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7gl8iz | why are antibiotics so effective but at the same time bad for us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7gl8iz/eli5_why_are_antibiotics_so_effective_but_at_the/ | {
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"When you are sick the bad bacteria causes you problems. Solution. Bomb it with antibiotics. Problem. We have millions of good helpful bacteria co-existing with us that also get killed with those antibiotics. \n\nSo you destroy the bad and good bacteria without prejudice. Lucky for us our good bacteria has lived with us for a while and can usually bounce back to a healthy population.",
"This is a very broad question with lots of different answers.\n\nHere are a few:\n\n-antibiotics target a mechanism that both the bug and yourself have, the only difference is the dose so too much of it will kill us eventually\n\n-antibiotics are broken down into toxic products by our liver and get eliminated from our body via the kidneys so if you have too much antibiotics and pre-existing liver or kidney disease these organs can get injured.\n\n-antibiotics kill both the good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria. You need a layer of good bacteria all over you to serve as a barrier against super bad bacteria, breakdown certain food products in your gut, and all sorts of other things we are only just learning\n\n-antibiotics may kill some of the bad bacteria in your system but others can survive and evolve to become mega badass bacteria that will kick your arse ten different ways\n\n-antibiotics have all sorts of weird and unusual side effects and allergies that random people might have\n\n-antibiotics are processed in your body in different ways which may interact with other medications, such as the contraceptive pill\n\n-antibiotics arent really tested on foetuses so we dont know if it will harm your baby if you are pregnant\n\nThere are plenty more reasons but thats just a few. So be careful when you ask for antibiotics or any sort of pill from your doctor. The benefit may not always be worth the risk. Especially if its just a virus and you need to suck it up and have a cupful of cement instead of crying for antibiotics from your GP.",
"I'll make it really simple.\n\nAntibiotics target the bacteria in your body. There are \"good\" bacteria that live inside your body. Then, there is the \"mean\" bacteria that make you sick. There are multiple sorts of bacteria too.\n\nAlso, there are multiple classes of antibiotics. Antibiotics do not target ALL the types of bacteria in your body. They will act on a \"spectrum\" of bacteria. Your doctor or pharmacist will normally choose an antibiotic that targets the \"mean\" bacteria in your body. They will either choose according to tests they have made that show you what \"mean\" bacteria you have or they will choose according to what bacteria usually cause the type of infection.\n\nSo, let's go back to the \"spectrum\" of bacteria that your antibiotic targets. It will target your \"mean\" bacteria, but it will also target types of \"good\" bacteria that you have. Antibiotics do not distinguish the good and the bad bacteria, they only affect types of bacteria.\n\nThis can disturb the peace and balance within the bacteria . Indeed, when you take an antibiotic pill, it affects the bacteria in all your body. This can lead to gastrointestinal problems until the balance comes back. Women can also have a fungus infection after taking antibiotics. \n ",
"Antibiotics are substances that are poisonous to bacteria, but not to humans. They might have some side effects like killing gut bacteria, which are beneficial to us. But the main problem with them is that bacteria can evolve very, very quickly. Those that survive the treatment might evolve an antibiotic resistance, which they can pass on to their descendants and even share with other bacteria. So the next time antibiotics are used to treat them, they become less effective.\n\nIn extreme cases, this can lead to strains of bacteria which are completely immune to several types of antibiotics. This is particularly problematic for patients with a weakened immune system, who are completely dependent on antibiotics even for infections which are harmless to most other people. Typically this happens in hospitals, where these diseases can easily develop their resistances and spread to weakened patients. So you shouldn't be scared if your doctor prescribes antibiotics.\n\n"
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2ykm0f | what is the use of rc circuits and capacitors in series and parallel? and how to solve them? | the easiest is the better please :( i cant seem to understand the book and videos :( i need to for school.. Thanks!! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ykm0f/eli5_what_is_the_use_of_rc_circuits_and/ | {
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"I'm taking circuit analysis now. One use of it, rather than a low, sustained voltage, you need a high, instantaneous voltage. One example is a camera flash. The battery itself has a fairly low energy output. However, the battery can be used to charge a capacitor, then the capacitor can be discharged quickly."
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1ol7bl | why is my balance worse when i'm higher off the ground? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ol7bl/eli5_why_is_my_balance_worse_when_im_higher_off/ | {
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"Your body balances perfectly fine on its own - if it's left alone. As the board/balance beam gets higher, danger increases, you become stiffer and more nervous and try to concentrate more on consciously keeping your balance. All of that makes it harder to keep your balance."
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8ai266 | how did we manage to create the machine or whatever that makes transistors with dimensions in nanometers | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ai266/eli5_how_did_we_manage_to_create_the_machine_or/ | {
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"At such small sizes, transistors are not made individually. Instead, the entire circuitry is 'etched' into the surface of a semi-conductor plate, called the die. Then, that die is subjected to various chemical and physical treatments to create nanometer-sized spots on its surface with different electrical properties, which make up all those millions and millions of transistors.\n\nOf course, the real process is *much* more complicated than this, but that's the general idea.",
"Lenses. \n\nThe “pattern” for the chip is focused and reduced through a lens system to the prepared surface of the silicon. \nThis lets you start with a larger more manageable work space and still create much smaller finished components. \n"
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4bsrdk | what percentage of common cold symptoms are due to the body's immune response compared with effects of the actual virus? | If the immune response were not to occur, would we be asymptomatic? What could the virus do to harm us and how long would it take? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4bsrdk/eli5_what_percentage_of_common_cold_symptoms_are/ | {
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"Almost all of them are your body's immune response, to break it down, we'll examine the most common symptoms that people tend to experience.\n\nFever: this is the body's response to most invading pathogens, the hypothalamus reacts by creating a rise in core body temperature to try and kill any pathogens by either denaturing enzymes held within them, or by destroying the cell walls\n\nCough: the lungs tend to be infected with the pathogen, and the cough allows the pathogen to be carried out of the lungs in mucus so that it can be swallowed and destroyed in the stomach\n\nRunny nose: Increased mucous secretions lubricate the airway and help to ensnare any potential pathogens trying to leave/enter the system\n\nSneezing: an attempt to expel any pathogens remaining in the nose or mouth \n\nIf we had no immune response to the pathogens, they would slowly break down the cell walls of every cell in our body, destroying them and us in the process, but we would have no symptoms until before death, and they would be greatly exaggerated such as pneumonia (Fluid in the lungs), haemothorax (a collapsed lung due to blood accumulation in between the two layers surrounding our lungs, which are called pleura), Kidney failure, liver failure, encephalitis (brain swelling) and eventually brain stem herniation and death. Its similar to how people with AIDS can die of things that wouldn't kill a normal human. "
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1m5h4l | how exactly do you lose weight(fat)? | For instance, if i exercised today and burned 7000 calories(2 pounds), where did that weight go? that mass can't just disappear but i'm 2 pounds lighter and i haven't directly expelled any matter or mass from my body. Does the fat simply turned into waste to be expelled later if not then where does it go? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m5h4l/eli5how_exactly_do_you_lose_weightfat/ | {
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"Every time you breath you take in O2 and release CO2. That C is carbon, and it doesn't come from nothing. It is from your food, or your fat in this case, and is where much of your weight loss comes from (ignoring highly variable water weight).",
"First off, fat loss does not boil down to simple pluses and minuses of calories in/calories out. It's a gross oversimplification of our incredibly complex metabolic processes. 500 calories of pure sugar have a much greater impact on fat retention than 500 calories of spinach. Calories are useful for measuring whether we're eating enough or too much (obesity is commonly attributable to overeating), but it is not a direct correlation to the amount of fat we gain/retain/lose. \n\nThe two pounds you lost while exercising was not fat. Fat doesn't burn that quickly. Those two pounds were water weight loss through exhaling water vapor and by sweating. Two pounds works out to roughly 1/4 of a gallon, or one quart of water. If you drank a quart of water right now, your two-pound loss will disappear. Two pounds isn't very much. \n\nWhen our bodies convert stored fat into energy, we expel it via our normal explusion mechanisms: through our breath, sweat, piss, and shit. A handy way to tell if you are discharging fat through your poop floats. Poop normally sinks, while poop laden with fat floats. \n\nIf you want a decent (albeit highly technical) explanation of why we gain/retain/lose fat from a historical and biochemical perspective, read [\"Why We Get Fat\"](_URL_0_) by Gary Taubes.",
"Your body breaks down carbs, fats, and proteins for energy. It does so by taking the oxygen you breath in and binding it to the carbons in the food you eat (or carbons in the fat in your adipose tissues). When it does that, it makes CO2 and water. You literally breath, piss, and sweat out the fat you burn."
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8v5e3s | stars and visibility | Why do stars in the night's sky seem to disappear when I look directly at them but seem more visible when I look at an adjacent star.
Is it like an optical illusion where my brain 'fills' the star with the surrounding darkness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v5e3s/elif_stars_and_visibility/ | {
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"It's a quirk of the human eye. At the center of the eye (the fovea) we mostly have colour-sensitive cone cells to see detail and colour of what we're focusing on. Around the fovea we mostly have rod cells that can't see colour but are more sensitive to variations in light intensity and movement. \nLooking slightly to the side of the thing you're examining sends more of the light to the rod cells and lets you see things more clearly in low-light conditions where cones don't work well. "
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cobte4 | it is known that - among others - former officials of ussr used to erase people who they did not like out of the photos. how did they do that before photoshop era? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cobte4/eli5_it_is_known_that_among_others_former/ | {
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"Many of the tools available in photoshop are digital versions of techniques that photographers used in the past. \"Dodging\" and \"Burning\" by adjusting chemicals in the processing of a print from a negative can darken or lighten an area to the point that something looks erased.\n\n\"Cutting\" and \"pasting\" other bits of photograph over a person was also done manually before digital photographs as well.",
"The software Photoshop is named so after actual photoshops, workshops where they manipulated images using paint, scissors and the like.",
"Photos back in the day were physical objects, actual chemicals on film. As such they are manipulable in all the ways physical objects or chemicals just are.\n\nAt its most primitive, you can take the photo negative and just scratch out whatever you are trying to remove. This is what was done too [Raising a Flag over the Reichstag](_URL_1_) to remove the 2nd watch on the Soviet solider. This was a very common technique, with blades akin to surgery scalpels used to scrape away or sometimes etch in finer details to images in regular use for editing photo portraits since the 1880's.\n\nAlmost as primitive, literally paint/draw on the negative. If you were lucky the subject was surrounded by a solid black or white, so it just became a matter of whiting/blacking them out, if not you would have to recreate what was behind them. Initially this was done with actual brushes or pencil but that led to noticeable marks on the image, with the invention of the airbrush with its softer, more diffuse and even application of paint actual brushes were dropped. The Soviets in particular used airbrush technique a lot to disappear purged officials from party photos.\n\nAs we are dealing with photo-sensitive chemicals here, you can always just expose the film strip to more light to various effects in the darkroom. For black and white photography it was mainly just a matter of where the light was falling (dodging and burning), once colour photography came in the colour of the light used would have also been a factor for colour manipulations.\n\nYou could double-expose the negative, essentially just expose the one photographic stock to multiple images to composite them. There are images of 'ghosts' from the beginning of photography using this effect, they just left the film in the camera and exposed it twice, once of a shocked looking man and again of a spooky lady on a dark background, leaving her ghostly imprint on the first image. Later it became possible to do it more precisely inside a dark room and it found extensive use in war propaganda to make more lively scenes by compositing multiple photos into one.\n\nNot quite in the same realm as everything else as its usually planned well in advance to create rather than alter an image, but worth mentioning is matte paintings. This is more of a film technique than a photography one. Essentially you get a glass plate, paint what you want on it with holes in it for the 'real' imagery, then stick it in front of the camera lined up to the real thing (or later, project the imagery/footage on to the back of the plate), photograph that. As a technique it was used extensively before digital compositing was a thing, [here's a BTS of the Ewok celebration scene in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi](_URL_0_) which was constructed using a matte painting and double exposure."
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6jwviz | why do we have english words for names of language's example spanish is español and do other countries have translated names of english | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jwviz/eli5_why_do_we_have_english_words_for_names_of/ | {
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"They do indeedy. In spanish, English is Ingles. German is alemán in Spanish (because Germany is Alemania). Sometimes it's just different pronunciations. France is France in both English and French (but France in Spanish is Francia)."
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552dbn | what's the oceans' bottom (from where the depth is measured) made of? is it rocks, soil or what? | Does Earth's crust finish at the bottom of oceans? As in, would you enter Earth's mantle if you drilled through the bottom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/552dbn/eli5_whats_the_oceans_bottom_from_where_the_depth/ | {
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" > Does Earth's crust finish at the bottom of oceans? \n\nNo, there are still miles of crust under the oceans too. But drill through enough and you would find the mantle.",
"At the bottom of the ocean there is what is referred to as oceanic crust. It is substantially thinner than continental crust. Oceanic crust is around 7-10km thick, with continental ranging from 20-90km the higher end being preventive belts etc."
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1occas | why do we have empathy for animals and not insects? | For example no one would care about a cull of insects? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1occas/eli5_why_do_we_have_empathy_for_animals_and_not/ | {
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"We have more empathy for creatures with high levels of awareness and intelligence. It is easier for us to see that they have emotions for us to empathize with."
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2mm1be | what is the difference between snap and ebt? | What do you have to do to apply for each program? Does a single man with no dependents qualify for SNAP and EBT? How long can that person stay on benefits? Is that longer than a married man or single mom or family?
I would really love citations in an answer that can be verified too, if that is possible. While I would be happy for a response without citations; I've had many internet discussions about SNAP and EBT and want to learn more and make sure I understand what I am talking about! I thought ELI5 was a good start point, because many times I see the discussion here get fairly deeper than a 5 year old can understand! Thanks for your **serious response**... other responses need not apply. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mm1be/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_snap_and_ebt/ | {
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"SNAP is a specific program that allows people to buy food only. It used to be called Food Stamps.\n\nEBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) is a method of distribution. Instead of using paper food stamps, the benefit amount is loaded into a debit card. Other forms of assistance also use EBT to distribute money for various purposes. \n\nThis is part of what caused a recent furor about \"food stamps\" being used to purchase marijuana - some people were observed using ATMs located in dispensaries to withdraw cash from EBT cards - but SNAP can never be converted directly to cash that way, so it would have been some other benefit that could be converted to cash."
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36oudj | networking. octets, ip's, subnet masks, dns, and gateways | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36oudj/eli5networking_octets_ips_subnet_masks_dns_and/ | {
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"1. An IP is and address of a point on the network. A PC can have zero to any number of them. Typically a PC would have one.\n\n2. a \"subnet\" is a way of subdividing a network into multiple networks. Typically TCP/IP network all nodes can talk to other nodes. If you apply a \"subnet\" you're limiting the reach of nodes to only talk to other nodes within the \"sub network\". The \"mask\" is the thing that defines the subnet.\n\n3. DNS is the system by which domain names are converted into IP addresses. The actual networking layer really only knows how to talk to IP addresses, but thats impractical for humans. So...there is a translation system that converts names (_URL_0_) into IP addresses. When you type in a url, the first thing that happens is that word is converted to IP address by making a DNS \"name lookup\", and in response to that it receives the IP address and then from there it actually reaches out to reddit's servers.\n\n3. Gateways are the point that gets you from your local network to another network. So..in your home, the gateway is where your request/communications hit in order to get up to the ISP and out to the rest of the internet. Think of it as the entrance/exit from one network to another.\n\n4. Octets - in IP address world - refer to each of the numbers between the digits in an IPv4 address like 192.168.0.100 (192 is an octet, 168 is an octet. They are referred to this because 0-256 (the possible range of each octet) is a representation of 8 bits. An IPv4 address is defined by a sequence of 4 octets.\n"
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2r7jq0 | what happens to the freckles on very freckled children who have little to no freckles as adults? | And also side question, when you have birthmarks that get smaller as you get older how does that work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r7jq0/eli5_what_happens_to_the_freckles_on_very/ | {
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"Interestingly enough, there are different types of freckles. All freckles are are areas of skin with some extra pigment (usually), but they can break down into a few different categories: \n\n* Sunburn freckles or lentingines- If you're a very pale person or are sensitive to the sun, you get these in the summer. They are large and stay the same shade over the course of the year. Large ones are sometimes called \"liver spots\"\n* \"Regular\" or simple freckles - Usually very small and light, and almost always harmless. Show up where your body is exposed to the sun, but can show elsewhere. They change shade with the seasons, and can be various colors (red, brown, sometimes yellowish).\n* There are other types, but it's not important for your question.\n\nAs to why they go away and \"what happens\" to them—as you age, your body essentially \"sheds\" skin cells at a fairly rapid rate. If you have simple freckles, often the groups of cells with high concentrations of pigment will be broken down over years, and your freckles will fade or dissapear alltogether. This process can be sped up through cryosurgery, which is a fancy word for using liquid nitrogen to freeze-kill the cells, causing them to be replaced. Also used are some light therapies that will break down the pygment buildup in the cells (hopefully) without harming them.\n\n\nJust as an asside: you hear a lot of rumors about how certian freckles can be linked to cancers, probabably from your mother-in-law's forwareded emails. Realistically, you should always monitor your skin for suspicious lumps and bumps, but the freckles you *do* need to have checked are ones that (a) change size rapidly, (b) take on a highly irregular shape, (c) are irregularly colored, and/or (d) change in height within a noticible period. Truth is, if you are over 25, you should make regular visits to your dermotligist.\n\nHope that answers your question.\n\n-----\n\nSource: Studying Biology, [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) "
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1ortj3 | why is american medicare only for those aged 65 and over or those who have a serious disability? why not the entire population? | I am not American so I dont know much. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ortj3/eli5_why_is_american_medicare_only_for_those_aged/ | {
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"The philosophy is that while you are healthy and young enough you have the capability to provide for yourself. As a result, you aren't handed cheap insurance - you go to private insurances.\n\nHowever, once you are very elderly you have paid your dues to society and aren't expected to continue working hard to provide for yourself. As a result you get cheap public healthcare.\n\nThe same idea is true for social security - it's to provide for the elderly and those unable to provide for themselves due to injury.",
"Because the US clings to the Wild West fantasy. And they don't have a cohesive society. Who wouldn't want Universal Healthcare? If you've lived with it, you'd want it. "
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3vbs0n | why did the destruction and reconstruction of countries like germany and japan not result in radicalization as in iraq and afghanistan? | After WWII, the US helped rebuild both West Germany and Japan, enemy countries. As far as I understand as a casual student of history, this was instrumental in their revitalized economies. Why did the conquest and reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan result in such a different consequence?
To be fair, Germany is a western country and close enough in culture that I can understand the lack of radicalization. But Japan is not western and was totally conquered and rebuilt by the West without decades of armed resistance.
Apologies if I'm wrong about any of these assumptions. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vbs0n/eli5_why_did_the_destruction_and_reconstruction/ | {
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"Historian here, but I will preface by saying I know little of the Iraq/Afghanistan situation to comment on its failure. I know enough about Germay/Japan to comment about its success. Four main factors which I would consider unique compared to Iraq/Afghanistan..\n\n\n1)Both countries were already on the path to, and considered, modernized both post and prewar. Japan is still renowned for their rapid modernization during the meiji restoration. Yes, Germany had suffered severe damage during the war, but it did not lose all of its technology in the process.\n\n\n2)There was much to bank on upon the success of the Marshall Plan. Both the new West Germany, France and UK for all intents and purposes were capitalistic and ready to \"Build bridges\" (quite literally) than trenches/barriers. Money talks. Think of all the trade talks that go on today and you can practically picture the enthusiasm of businesses and corporations to quickly get over the war and make money!\n\n\n3)\"Who benefits from their success?\" In this case, trade and economic benefits from a strong Europe were obvious and necessary. The west (America) benefited -greatly- from \"bailing out\" Europe. Like above, a unified Europe had both strong economical incentives as well as creating a \"barrier\" for Soviet Communism/expansion.\n\n\n\n4)Unification. While not as peaceful as made out by any means (as in \"no\" radicalization in either Germany or Japan) there was a profound desire to move ahead. Particularly Japan and its postwar idealogy of not having a standing army but a \"defense force\", essentially. Democratic progession in both nations was a lot more seamless than their middle eastern counterparts.\n\n\nWhen you look at these four factors and compare them to postwar Iraq/Afghanistan, you can certainly see strong contrasts in every category. I would say that Afghanistan lacks a concept of nationalism, which is key to unification. They are still very much a primary economy on top of that (village/farm/agricultural life). Iraq is moving into a secondary/tertiary economy but has strong political divides (Sunni/Shia) that prevent a concept of unification and has led to increased radicalism. Combine this with the west' hesitation (For valid reasons) to invest in their economy, you have a quagmire for consistent failures.\n\n\n\nEdit: Clarifications."
