"Help providing a satisfying explanation for a friend (Quantum)"
] | [
false
] | Hi AskScience, the other day I was talking to my friend (a 3rd year undergrad chemistry student) and he was saying that he doesn't like quantum mechanics as an explanation for natural phenomena. I was hoping someone could provide an explanation of certain things in a way better than I could. He made points that if a p... | [
"It's kind of a dickish thing to say, but first of all one must acknowledge that it doesn't matter whether one \"likes\" a scientific theory or not, but whether it makes reliabe predictions.",
"You may not \"like\" special relativity, but it explains why we can see long traces of ionizing radiation in a ",
"Clo... | [
"The propagator for a particle propagating outside its light cone falls off exponentially (Peskin and Schroeder ch 2.4 if you want the derivation) which holds for scalars, so it doesn't need an antiparticle."
] | [
":("
] |
[
"Is genetic diversity beneficial or detrimental in an organism and it's species' survival?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"In the simplest terms, greater genetic diversity will likely lead to greater adaptability as the environment changes. Therefore, a species with a high genetic diversity will be more likely to survive changes in the environment, and/or have new species branch off in the selective pressures are right.",
"To bring... | [
"Not an answer, but cheetahs actually have ",
"remarkably low genetic diversity",
", which seems to be the result of a population bottleneck (dramatically reduced population size) about 10,000 years ago. "
] | [
"Simply put: too much or too little diversity is detrimental. ",
"If you don't have enough genetic diversity your species might become extinct after a change. For instance a parasite or a fungus in a bee population is detrimental for that population since there is very little diversity in a bee (or ant) populatio... |
[
"If we absolutely had to for some reason, how long would it take NASA to have an old shuttle fueled and ready for launch?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"lets assume it's a rescue mission to the ISS.",
"They'd be dead before we could get a shuttle up there. The Soyuz capsules would probably be their best bet.",
"The space shuttles have all been decommissioned, and they'd have to basically be re-built to make them flight worthy. Atlantis is at the Kennedy Space ... | [
"The Soyuz modules are launched fairly often between ",
"unmanned Progress flights",
", which carry supplies and manned ",
"Soyuz flights",
", bringing new crew. It looks like they go to the ISS about once every couple of months on average.",
"http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/03/decommissioning-the... | [
"they'd have to basically be re-built to make them flight worthy",
"How long would that take? If the Soyuz capsules weren't ready..."
] |
[
"How is asthma medication made?"
] | [
false
] | So, very recently, I wanted to learn how rocket fuel was made. I did some googling, and learned all the chemical processes needed to create materials to create experiments that make more materials that eventual create rocket fuel. In the process however, I learnt how to make a lot of dangerous chemicals. So today, I wa... | [
"There's various different classes of asthma medication - inhaled corticosteroids, beta agonists, leukotriene modifiers. That's why you can't find a direct source on how it is made. Also, compared to rocket fuel, we are getting into really complex chemistry here, so you need to know what to look for. But I fear it ... | [
"All that stuff is patented and patents are public. If you plug the name of a substance into Google patents or into a serious patent database like ",
"Espacenet",
", you'll find all of them."
] | [
"All that stuff is patented and patents are public. If you plug the name of a substance into Google patents or into a serious patent database like ",
"Espacenet",
", you'll find all of them."
] |
[
"Is capsaicin responsible for all spiciness?"
] | [
false
] | Is capsaicin responsible for everything we perceive as spicy? Wasabi vs. curry, for example... the effect is notably different (nose vs. mouth). | [
"Nope, capsaicin is but one piquant. Wasabi, mustard, horseradish etc. contain ",
"allyl isothiocyanate",
", and black pepper has ",
"piperine",
"."
] | [
"A white russian?"