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7s0vl5 | how did ancient cultures create statues of solid gold? is it shaped or or made from a mold? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7s0vl5/eli5_how_did_ancient_cultures_create_statues_of/ | {
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"Most didn't. When they had golden statues they were normally gold plated via the application of gold leaf. When they were solid gold it would generally be cast from a mold. ",
"Due to the rarity and cost of gold, it wasn't common for solid gold items to be made, except for small jewelry type items. And of course, if such things were created, they were subject to the theft and re-melting over the ages.\n\nThe melting point of gold is close to that of copper, and it's possible to melt either metal in a charcoal furnace with forced air from a bellows. \n\nThe simplest casting method would be to carve a small master pattern die from wood or bone. The master could then be pressed into a block of wet clay forming a mold. Molten gold would then be poured into the mold cavity. Two sided molds could also be created with the same method.\n\nBecause of the softness and malleability of gold, you can also form gold items just by hammering gold nuggets or small cast ingots, with various punches and chisels.\n\nThis is probably the first method used to work gold, before casting was used.\n\nAnother process developed in the bronze age is lost-wax or investment casting. This was also common for creating bronze tools and weapons, as well as sculptures and jewelry. Adapting it for gold isn't a problem.\n\nIn this process a pattern or investment is carved from beeswax, tallow, or resin. The pattern is coated in successive layers of fine clay, mud, sand, and other materials, until a thick outer shell mold is created.\n\nAlternatively a clay core can be created, and the core can be coated with several thin wax layers, then fine details are carved into the wax. Finally the outer supporting mold is created. This saves on the amount of metal in the final casting.\n\nThe finished mold is then heated to melt out the wax or resin, leaving a hollow mold cavity that very precisely duplicates the features of the wax pattern. This is then filled with molten metal, cooled, and the outer shell is broken out.\n\nThis is called investment because both the original wax pattern and the outer mold is destroyed. \n\nThis technique is so effective and can create intricate details that other manufacturing processes simply cannot produce. It's still very popular today in the 21st century."
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5wwcbr | how does a police officer prove his radar reading was specifically for your car when there's hundreds of cars whizzing by on a busy highway? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wwcbr/eli5_how_does_a_police_officer_prove_his_radar/ | {
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"They point it at your car. They can observe you are moving faster than the other traffic and they stop you under their own judgment. In court their judgment is generally considered to be reliable evidence that a particular motorist was behaving incorrectly.",
"Kinda related.....LIDAR guns have a sight on them with a crosshair that show exactly what the gun is pointed at. ",
"A radar can be set with a \"gate\" so it only reads the vehicle, say, more than 300 yards and less than 325 yards away. If you are the first car to enter that gate you are the target. Cars coming in later while you're still there cannot be individually measured accurately.\n\nThe officer learns how to use the radar and that is one of the many options available. There are techniques for almost any situation, coming or going, moving or stopped. (Also laser instead of radar can pick out anyone, anywhere.)"
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3d3mcf | why don't we ever have to clean our water pipes in our homes? | I always wondered how the water pipes that feed my faucets never need to be cleaned, why isn't this something we worry about? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d3mcf/eli5_why_dont_we_ever_have_to_clean_our_water/ | {
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"As common sense as it seems, its NOT because the water is clean. Water pipes fall apart all the time in the ground. So whats the difference?\n\nWell, your home water heater has an anode inside the water heater. The anode actually breaks down and sacrifices itself to protect the pipes. \n\nOtherwise, the minerals tend to build up in the pipes and the water heater and destroy the pipes. \n\nHere is a picture of a used anode that sacrificed itself next to a new one for comparison. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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1n0mf5 | how are nuclear reactions started? | I have read all about nuclear power and how it generates electricity.
I have never seen a clear answer, however, on how the chain reaction is actually started. Is it just the two differing materials being placed next to each other that starts the reaction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n0mf5/eli5how_are_nuclear_reactions_started/ | {
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"More or less. Fissile material constantly emits neutrons, but when you only have a small amount of the stuff, most neutrons escape the bulk of the material before meeting another nucleus and causing another fission event. In this case, the neutron emission is only due to spontaneous fission because the material is radioactive. The more of the material you have per unit volume, the more neutrons will cause fission events (because they're more likely to hit another nucleus). Once you have a particular amount of fissile material (the critical mass for that substance) you will cross a threshold such that each neutron, on average, generates more than one extra neutron by causing fission. When this happens, you have a runaway nuclear reaction and you get an explosion.\n\nAs an example, one design is the implosion-type weapon. You have a sphere of fissile material that is close to but not at critical mass. When you want the weapon to go off, conventional explosives around the sphere explode, crushing it and bringing it to critical mass (because you now have the same mass, but in a smaller volume). Boom!",
"Uranium-235 (and Plutonium) naturally undergoes **spontanious fission** at a low rate. This process emits neutrons which start the chain reaction."
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fh9a40 | why does cuddling make you feel good? also, why does it make someone cry harder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fh9a40/eli5_why_does_cuddling_make_you_feel_good_also/ | {
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"It makes you feel good because your nerves in your skin release Serotonin, a natural feel-good chemical, when you are slowly caressed. \n\nIt makes people cry harder because, when people are just crying by themselves, they instinctively try to stop crying, whether they want to or not. However, as soon as someone starts holding them, they can “let it all out,” or let their guard down. It makes them feel safe, and feel as though they don’t have anything to be afraid of. It doesn’t make them more sad, it just shows that they can trust you.\n\nI hope this helped!"
]
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141h1q | how does muscle weigh more than fat? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/141h1q/eli5_how_does_muscle_weigh_more_than_fat/ | {
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"It's denser. For a given volume of muscle and fat, the muscle will weigh more. Just like for a given volume of lead and feathers, the lead will weigh more."
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9yhloo | why does eating fish give me no fishy burps, but fish oil pills make me regret wanting to be healthy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9yhloo/eli5_why_does_eating_fish_give_me_no_fishy_burps/ | {
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"Because fish oil pills are pure fish oil. \n\nOilier fish tend to have much more of that fishy flavor - sardine or mackerel burps aren't that pleasant either...",
"Well, the least \"why\" answer, but probably most helpful is \"because you;re taking the wrong fish oil pills\" - Look for pills that say they help prevent the fishy burps. They're out there, but you might have to spend a little more for them\n\nThe \"why\" answer is - Because when you are eating fish, the oil is spread throughout the meat, and there by diffused. In the poll, you have just the oil, no meat (or other meal ingredients) to diffuse the concentration. While fish oil has health benefits, our digestive system just isn't set up to handle it in large, direct quantities. This leads to the fishy burps, Same thing happens with stuff like garlic pills and such. Or, even folks who eat an over abundance of foods/spices with naturally strong odors. You still get the health benefits, but you also get the reaction of \"high/over dosage\""
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6b5s9u | why would a president choose to record their conversations? if tapes can be so incriminating, why make them in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b5s9u/eli5_why_would_a_president_choose_to_record_their/ | {
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"Nixon did it so he could preserve the historical record. He planned on writing a book after he left office detailing his Presidency.\n\nAs for the 'incriminating' part, you need to bear in mind that while such tapes can be *prejudicial* they can't really be 'incriminating' in the conventional sense because the President is largely immune to legal repercussions from performing the duties of his office."
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2xu1bw | in states that legalize recreational use of marijuana: will people who have been previously convicted of marijuana possession be able to have the offense removed from their criminal record? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xu1bw/eli5_in_states_that_legalize_recreational_use_of/ | {
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"Not typically. Just because something becomes legal, doesn't mean you didn't break the law when you did it. The punishment is for doing something illegal, not about how it is viewed by the public.\n\nThough, I wouldn't be surprised to see sentence reductions on appeal ... but I would guess that will be more of the exception than the norm. "
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e0kpps | how do phones take your voice and make it come out of another phone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e0kpps/eli5_how_do_phones_take_your_voice_and_make_it/ | {
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"The process revolves around the idea of digital modulation, whereby the levels of sound are measured and translated into digital electrical signals (encoding). This signal is then passed and relayed across various forms of media to the intended destination which then translates the signal back (decoding). The corresponding sound waves are then recreated based on the levels originally provided (more or less) and you hear the caller's voice.",
"With modern technology, it goes like this: \n \nYour voice moves a diaphram/magnet in the microphone of your phone (or a similar technology). That magnet is inside of a coil of wire, and the moving magnet induces a small electrical current in the coil. That signal is amplified and turned into a voltage by circuits in the phone. \n \nThat [voltage waveform](_URL_1_) of your voice is then sampled (measured) many times per second, turning it into a stream of numbers that represents the same thing. Those numbers are stored in binary (1s and 0s) because that's what digital computer circuits can easily manipulate. \n \nNow the phone needs to send that stream of binary numbers somewhere, like a cell tower. It initiates a call over radio (light that is so deep red that our eyes can't see it). The radio signals are [modulated](_URL_0_) to carry information that the cell tower can decode. \n \nAfter the connection between the cell tower and your phone is set up, the phone sends that stream of binary numbers to the tower. Of course, it also sends other information first, most notably what number the call is supposed to go to and who it is from. The cell tower has information about where to forward that data, usually over a land link (wires) to a central switch, which then forwards it on to another switch, etc. etc. until it gets to a cell tower near the recipient's phone. \n \nAll of this data communication is similar to that between your phone and the tower, except it isn't using radio. The voltage signals are sent using various encoding schemes using regular wires or optical fiber links. If optical fiber links, the signals must again be converted to light, but not radio. \n \nEventually the data gets to the cell tower nearest the recipient and the process goes in reverse, with that stream of numbers getting to the recipient's phone and turned back into a voltage/current to excite a speaker in the phone, turning it into sound. \n \nOf course, all of this happens very very fast. Computers are good at that."
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5rkdki | why do people get mad when being told to do what they were already going to do? | Like when a guy walks out of the house with a shovel and his father walks by and says "hey! Shovel the snow!!" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rkdki/eli5why_do_people_get_mad_when_being_told_to_do/ | {
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"Because people in general do not like being told what to do. \n\nWhen you are going to do something, and then someone *tells* you to do it, it robs you of the autonomy of the action. ",
"It changes a 'I thought of this' to 'I was told to do this'\n\nYou don't get the satisfaction or credit of coming up with the idea, and the other person who told you to do it, even though you already came up with the idea before them, gets the credit and the satisfaction of believing you're doing their bidding.\n\nA bit petty, but that's why it irritates me.",
"Because deciding to do a useful or helpful task without being asked is considered thoughtful, so telling them to do what they have already decided to do robs them of that virtue.",
"The phenomenon is called \"Reactance\" and describes a psychological defense mechanism wherein people react negatively to perceived limitations of their freedom to choose.\n\nBy telling you to do something, somebody is infringing on your freedom to chose, you no longer choose to do something, you had to.\n\nPeople by and large react negatively to this and try to establish freedom of choice again often by acting out the expressed alternative of what they are being told to do.\n\nSince this is a very emotional reaction many people don't think about it and realize it didn't matter because it is what they wanted anyway.\n\nHowever reactance can be decreased by communication and personal relationships. You are less likely to react negatively to people you like, respect, etc. as well as to positive communication.\n\nReactance can be used to manipulate people (pop psychology often calls it \"reverse psychology\", telling someone to do the opposite of what you want him to do) and is also behind such phenomenons as the \"Streisand Effect\".\n\nLet me finish by saying that, as is often the case in psychology, all this sounds incredibly obvious but is nevertheless something that has been extensively studied and empirically tested. It also goes without saying that it's not a foolproof mechanism, some people are less prone to it and obviously \"acting out\" doesn't always mean doing the opposite. You may well shovel the snow but just be pissed about it instead of happy doing it."
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2re0ic | how do hotels get their towels always so white? what sort of chemicals do they use/how often do they get replaced? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2re0ic/eli5_how_do_hotels_get_their_towels_always_so/ | {
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"Former hotel manager here:\n\nHotel detergent is no different than the detergent at home. If anything, the fact that all linens/towels are white means it's easier to bleach washes safely.\n\nLikewise, we will sort out old/damaged towels.\n\nThey get replaced at least once a year depending on use."
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9j28ub | how do we decide that this job will be paid this much money and that job will be paid that much money? who decides it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9j28ub/eli5_how_do_we_decide_that_this_job_will_be_paid/ | {
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"I think the salary is mostly decided by the employer. However much money they need to set as the salary to get someone good enough to do the amount of work they need them to. If a job is more valuable to them and requires more knowledge and work then the employer will need to set the salary higher for someone to take it. If the job doesn’t require thinking and is much easier to do they can get someone to take it for much lower.",
"Wages for most jobs are essentially settled by supply and demand.\n\nWhat is the supply of people willing and able to do that work, and what is the demand for that work?\n\nIf there is a high demand and a low supply (like petroleum engineering) then the wage will be high as companies compete to attract the few available workers.\n\nIf there is a large supply and a low demand (like big box retail) then wages plummet as workers compete for the available positions. Most places have a mandatory minimum wage to keep the oversupply of labor from pushing these wages to incredibly low levels.\n\nThen you have labor unions, who attempt to artificially restrict labor supply to increase wages - with varying degree of success."
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a1pthc | how does traffic on the freeway happen if we are all going the same speed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1pthc/eli5_how_does_traffic_on_the_freeway_happen_if_we/ | {
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"A lot of the times its because we aren't going the same speed. Some people like to change lanes multiple times to over take drivers going at the appropriate speed which is a contributing factor of traffic ",
"Reaction times. 1 person slows then speeds back up for a reason, but does so instantly. You take a 10th if a second to react before doing the same, the person behind you reacts a 10th of a second after you reacted a 10th of a second to the first driver, and it daisy chains along thousands of drivers. Before long, one person slowing for a second can be a 3 hour traffic jam later that day.",
"Sometimes, people slow down to change lanes, enter, or exit, or because there's construction. It can take a little bit for even a minor slowdown to ripple all the way back through traffic. If it's a more major slowdown, more and more cars coming up behind it will be affected and have to slow down, too.\n\nThis video does a great job of explaining it: _URL_0_",
"You'd think that if everyone was travelling at the same speed, they would all move at the same speed, evenly. But, of course, they do not travel at the same speed. Sooner or later, someone will slow down. Maybe someone changed lanes in front of them and they had to give them room. If the people behind them are close, then they too will have to slow down - perhaps more than the car in front of them. You end up with a few cars travelling slower - then the cars have to speed back up again - and here is where traffic snarls start. If cars arrive at this slowdown faster than ones at the front can speed up again, this blockage will just grow. It creates what is sort of a 'pressure wave' in the traffic.\n\nHere's where any driver can help. If a driver keeps a reasonable gap between them and the cars in front of him, then they won't have to slow down as much, or as quickly. The forming snarl just melts away. It doesn't take many drivers keeping a larger distance, and traffic jams just wouldn't happen. ",
"There's always a bottleneck.\n\nUnless the drive is completely trivial, there will always be places where traffic gets concentrated. This might be structural: a merge or an intersection or something temporary like construction or a collision. \n\nWhy does that slow traffic down? The simple way is to look at it is capacity: If 1500 cars/hour can drive *to* the bottleneck and 1000 cars/hour can drive *through* it, people are going to have to wait their turn. \n "
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4qa47w | how does alzheimer's kill a person? | As I understand it, Alzheimer's is a brain disease that affects a person's memory and sense of identity. I didn't realize that it is a disease that directly causes death. In wake of Pat Summit's rapid deterioration and death, I'm left wondering.
EDIT: So many heartbreaking stories. I'm so sorry.
Since we're on the front page and on the subject, here's a few links, should anyone be inclined to make a donation toward research (Do your homework. I don't actually know anything about these organizations):
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
_URL_2_
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qa47w/eli5_how_does_alzheimers_kill_a_person/ | {
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"Alzheimers is a degenerative brain disease, memory loss and loosing a sense of identity are only mid-term symptoms - it continues destroying the brain which will eventually cause coma, and ultimately destroys the part of the brain that regulates breathing and heart rate. \nA lot of sufferers don't get this far - they can become sick with life-threatening illnesses such as pneumonia, infections or organ damage just as much as anyone can, but they are not able to relate symptoms and seek treatment like an able-minded person can.",
"It lowers the immune system also. Not only can the person not seek medical help when diseases hit, they hit very fast and their body can't fight it off. Lost my grandfather to pneumonia last year. He was in a nursing home with alzheimers. ",
"Yes it's pretty awful.\n\nSeldom do you die from Alzheimers directly. As your brain deteriorates, you mobilize less, eat less, drink less etc. Eventually you are bedridden and will likely eventually die from pneumonia, dehydration or another other septic complication.\n\n By this time, often your care directions are for \"no heroic measures\" or \"comfort only\" so you slip away as your body fails. \n\nThis is why it is REALLY important to have a living will...",
"Sometimes people who have Alzheimer's die from eating problems. They literally forget how to chew food up and swallow it....basic eating skills and they choke on their food, or choke and then get pneumonia. \nSometimes patients will chew their food but not swallow it and store the chewed up bits in their cheeks like chipmunks, and for this reason, it is important to check to make sure that the patient has actually swallowed their food or spits it out, so they won't choke on it later.",
"No one has really touched on the facts of what Alzheimer's really does to a person on a physical level. Alzheimer's makes your body, or at least your brain, unable to break down a certain protein that is naturally formed. Most people are capable of breaking them down, but there are some people that have a certain mutated gene that when aged can suddenly ruin your ability to break them down. These proteins build up to create toxic clumps. The toxic clumps directly affect brain function and can also cause wider spread damage to the body.",
"_URL_1_\n\nYour brain wastes away and ceases to function properly on any level. It's not just memory that goes, it's everything. You can see in the pic how the AZ brain is smaller and emptier and full of holes. \n\nEdit:\n\nThere is a very beautiful story about a woman who was diagnosed with alzheimers and made the decision to end her own life before it progressed too far. It details her experience and her decision making process to live as much life as possible while ending it before she lost the capacity to do so:\n\n_URL_0_",
"alzheimer's is caused by accumulation of plaques that build up in the brain. these plaques block cells from communicating with each other and also block nutrients and waste products from getting to/from cells\n\nthese aren't plaques like the ones that form on you're teeth, they're a byproduct of stuff cells make normally but they accumulate improperly and can't be broken down",
"Alzheimer's patients accumulate protein formations called amyloid beta plaques inside their brain. These plaques are toxic and they expand as Alzheimer's progresses. The toxicity of the plaques causes nearby brain cells to die, which eventually prevents the patient from breathing air and chewing and swallowing food.",
"Alzheimer's patients tend to just sit and stare at some point. Muscles weaken, joints get stiff, heart and lungs loose their capacity. They die from any illness related to this lack of motion: usually some pneumonia on food swallowed in the lungs. ",
"Many Alzheimer's patients actually die from starvation and dehydration. They won't eat or drink, and unless they're on a feeding tube, they slowly starve, which is actually not as brutal as it sounds. \n",
"The actual cause of Alzheimer's is not clearly known. However there are two common changes in the brain of an Alzheimer's patient. \n\nFirst, your brain is made up of nerve cells and the road-like pathways between these cells are very important for relaying signals for just about anything you want to do from raising your arm, to chewing your food, to aspects such as breathing. Alzheimer's is a disease where there is either too much of a **sticky** protein part (called beta amyloid) made or not enough \"thrown away\". This leads to a buildup of these sticky proteins and it tends to cause a traffic jam and block the signals to be transmitted. \n\nOver time, the more and more plaque deposits block various pathways, slowly causing the person to be able to function less and less. \n\nThe second part occurs inside of the cells in the brain. There are parts that are like strings (neurofibrils) that are held together by tape (tau proteins) in a particular pattern normally. You can see these under a microscope. With Alzheimer's, the tape becomes tangled up on itself and allows the strings to tangle (neurofibrillary tangles) and is the main way they diagnose the disease. It is the bundle of tape that is toxic to the cell. \n\nThis being bad for the cell (and a lot of cells getting sick), there are an increase in certain cells in the brain that are responsible for throwing the trash away. This leads to the brain getting smaller, which also causes the person to lose function over time.",
"My grandad died of it 4 years ago. It took 2 years from first to final stage. It starts with words and names, then memories then activities and what year you're in, eventually it reaches the cerebral cortex which deals with automatic functions such as respiration and heartbeat etc and it makes them forget how to basic really and you die",
"We still don't understand a lot about Alzheimer's, but basically it starts off gradually as you age. Dementia and forgetting things. You go from just forgetting things, to being unable to do certain things and needing minor help. From about there you lose more ability to do things, including control of your sphincter (so you have to wear a diaper for a reason). Eventually you just lose control of a body function that's necessary like breathing.\n\nI worked in the kitchen of a home that specialized in Alzheimer care. You could have someone who was walking fine, could have a conversation with you, and a week later not be aware they were in a home. We had residents that could do everything but had lost their speech, and then would forget what a bathroom was and use a random corner. I walked into an employee bathroom and a resident had gotten in there and decided to take their feces and smear it everywhere on the floor...they literally lose everything piece by piece. I wish we knew why.",
"Why do they say women are more likely to get it than men? Is it true? If so why? ",
" I actually consider myself lucky as my mother never progressed through the violence or paranoia that so may others see, but she eventually forgot how to swallow (which even though it is something we do unconsciously, it is actually a very complex task). She got to the point where any attempt at eating resulted in her aspirating (food/liquid in the lungs). She developed pneumonia, and by then her body was just too weak to do anything about it.",
"I watched my grandmother go through it. \n\nBasically you forget how to live. It starts with memories and basic functions. But then you can't hold a spoon or fork. You can't stand. You can't walk. You can't even swallow. Your body cannot do anything to support itself. Eventually your brain deteriorates to the point where you can't \"remember\" how to live/breathe/keep a heartbeat. Then you're gone. \n\nIt's painfully slow and terrible to watch. All I hope is that the victims have no idea what is happening as they reach the end. ",
"My grandmother has Alzheimer's and I've been taking care of her for the past 5 months. She is 77 and her disease is still in the inital stages, she can do the dishes, eat normally, take a shower by herself, etc but she has trouble remembering basic things like taking her meds, throwing away the trash, she doesn't cook anymore and she was damn good at ir. And she is a VERY stubborn person and that plus the disease makes it very difficulty to take care of her.\nShe raised me when I was a kid, my parents were very careful to me and my brother but they worked their asses off we often stayed with my grandmother. Seeing someone who took good care of you and was such a lovely person withering away is so fucking hard. I'm reading the posts here about what advanced AD does to a person and I want to cry, just the thought that she won't recognize me in the inevitable future and that she won't be even be able to eat anymore hurts me like hell. \nShe lost a son 20 years ago in a drowning accident, she saw my grandfather wither away to cancer while taking care of him 3 years ago. She doesn't deserve to suffer anymore.",
"The ELI5 answer is that your brain runs your body. When your brain becomes sick - your body will suffer. Over time, your brain will be attacked in such a way that your body begins to not work properly and shut down.",
"Alzheimer's affects memory and consciousness, but it also affects other functions of the nervous system, and in its more severe forms some of those functions are all the difference between life and death.\n\nMy maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Pick's disease, which has very similar symptoms but attacks the brain differently. (She passed 23 December 2013, about 5 years after her diagnosis.) Although I, my parents and my uncle had to fight my aunt for visitations (my aunt has always been mentally ill as well), this is how I'd describe her final year of life:\n\n- 1 year before her death: motor skills begin to deteriorate. She has trouble walking and working with her hands. By this time, her short-term memory is everything but there: she can recognize my uncle because he lives in another part of the world and his memory is long-term, but she can't recognize my mother because they live in the same town.\n- 6 months before her death: has a terrible fall, becomes bedridden. By this point, she's having trouble eating, drinking and using the toilet by herself, and a caretaker had to be hired. I'm fairly certain that if I had been able to visit her, she would barely have been able to recognize me.\n- 3(?) months before her death: she has to be put on machines. I think that they found tumors or lumps around her lungs, and she was starting to have trouble breathing.\n- 1 month before her death: her internal organs start failing or deteriorating. I don't think she was able to keep her eyes open, if she could open them at all.",
"late to the party. CNA here (certified nursing assistant) aka glorified butt wiper.\n\nI worked in a neurology floor for two years and basically if someone's loved one was becoming too much of a handful, they would often be shipped over to my unit.\n\nLet me first say what I don't hear much in media about Alzheimers. Most M.D.'s cannot confirm nor determine until a postmortem autopsy of the brain is done. At least that's what our M.D.'s are having us correct patient's families with (although its never come up). Therefore I won't use the word Alzheimer's and instead say dementia.\n\nThe top comments are right on the money as to what is exactly going on. I will say from a clinical aspect to further elaborate what i've seen from cases of dementia is when a person forgets activities of daily living is that a person can become bed ridden quickly. Not to mention the drugs we give to some dementia patients only further keep them in the bed. As has been said before \"a body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest stays at rest.\" You would be surprised at the accelerated rate of atrophy a human being experiences when dementia is first diagnosed. ",
"Another really scary thing is Lewy-body Dementia. In addition to STML you get the added bonus of hallucinations!\n\nI saw some care notes for a claimant that she had to be restrained and medicated because she was convinced there were men in her room trying to kill her. I can't imagine how scary that is for someone.",
"Alzheimers leads to a buildup of \"plaque\" in the Brain. This plaque slowly begins to impair neuronal functioning. One of the components of the plaque is a protein called BACE1. Interestingly, when scientists created BACE1 knockout mice, which shouldn't be able to get alzheimers, these mice exhibited Alzheimers like symptoms from birth. Moderate to heavy caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol use all seem to significantly lower a persons probability of having Alzheimer's.\n",
"Very simply put, different parts of your brain control different aspects of your body/mind. For example a part of your brain might be responsible for movement, whilst another is responsible for speech. \n\nAlzheimer's and other dementias are what're known as neurodegenerative disorders. \nThey'll start off at a specific part of the brain and once they destroy it; move on to the next. \nMemory loss and identity loss are symptoms of the disease when those sections of the brain are destroyed. \n\nOnce the disease reaches parts of the brain responsible for regulating breathing or heartbeat; and subsequently destroys them, the patient will die unless kept alive by medical devices. \n\nAlternatively, the degeneration of the brain (and thus problems with regulating the body) can lead to an increased risk of infection. In these cases, an illness - for example pneumonia - will kill the patient. ",
"The top answers are wrong. This is a death I've witnessed many times. What tends to happen is, eventually, the drive to eat is lost, the drive to drink is lost. These go long before people enter into a 'coma' state- to keep people alive till the point their respiratory drive failed we'd have to replace their food, and why on earth would we do that? It would be cruel. At this point we bring the family and explain nothing will reverse the dementia process, and that the problem cannot be fixed. After that we keep them as comfortable as possible until dehydration causes the kidneys to fail, and the build up of toxins causes death.\n\nIt is a very, very sad process.",
"My father died a little over a year ago... five years after diagnosis. He was 61 years old. So it was early-onset, and very rapid.\n\nI never realized how intensely reliant we are upon memory, until I saw him losing it. it's not simply forgetting where things are, or who people are. its forgetting how to chew and swallow food. or having to use the toilet, but forgetting on the way to the bathroom why your in the bathroom. he would get stuck in that type of loop until he would just pace around the house...\n\njust think about how much you rely on memory every day. even the simplest task is hugely memory intensive. \n\neventually he simply couldn't communicate anymore and forgot how to breath. \n\nand while not official, I'm pretty sure he was euthanized by hospice after a tacit agreement between family.\n\nthank science for morphine. ",
"I work in a care home for people with dementia and seeing first hand how it effects people is heartbreaking. Seeing someone progressively get worse through time is horrible, people forget how to walk, how to eat and forget how to talk even ",
"Alzheimer's doesn't literally kill a person. It is the sequelae - result - of detrioration in congnition that leads to poor health. For instance, decreased hygiene leads to bladder infection, leads to larger infection leads to death. \n\nIn my field, we commonly see people with cognitive impairment who have had a fall, resulting in a broken hip. The pain of the broken hip and the stress of surgery and recovery can lead to a similar entity called delirium in which cognition and brain function deteriorate quickly. This stage is sometimes reversible and sometimes not but in either case can lead to infections in the lungs or urine or elsewhere which eventually stress the heart too much and thus the brain. \n\nAt this point often the patient can no longer feed themselves or carry on in any meaningful way until the body stops functioning and they pass away.\n\nPretty terrible but if managed correctly the end can occur in a painless and dignified manner.",
"My grandpa died from Alzheimer. Well technically. He was really old and living in the small village. He was living with my aunts and uncles, they were always locking his door before leaving the house( which I still find it stupid until this day). One day, they locked him again and I guess Alzheimer hit him and he just wanted to be free and jumped out of 2nd floor thinking nothing will happen. He broke couple of his bones and they took him to the hospital. He was there for a while but sadly he couldn't make it. This all happened while I was young but I still remember the incident . (Sorry about my English, tried my best explaining it)",
"Yes, essentially at some point the patient will simply loses the cognitive ability to do even necessary things like getting out of bed, using the restroom, or eating. The best case scenario would be that the patient is cared for long enough and well enough that eventually all neurological systems shut down. More likely however, the individual will develop complications as result of their mental degradation, i.e. bed sores, immune system failure, malnourishment. \n\nTL;DR Alzheimer's is a slow disease that progressively shuts down the brain, which does cool things like telling you that you should eat or breathe. ",
"Honestly things like alzheimer's scare me more than death. With death there is at least some closure, but with alzheimer's you never know where a person goes, if they are just trapped, or if everything they were really is just fading away. \n\nIt brings everything I know about personhood and selfhood into question...",
"Okay, the other top comments seem to be entirely missing the point. ELI5: Alzheimers is caused by losing the ability to store the neurotransmitter dopamine locally throughout the body where it usually sits ready for use by nerve cells. Without dopamine, nerve cells fail to function properly to put it simply. Treatment using l-dopa attempts to create very high levels of circulating dopamine in the hope that by keeping dopamine readily available everywhere will make up for the inability to store it. While it does greatly help, the obscenely high levels eventually cause Alzheimers like symptoms itself.",
"The brain will eventually forget everything. And by everything it doesn't limit forgetting memories, names and speaking. But it forgets to send the signals your body needs to function. It will forget that your body is hungry or not receive the signals from your empty stomach telling it so. It will forget to send signals to digest your food. It will forget how to send signals to your muscles so that you can no longer have the ability to choose when to defecate. The body is one big ship and with no one in the control room, the engines will eventually stop running",
"They forget how to eat, chew, swallow. They forget what to do when they feel thirsty. They forget to bathe, dress, use the bathroom. My husband's great aunt has it and she can't function without helpers from her bursing home.",
"It's a horrible disease. You don't forget memories, but vital functions as well. Some forget how to eat, eventually you stop breathing or your heart stops pumping. Your brain basically just stops working over time.",
"The easiest explanation is that you don't die directly from AZ. Most pts eventually become bedridden and pass away from complications.\n\nA word should be said on the rising support for euthanasia, which has become a more popular position in the last few years. AZ can only be diagnosed definitively post-mortem. There are tests that can be run on a living patient to differentiate, but the final determination is made after death. Any kind of law supporting euthanasia for certain conditions would have to rely on a definitive diagnosis for AZ. So either the criteria for a diagnosis must change or no one will ever be medically suicided for AZ.",
"Your brain ceases to exist.\n\nIncredibly scary.\n\nIt affects different people in different ways because different areas are corrupted or dissolved first, sometimes.\n\nYou may have someone who loses the ability to walk or move well and has to be hospitalized early on, but retains speaking skills. This can kill you quickly because you technically need your breathing skills and chewing skills more than you need your thinking skills, to survive.\n\nI've known a few older folks who were killed by Alzheimer's simply because they got so bad that they kept falling and injuring themselves.",
"It robs a persons mind of all memories beginning with the most recent. One regresses into the past. At the end, one is an adult baby, shitting and pissing their diapers. Eventually, one loses the ability to swallow. Death by starvation follows soon if the person is not treated heroically (stomach tube, iv). It only takes a couple of weeks to starve to death. \n\nSource: Grandmother, Mother, Aunts, Sister all lost to early onset Alzheimers.",
"So many non ELI5 answers so I'm going to try\n\nPeople need their brain to stay alive. Alzheimer's makes the brain sick and it doesn't get better. Eventually it gets so sick the person dies. ",
"Hospice nurse here.\n\nAlzheimer's generally causes someone's death when their body forgets how to perform basic functions - like swallowing or breathing or keeping a pulse.\n\nThe gradual weight loss from decreased food intake takes a toll on the body - loss of muscle mass will eventually effect the heart and breathing muscles. Sometimes patients don't have enough muscle strength to breath well anymore. This can lead to lung infections. Loss of heart muscle mass can lead to irregular heart beats and possible heart attacks.\n\ntl:dr - your body forgets how to eat, breath, and keeping your heart beating.\n\n",
"The saddest and most frustrating part of Alzheimer's is that eventually the brain:body will forget how to regulate itself. So a lot of them start having cardiac and respiratory issues. If you are a care taker and take a loved one into emergency for either of these issues they will be very lax to help. Because this is just due process of the disease. From personal experience, should you have to take a loved one with Alzheimer's to ER, do not start off by saying they have Alzheimer's. ",
"Not professional experience, but practical experience with loved ones. A lot of folks with Alzheimer's also have high blood pressure, bad hearts, COPD, diabetes, etcetera. At the end of the road, when things just stop working, the professionals generally state death by natural causes and leave the details alone.",
"The tangles and plaques eventually degenerate the part of the brain that controls heart beat and breathing. ",
"The disease is not really a disease\n\nIt is premature brain death while you are still alive\n\nBut it happens slowly\n\nFirst it is your memory and then you become a vegetable until the rest of your body gives up on living\n\nLike all cells\n\nBrain cells have a limit to how many times they can divide and it varies from person to person\n\nThis is why it is closely related to old age or trauma"
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argy6m | why do games render cutscenes real time instead of the cutscene just being a video that plays? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/argy6m/eli5_why_do_games_render_cutscenes_real_time/ | {
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"I would assume file sizes since most games with cut scenes are already large games also custom characters, different entrances, different scenes for what progress you already have done",
"More flexible and cheaper. In-game cutscenes mean you don't need external models and art, in addition to tooling; you can use your engine for everything.\n\nIt's also easier to change something. If you want to change what happens, then you just do it; you don't have to re-render it. \n\nAlso ages better, though I'm not sure anyone cares in the moment.",
"Pre rendered cut scenes are difficult to make. Cut scenes made in engine are easier to create and easier for the game to handle. Pre rendered cut scenes require a team of animators to made the cut scene from scratch, while in engine cut scenes simply require the game to write scripts for the in game assets that were already created, you can't just take the model for a character and copy and paste it in a pre rendered cut scene. Pre rendered cut scenes also take up a lot of storage space for the game. Pre rendered cut scenes also need to be loaded, while in engine cut scenes already have all the assets loaded from gameplay, so it's a seamless transition. It saves time, money, resources, processing power, storage space, and load time.",
"They use to do prerendered 3D cut scene before video card where fast enough to do it in game.\n\nWhile not the first, Blizzard was pretty good at it. I remember I played StarCraft 1 just so I could see the cut scenes. "
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jewdp | how did the concept of nations come to be? in other words, how did we come to have borders, thus countries. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jewdp/eli5_how_did_the_concept_of_nations_come_to_be_in/ | {
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"Before civilization formed we belonged to a tribe of people. These tribes often fought against each other so tribes would form territories where they could hunt and sleep and didn't let anyone in these territories. As society advanced these tribes became villages and these villages started trading with each other forming larger cities and states. These states eventually joined together to form countries.",
"Before civilization formed we belonged to a tribe of people. These tribes often fought against each other so tribes would form territories where they could hunt and sleep and didn't let anyone in these territories. As society advanced these tribes became villages and these villages started trading with each other forming larger cities and states. These states eventually joined together to form countries."
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1wjipy | why yellow man is an offensive term, but black man isn't. | ELI5:Why a black man is okay with being referred to as a black man, but an Asian man would be offended by being referred to as a yellow man. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wjipy/eli5why_yellow_man_is_an_offensive_term_but_black/ | {
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"whether a word is considered offensive or not is entirely up to usage. if black people, as a group, found the term to be offensive, most people would generally treat it as such and stop using it.\n\nas it stands, some black people dislike the only other currently accepted term, \"african-american,\" for a variety of reasons, one being that many feel no connection to africa (some trace their roots to haiti, for example), and others feel that the term is patronizing. other terms, such as \"colored,\" \"negro\" and \"afro-american\" carry painful historical baggage. consequently, hardly anyone uses them anymore, except for some elderly people. \n\nfor similar reasons, american indians generally find the term \"native american\" distasteful, along with \"red man,\" which is what white americans called them in the 19th century, while they were busy relocating them to \"reservations\" or slaughtering them wholesale (e.g., wounded knee).\n\nany of these terms could one day no longer be offensive, if those who are offended by them cease to be so, or start using the term themselves as a way of taking ownership (\"queer\" is an excellent example of a word that used to be a slur, but is now a term of pride among the LGBT community).\n\nfor what it's worth, \"yankee doodle\" was also a slur directed at american colonists by the british, but americans took ownership of that term, too, and made it a point of pride to sing the song with that name as a way of celebrating their own cultural identity.",
"Asian people are actually brown. If you're yellow it means you have liver problems. ",
"Black used to be a slur. Some artists and activists ran with the idea of making the slur into a sign of empowerment. Black is beautiful. Black power. Before the information age, it was easier to do. All the previous words rapidly evolved to represent someone from a more racist time, at best. It helped that white identity, at the time, was a sign of power. Black power was a mirror to it. \n\nYellow and red, meanwhile, are more directly associated with times when a lot of innocent people died.",
"I don't find the term \"black man\" or \"yellow man\" offensive, you silly wasp!"