] | [
"What about hydroxy-alpha-sanshool? Sichuan pepper\nLink ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper"
] |
[
"How do people with permanent pacemakers/defibrillators go with being tazed? Does damage occur to the devices? Do people without them potentially go into an arrhythmia?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"i have an ICD. Getting tazed is not common here in Switzerland. I guess the devices could be damaged. Magnets are much worse. ",
"The tazing itself is bad for the heart. It isnt likely to cause arhythmia for people without damage to their hearts. But it may cause damage itself making people more inclined to get ... | [
"That being said, I have asked police I know about this and I was told that the tazer actually shocking a person is relatively uncommon, depending on where you live it's not a frequent occurrence, it also can be caught or stopped by clothing."
] | [
"That being said, I have asked police I know about this and I was told that the tazer actually shocking a person is relatively uncommon, depending on where you live it's not a frequent occurrence, it also can be caught or stopped by clothing."
] |
[
"I have a chance to ask Stephen Hawking a question next week. What's a question that you'd like Stephen Hawking to answer?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"Ask him if he believes that cryonic suspension is a feasible way to bridge the gap between the current state of medical technology and the future in which radical life extentension is possible. ",
"He has stated that he believes that aliens could use cryonic suspension to allow them to travel across the vastness... | [
"probably because it has only been posted for six minutes..."
] | [
"Ray Kurzweil is a sensationalist hack. I strongly suggest against. "
] |
[
"How would we know anti-matter if we saw it?"
] | [
false
] | In the article posted the following is said: "The whole world is made almost entirely of normal matter, with only tiny traces of antimatter. Astronomers have looked right to the edge of the visible universe and even then they see just matter, no great stashes of antimatter. Physicists just do not know what happened to ... | [
"You know how you can have a sink full of water, then drop some food colouring into it? It doesn't instantly go entirely pink (or whatever). Instead, you see an interface where the water that doesn't have any food colouring in it meets the water that does. And it's very pretty and fun to watch, but that's not the p... | [
"That's not at all a stupid question; it is in fact quite a clever one.",
"However, while your thinking is right, the scenario turns out to be implausible in the extreme. In order for pair-annihilation gamma radiation to be redshifted into the microwave band, the source of that radiation would have to be moving a... | [
"I'll be the idiot this time, and ask the really stupid question.",
"If a photon-emitting source is moving away from me as it emits the photons, I am told that the photons appear to be lower energy than they would be otherwise. IOW, light emitted from receding objects appears to be red-shifted.",
"If such a ma... |
[
"Look at this gif, then please help me to understand why gravity doesn't pull the slinky down straight away from the bottom"
] | [
false
] | I don't get it. How's it just... hovering or whatever. | [
"The source video",
" can answer this question for you."
] | [
"Ok so the best way to explain this is to think of it as two separate events, one has ONLY spring contraction, NO gravity, and the other has ONLY gravity, and NO spring contraction. Then, combine the two events, and you get the result. Here is a little drawing I made to animate ",
"Imgur",
"Basically, the cen... | [
"It's not a force due to human pulling. It's a force due to the nature of the spring. Springs have a \"rest length\" that they are at if no forces are acting on them. That is, if you put a slinky horizontally on a table and let it go, it will naturally contract to its ",
".",
"Slinkys only stretch when a force ... |
[
"What would happen if you injected different liquids directly into your bloodstream?"
] | [
false
] | I know that hospitals and ORs will use saline IVs, and that's fine, but what about other liquids in the bloodstream? For example, If someone were to inject plain water into their bloodstream would it do anything, would it be different if it was deionized water? What about if the liquid is acidic, ph 2-4, and what about... | [
"Hospitals use isotonic saline, pH 7.4 to avoid problems with injections. If plain water were to be injected into the blood stream, it would cause an osmotic imbalance and cause the cells circulating to try and balance their salt content with the salt content of the fluid they are in. This would result in the cell ... | [
"Generally, IV solutions want to be isotonic (~290mOsm) and at around pH7.4 to be compatible with blood plasma. If solutions are not isotonic, they can create osmotic stresses on rbcs, causing lysis. Low pH's can also directly damage cells and proteins circulating in the blood. With that said, here's some inform... | [
"Not refuting you just going to clarify. We do inject sterile water into pt's as some medicines do not mix well with saline. This is normally only used to put a powdered medicine into a solution. The same is done with hypotonic/hypertonic solutions. Some medicine mixes better and gets better effects depending on th... |
[
"What is happening in our lips/mouth that causes spicy foods we eat to feel hot or \"spicy\"?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"According to ",
"this paper",
", capsaicin (the substance responsible for the feeling of heat) activates pain receptors, specifically causing the body to experience the feeling of heat.",
"Interestingly, mammals experience heat from capsaicin, but birds do not. This may be an evolutionary adaptation. It ke... | [
"Is the spice actually causing any damage when it activates the pain receptors or is it doing so without any damage? Can I eat a pepper hot enough to burn my tongue or hurt me?"