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oouks | what makes megaupload different from rapidshare and hundreds of other sharing websites that are still running? | I don't understand, there is much more illegal content on RapidShare, so what makes is "better" than MU? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oouks/eli5_what_makes_megaupload_different_from/ | {
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"It's like when all of you are talking while the teacher is, and she only chooses one of you to call out.",
"Simple answer: Nothing.\n",
" > “we have a funny business . . . modern days pirates :)” \n > ORTMANN responded, “we’re not pirates, we’re just providing shipping services to pirates :)”\n\n\nThe admins of megaupload were paying people to upload pirated content, and helping users find pirated materials.\n\n \n > 32r.\n \n > On or about February 5, 2007, VAN DER KOLK sent an e-mail to \n > ORTMANN entitled “reward payments”. Attached to the e-mail was a \n > text file listing thefollowing proposed reward amounts, the \n > _URL_6_ username, and the contentthey uploaded:\n > > 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 10+ Full popular DVD rips (split files), a fewsmall porn movies, some software with keygenerators (warez)\n\n > > 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] 5845 files in his account, mainly Vietnamese content\n\n > > 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] Popular DVD rips\n\n > > 100 USD [USERNAME DELETED] Some older DVD rips + unknown (Italianserries?) rar files\n\n > > 1500 USD [USERNAME DELETED] known paid user (vietnamese content)\n\n > The last individual received at least $55,000 from the Mega Conspiracy through transfers fromPayPal Inc., as part of the “Uploader Rewards” program.\n\nThey knew they were making money of piracy, and refused to take down infringing content in the same way they would take down child porn. If the admins had acted like professonals, none of this would have happened.\n\n[the full text is here](_URL_0_)\n\nAlso, the decided to go and sue other download sites for illegal content.\n\n > Our legal team in the US is currently preparing to sue some of our competitors andexpose their criminal activity. We like to give you a heads up and advice you not to work with sites that are known to pay uploaders for pirated content. They are damaging theimage and the existence of the file hosting industry (see whats happening with the ProtectIP act). Look at _URL_1_, _URL_2_, _URL_4_, _URL_5_,_URL_3_. These sites pay everyone (no matter if the files are pirated or not)and have NO repeat infringer policy. And they are using PAYPAL to pay infringers.",
"I think a lot of what worsened MegaUpload's case was things like MegaVideo (a service of theirs), which allowed people to stream TV shows, movies, etc. I'm sure the MPAA was none too happy about that. "
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5mpdop | why does orange juice from tropicana taste different from simply orange if they're both 100% orange juice? | I've taste tested both of these. They taste different, despite both saying 100% Orange Juice with no preservatives or additives.
Neither has pulp, and both bottles were bought on the same day. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mpdop/eli5_why_does_orange_juice_from_tropicana_taste/ | {
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"Orange juice from a supermarket typically has been processed a great deal. It may have been heat treated to kill germs. It may have been stored for months. It may have been concentrated and then restored. It may have been frozen and then thawed. It may have extra orange flavor added (extract from additional oranges) to intensify the flavor.",
"Back in the day--maybe pre-1990s?--year-round fresh (not frozen, not concentrate) OJ was not as common and was more expensive. Then, some great new process was devised and it became more common and cheaper. With the new process, it's squeezed, then stored in vats for months at a time. This process caused it to lose flavor. So flavor is added before it is sold. Different brands have slightly different flavor processes so taste different. And these have a different flavor and consistency than genuine fresh-squeezed OJ. Go get some genuine fresh squeezed from Whole Foods or similar and you'll taste the difference.",
"OJ is deoxygenated to prevent spoilage. That causes flavor loss. Companies create ^artificial natural flavor packs from \"Orange essence and oils\" to reflavor the OJ. Every company uses different blends.\n\n\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\n\nEdit: also... _URL_1_",
"\"Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh.\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"This is just another reason you should eat fruit instead of juice. Have a fresh, delicious orange 🍊 ",
"One of the reasons that you get different flavors is time spent in processing and travel. But the biggest determiner of flavor is the orange it self. Both Tropicana and Simply Orange use oranges from Florida but they also use fruit from South America because it's cheaper. Florida's Natural however, only uses fruit from local growers and imho tastes much better! \n\nSource: my family owns an orange grove that sells its oranges to Florida's Natural and my grandfather was the president of the citrus growers association for years and years.",
"As already mentioned they probably have different \"Extras\" in them, but even if you would have 2 Bottles of 100% freshly pressed Juice they could taste different because some Oranges are sweeter and some are more Sour usw. If we would make everything with our own Hands the most things would taste slighty different each time we make them .",
"There are dozens of types of oranges: navels, tangelos, tangerines, temples, mercots, hamlins, valencias, parson brown, etc.\n\nJust like apples, every different type of orange looks and tastes a bit different. Some are better for eating fresh and some are better for juice. Some are very popular, some are not as popular, and some are cheap since there is a huge supply and some are expensive. Some are grown in Florida, some in California, and some in Brazil. \n\nSo every manufacturer sources their oranges from a different place and of course that makes them taste a bit different. And as other posters mentioned, December is the main time for oranges to be harvested, with some a bit before that to a bit after that. \n\nFreezes can damage or reduce the crop forcing juice manufacturers to change the mix of oranges they use. Since we need orange juice year round, some manufactures put the juice in giant oxygen-free holding tanks at 33 degrees and keep it there for up to six months. This damages the taste so they add in \"flavor packs\" which are also made from orange oils (which I think is somehow distilled out of the orange peels, but I'm not really sure).\n\nSo you can see, there are hundreds of variables which go into how orange juice tastes, and the big companies spend tons of money making sure that their juice tastes the same no matter what time of year it is, or what materials they have to make it with. ",
"Because they mislead you. 100% pure orange juice (from concentrate). This is why there is no pulp. \n\nIt is a bit like instant soup. They make it. Cook and dry it into a powder (concentrate) and then add water back i to it when they bottle it for sale.\n\nIf you want real fruit juice your best bet is making ir yourself. You can always check the ingredients. It is the only plac they are not allowed to lie.",
"Yep, OJ is fucked up. Also when you see low calorie /low sugar juice it means they add water and dilute the juice. So you just bought diluted juice, when you could dilute it for yourself. When you see \"juice\" labeled as juice drinks, juice cocktails, etc are not 100% fruit juice. ",
"The sugar content and taste of an orange varies depending on where it's produced.\n\nWhen Simply Orange was introduced Minute Maid chose to use a blend of oranges from different sources, with different sugar contents and tastes, in order to produce a product that both tastes like what they want and has a very consistent taste across different batches. Tropicana uses different rules for determining what goes into each batch, which results in both a different and less consistent taste.\n\nSource: My father, retired, worked for Minute Maid at a factory which produced Simply Orange.",
"Basically there are a lot of ingredients that companies don't have to list, such as flavors packs.\nTropicana is orange flavored orange juice.",
"Because *[neither](_URL_0_)* is actually orange juice. ",
"[Simply Orange is anything but that, it's a Frankenstein's monster of orange juice.](_URL_0_)",
"My wife worked at the Tropicana factory in Los Angeles. The stuff that went in the bottles for the expensive naked juice brand was the same as the stuff out in the cheap Tropicana bottles. Same shit, marketed to two different people at two price points ",
"Bascially what everyone has said. A good experiment to try is squeeze your own oranges and compare it to bottled juice. Of course its gonna ve different tastes, but the color of the juice and sweetness will be different (the bottled will have more orange flavor and be sweeter).\n\nStatistically children prefer bottled if they are exposed to both, because of the flavor (children, since they are still developing, can't taste all the same flavors adults can, and rely on sweetness more then anything else).",
"And yet again if more people just watched Adam ruins everything this sub would be a little more intelligent (meant with no slight at you OP).... As seen in the video that I'm going to link ( _URL_0_ ), Adam, the shows host, explains; that when OJ is made, and to have it have a decent shelf life they have to take out all the oxygen from the juice. By doing that it removes the flavor from it. However, you still have a flavor from it because they added \"natural\" flavors that was made in a lab that also produces other scents like famous perfumes and what not.",
"It's worth noting that in addition to what everyone else has said, juices are typically pasteurized - heated to kill bacteria and other microorganisms that could cause them to spoil. However, different companies may use different pasteurization conditions - different temperatures and lengths of time - which could affect the flavor compounds differently.",
"[Adam Ruins Everything](_URL_0_) explained it well."
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bmsjg8 | - how is it that pot eases or stops nausea/vomiting but can also cause cannabis hyperemesis syndrome or cyclical vomiting? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bmsjg8/eli5_how_is_it_that_pot_eases_or_stops/ | {
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" Biologist here!\n\nWhen THC hits the brain, it bonds to special forms of dopamine and serotonin receptors that the body uses to trigger vomiting and nausea. Since opiates are very dopamine like, they can bond to these receptors as well, causing nausea.\n\n\nBut when THC bonds to it, it attaches to it without actually activating it. This blocks the bodies nausea chemicals from forming a bond until the body can send the enzyme to break it down.\n\n\nTHC, for a reason were not too sure of yet, also bonds to receptors inside the intestines that trigger reflex nausea and vomiting, but with the thc stimulating the receptors without triggering its switch in the brain, the puke signals are over powered\n\n\nWe think that when the thc bonds to the gut in normal people, we get nauseous but the brain being stimulated by the THC takes priority, it blocks out the puke signal and we go about our high,\n\nBut as a tolerance builds, the liver and brain find a faster way to break the THC off of the puke receptors, allowing the vomiting signals from the gut receptors, a place the brain receptor enzyme has no effect.\n\nSince the “high” becomes shorter and shorter and it takes more and more thc to effect the brain, CHS and vomiting can be triggered by THC still in the blood but metabolized from the brains chemical receptors, allowing the gut signals to say “PUKE HOMIE!” And the brain say “ON IT BRO”"
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3jdzp8 | why is germany so accepting towards the immigrants in europe right now. did they just smile and say come on in or what? how is this happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jdzp8/eli5_why_is_germany_so_accepting_towards_the/ | {
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"Germany kind of as a...history of massive human rights violations when nobody would help their people escape to safety. When they say \"never again\", they mean they want to prevent that kind of horror everywhere they can."
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1cl835 | east and west berlin | What happened and why there is east and west?
This is in response to the post in frontpage entitled **East/West Berlin divide...** | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cl835/eli5_east_and_west_berlin/ | {
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"After the Second World War the city was occupied by the allied parties. The Western countries occupied the west of the city and the Soviet Union the east. Access between the two regions was generally restricted. \n\nDuring the 1960's the USSR built a wall surrounding East Germany to prevent western influence and to stop immigration to the west by the East Germans. The two sections of Berlins spent the next 20+ years developing separately from each other. West Berlin largely developed and flourished similarly to West Germany and East Berlin, like East Germany, followed the Soviet economic model and generally stagnated. \n\n",
"After WWII, Germany as a county was split up between the Allies (Britain, France, USA, and the USSR). This also happened to the capital of Berlin. Growing differences between the capitalist and communist ways of running things caused a divide between the Soviet Union and the other three nations. Eventually the more productive and skilled members of society (doctors, lawyers, teachers) in East Germany realized life wasn't going to be so wonderful, and headed into West Berlin. \n\nThe East German government realized that losinging the intellectuals would only create more problems, so they got permission from the Soviets to build the Berlin Wall under the guise of an anti-fascist protection barrier which was built all around West Berlin. It started as just a barbed wire fence, but as time went on several upgrades where put in place up until the mid 1980's. The final state of the Wall was quite something including things like guard towers, raked sand, mines, anti-vehicle barricades, and patrolling dogs.",
"As I would tell my son, who's 5…\n\nJust like 'Asterix and the Great Divide', two groups of people of Berlin disagreed on how a city should work.\n\nOver time the disagreements got so big, that the rulers of one side (the East) decided to build a wall to 'protect' themselves from the people they disagreed with on the other side. Really, though, this was to stop people form running away to the West, where people felt that they were freer, richer and happier.\n\nThe city had these two parts from 1945 until 1990 (45 years), and wall from 1961.\n\nIn time, the side on the East began to change itself and eventually the divided city became one.\n\nIf you're interested in knowing any more, ask your Mother, she grew up in the East…"
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385vnz | what makes some foods 'fancy', such as fancy ketchup and whole fancy cashews? | Currently looking at a bottle of Fancy Ketchup. Can't for the life of me recall ever seeing plain old non fancy ketchup. And why aren't more things fancy? I could go for a nice glass of Fancy Orange Juice. What gives? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/385vnz/eli5_what_makes_some_foods_fancy_such_as_fancy/ | {
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"A quick Google search for simply \"Fancy Ketchup\": \n \n > According to Heinz, “fancy” is simply a USDA designation that producers are allowed to use for marketing if their product meets the standards of US Grade A/US Fancy tomato ketchup, which possesses a **better color, consistency and flavor, and has fewer specks and particles and less separation of the liquid/solid contents** than US Grade B/US Extra Standard Ketchup and US Grade C/US Standard Ketchup.",
"Fancy ketchup has a higher specific gravity. Basically, it's thicker while non-fancy ketchup is more water-y."
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5echqr | how did the us invade afghanistan? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5echqr/eli5_how_did_the_us_invade_afghanistan/ | {
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"Just read this: \n_URL_0_\n\nExplore that site to get more information on the Afghanistan war. \n\n"
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"http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-led-attack-on-afghanistan-begins"
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5ncd1c | why do they say, "scrambles" jet? as in - taiwan scrambles fighter jets as chinese navy enters taiwanese sea. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ncd1c/eli5_why_do_they_say_scrambles_jet_as_in_taiwan/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\n > to move hastily and with urgency\n\n > to collect or organize (things) in a hurried or disorderly manner (often followed by together or up)\n\n > to cause to move hastily, as if in panic\n\nAnd finally:\n\n > Military. to cause (an intercepting aircraft or pilot) to take off in the shortest possible time, in response to an alert.\n",
"Scientific? No.\n\nMilitary? Yes.\n\n\"Scrambling\" refers to rapidly deploying a plane to respond to an immediate threat. ",
"Oddly the only thing that's not necessarily accurate is the \"Taiwanese sea\" part. Which is sort of not a thing, and likely what would amount to Taiwanese sea is pretty much violated regularly due to the existence of kinmen and Lienching counties right off the Chinese coast. It's pretty likely that the Taiwanese government will \"scramble\" jets every time that a Chinese warship leaves Fujian or crosses between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese coast, which probably happens with a great deal of regularity due to the alternative being miles out of the way and also crossing through Japanese territory."
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d7b9vi | why do temperatures differ across the world in direct sunlight with no cloud coverage? | How can it be 25 degrees in one country and 40 in another from the same sun? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d7b9vi/eli5_why_do_temperatures_differ_across_the_world/ | {
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"The angle at which the Sun hits the Earth in Northern or Southern parts of the globe means that the Sun's energy is spread over a larger area so they don't warm up as much.",
"The sun isn't the only factor in temperature. Altitude, latitude, weather systems, cities, vegetation, all impact temperature"
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18pcj0 | why is the jewish ethnicity so much whiter than arabs if they both came from the middle-east? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18pcj0/eli5_why_is_the_jewish_ethnicity_so_much_whiter/ | {
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"Persians are often very pale.\n\nNot all middle eastern ethnic groups are dark skinned. Jews have also intermingled with Northern European and Slavic peoples over the centuries.",
"Most of the Jews you are referring to are European Jews, who have intermarried with other Europeans for hundreds of years.\n\nThere are many dark skinned Jewish groups.",
"Jews are a diverse group of people. There are three main types of Jewish people:\n\n* Ashkenazi: origins in northwestern and eastern Europe\n\n* Sephardic: origins in the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal)\n\n* Mizarahi: origins in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia\n\nYou are probably thinking of Ashkenazi Jews. Ashkenazi Jews have been in Europe for centuries and have intermarried with Europeans to a certain extent, which explains their appearances. But then again, Jews mostly tend to resemble their neighbors, no matter where they're from.\n\n* [Yemenite Jews](_URL_5_)\n\n* [Indian Jews](_URL_3_)\n\n* [Ethiopian Jews](_URL_0_)\n\nJews of all backgrounds share a [common ancestry](_URL_4_). Jews are also [related to Arabs](_URL_6_). Westerners often assume that Arabs are darker than Jews but this isn't always true. Arabs can resemble Europeans, like this [little girl](_URL_2_) or [Africans](_URL_1_). Most Lebanese people are very Caucasian looking while most Sudanese (the ones in the north who identify themselves as Arabs) are very African looking.\n\nArab and Jewish are ethno-linguistic terms that don't have much to do with race, but rather with language, religion, and culture. The Middle East is the crossroads for Asia, Europe, and Africa. Many different groups of people have left their genetic imprint there. ",
"Furthermore, Arabs from \"Levantine\" countries (Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Iraq) are in many instances very light-skinned with colored eyes.",
"I'm a persian Jew and I'm very white. However I go to a Orthodox Jewish school were their are very different colors and ethnicity within the students, one of my friends happen to be black because he's one of the Jews from ethiopia, I also have dark friends from Morocco and persian friends that are also dark. It just depends on the family",
"Most of the Jewish people in the US are Ashkenazi which are just Russian/European immigrants who came to the US. They're mostly white and only have a minor genetic link to the middle east."
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1f0lcv | what it would be like if i was sucked into a black hole | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1f0lcv/eli5_what_it_would_be_like_if_i_was_sucked_into_a/ | {
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"You'd be ripped in half and then those halves would be ripped in half until the components of your atoms couldn't be broken any further.\n\nAssuming you some how discovered a way to fly in a black hole without having to live through the experience of dying you'd see nothing but blackness after a \"hole\" to the outside universe got small and smaller, like falling into a super deep well. Every direction you try to fly in leads down. Up becomes down. Right and left become down. Down becomes down. \n\nThis is for a non-spinning black hole. Spinning black holes actually spit you back out many years in the future. (thousands, millions, billions)\n\n**Edit: after you're pieces get ripped in half and you're close to entering the event horizon, you'd get radiation nuked by all the radiation in the entire universe that the black hole had collected up until that point**\n\n**Once you were in the hole, you'd watch the entire history of the universe until it's death (assuming the universe has an end) blue shift by and then you and the black hole would cease to exist. Forgot to add these bits after looking it up**",
"A process called \"spaghettification\" (I kid you not) where gravity stretches your body until you're nothing but a long string of atoms. Needless to say you don't survive this process, although the point where you lose sensory input and/or actually die for real is probably up for debate. Because of time dilation, you'll probably perceive the entire thing in hyper slow motion.\n\nThe odd thing is that I vaguely recall reading an article once that suggested this may actually be incorrect, but I can't remember where and thus have no source.",
"[Death By Black Hole - NDT](_URL_0_)"
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j2xho | can somebody please explain the theory of relativity to me, like i'm five? | And why does this make faster than light travel impossible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2xho/can_somebody_please_explain_the_theory_of/ | {
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"I'll start, but I don't know if I can finish.\n\nPicture yourself next to a clock tower, we'll use Big Ben as an example. The moment that Big Ben says that it is noon, you fly off in your rocket ship at **half** the speed of light. Now, even though you are flying off at an obviously high speed, lets say that you can still see the clock the whole time. \n\nTwo minutes later, it's 12:02, right? Well, you have traveled the distance that light can travel in one minute (since you're going half speed), so you read the clock as 12:01 since only that light which bounced off the clock has reached you so far, so only 1 minute has actually passed, instead of 2.\n\nIt's not a complete answer, but it gives you a visual for time dilation.\n\nAs for the second question, I forget for the moment. It has to do with time dilation though.",
"The first part is in the name. \"Relativity\". That is, everything is relative to the observer.\n\nImagine yourself on a train zooming along down the tracks. You bounce a ball on the table in front of you. What do you see? A ball bouncing straight up and down.\n\nNow imagine someone is at the side of the tracks and they see you bouncing the ball. What do they see? A ball describing arcs (i.e. it hits the table and as it travels up it moves \"forward\" to its apex then back down to the table...the person on the side of the tracks, if the plotted its movement, would see it traveling in an arc).\n\nWho is right? Is it going straight up and down or moving in an arc? Actually you are both right at the same time although you are both seeing very different results.\n\nThat simple thought experiment is profound when you consider the implications (e.g. two people can disagree on the order of events). Read up on \"Frames of Reference\" for more.\n\nSo, that is where the \"relativity\" part comes from but you have not specified the General Theory or the Special Theory.\n\nThe above is the Special Theory of Relativity (also where E=MC^2 comes from).\n\nThe more complex (and published after and separate) is the General Theory of Relativity. \n\nThe General Theory relates the geometry of space-time. Powerful stuff. Gave the world a new view on gravity and ushered in the likes of Black Holes.\n\nThe General Theory posits that \"gravity\" is the warping of space itself. Akin to a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline. If you roll a marble past the bowling ball it will be deflected like something would passing the Earth. Of course this is simplified but gives you a good idea to visualize it.\n\nAs for FTL travel it is in the E=MC^2 equation. Sorry if it is past a 5 year-old to understand but that is it. Energy and mass are interchangeable. As you increase energy (speed) you increase mass. Mass is multiplied by a really big number (speed of light squared). If you keep pushing it you find you need infinite energy to go the speed of light. Obviously there is not that much in the whole Universe.\n",
"I'll give a good attempt.\n\nWithout the theory of relativity, if a person moves at the speed of light \"c\" and observes a beam of light, the beam of light would look like a stationary particle of light. It was discovered, however that no matter how fast you move, light is always observed to move at the speed \"c\". \n\nThis is when Einstein had his one of his famous thought experiments. If relativity did not apply and a person was holding a mirror while riding a bicycle near the speed of light, he would would not see himself in the mirror immediately. However, because the speed of light is always \"c\", he always would see himself in the mirror almost instantaneously.\n\nThrough these contradictions, he found the answer. *Time and space* must morph to keep the speed of light \"c\". \n\nIf you were to race a light particle, moving near \"c\" and had a friend observe the finish line, the friend would say \"wow, you were close, just right behind the light particle\". And then you would say \"are you kidding? The light particle raced ahead and beat me by a mile.\" That's because in your perspective, as you accelerated closer to the speed of light, the race track seemed to proportionally longer, preventing you from beating the particle of light and preventing you from reaching the speed of light. Also, you got heavier as you approached light speed, requiring you to have infinite amount of energy to reach \"c\".\n\nYour friend recorded your race and the computer analysis did show that you got slimmer in the direction you were racing (and returned to normal size once you stopped). Also, the tracked had weight sensors beneath it and it confirmed that you gained mass (and again lost it once you stopped).\n\nYour camera recording your friend also showed him getting slimmer as you approached \"c\".\n\nYou and your friend checked your watches. They are now our of sync, because time slowed for you compared to your friend, in order to maintain \"c\". You say you crossed the finish line at this time, your friend a different time! You both have video footage to prove both! Who is correct?\n\n###### You both are! As I said, space and time morphed to maintain \"c\"\n\ntldr; the speed of light is constant, space and time are not. Space and time will morph to prevent you from reaching \"c\"",
"to quote Einstein himself: \"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. When he sits on a hot stove for a minute it seems like an hour. That's relativity.\"\n\n(An explanation of relativity which he gave to his secretary Helen Dukas to convey to non-scientists and reporters, as quoted in Best Quotes of '54, '55, l56 (1957) by James B. Simpson; also in Expandable Quotable Einstein (2005) edited by Alice Calaprice)"
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3vc9mo | why old wine or whisky are more expensive then new one? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vc9mo/eli5_why_old_wine_or_whisky_are_more_expensive/ | {
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"In addition to the product taking on more sought after flavor characteristics, there is also the issue of evaporation during the aging process... for example, a whiskey barrel might lose half its volume when aged 18-20 years--known as the angel's share. So if you have to spend the time, effort and resources to create the whiskey and then lose half while it ages, what's left needs to cost more to absorb the cost. And also don't forget the cost of real estate to store all those barrels all that time. ",
"I'm going to answer about wine because I don't know too much about how the aging process works with whisky. I know that it's done in a fairly similar way, but IIRC whisky is primarily aged in the barrel and not the bottle. \n\nWine is aged in both the bottle and the barrel. With wines, they can absorb flavor from the wood of the barrel and also the microorganisms in the wine itself continue to eat the sugars in the wine and produce compounds that deepen the flavor profile. This reaction between the microorganisms and the sugars in the wine takes time to happen. \n\nNot all wines and whiskys are meant to be aged for prolonged periods of time. With wine, most bottles are meant to be consumed within at maximum of a year after the purchase. Only select wines are meant to be aged. Usually these bottles will cost well over what a typical person spends on a bottle, so the original price of the bottle was already expensive. The price is further driven up because it takes a very specific environment in order to age wine. The temperature, humidity, amount of light, and the placement of the bottle must all be kept under near perfect conditions for very old wines to mature and for their flavor profiles to improve. All these conditions cost money to maintain, plus people must devote their lives to overseeing this process. Any product that takes over 30 years to make is going to cost a lot because of the sheer amount of time spent in maintaining the product. All this combined makes for a very expensive bottle. "
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sdre3 | why does alcohol and lemon juice hurt like hell on a cut, but hydrogen peroxide doesn't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sdre3/why_does_alcohol_and_lemon_juice_hurt_like_hell/ | {
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"Have you ever used hydrogen peroxide? It stings like a bitch.",
"Whatchu talkin about, Willis? Shit stings more than alcohol. ",
"Weird. I've always heard that peroxide stung in a cut. \nWell anyhow, lemon juice probably hurts because it has acid in it. Acid \"tears\" parts of your cells apart, and triggers pain.\nAlcohol i'm less sure about, but I think it could be a combination of evaporation effects and alcohol causing parts of your cell membranes to dissolve. \n\nHydrogen peroxide isn't super damaging to human cells (and most other animals) because many human cells have an enzyme called catalase, which quickly turns H2O2 to water and oxygen, without allowing the H2O2 to damage parts of the cell during its decomposition. Most bacteria don't have this ability to deal with peroxide, and so it is used as a disinfectant.\n\nHowever, i've heard a lot of people say that peroxide is no longer recommended for injuries. Not super sure about that, really.\n\nHere's my primary sources. [Alcohol stinging](_URL_2_). [More](_URL_0_). [Catalase wikipedia](_URL_1_).",
"This raises an interesting question, because like you I do not feel pain from putting H2O2 on my cuts; though it appears that others do not share this quality with us. "
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9vaxs5 | why do some usb-c cables have different functionality than others? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9vaxs5/eli5_why_do_some_usbc_cables_have_different/ | {
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"USB-C is the physical port on the end of the wire. It doesn't imply anything about the actual capacity of the wire it's connected to. That's what 2 vs 3.1 is about.",
"The biggest change introduced in USB 3.0 was the new superspeed mode for USB. However this mode no longer uses a single cable pair for data but now use different cable pairs for transmit and receive. This allows for much higher data rates. But you still have the same high speed mode that were introduced in USB 2.0 using the original data pair. The USB-A and USB-B plugs as well as the Micro-B plug were modified to have extra pins while still being backwards compatible. In addition the new USB-C connector comes with the superspeed pins. However not all cables includes the superspeed wires as this more then doubles the manufacturing cost of the cable. And for most use cases there is no need for superspeed. There is also issues with impedance matching for the higher transfer rates. In general if there is some variations in the cable along the way this will be visible on the signal as additional noise which makes data transfer difficult. So low quality cables or damaged cables can produce errors in the signals which causes the devices to fall back to lower speed modes.",
"USB2 is carried through different pins/wires than USB3/TBT is on. To make a cheap charge cable, all you really need to run is the USB2 wires. The USB3/TBT/DP high speed pairs can be left out of the cable.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nTBT3 cables are required to be \"marked\" for TBT3 with the use of a PD controller inside the cable. This basically certifies that the cable is 20gbps/40gbps capable. Without the TBT3 marker, the host system shouldn't negotiate a TBT3 link over the cable.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nLength constraints and re-timing can further constrain a cable to a certain subset of protocols.\n\nTo further complicate the type-c cable ecosystem, there are new cables and connectors coming out that specifically support nVidia \"Virtual Link\" VR ports.",
"Your assumption that they have the same amount of wires is incorrect.\n\nThe whole standard is a bit of a minefield for what speeds you get with what.\n\nTO make it even more confusing when you start talking about the actual speed of the cable the naming conventions are awful.\n\nUSB 2\n\nUSB 3.0\n\nUSB 3.1 gen1 (now the same as USB 3.0 - 5Gbps)\n\nUSB 3.1 gen2 (10Gbps link speed)\n\nThen you roll in thunderbolt 3 as well. This uses an optical link (I think) and has a chip in the end of the cable converting signals.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nYou can usually tell what speed the cable is by what is printed on the cable. USB 3 is \"SS\" USB 3.1 gen2 is \"SS10\" TB3 has a lighting symbol.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nELI5: Well, if you imagine a big pipe then USBC refers to the ends of the pipe that act as connectors. Depending on how much money gets spent on the pipe it can be a lot of different widths. The wider the pipe, the faster the contents will travel. The ends of the pipe are capable of delivering a LOT of contents, but often the pipe itself is too thin so the contents get slowed. USB2 is a very thin pipe, thunderbolt 3 is a very large pipe.",
"USB-C is a flexible standard for the hardware - the connectors, cables, etc.\n\nPart of the USB-C standard is that it supports variations based on different USB protocol standards (the protocol standards define what is actually sent over the cable).\n\nSo the USB-C standard allows USB-C cables that only support the USB 2.0 protocol standard and cables that support the USB 3.1 protocol standard.\n\nThe USB-C cables supporting the USB 2.0 standard use the same connectors but have fewer wires in the cable than the ones supporting USB 3.1. \n\nYou can read about it in significant detail here: _URL_0_",
"I feel like I need an ELI3 follow up to these answers.\n\nI have a ton of different type of USB chargers for all sorts of things in my house. How do I know what is USB C? What are the other types? \n\nThere are the old apple ones, the new apple ones, the little rombus looking ones, the tiny little ones and other miscellaneous types.\n\nWhy aren't they standard, and why should I care which one a certain thing has? \n\nThe sad thing is I'm in IT, but my knowledge of USB has never gone, below, find the matching plug and plug it in. "
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oujzf | what do paramount, 20th century fox, columbia and all those companies from intros of films do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/oujzf/eli5_what_do_paramount_20th_century_fox_columbia/ | {
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"They make those films.",
"They provide the money and resources."
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4uvrvo | why do companies pay for sports stadium naming rights? i mean, does "progressive field" really want me to buy their car insurance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uvrvo/eli5why_do_companies_pay_for_sports_stadium/ | {
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"On a direct level, no it probably doesn't make you want to buy insurance.\n\nBut, if you were shopping for insurance and your choices were Progressive, Company B, and Company C, you'd probably choose Progressive. They have klout, they are big and have enough money to pay for a stadium, which means, presumably, that they will be able to afford a claim that you make. They also aren't going to randomly go bankrupt any time soon. You hear their name everywhere. \n\nIt's called brand recognition. The ad doesn't magically make you go buy car insurance. But it does make you subconsciously more aware of Progressive than their competitors.",
"That's exactly what they're doing. They're spending a bunch of money so that every time the announcers on a televised game come back from a commercial they have to say something like \"we're here live at Safeco Field where the Mariners are leading the Blue Jays 2-1 in the 6th inning\". Tickets for the game will say 7:00pm at Safeco Field, people reading about the game in the newspaper the next day will see Safeco Field in the article. When I drive past the stadium, I'l lsee a big sign saying \"Safeco Field\" and so on.\n\nThe more often I see or hear about Safeco, the more likely I am to think about them the next time I need insurance. "
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5qxjwl | if buying and selling stocks is gambling, who is the house? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qxjwl/eli5_if_buying_and_selling_stocks_is_gambling_who/ | {
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"It's gambling only in the sense that people don't really know the outcome, and even skillful players can lose. \n\nTo the extent there's a house, it's the brokers, who take some form of commissions on trades and so make money no matter what, the way a casino might take 1% of a poker pot."
]
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bn3lbm | why dont phone companies use those paper kindle screens so people can see easier outside? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bn3lbm/eli5_why_dont_phone_companies_use_those_paper/ | {
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"People ask more of their phones than e-paper style displays are generally ideal for. Things like watching video, taking pictures, etc. e-Paper at the moment has pretty unfavourable refresh rates which makes smooth motion a poor user experience. That's fine for static text on a page, like a book.\n\nOccasionally some manufacturers have toyed with the idea for ultra-basic calls-and-texts-only kind of phones, but the concept hasn't really caught and I suspect until the e-Paper concept matures to a point of fluid motion, it'll be a tough sell for a wide appeal.",
"If you're referring to cell phone manufacturers, the biggest reason is that the refresh rate is simply far too low to be usable for much of anything aside from telling time or reading a book. In addition, color is only just now showing up in e-ink displays, so most units would be monochrome.\n\nShort version is that the market for people who would want that is too small to justify any company making them yet."
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4y9ag3 | what is that extremely painful feeling in the chest you get if you gag while brushing too far back the tongue? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4y9ag3/eli5_what_is_that_extremely_painful_feeling_in/ | {
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"That's called a gag reflex. FYI you probably couldn't give a very good blowjob if you have one",
"The pain you feel is likely discomfort from the muscles of your esophagus (connects your mouth to your stomach) contracting in an attempt to vomit"
]
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2ge8kj | why haven't other countries like usa, britain, russia taken action against isis and just end the executions of reporters and citizens? | I'm sorry if this comes out as ignorant or "shoot first ask questions later"-esque. But I truly am intrigued as to what the situation is like over there and why ISIS hasn't been put down yet. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ge8kj/eli5_why_havent_other_countries_like_usa_britain/ | {
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"Think about what you're asking here:\n\nWhy wouldn't a bunch of countries want to send thousands of men/women overseas to potentially die, burn through billions of dollars in war costs, get further involved in a politically complex and charged region, and potentially provoke further Muslim terrorist reprisals, all to potentially help some random foreigners and a tiny handful of reporters?",
"There's a recent history of interventions not working too well. \n\nIraq = a nasty dictator removed. Country is in disarray. Billions spent.\n\nAfghanistan = nasty group waiting for US to leave to start again, Billions spent.\n\nLibya = a nasty dictator removed. Country is in disarray. Less spent. \n\nSyria = muscles flexed, arms provided to anti-Assad, you know ISIS and the like. \n\nDon't think another intervention is a good idea. It'd make things worse.",
"When it comes war, you have to weigh up how many lives you are going to save versus how many soldiers are going to die in the conflict. Clearly all out war to save the lives of a few journalists is pushing it a bit as many more would likely die in the process.\n\nSo why haven't they launched a small scale attack then? Well, it turns out they have, it just hasn't been that widely reported. The US launched a special forces mission to try and rescue James Foley just a few weeks before he was executed. It failed, which is probably why you don't hear much about it.\n\n"
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ewtcf1 | how does a vector work in the fourth dimension? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ewtcf1/eli5_how_does_a_vector_work_in_the_fourth/ | {
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"Vectors work the same in a 4 dimensional space as they do in a 2 dimensional space. Sure, you can't visualize them, because you don't have 4 dimensional space to work in, but all the math operations work the same way.",
"Instead of imagining dimensions as purely axes of Cartesian space, imagine them as simply a quantifiable measure of something. It could be intensity (of light for example), XYZ position, time, color, number of sneezes, whatever. Now a vector can be imagined as a change of some quality (or qualities) of an object in the reference frame of some combination of dimensions. That’s it."
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cqvbrb | why are products packaged in a way with so much space and air within them? | And why not just use a smaller packaging to save waste? (I’m talking about stuff like chips) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cqvbrb/eli5_why_are_products_packaged_in_a_way_with_so/ | {
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"Potato Chips need that extra air to not only cushion them, to keep the chips from just crumbling to dust while being transported, but also to help keep them from going bad, as the nitrogen inside the bags is designed to keep them preserved until opened. \n\n\nIn many cases, the extra packaging has a reason, and generally it's \"to make sure it makes it from the factory to the store safely.\""
]
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1zja4d | what does it mean when a country "scrambles the jets?" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zja4d/eli5what_does_it_mean_when_a_country_scrambles/ | {
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"In military aviation, scrambling is the act of quickly getting military aircraft airborne to react to an immediate threat, usually to intercept hostile aircraft.\n"
]
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3gq5p6 | is a persons strength (generally) automatically proportional to their size? why or why not. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gq5p6/eli5_is_a_persons_strength_generally/ | {
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"No, strength increases relative to body size the smaller you get (all other things being equal). This is part of why small insects like ants can lift tens or hundreds of times their own weight. ",
"Evidence says no, that wouldn't be fair. Smaller people are proportionally stronger.\n\nThe absolute strongest people are, of course, the largest with the most muscle. When compared to a proportion of body weight, the smallest are the strongest (with some exceptions for exceptional athletes, of course).\n\nYou can view the results from [International Weightlifting Federation events online](_URL_0_), and they break it down by weight class. It makes it really easy to compare.\n\nLooking at the most recent event, a 56kg man had a total of 269kg in the events, while the top scorer overall was 150kg and moved a total of 427. Obviously, we know who is more strong absolutely.\n\n427/150=2.85 times their body weight, while 269/56=4.8 times their body weight. Proportionally, the small guy is far stronger. This holds true over all the weight classes and all the events I've seen.",
"On average, strength should scale more by the cross-sectional area of a muscle, rather than the total mass. So at best strength should scale by size squared, and since mass goes like size cubed, strength should go like mass^(2/3). Strength per unit mass goes down like mass^(-1/3) then. So yes, strength generally *increases* with size/mass, but not in a way that is proportional to size or mass, but rather with a different power.\n\nThis assumes that people have the same proportions, and differ only by some scaling factor in size.",
"I always imagine a child doing monkey bars and how easy it is for them. If you've ever tried to do monkey bars recently, you'll find it's much more difficult. Meaning smaller people are proportionally stronger to their body weight.",
"There is a correlation in absolute strength, but not linear with bodyweight. It's logarithmic or quasi-parabolic. This is reflected by the equations used to rank lifters across different weight classes.\n\n\nolympic weightlifting uses a log function: \n_URL_1_\n\npowerlifting uses a quasi-parabolic function: \n_URL_0_\n\n\nLike your 5: the heavier guy should use something like 65-70% of his bodyweight to make it fair.",
"Just to add on the number guys theres a reason we have a word like country-strong. No show muscles but all dense fieldwork muscle. ",
"Much of a person's strength has to do with the leverage generated at their joints; cats, for example, have their primary leg muscles attached at their knee-bone further from the joint than humans do, which gives the muscles more leverage and is why cats can jump so high. Being proportionally larger simply creates proportional joint structure, which allows for more leverage using equal force."
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3fyhzz | how are things named? | How do people decide what name belongs to what? Ex. Why is it called a chair and who named it a chair. It somewhat dazzles me how people decide these things and carry it through generations..