] | [
"Capsaicin itself is not corrosive. It doesn't cause chemical burns or anything. It can cause temporary inflammation and irritation, like if someone gets pepper spray in the eyes. But it does this by essentially tricking the nerves into sending pain signals, not by causing actual damage. I'm referring here to s... |
[
"How strong would a magnet need to be to affect the iron in a person's blood?"
] | [
false
] | If you had a strong and large enough magnet, could it lift a person just by the iron in their blood? | [
"You'd have to understand Gaussian field theory to make sense of any answer, but first know hemoglobin is only weakly affected by magnetic fields. Even an MRI, which has an extremely strong magnetic field, ",
"barely interacts with blood",
"."
] | [
"Haemoglobin is diamagnetic if it's carrying oxygen and paramagnetic if it's not.",
"Also note that the diamagnetic response of the water in your body drowns out any response from haemoglobine, since there's just a LOT more water in your body."
] | [
"Well, you could levitate people magnetically, but not by the mechanism you are thinking off.",
"To understand why, we need to look into how molecules interact with magnetic fields. There are two components to this: the paired electrons are repelled (diamagnetism) by the magnetic field, while unpaired electrons a... |
[
"How is speciation possible for sexual reproductive organisms?"
] | [
false
] | What is the logic that leads to 2 viable members of the new species having the ability to mate and produce offspring vs members of the species from which they came? This has always been the question whenever I went over evolution in school. I understand that most developments of new species happened in isolated areas s... | [
"Speciation isn't a discrete thing. A good example of this is a ",
"ring species",
". Just because A can mate with B and B can mat with C doesn't mean that A can mate with C. Speciation occurs when two groups are separated enough that they gradually drift apart until they are no longer interfertile. But there's... | [
"The topic of chromosomal rearrangements and speciation is much more complicated than that \"article\" suggests. The human chimp rearrangement probably isn't a great example. There is a solid one in Drosophila that does appear to be caused by rearrangements though. This is also only one type of molecular mechanism ... | [
"I don't know how many ring species exist laterally, but every single species is a ring species temporally. A breedable population isn't formed. You start with one. Then you slowly change their genes together until they can no longer mate with the original group. But since they're all pretty closely related at any ... |
[
"How do meteorologists calculate wind chill or “feels like” temperatures?"
] | [
false
] | null | [
"There is actually a wind chill formula that is typically used (it's different depending on where in the world you are, there is no standard).",
"In the United States we have one",
"T= 35.74 + .6215(Ta) - 35.75 v",
" + .4275 (Ta) v",
"Where T is the final, (Ta) is the air temp (f), and v is the wind speed i... | [
"Edit: Somehow I skipped entirely over the wind chill, which is the \"feels like\" measure you actually asked about. This response is about the heat index, which is another \"feels like\" measure. Sorry. ",
"This is called the heat index, and it's a subjective attempt to combine the effects of humidity with heat.... | [
"The vast majority of convective heat transfer constants are empirically derived and as such are really ugly weird numbers. Wind chill is an effort to correlate the difference between heat transfer off a person in still air compared to the heat transfer of moving air and as such is subject to those same types of o... |
[
"If a codon is only 3 bases long, what does the rest of mRNA molecule do?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"It’s also worth adding that the bits of mRNA that don’t encode proteins are also very important to processing ",
"Some non coding regions of mRNAs form things called internal ribosome entry sites (IRES). The ribosome can bind to these and start translating from this point instead of the start of the molecule. Th... | [
"An mRNA strand is made up of lots of codons, each codon codes for 1 amino acid. Though there are some noncoding segments that get cut out I believe in post transcriptional processing",
"An mRNA molecule would look like this",
"- CCU - CUU - GGC - UAG",
"",
"And the corresponding protein strand would look ... | [
"Alternative splicing (removal of specific introns) is one of the reasons why humans have a relatively short genome but a huge amount of genetic diversity. For example, if on an mRNA molecule you have A-B-C, where ABC are exons with introns in between them, that could be expressed in 7 different ways (A, B, C, AB, ... |
[
"Why can't we absorb oxygen through our skin? What's the point of lungs?"