Seriously who the hell names things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fyhzz/eli5_how_are_things_named/ | {
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"There are a lot of ways things get named. \n\n1. Take its equivalent name in another language. This is what a lot of English is. Chair's origin was from the old french \"chaiere\".\n\n2. Name it based on its function or origin. \"Fireplace\", \"compact disc\", \"computer\" are named based on their functions or appearances. \"Nylon\" (New York and London), \"Kleenex\", \"reddit\", etc. This is the typical approach with modern words or brand names, with one exception:\n\n3. Be the first to call it something and let it catch on.\n\nPeople decide what a name is based on who propagates it. Companies market their brand name until it becomes synonymous with its product. Scientists coin new terms and name species and use it until it enters common parlance. Slang is invented and circulated until it becomes part of the local dialect. One thing's for sure, naming is not the responsibility of one person; everyone needs to know it for a name to work!",
"\"Whats this thing do?\" \n\n\"Well thats a fresher, it keeps shit fresh. Im going on break\""
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3eaei9 | are we/will we be able to get to a point where we can artificially make water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eaei9/eli5_are_wewill_we_be_able_to_get_to_a_point/ | {
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"We can make water from hydrogen and oxygen, but we usually make hydrogen and oxygen from water and electricity. There's not a lot of ways to get pure hydrogen and oxygen and they're all kind of expensive.\n\nIn principle it might be possible to convert energy into matter and make water out of sunlight, but that's in the purely hypothetical level of physics that's only very slightly probably true and certainly not going to come up any time soon.\n\nBut we can use sunlight and saltwater to make fresh water! You can do it really cheap at home with a plastic dome and a lot of time - just let it evaporate, condense, and roll down the side of the glass. There's also hope that in the near future we'll be able to get enough electricity from sunlight to do some new, more energy efficient purification to make saltwater into drinking water to meet city-wide demand.\n\nEither way, in the immortal words of Carl Sagan, if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. Anything we use to make water isn't really 'from scratch'.",
"Its entirely possible to make water chemically from hydrogen and oxygen. Take the hydrogen internal cumbustion engine, for example, takes 2 hydrogen and 2 oxygen atoms (H202) and with combustion, changes to water + energy (H20 + energy). This method of making water has actually been known for a couple hundred years. There are other ways to make water from alcohols and metal hydrides as well. Just check out this article from 2007:\n_URL_0_",
"Technically humans can make artificial water. You can reverse electrolysis to combine hydrogen and oxygen into water. Except it takes more energy to do that then to separate it. "
]
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[],
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"www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071031125457.htm"
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9mglts | why do certain medicine make you thirsty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mglts/eli5_why_do_certain_medicine_make_you_thirsty/ | {
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"One thing to mention is that some medicines are diuretic which means that they cause you kidneys to work harder pushing water into your bladder which will ultimately make you thirsty and need to pee. Alcohol and coffee do this a little.\n\nEdit: typo ",
"Any medicine that makes you lose more water (e.g. by sweating, peeing etc.) decreases how much water is left in the body (specifically in the blood and tissues - the organs etc). Our bodies prefer to keep most things (including water, certain salts in the blood) within very strict limits - they do this in various ways. If you lose a certain amount of water, you feel thirsty because it's your body's way of replacing that lost water.\n\nWorth noting as an aside that certain diseases can do this too (e.g. increased urination with undiagnosed/uncontrolled diabetes); also, thirst mechanisms decrease as you get older (most systems degrade), so older people may lose lots of water without feeling thirsty.",
" While others have noted that some medications can make you lose water and salt, one of the most common reasons is to simply make your mouth dry. Any medication that blocks certain acetylcholine receptors, commonly something like Benadryl but lots of others, will reduce saliva output and cause dry mouth."
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cfsdvd | why a car’s usage is measured in distance (mi/km) but boats are measured in hours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cfsdvd/eli5_why_a_cars_usage_is_measured_in_distance/ | {
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"Boats encounter a different kind of resistance in travel. It can not be measured the same way as something with wheels.",
"Most new vehicles also have an hour meter on them. Most machinery is measured in hours used. Automobiles are one of the only things that are still measured by distance. A tractor with 5000 hours on it could be considered wore out. But a semi with 5000 hours is just broke in. A lot of that time on the semi is just parked, engine running at idle time. Boats don’t idle much. It’s start engine and throttle up and go. Same with a lot of heavy equipment.",
"Most non-commercial boats don't have a very reliable way to measure distance like cars do. Most cars don't spend a lot of time just sitting at idle so it is easier to just measure distance traveled.\n\nConversely, if you can't easily measure total distance traveled, or if the vehicle will likely sit at idle for extended periods you need to know how many hours the motor has been running",
"Adding to other comments, tires have relatively consistent circumference so their rotation can be used to calculate distance. Because the speed one drives varies so much there are many wear parts on a car that correlate more to distance driven than hours on the engine (i.e. tires). Using an hour counter in cars would lead to replacing parts early for high traffic around-town drivers, and parts failing \"early\" for long haul highway truckersThere aren't many components like this for boats. \n\nEngine hours on a boat are what correlate best to wear parts breaking down and failing. In a river, depending on which way you are moving relative to the current, the distance you cover over x time might be a mile (ground distance). Over x time going up stream, your boat may have had to power through 10 times that distance worth of water. This would lead to parts breaking before your boat odometer said to replace them. Going with the current the reverse would happen, leading you to waste money replacing parts that have peanty of life left. On the ocean or large bodies of water, (even if you had a device to accurately measure the \"distance of water\" you covered to avoid the problem above) wind can have the same effect of throwing off your measurements of how much wear you put on the boat. \n\nTldr; Because most of a boats ware parts are either in or directly related to the engine, engine hours are the best way to determine when to replace parts that wear."
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9pzan7 | why is the longer male penis size important for better reproduction and pleasure yet most male got below avarage size? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9pzan7/eli5_why_is_the_longer_male_penis_size_important/ | {
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"It's not. The average vagina is only 6.5\" deep. The average penis length is 5.5\" to 6.5\". They fit perfectly. You don't need a longer penis to be more fertile or to increase pleasure. "
]
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2hs1et | is there a practical reason why some brands make phones without removable battery / sdcard, or they're just fucking with us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hs1et/eli5_is_there_a_practical_reason_why_some_brands/ | {
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"If you want to make the battery removable, the entire design of the phone is restricted by that fact. It's a huge design decision that's taken out of your hands as a hardware designer. How do you make a glass front and back like the iPhone 4? Or a aluminum phone like the htc one? Can you make the phone as sturdy if you need to be able to access the battery? It's harder to make water and dust proof. Etc.\n\nIt will also inevitably result in some wasted space inside the phone. Space that could have been used for more battery. ",
"For the battery, this is known as \"planned obsolescence.\"\n\nMuch of the modern consumer model relies on devices being replaced every so often. As devices have become cheaper, \"every so often\" has become more often. One way to make sure that customers come back to have their device replaced is to have the battery built into it in such a way that it is impractical for most customers to replace it. This can be found with many other types of devices as well, including some computers, shavers, etc. Also notice that some of this general phenomenon can also be seen in trying to repair devices - often the spare parts cost a staggering amount, so much so that buying a new one is more economical than buying a replacement part for the old one.\n\nThis also provides some measure of control in the case of some devices. For instance, Apple, which has long wanted to control the device that you hypothetically own, does this on a number of levels, including controlling the software in their iPads and iPhones to a rather extreme degree. They are not alone in this, but they are one of the more egregious examples.\n\nThe SD card may well fit into the same category - making it harder to hack or mod the device. Additionally, an SD card slot lets you upgrade the device without paying the phone manufacturer, who would rather you come to them for any upgrade, or for you to just buy a device with more storage space for them to start with, which naturally incurs a higher price for the device.\n\nThere may be other reasons as well.",
"A removable battery means a removable back/door. That means a thicker, probably heavier back. It also means the contacts on the battery need to slot into something, making that system thicker as well. Plus, most people don't actually need to have more than one battery so why spend millions on engineering a back that is strong, pretty and user removable when you could just make some plastic clips that will be opened a couple of times at most. \n\nThe SD card thing is similar, but pretty weird. If you make an SD card slot, it has to be somewhere user accessible, it adds thickness, it may add an opening in the device through which dust/water will seep, affecting the motherboard directly etc. There also might be difficulties connecting the SD card reader to the motherboard due to certain constraints. Finally, again, not a lot of users know about SD cards or use them.\n\nCompanies don't fuck with us just because, there usually is a reason. I mean yes, they could easily design phones that meet all demands and are damn pretty, but that would cost them more, eating into their profits, and for what.\n",
"The main reason Google has tried to push manufacturers away from using SD Cards is because of the security implications. Most SD cards can be read in computers going as far back as Windows 98 using a system that effectively has zero security.\n\nBy not using SD Cards, and instead using internal storage, it can continue to use the same filesystem structure as the rest of the device, along with encryption, making it significantly more secure in a number of ways.",
"I would like to add that the reasons below are relevant because most users do not utilize either feature, so there is not much to gain by forgoing the mentioned benefits.",
"For SDCard :\n1) Security\n2) Stability\n3) Performance\nAn SDCard is less secure, less stable and slower than a NAND memory\nFor Battery :\n1) Avoid problem\n2) Durability\nIf you can replace the battery you can replace it with a bad one and have some troubles. Also, a phone without a removable back is more durable.",
"To force you to buy a new phone Evey few years when the charge dies, to prevent you from buying a higher capacity battery, and to prevent you from cheaply expanding and exchanging memory."
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8oy53a | why does metal rust if i leave it out in the rain, but not when it's in jewelry that i wear in the shower? | So basically if I wear a pair of earrings or a necklace in the shower, even if it contains iron, it doesn't rust. But if I leave something metal like a pipe or bike in the rain, it rusts. I think it may have something to do with iron, but I'm not entirely sure.
Thank you! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8oy53a/eli5_why_does_metal_rust_if_i_leave_it_out_in_the/ | {
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"Depends on the metal and also on the process that they receive to be able to withstand the conditions. \n\nUsually, jewelry will be coated with some metal that won’t rust or even paint to protect them and will be made of materials that are unlikely to rust. "
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7mvlhv | how do mesh networks connect users together? is an internet connection required? | I just don't understand how mesh networks work. How can a group of users obtain a high speed connection without going through an ISP?
edit: added - For example: what would be the advantage of something like ZeroTier One? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7mvlhv/eli5_how_do_mesh_networks_connect_users_together/ | {
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"Mesh only describes a topology designed for redundancy. Given several nodes, each node is connected to all of the others with individual cables. This way if one connection goes down then the other several connections still operate. The extra redundancy also makes the network fast because more connections mean more throughput is possible.\n\nRegarding ISPs, many companies have connections to several ISP providers. These are always up and also offer redundancy if one connection fails. I suppose this could be considered mesh as well, it just was never described to me that way when I was studying for my Net+",
"Just clearing a fact: You do not need an ISP just for a *connection*. Suppose you purchase a router and connect multiple computers into it. You now have your local network and if you'd host a website on one of your machines, you could very well access it within the network of yours. Router can also be connected to internet of course, but if you remove that cable, the rest of the network will continue just fine."
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a8vj2t | if some vitamin supplements like calcium or iron are minerals on the elemental chart, why do vitamin supplements have expiration dates? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8vj2t/eli5_if_some_vitamin_supplements_like_calcium_or/ | {
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"A vitamin supplement is made of a nutrient, and also something to carry the nutrient into your body. A chalky tablet that will dissolve easily. Those tablets will change over time. They might get damp and crumble or dry or even get attacked by bacteria or fungus. So after a while the company that made them can't be sure they will do their job of carrying the nutrient to your body's system.",
"Vitamins are not minerals and the supplements are not just the mineral there are other things in there that will go bad",
"They need to be in a form that is accessible to the body. For example pure calcium would likely burn you if you tried to ingest it os we consume it in the form of compounds where the calcium is bound to something. Over time those compounds may change into other forms that our body can't absorb hence the best before date.",
"Because the FDA requires them to have exp dates, they aren't always based on a real reason.\n\n",
"To be clear, calcium and iron are not vitamins, they are minerals. Vitamins are compounds like ascorbic acid (vitamin A) or thiamine (vitamin B1). Minerals are the building blocks of the body that are used to form the complex molecules that our bodies need for various tissues and processes. Vitamin refers to certain groups of those molecules that our bodies are unable to synthesize on our own so need to ingest them through our food. \n\nMost of those general supplements include a bunch of both vitamins and minerals. The vitamins in the supplement are the ones in the mix most likely to expire soonest. Expire in this case meaning it breaks down into its component parts and doesn’t provide the benefits it was supposed to. In other words, loses potency. It’s unlikely to be harmful after it expires, just useless."
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3jrb3k | how can products such as dr. pepper, sprite and gatorade have individual promotions when they're under a brand like pepsi and coca-cola? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jrb3k/eli5_how_can_products_such_as_dr_pepper_sprite/ | {
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"I'm not sure I understand. Why would they not be advertised individually? ",
"Dr Pepper is an independent brand not associated with either coke or Pepsi, which is why you can find it on coke and Pepsi fountains ",
"Think about it...why would a company limit itself to only putting all its products on promotion at once?\n\n\nCoca-cola owns a lot of brand names/products that target different customer's tastes and preferences. A promotion that would work for, say, Fanta may not work for Powerade or even Coca-cola because they are targeting slightly different markets. \n\n\nAs an example:\n\n\n* Powerade is an energy drink and is generally marketed as a sports-drink to be taken to replenish your energy levels during intensive sports activity. The sort of promotion that would work well for that type of drink is maybe athletics or endurance sports \n\n\n* Coke zero and diet-coke are low zero-calories drinks. It wouldn't make a great deal of sense to advertise as an energy drink because it doesn't give you any sugar/calories to burn so the very promotion that conceivably works for Powerade doesn't make sense for coke zero or diet coke."
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2ackog | what is the difference between iron, pig iron, wrought iron, cast iron, steel, stainless steel etc. | What are all the different types of iron and what are they all used for? Feel free to also explain any other important irons that I may have missed.
I tried to do research on all these different irons myself but started to get overwhelming, and it would definitely be nice to have someone explain it all in an easy to understand way.
Also if someone includes a bonus explanation on what bloom/coke/casting/forging are I will give you free jellybeans. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ackog/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_iron_pig_iron/ | {
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"Iron is pure and brittle. Used historically for weaponry before we figured out how to add carbon to it.\n\nPig iron has a high carbon content and is an intermediate product for making steal.\n\nWrought iron is iron with a low carbon content, it was used in place of steel before steel became available but is now used in the steel making process.\n\nCast iron is iron that has been shaped by being poured into a cast. Uses include pots and pans etc.\n\nSteel is iron mixed with carbon which increases strength and makes it less brittle. This is used for construction among other things.\n\nStainless steel is steel mixed with chromium which stops it from oxidizing (rusting). Used for cutlery or other things we don't want to rust.\n\nIron + Coke (carbon) = steel\n\nIron + coke + chromium = stainless steel\n\nforging is a method for shaping metal, first you heat the material up so that it become malleable, then you shape it with a hammer or machine, finally you cool it rapidly. This final process ensures that large crystals don't form, because large crystals make the material weaker.",
"Iron is a metal in the periodic table, and part of the first transition seried. It is widely occuring in nature and constitutes a part of the core. \n\nPig iron is the end product of the blast furnace proces where iron ore is smelted with a reducing agent i.e coke or coal and a flux ( sand) to remove impurities. The name comes from the way its cast into ingots. The molten form of it is used to create steels through different process. One example is a LD furnace which has a lance which blows high purity oxygen to oxidize the impurities into a gaseous form.\n\nDuring this process some additives like chromium, manganese, nickel etc are added to create special steels. Stainless steel is one such variety which consists of chromium in small quantities.\n\nCast iron is iron alloy with 2.1% - 4.0% of iron. It is generally used in construction and shipbuilding. \n\nWrought Iron is a very pure form of iron with less than 1% of carbon. It does not have any other impurites.",
"Iron is an element it oxidizes easily. It's very ductile, but when carbon is added the amount of carbon can be made to have a wide array of strengths. \n\nBloom is a product of a simple way of smelting iron ore. It's a mix of iron and slag from a \"bloomery\". Modern furnaces produce pig iron as an intermediate product rather than bloom. \n\nWrought iron is a low carbon alloy that's tough. Bloom would need to be heated and worked to remove the slag from the bloom (thus creating wrought iron). \n\nPig iron is an intermediate product that can be made into wrought iron or steel. The difference between pig iron and steel is more carbon in pig iron than will be in steel. It's got about 4% carbon and very brittle. \n\nSteel is an alloy of iron and carbon that via changes in the ratios of materials and temperatures can be made to have a very wide array of properties (from very hard, brittle tool steels to very ductile but soft steels). Most steels top out at about 2% carbon. \n\nStainless steel is an alloy of iron and carbon that includes a large portion of other metals (notably Chromium) that aren't as likely to rust. \n\nCoke is the coal used to add carbon to steel. It's nearly pure carbon. \n\nCasting is pouring liquid metal into a form. It doesn't need to be iron. Casting is a technically easy way to shape metal (lead for example can be cast with little more than a mold, hot plate, and wide variety of containers as crucibles). Unless most alloy castings are later heat treated they tend to not be very strong (which doesn't matter for art but may if the product is intended to be a tool). Molds can be made from materials as simple as sand or wax+clay (wax original, coated in clay then melt the wax and remove and add metal). \n\nForging is shaping metal by hammering it rather than casting it. Forging many alloys results in heat treatment that makes the resulting metal harder than original. ",
"Iron is an element, found in chemistry labs.\n\nPig iron is iron as cast after smelting from ore. It is so called because it used to be a very simple casting made by scooping roundish depressions in a row along a runnel. Add red-hot iron, and the visual effect resembles piglets feeding from a sow. Pig iron has 5% carbon by weight or more. \n\nCast iron is pig iron remelted (or even, these days, shipped directly to a foundry in molten form) and cast into something useful. It still has 5% or more carbon, and the carbon separates out into flakes. This reduces the tensile strength, but not the compressive strength, so it is used where compression is important. Machine tool bases are often cast iron.\n\nTake out all but 0.25% of the carbon, add a little manganese and silicon, and you have mild steel. This is the steel that you see the most of. It works relatively easily, has good tensile and compressive strength, and is cheap. Car and appliance bodies are mild steel sheet. Coat the sheet with zinc to prevent corrosion, and use it for roofs and ducts. Most modern \"wrought iron\" railings are really mild steel, so you need to keep them painted. This is what most people are thinking of when the say just \"steel\" with no qualifiers.\n\nTake out just about all the carbon and you have wrought iron, easy to shape on a forge and weather resistant - it rusts a lot more slowly than other steels. It is almost pure iron. Rarely seen these days. \n\nLeave in just the right amount of carbon, around 1%, and you have carbon steel. This is useful in springs, knives, and high-tensile wire rope. Its big feature is that you can change its properties from soft via springy to hard and brittle by simple heat treatment. Also sometimes called tool steel, though this tends to be used for more complex alloys.\n\nTo get stainless steel you remove the carbon and add a lot of chromium, at least 10.5%. It is capable of taking a moderately good edge, (not as good as a tool steel) but it will not rust, provided it is exposed to air so that it can form a protective oxide layer. Great for cutlery and cooking gear, but not so good for bolts, which rust out fast where you can't see them, because there is no free oxygen there. \n\nAnd for extra points...\n\nCasting is the forming of shapes by pouring molten metal into a mould. The mould is often made by tamping slightly damp sand around a wooden \"pattern\". After each casting is made the sand mould is destroyed to extract the casting, but it is easy to make another mould from the pattern.\n\nForging is beating hot metal to the shape you need. Red-hot steel is surprisingly plastic. The craftsman who specialises in forging is the blacksmith. Industrial forging is done with presses rather than hammers. Forging is dramatic, fun to watch, even more fun to do. \n\nCoke is the residue left in the retort after coal is heated without an air supply to form coal gas. This used to be done on a huge scale in almost every city to produce gas for domestic use. The residual coke is porous and brittle. It burns very cleanly, and very hot, so it is a great fuel for your forge.\n\nA bloom is a gob of metal retrieved from a puddling furnace by dipping in a rod and stirring it about. Puddling used to be a major steelmaking method, but it was labour-intensive, and has largely been superceded by Bessemer converters. \n\nI'm aware I have introduced almost as many terms as I have defined. Thin of these as a test of your internet search-fu.\n"
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b3roqn | if polymer is long chain of molecules how do they create 3d object? is there bonds between chains? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3roqn/eli5_if_polymer_is_long_chain_of_molecules_how_do/ | {
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"They twist. it's not a flat chain, think - crudely - like a tangled phone cord.",
"A polymer is indeed a long chain of monomers, but nowhere is said it must be in one direction only.\n\nA monomer can have more than one site another monomer can attach to, so the Chain grows on more than one direction thus a 3D object\n\nEdit: also things can get even more complicated if you add special additives called \"crosslinkers\" that have the function of linking more than one polymer chain, making the system grow even larger "
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3usj9c | in the nfl, where do they come up with the words that quarterbacks yell before the play? like "omaha" or " blue 42"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3usj9c/eli5in_the_nfl_where_do_they_come_up_with_the/ | {
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"To add to this, why is Blue 42 so famous? Omaha, obviously pfm, but where did Blue 42 become a commonly known play call.",
"For the most part, it is a cadence. If your entire line knows the sounds you make before the ball is snapped, they can still be on the same page even if they don't hear one. ",
"They choose the words and use them to change the play once they see what the defense is showing them. For example, they could assign 'blue 42' to a run play. If the quarterback thinks it will be better to run the ball he will call out 'blue 42.' The other players know that 'blue 42' changes the play to a run. ",
"Some are blitz checks to say \"hey this linebacker looks like he's coming. Pick him up\" Others are calling out the defense's formation. Some are audibles. Some of its just a cadence. It all depends on the team and system they run.",
"My roommate in college was on the football team, and he explained some of this to me. The team had pass routes numbered 1 to 9, and the numbers called out indicated which route each receiver would run. So 42 would indicate that the receiver on the left would run a 4 pattern, and the receiver on the right would run the 2 pattern. The word before the numbers would be a code to tell the players if the play was actually being changed at the line of scrimmage, or if the play called in the huddle would be run. A \"live\" word would let the players know that the play was being changed so they had to listen for the new play. If it was any other word, the players could ignore the signal because the play was not being changed. The live word could be anything really, but our team preferred colors. I can't remember how often the live word was changed. ",
"I'm a high school quarterback. I always call one of two or three things before the snap that usually involve pass protection for passes. But I say it on every play so it's not obvious if we are passing. I also have to call certain checks before the snap to make sure the offense knows what they're doing.",