] | [
false
] | [deleted] | [
"The outer layers of our skin are mostly dead cells, plus there's a fair bit of material there to protect us from the environment. However, there probably is some diffusion of gases across the barrier of the skin, just as our skin can absorb water or other substances. The amount of oxygen absorbed and CO_2 emitte... | [
"All folded up and crumpled, the lungs are, but all the little nooks and crannies of your lungs if completely unfolded can add up to 50m",
" ",
"Think of it like taking a giant sheet of 7m x 7m paper and crumpling it up to the size of something like your lung interior. Now you see how 50m",
" can fit inside ... | [
"Lungs' lining is very thin and moist. Skin is very not thin and dry. Being very thin means that your lungs can very effectively transport oxygen into your body, but it also means that pathogens can easily cross from your lungs into your body. Being moist makes your lungs an excellent breeding ground for pathogens.... |
[
"Why do women have two breasts when, on average, they have one baby at a time?"
] | [
false
] | Also, why not three or four? | [
"Think about why you have to rotate your tires, but with tits."
] | [
"Because you'd never get any work done."
] | [
"Most mammals have twice the number of nipples as the average litter size."
] |
[
"Is it in any way possible to reverse a black hole?"
] | [
false
] | Would it be possible to remove mass from a black hole, making the gravititional pull too weak to "maintain" a singulariry? What would happen? | [
"If they're small enough, they actually do this on their own. We think that quantum fluctuations near the event horizons of black holes cause them to emit mass/energy in the form of Hawking Radiation. For big black holes, this happens really slowly, (many-times-the-age-of-the-universe-slowly) but the smaller they g... | [
"Just to clarify, these quantum fluctuations happen at the event horizon of the black hole. Therefore the radiation produced is proportional to the surface area of the black hole. You can think of the mass of the black hole being proportional to the volume and the rate at which it is turning into Hawking Radiation ... | [
"Basically, since the temperature of a black hole (or rather, the Hawking radiation associated with it) increases as the hole gets smaller, which causes the hole to shrink faster, and thus keeps looping, the last moment of its life is its most energetic.",
"Along with that, the process is very directly converting... |
[
"When a tree (or other land plant) is immersed in water, what does it die of?"
] | [
false
] | Let's pretend the water only just covers the tree/plant, so light is still available. Does it suffocate due to lack of oxygen? Does the water leach essential chemicals out of leaves? Both? Does the water just block enough light it starves? | [
"Plants need oxygen to metabolize the sugars they have produced all day. They do proportionately more of this at night to put the stores energy to growth, and maintenance. Unless they are adapted to aquatic life, they can’t access the oxygen their mitochondria need."
] | [
"Many terrestrial plants are surprisingly resistant to flooding, surviving months and even years. The lack of oxygen is what would kill them, but they produce that given light. ",
"Here",
" is a source. Light is a major deciding factor in the lifespan of submerged organisms because with it comes photosynthesi... | [
"Some plants have evolved to be tolerant of flooding. In the Amazon the water can rise 50ft (ca. 15 metres) in the wet season and young trees survive. Other plants can die in a day or two being immersed in water."
] |
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