"In the USA once you finish high school or college. Can you still play Football with clubs socially or once college is over so is your playing career?",
"They are different depending on the situation. Blue 42 or Green 19 (what Aaron Rodger says) is called cadence. The Quarterback says the same phrase over and over again before every snap so his lineman can time the snap and know when the ball is hiked seeing as how they can't really look at the ball. There could be a blitz on and guys constantly shifting around so they can't be staring down the line looking at the ball. Not every QB does this though. Some just lift their leg in the shotgun, tap the center on the butt, have the lineman hold hands, or have a guard stare at the QB and tap the center when the QB wants the ball Hiked. \nOther things you might here presnap are ALERT or 52 is the mike. Alert could mean the qb is calling a audible or that he wants his lineman to watch for a blitz. 52s the mike is the Qb calling out what linebacker is the middle linebacker. This helps the offensive line identify their blocking assignments. \nAll in all there are tons of things that are said presnap and the meaning vary by team and the system they run. The only way to know for sure would be to have the playbook, be inside their meetings, or have some kind of inside knowledge on the teams signals. ",
"The real answer is that it is different for everyone. You want to be able to convey an idea in a way that doesn't make your team have to think too much, while still keeping the opposing team in the dark. Lots of teams still employ the \"word that starts with L or R system\", wherein the offensive line protects differently towards the left or right, depending on the call. Roger = Right, Lucy = Left. This is universal though, and easily cracked. Turns out a lot of the guys on the team know a guy named Roger Jenkins. Roger Jenkins gets drunk at parties a lot and makes a fool of himself. Therefore now the call for \"Right\" is \"Jenkins\" and so on. \n\nIt all depends on the team. The main concept is to come up with a call that conveys the idea you want all 11 of your guys to understand, without allowing any of the opposing 11 in on it.",
"Back from when I played, the QB would use the counts as either actual nicknames of plays and audibles or he'd shout random shit just to train the other team to certain words. One phrase could mean absolutely nothing while saying it twice can mean an entire play / motion being called. It varies for every coaching staff, playbook, and player. ",
"They just pick easy to say, easy to hear words. \"Omaha\" can be understood by a receiver on the other side of the field, even over the opposing fans. Words they use could be anything really, as long as the whole team knows what they are supposed to all mean.",
"The wording is usually based on your common cadence and your audible calls. For instance at my college red was the audible. So I would come to the line and say.. down.. set.. blue 52 blue 52.. check Mike 50 (linebacker position + number) if maybe I thought he was blitzing and needed to be accounted for. Now through the audibles it could go any trigger word. Red, omaha, nightlight, fire etc. It's usually followed by the new play or route unless the trigger word itself is a hot route play. Down.... set.. red 32 red 32.. Hut hut.. that would of been an audible to the tailback to hit the 2 hole (the spot between the center and right guard)\n\nTl;Dr all terminology is based on the offensive coordinator and quarterback and a way to quickly switch plays or call out assignments. \nSource: Was College quarterback",
"Most quarterbacks only know two or three words, so they have to use them, whatever they may be. ",
"Numbers can dictate a number of things ranging from pass protection, hole the back will run through, route/pattern, but it often depends on the word it's associated with. Teams will usually separate different elements of the play under different categories of words. Example: Richmond 58 shark/slide. Richmond= any city starting in R dictates the formation's strong side is the right. 5 in 58= 5 step pass protection for the line. 8= an even digit means fan block to the strong side, back will pick up week side. shark/slide = route codenames that can be a reference to any related word. Shark- > s- > slant route. So often at the line, if the quarterback wants to change a part of the play, they can either substitute another route or pass protection, or the team may have a category or words and numbers dedicated to audibles.",
"This might be somewhat redundant, but I haven't seen a few things said that I'm going to say. u/blue42lou and u/gocubsgo22 and others have pointed out some necessary and key points that I will refer to, as they all add on the the same answer.\n\n\nWhat you're hearing, \"Omaha\" or \"Blue 42\" is the cadence. It has no correlation to what play the team with the ball (the offense) will be running. But hold on, first things first, what's a cadence? A cadence is the word, or series of words, called out by the quarter back that snaps the ball and begins the play. \n\n\nWith that settled, let's talk about cadences . A more common cadence than \"Omaha\" (practiced by Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos), \"Green 19\" (Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers) or \"Blue 42\" (multiple mentions, very popular), is \"Down, Set, Hut (Go)\". This is the classic cadence practiced in little leagues and high schools all across the USA. Why is that? I have no idea, my best guess is that it's probably a word that started with Vince Lombardi (one of the great football coaches who coached in the 60's) and hasn't died out since. But let's get back to your question, why with the weird words and rhyme schemes?\n\n\nWell, as you could have guessed, NFL coaches and players like to be sneaky with play calling, especially calling cadences. This is because if a team calls a false cadence (or more commonly called a \"dummy call\") that the offensive players know but the defense does not, they might have a chance to make them jump offside; this is a penalty resulting in a 5 yard gain for the offense (resulting in 1st and 5 yards, instead of 1st and 10 yards). \nSo that's why there's all the weird words and funny rhyme schemes directly before a play starts.\n\n\n**Before I start this other section I just want to say that I do not mean to say that any redditor does not know what they're talking about. You all had good explanations or questions, I just want to clarify with what my understanding is.**\n\n\nWhat some of the other redditors leaving comments have confused is audibles and cadences. This is very easy to do as the NFL uses what is called a \"kill system\". Without getting into too much detail (trying to keep it ELI5), its basically an on the fly, at the line of scrimmage, post breaking the huddle and now the defense is lined up, oh-shit they're perfectly lined up for this play that we're going to run audible system. It's very popular in the NFL. I don't know how many teams run it, but most, if not, all do. \n\n\nLet's use the Carolina Panthers as an example.What happens is the quarterback (Cam Newton) will get the play from the Offensive-Coordinator (Mike Shula) in the \"booth\" in the stadium or from the head-coach (Ron Rivera)down on the field via microphone in helmet (yes, those are not a myth). He will call the play, something like \"flip right double-X jet thirty-six counter naked wagglet seven X quarter\". Everyone will \"break\", and leave the huddle knowing their assignments. Now, what happens next is where the kill system, or audible, comes in. Either Cam Newton or the Mike Shula (most of the time it's the offensive coordinator) sees some formation or blitz package that the defense is running that *does not* go well with the play just called in the huddle. So, what the offensive coordinator can do is tell the quarterback, Cam Newton, to kill the play and switch it to say a run to the outside. What Cam Newton is then tasked with doing is remembering the exact call for the play that will \"kill\" what he just called in the huddle and then making a new call for the play that will result in a run to the outside.\n\n\nIt is a very complicated process, but that is necessary to run such a complicated but effective Pro-style offense (that is what is run in the NFL nowadays). \nThe mentioned \"route tree\" with routes 1-9 is still in place, but quarterbacks and offensive coordinators are rarely stupid/careless enough to say the numbers for receivers out in the open without masking it elaborately so that the opposing defense won't understand it. The route tree is universal for football and so not masking it in any type of way would be inviting the defense to beating your play without trying.\n\n\n\nSources: I've played 4 years of high school football and now play college football. My father played DI college football and taught me everything I know/how to love the game.\n\n_URL_0_\nThe ESPN link was for the play I used.\n\nEdit: spelling and formatting",
"Also, its barely QBs that use these. I was an Offensive Lineman for 8 years and we communicated 20x more than the QB ever did. So we used Mike (number) to identify who the middle linebacker was. Also, we had many different blocking strategies. We used Malcolm to communicated we would be doing an X block. Meaning the guard and tackle would hit each others man due to the angle being better. Also we used DDT to signal i needed a double team. Stuff like that. \n\nThe QB would say blue to indicate a pass and green to indicate a run. As a Lineman alli needed to know was blue and have one assignment, pass block. If he said green we listen for the numbers. Lets say he says Green 32. That says run (green) with the RB (3) in the 2 gap. 2 gap is between center and guard, means i ( LG) would be doing a trap block on the right side DT. \n\nCommunication is important. We also didnt really care that the defense could figure out what our signals meant. \n\nOh and on top of that, I played DE and we had a whole slew of hand signals. Like our coach used the John Cena hand motion where he waves it in front of his face. The was our signal for Monster which meant our 4 man front D line did a double stunt (DT engaged OT, while DE engaged G or C) and called a strong side blitz by the OLB. All one hand motion. Im sure it meant aomething to the CBs and Safeties but i never learned what.",
"I played offensive line in high school and for us the colors were different pass protections. For instance if our QB said \"Easy! Easy! Blue 42! Blue 42! Hike!\". He was letting his line know that he wants us to block like we are running a run play but stay in pass pro (play action for the football inclined). Some other colors we had were Yellow (move pocket right) , brown (move pocket left), and white (BOB pass protection)- which typically didn't have a number after them. To shift to a run play he would yell \"Easy! Easy! Razer 420! Razer 420!\" which let the line know that we aren't pass protecting and that we need to run 42 lead as a run play. "
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69888k | evaporation causes cooling effect, as global temperature rises there should more evaporation from sea surface and thereby a cooling effect, does this actually happen. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69888k/eli5_evaporation_causes_cooling_effect_as_global/ | {
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"All the water that evaporates in one place condenses somewhere else; that's why we get rain. The atmosphere has a limited capacity to hold water; it isn't going to go up very much. When water condenses, it gives up the same amount of energy it absorbed when it evaporated, so the effect of evaporation and condensation cancel each other out globally. "
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27vce6 | how does an explosion actually kill you? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27vce6/eli5_how_does_an_explosion_actually_kill_you/ | {
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"Heat, debris, or shockwave from an explosion will kill you. The closer you are to it, the deadlier it gets. ",
"Compression. As the shock wave is expanding from the explosion, it is trying to go everywhere it can. And a human body offers little resistance. It is like being hit with an 800 pound hammer on every part of your body at the same time. ",
"The shock wave basically rapidly compresses your body and everything inside. Organs rupture, veins explode and even the eyes in your head can explode. And if that doesn't get you, rapid heating off the air can sear your air ways and cook you from the inside out. And then if that doesn't get you, there's debris (shrapnel).... indiscriminate pieces of rock, metal, and anything else slamming into and or tearing through your body. ..... All in all. .. something to avoid",
"To expand on what has been given:\n\nHeat can cause your skin to suffer sever burns; if you are close enough to the right kind of explosion it can cook you alive as it suffocates you, since fires eat up all the oxygen in the area.\n\nDebris: whether this is tiny bits of shrapnel flying out from a grenade or the kitchen sink falling from 500 feet onto you after a blast of C4, things moving really fast and hitting you are a bad time.\n\nThe shockwave was explained by /u/limbodog better than I could hope to.",
"You have four ways to die from an explosion.\n\nPrimary injuries: the blast wave/shockwave. Others have explained it better than I could -- the explosion releases tons of energy and if your body is in the way of that wave of air molecules slamming into each other, anything fluid-filled or air-filled in you is going to be damaged. Organs will rupture. If the explosion is especially nasty, you won't die from the organ damage right away -- you'll die hours or days later from internal bleeding or infections stemming from your bowels rupturing. \n\nSecondary injuries: The shrapnel/debris. As the pressure from the explosion blows the bomb/whatever was holding it apart, it launches the fragments of those things everywhere. Not only can the shrapnel hit you in arteries or veins and cause you to exsanguinate or hit you and give you nasty head injuries, but they can also give you really gnarly infections if they're really dirty. \n\nTertiary injuries: Also the blast wave/shockwave. If the blast wave/shockwave is powerful enough to propel you to the ground or against a wall/building/piece of furniture, you can get some bad spinal or head injuries that can kill you very fast, or kill you much, much later. \n\nQuartenary injuries: Basically anything else. If the bomb has harmful chemicals in it or a lot of smoke as a byproduct of the explosion, you can get injured or die from that; if the bomb destroys a structure that you're in, you can be crushed to death by the falling structure/debris; if you're close enough to the bomb to be hit by the heat/fire, you can get terrible burns that kill you that way.\n\nBasically, cool guys don't look at explosions; they get internally liquefied, pincushioned by shrapnel, and burned to a crisp. ",
"Going off of this, in war scenarios when a soldier may lose a limb in an IED explosion or something how can they be at the centre of an explosion yet only lose a leg, arm etc? Or is it just the same?",
"You know how in movies when there's an explosion and people get thrown? That can happen from the shockwave. But, it's not lightly picking you up like a wind and 'blowing' you away. \n\nIt's hitting you with the same amount of force as anything else would need to throw you that far. In essence, your internal organs are getting hit by a speeding bus, just the bus is invisible and the impact travels all the way through your body. *edit your/you're shenanigans*",
"Since on land is explained pretty well already, underwater explosion: It hardly has the risk of shrapnel due to the medium in which one is submerged.\n\n However, blast range is much higher and the shockwave created is more deadly, as the rapid current will carry you off and everything around you becomes a deadly obstacle.\n\nBeing on the seafloor doesn't help if you're sufficiently close, even a sandy and soft seabed creates enough abrasions to seriously injure you, even through your gear.\n\nYou don't want to be caught under some idiots fishing with explosives. But if you do, and have time to act, grab onto whatever rock or debris that is firmly affixed and try to minimize surface area.\n\nYou'll naturally go into a fetal position with fear, so that will help.\n\n\n\n\n",
"This really puts my mind in perspective on how people can just explode from a bomb or explosive (i.e. suicide bombers). You'd think there would be some magical component in the explosive that eviscerates everything into a pink mist when really it's just basic physics.",
"Have you ever see a Mythbusters high-speed shot of an explosion? Ever notice that moving front of ever-expanding waves? That's the explosion's shockwave and when it reaches your body, if it's energetic enough, it starts turning you into smaller pieces. The energy alone just starts ripping you apart. Basically, your cells don't have time to move together as a group, so they start ripping away from each other. It's called \"static inertia\". No shrapnel needed, but add shrapnel and debris to the explosion and now you have super high speed foreign objects to worry about. Nasty nasty.",
"More often than not shrapnel gets ya. Thousands of pieces of razor sharp scolding hot metal flying in all directions away from the explosion. If your close enough the blast itself would be enough to burst or rip apart most of your body. But that a small area in comparison to the area the shrapnel can fly ",
"Here is a slideshow of a bomb exploded in Sri Lanka. \n\n_URL_0_",
"If you have an afternoon to kill this is a fascinating record (Some NSFW/L illustrations): _URL_1_\n\n[This chapter](_URL_0_) about wounds suffered by American bomber crews in WW2 really shows the horror young men were exposed to in the skies over Nazi Germany.\n\nedit: [This (NSFW/L)](_URL_2_) was the most shocking for me, an 88mm flak shell which failed to explode but went through a poor crewman's head.",
"So, it's basically the pressure of the Shockwave that kills you before anything else, correct?",
"Trauma.\n\nThis reminds me of the first time I watched the Lion King. The question on my mind was \"How does falling off a cliff actually kill you?\" But it's the same answer, whether it's bullets or crocodile bites or getting hit by a meteor. The parts that compose your body are simply broken.\n\nThink of it this way: Your body is just a complex Lego build, albeit slightly sturdier. Anything that can in principle turn a Lego tower to pieces can also turn your body to pieces, at least if you up the strength.",
"There are a few different reasons and they all depend on the circumstances.\n\n\nThe most common is shrapnel. Think of a sphere surrounded by dozens of tiny pistols shooting a bullet in every direction. In this case it's pretty simple. Pieces of junk rip your flesh apart like a shotgun blast.\n\n\nIn the absence of shrapnel, an explosion can cause whiplash-like sudden jerking of the body. This causes numerous problems like tearing of ligaments or breaking of bones, but the worst of these is a concussion. Your brain moves around in your skull like a baby's rattle. If that doesn't instantly kill you, you'd at least have brain damage. \n\n\nThe next most common is probably heat. As you might know, heat is just molecules moving really fast, or friction. Rubbing your palms together makes them heat up. So too will air heat up when it is forced to move from an explosion, but of course the effect is exponentially magnified.",
"The parts of an explosion that kill you are either A)shrapnel, or B)the shock wave. Shrapnel's obvious, you have a whole bunch of sharp fragments going into your body kinda like bullets. The shock wave, however, can cause internal bleeding without any external signs by jostling your organs. Also, depending on the kind of explosion, you can always get burnt.\n\nIt really depends on what kind of explosion it is, how close you were, etc.(for example, if a potato cannon blows up while you're firing it, that's all shrapnel because the pressure is minimal).",
"My friend, during his college years, his boiler exploded and luckily survived it. This is how he explained the pain of the explosion.\n\n > Imagine the biggest shit you have to take. The kind of shit that hurts your rectal area and causes rectal bleeding. Now imagine that your body is covered with anuses and you have to take the biggest shit(s) of mankind. Double the pain. That's what I felt when the water boiler exploded.",
"Short answer: the same way a fall of a high building would I would say.",
"In a word, Pressure. \n\nPressure is a force. The molecules that your body is made of have an attraction to each other (a small force) and they hold together under the conditions present in our environment -- which is to say the forces in nature usually do not amount to enough to rip the bonds apart. \n\nToo much pressure, as one would experience being subjec to explosion, causes these bonds to break (simple example: Bonds of your body 1, force of explosion 1,000). Thus, too much pressure (ie. force) causes your molecules to quickly separate. \n\nTL;DR - A whole person becomes smaller pieces of a person. Said pieces can no longer function as a whole, resulting in death.\n",
"You don't need to get ripped to pieces to get killed. The shockwave of a high explosive has a pressure of several gigapascals. That is more than ten thousand times atmospheric pressure. So this is basically a wall, several thousand degrees hot that is coming at you faster than the speed of ~~light~~ sound. Getting hit by this shockwave is the equivalent of crashing a fighter jet into mountain.",
"Similarly, ELI5: How does jumping off a bridge kill you? Do you end up so deep that you run out of breath before you surface? Or is the impact itself so hard that you lose consciousness and drown?",
"Imagine what a fly looks like after you swat it with a newspaper. Now imagine you're caught in an explosion. You're the fly, and the explosion is the newspaper.",
"It rearranges your flesh in a way that makes it not function any more.",
"This thread has been way more interesting than I anticipated.",
"The rapid pressure change from the explosion ruptures your organs",
"I remember asking my mentor a question like this once. I'll never forget what he said to me.\n\n\"It can only kill directly in one one way... and indirectly in 2 ways.\" he said to me.\n\n\"You should pray it kills you directly. if it does, this is how it would get you.\n\nA pressure wave forms in front of the explosion and the pressure literally liquefies parts of you inside. It's hard to stay alive with soup for lungs. Sure the pressure can snap bones and stuff but it's the pressure that kills. You should hope that the explosion DOES do this because if it's a [low explosive] (_URL_0_)... My god... pray it's a Hex and not Loex.\n\nIf it IS a low explosive here is what you will get in less than the space of a heat beat:\n\nShards of shrapnel will tear through you. RIPPING their way through the vital pathways inside you. TEARING them apart! Whether they're the pathways for nerve impulses, blood flow or air flow. It doesn't matter. That shrapnel rips through you and surprisingly, it's going to be hot. It doesn't hurt you though. The heat of the eviscerated flesh is nothing compared to what's next. \n\n\"Does it hurt?\" you ask? No. It doesn't have time to hurt.\n\nIn the instant before the you'll greet the reaper you'll see a fireball of outstanding beauty run at you. Maybe this will kill you... but it probably won't\n\nYou will be lying there with your vital fluids creeping their way to the gutter as and your bowels strewn before you as your flesh starts to slough from your bones, slowly cooked from the heat of the fire. All the time you'll be thinking, praying, hoping this is just a dream.\n\nAnd, finally... as all goes dark...\n\nthe cold embrace of death.\"",
"I'm sitting here in my house, surrounded by technology and so many examples of human ingenuity, reading the thoughts and ideas of some of the most creative minds imaginable... The idea that here, in 2014, people just like me are fighting wars and suffering unimaginably on the other side of the world, is appalling. \n\nGo ahead and call me naive, but sometimes I think the world could use a few more naive people who want to change things. Reading through this thread is disturbing.",
"Pressure wave crushes you and expands lungs making them explode and killing you from the inside out. Or the thermal energy ignites your body and burns you to death. ",
"1. Fire.\n2. Lack of oxygen from the fire.\n3. Shockwave from the explosion.\n4. Shrapnel/frags.",
"There are 5 ways and explosion can actually kill you. I have this from my PHTLS military edition. \n(im taking this from the top of my head)\n\n1: The blast. As previously mentioned, this will make your airfilled organs burst. \n2: The Heat. Getting burns on 90% of your body, will eventually kill you. Either to infection, dehydration, or similar. \n3: Projectiles. Rocks flying at insane speeds pose a serious health hazard. \n4: You become the projectile. Pretty straight forward, if you have the morbid idea to watch real combat footage, youll notice that some people get flung 50+ meters into the air before they come crashing down. \n5: Gas/disease/radioactivity/chemicals - If the explosion itself didnt kill you. (Fun fact - According to PHTLS military edition, there is a 3% chance to get infected with HIV, if a suicide bomber detonates, and you get hit by bonefragments). \n",
"As my college chemistry professor put it, \"by moving stuff around really fast.\"",
"It rips your fucking body apart, that's how. ",
"Usually in more than enough ways than necessary. Blast (abrupt pressure change), heat, kinetic energy applied to you and to other objects, acceleration and deceleration and other forces inflicting multiple trauma to your little meatsack of existence.",
"Very high strain rates",
"An explosion is when something rapidly converts to gas. Like when the kettle boils and water turns to steam, but so fast that it seems like it's happening instantly. When things convert to gas, they expand, and they push out on the things around them, like air going into a balloon. Except instead of a balloon - it's pushing the air (and dust and dirt and anything else around the explosion) out. Because there's so much gas pushing out so fast, it's like everything around the explosion is simultaneously hit with a hammer made of air.\n\nThe volume or mass of the explosion, or how much gas there is produced by the chemical reaction determines some of what happens, like how far away from the blast things will be damaged, and the velocity of the reaction determines if things will just be ripped apart, or picked up and thrown. High speed explosives usually just rip things apart. Low speed explosives tend to throw big heavy things.\n\nIf the big hammer of gas doesn't hurt you, the things thrown by the explosion (shrapnel) might. Rocks, pieces of metal and glass and other small sharp or hard things can be thrown by the explosion like bullets, and those things can tear holes in people, except they usually leave jagged messy holes and often go lots faster than bullets. ",
"There is a characteristic of an explosion named 'brisance'. It's described as the shattering effect at the point of detonation. The higher the brisance the more likely it will tear your limbs from your body. High explosives obviously have a lot of brisance. \n\nI trained in basic demolitions in the military. \n\nEdit: wiki; _URL_0_",
"Is it painful?",
"/u/Opee23 hit on the main parts. There are several things that can kill you:\n\n1. Overpressure from the blast damaging your internal organs\n\n2. Heat from the explosion causing thermal burns to skin or worse, airways and other mucuosal tissues\n\n3. Injury from shrapnel or debris caused by the explosion (Think of Boston Bombing... the pressure cookers were loaded with nails and other metal to create a fragmentation bomb that shredded people)\n\n4. Being turned in to flying debris yourself and hurled in to another object\n\nThis is similar to car accident where there are multiple forces at work: Sudden deceleration of the vehicle, person impacting steering wheel/seat belt/air bag, internal organs impacting against the body, objects in vehicle hitting the person.",
"Shock waves, pressure and metal hurt",
"When a piece of stone or metal flies through your brain at 500 mph, it can have negative effects on your health.",
"you know how when you evaporate water, it creates pressure so enormous that it can move the generators of power-plants.... well if you ignite these solid explosives, they also have chemicals that are released in the same fashion, except at temperatures of thousands of degrees. It carries with them millions of tiny, heated particles, melting through your flesh until they're cooled down, travelling at hundreds of miles per hour.... \n... was that too graphic for a five year old?",
"Explosions and pressure waves aren't actually too rough on organs or solid body parts, where they do their damage is air pockets and cavities such as lungs or intestines. This is because energy will travel through a medium, but things go funny when it needs to transfer mediums (water to air, water to rock, etc.) for reference look at the myth busters episode about diving near an underwater explosion, I recall this being explained there. They found laying on the surface is significantly safer than being submerged because the pressure waves are less direct.",
"An explosion causes harm in three distinct ways: \n\nThe concussion, or shock wave\n\nObjects being ejected or thrown at you.\n\nYou being thrown into objects.\n",
"+/u/dogetipbot 98 doge thanks for the question",
"When something goes boom, a lot of force goes everywhere. A lot of that force passes through whatever unfortunate sap is nearby. That force kills the unfortunate sap by smushing his innards. Also, shrapnel, heat, fire, the like."
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1j3xoc | why is apple buying back its own shares? | How does this benefit the company? The news articles about this focused on why they would borrow money rather than use their own reserves, and totally neglected to say why they would want to do this in the first place. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1j3xoc/eli5_why_is_apple_buying_back_its_own_shares/ | {
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"It's not to benefit the company, it's to benefit the owners of the company, i.e. shareholders. When Apple buys back stock, its stock price increases, increasing the value of investors' shares.\n\n\n",
"There's lots of different reasons for this, and I'm sure a lot of people can chime in on this topic... \n\nIt's mainly to the benefit of existing shareholders, since the share prices rise. But it can also benefit the company in at least two ways. \n\n1) Less shares available to the public means trading volume drops (the amount of shares exchanged in a day). This leads to a more stable stock price. Look up Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK-A) stock... because there are only 1.65 million shares of it out there, the trading volume is significantly lower than those of Apple, which has 908.44 million shares. And a lower trading volume has helped kept a steadier share price. \n\n2) Higher share prices mean that less people can trade that stock, leading not only to a lower trading volume, but also making that stock inaccessible to a larger population. Why do that? So that not just about any average Joe can buy/sell that stock. If the share price is low, then average Joe's can buy/sell that stock, and bigger players (funds or higher income people) can play around with a large number of shares... That can cause bigger fluctuations in stock price because of the high amount of trade that happens. Fewer people who can trade that share means a more stable share price in the long run since not as much trading can go on with more expensive shares\n\nSo Apple is trying to do just that... get a more stable (and higher) share price. It's doing that by buying back its shares and raising its stock price to lower its trading volume and to make its shares less accessible",
"There are a number of reasons to do it.\n\n* **Return profits to shareholders.** It is a way to return profits to shareholders. It is economically identical to paying a dividend and sometimes has tax benefits over dividends. \n\n* **Shares are undervalued.** If management believes its shares are undervalued, a stock buyback is a net win for shareholders. The corporation buys an asset for less than it's worth. It therefore makes money.\n\n* **Signal that shares are undervalued.** Even if management doesn't believe its shares are undervalued, its decision to repurchase shares might make the market think that management believes the shares are undervalued. Since management should be in the best position to know, this can (artificially) increase the share price.\n\nThe first reason--to give back cash to shareholders--is the reason that Apple, in particular, is doing buybacks. The firm is sitting on a huge cash pile that shareholders have long been demanding it distribute. In particular, one or more activist hedge funds have been nagging the firm to make a major distribution. Generally, if a corporation has no use for cash, it is better that it be in the hands of shareholders who can make their own decision what to do with it. "
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5yue8h | what is ai or artificial intelligence? | Quote: “whenever someone says 'AI' what they're really talking about is 'a computer program someone wrote'" ~Allison Parrish, bot and book author @allisonbparrish | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yue8h/eli5_what_is_ai_or_artificial_intelligence/ | {
"a_id": [
"desyrlt"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"There are generally two forms of AI - narrow and general. Narrow AI is the ability of software - sometimes in conjunction with hardware sensors and mechanisms - to dynamically perform an otherwise narrowly-defined task that is simple for humans but difficult for autonomous machines. Self-driving cars would be an example of narrow AI.\n\nGeneral AI would be artificial beings, conscious of themselves and able to undertake a wide spectrum of general tasks they decide upon under changing circumstances, in the same sense that humans do.\n\nNarrow AI can be analogized as artificial animals, while general AI can be thought of as artificial people (regardless of what their \"bodies\" look like)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
c4xz0l | how are teslas and other cars with touch screen computers able to sit in the sun without overheating, but smartphones can't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c4xz0l/eli5_how_are_teslas_and_other_cars_with_touch/ | {
"a_id": [
"erywyur",
"erz18ag",
"es09ma1"
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"score": [
2,
4,
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"text": [
"Phones are not designed for a longtime direct sunlight exposure environment. Longtime direct sunlight exposure means overheating of the tablets. As such you will need proper cooling of the tablets. When you have control over the environment (i.e. you are Tesla), then you can provide for this requirement.\n\nShort version: Proper cooling of the tablets.",
"Nah these responses are too complex still here's the best one: \nCar designed like that, phone not",
"Phones are, most of all, designed to be small. The heat of the phone has nowhere to go, so if it is not being cooled by a cold environment, it cannot work hard. A car is big, so it has a lot more opportunity to get the heat away from the sensitive parts."
]
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[],
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17r31n | where is all the music on spotify stored? what happens when i click on a song? | Is it all on one giant hard drive somewhere? Is each song buffered to my computer before it can play? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17r31n/eli5_where_is_all_the_music_on_spotify_stored/ | {
"a_id": [
"c882gzu",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Re: Hard drives, even companies like Google are still limited to hard drives, like the rest of us. There are no \"giant hard drives\". The difference is that they have thousands upon thousands of them.\n\nEverything you see on the internet, no matter where you go, is quite likely it's stored on a disk very similar to the one in your own computer.\n\nWhenever you see the term \"cloud\", it's marketing folks trying to gloss over the fact that what you're actually connecting to is just another computer.\n\nWhen you click on a song, you are asking one computer to find a specific file, that computer checks a list, and then points you to a different computer that starts sending the file through the internet to your computer.\n\nDepending on the size of the file, and your internet connection, it might need to be buffered for a few seconds, but most connections are fast enough that they can send the file while it's playing.\n\nGiven that the highest quality MP3s are at roughly 320kilobits(K**b**) per second (how much data is stored in each second), as long as you have a connection capable of more than 40 Kilobytes(K**B**) per second (slower than a cell phone, these days), it should be able to play instantly.",
"Spotify uses a mostly P2P network architecture, meaning that the files are distributed among many \"peers\". These peers are all of the customers who use the desktop software. Essentially, Spotify is relying on your harddrive and your internet connection to provide it's service to other customers.\n\nWhen you click a song to play you get an initial burst of data from Spotify's servers, this is why songs you have never played before can be started almost immediately. After the first few seconds of playback, Spotify connects you to other customers who have the song in their local cache (on their harddrive), and then you begin streaming the song from there.\n\nIf you'd like to know some Spotify stats, this is a nicely compiled article on how Spotify works. Cheers.\n\n_URL_0_",
"As others have explained, Spotify downloads the songs both from its own servers and from other users' computers.\n\nYou can find your own local storage here:\n\nC:/Users/USERNAME/AppData/Local/Spotify/Storage/\n\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats-and-how-spotify-works/"
],
[]
] | |
3c5yja | what's the difference between jameson, johnnie walker, jim beam and jack daniels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c5yja/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_jameson_johnnie/ | {
"a_id": [
"cssjx11",
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"Jameson is Irish whiskey. Johnny Walker is scotch. Jim Beam is Kentucky Bourbon. Jack Daniels is Tennessee whiskey. ",
"Jim Beam and Jack Daniels are made mostly of corn and aged in new barrels. Johnnie Walker and Jameson are made of barley and aged in used barrels (typically previously used for bourbon or sherry). Each is from a different country or state. All are classified as whisk(e)y. ",
"Jim Beam is [bourbon] (_URL_0_): at least 51% corn, aged in new charred oak barrels. Jack Daniels is Tennessee whiskey, which meets the same standards as Bourbon and is also [filtered through charcoal] (_URL_1_) before aging. Johnny Walker is a Scotch whisky (sic), made from peat-dried barley malt that gives it a characteristic smoky flavor and (mostly) double distilled. Jameson is Irish whiskey, not (traditionally) made from peated malt, and (usually) triple distilled, so not smoky and lighter in flavor than most Scotches."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourbon_whiskey#Legal_requirements",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_County_Process"
]
] | ||
7kg3zf | why did video games only work on channel 3? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7kg3zf/eli5_why_did_video_games_only_work_on_channel_3/ | {
"a_id": [
"dre17hq",
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"score": [
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4
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"text": [
"The video game system (and other external devices like a vcr) connected to the TV through the coaxial cable jack. At the time it was common for the TV to not have other inputs like A/V etc. So, the connector would make the signal come out in a way to be tuned on the TV, matching the same signal it would be looking for in channel 3.\n\nThis process. is known as modulation.",
"**tl;dr:** TV's didn't have 'inputs' on them for the first 30 or so years they existed so they only way to get a signal in from an external source was to hack the antenna to replace content of a particular channel and make sure the TV was tuned to that channel. Make it a low channel number for backward compatibility, allow two channels for technical reasons.\n\nThe rest of this post is a rough outline of the development of television inputs. Might be an interesting read if you want to know how TV was in the early 80s.\n\nBack in the day, televisions received video only over the air so you had to connect an antenna. There were no VCR's or DVD players or even cable boxes. You had ~13 channels to select from using a physical dial on the front of the TV.\n\nSo, back in the day, someone devised a way where you could connect a device to the antenna connectors on the TV and watch premium channels. This was cable. The box acted like a pass-through and you'd connect your tv antenna to the back of the cable box instead. There's also be a CATV cable connected to the back of the cable box containing the cable signal from the provider.\n\nCable offered a lot more channels than what your 13 position dial on the TV did so what they did is make it so you had to tune your tv to a particular channel to see the cable tv. What the cable box was doing was basically replacing whatever was coming in on the antenna for this particular channel with whatever cable content you were trying to watch.\n\nAt some point, cable companies eventually standardized on channels 2 and 3 (using a switch on the cable box) because it's easier to send a clear signal on a channel which isn't used in your area than one that is. Also, due to technical issues, you generally wouldn't have content on BOTH channels 2 and 3 in any given area. Also, low channel numbers pretty much guarantee that old TV's from the 60's which only had something like 5 channels would still be able to connect to cable. (In the 80s, it wasn't uncommon to be using a black and white television from the 60s. Shit was built to last.)\n\nSo JVC and Sony come out with video cassette systems. This is all fine and dandy, but how do you connect it to a tv which has only power and antenna connections? The same way as cable. There's a signal in connection which connects to your antenna or the signal out from a cable box. There's a signal out which goes to the TV's antenna connection.\n\nNow, it this point, I should mention something about TV signals. Basically, each tv channel is a few sound signals and an NTSC signal (or PAL if you live in some backwater European country) then the whole thing is modulated with an FM carrier signal. If you keep the FM carrier frequencies separated by a few megaherts, you can send multiple channels (multiple video and audio streams) through a single wire. VCR's and (less so cable boxes originally) needed to only send one signal. All this channel 2/3 bs was because the only way to get a video signal into the TV was to modulate the whole signal with an FM carrier just so the TV can demodulate it. Way complicated for just trying to get one channel into a tv.\n\nRCA started building TV's where you could send it an unmodulated NTSC video stream. This is literally the video stream the comes in over the air, but with the FM modulation... demodulated... and the sound stripped out (they used a couple additional connectors for sound). Just about every modern tv up until a few years ago had this: three RCA connectors colored red, white, and yellow.\n\nMost VCR's, all game systems, and most cable boxes and pretty much anything else that sent a signal to the TV could use the RCA system. Since you got a better picture than using the antenna connector, it was always recommended to use this if possible. To maintain backward compatibility, though, these devices would still contain all the electronics to modulate the signal and replace channel 2 or 3 on whatever input signal was coming in.\n\nNow... on game systems like the NES, you had an external device, the RF Switch, which had a signal in (from cable/antenna) and a signal out (to tv). There was also a connector which ran to the NES. When you turned on the NES, it would send the broadcast signal on either channel 2 or 3 to the RF switch. The RF switch would then inject the NES's signal into the TV's antenna. And now you're playing SMB3 or the Legend of Zelda, or whatever.\n\n\n\n\n\n"
]
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[],
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] | ||
30lt0u | what is convection? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30lt0u/eli5_what_is_convection/ | {
"a_id": [
"cptl8x1",
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"text": [
"The transfer of heat by the circulation of air or gas.\n\nExample: hot air rises. As it does so it cools, which then causes it fall back down. If there's a heat source at the bottom (a fire, a warm ocean), it'll start warming up again and so the process starts again.",
"It's a heat transfer between a solid and a liquid or gas, or between a liquid and gas.\n\nThere are two types of convection. Natural and forced.\n\nLet's say you have a vertical hot water pipe in a room filled with calm cool water. In the pipe, hot water runs at a certain speed. So, when you look at the wall of the pipe, on one side you have hot running water, and on the other side you have calm cool water. Naturally, heat goes from hot water to the pipe wall and from the pipe wall to the cool calm water. Because the hot water in the pipe has some velocity and is moving, it is \"forced\", by a pump or something, therefore heat transfer to the inner surface of the pipe wall is by forced convection, while the water outside of the pipe is calm, and nothing is \"forcing\" it to go anywhere, it receives heat from the pipe wall by natural convection.\n\nimage: _URL_0_\n\nHere you can see what convection actually is. Convection is those arcs between temperatures T1 and T2 and between T3 and T4. That is the law of convection. T2 is always lower than T1 and T4 is always lower than T3. Due - to - convection. And that is why when you put your hand on a wall in your room, it's colder than the air 5 cm from that wall.\n\nAlso, heat transfer is always more efficient with forced convection than with natural.\n\nEDIT: And it's also why your soup cools faster when you blow at it (forced convection) than when you just leave it to cool (natural convection)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://s13.postimg.org/xpdf88e9z/conv.png"
]
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5aqqdh | how is it that rfid stickers work without any batteries? | I came [across this project](_URL_0_) which claims to use RFID stickers which don't need a power source. How is that possible (I'm assuming its not BS)? I clearly don't understand how RFID works.
Also: What's the difference between RFID and NFC? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5aqqdh/eli5_how_is_it_that_rfid_stickers_work_without/ | {
"a_id": [
"d9ii7ji",
"d9iki14"
],
"score": [
2,
3
],
"text": [
"The RFID tag receives a radio signal, stores the power in a capacitor, and then uses the capacitor like a tiny battery to power a radio transmitter that sends its \"tag number\".\n\nNFC is two way radio communications, where both sides have a power source, that can have deluxe, variable radio messages.",
"Passive RFID tags use an effect of electromagnetic induction in process called [resonant inductive coupling](_URL_0_) which was first used by Nikola Tesla. Inside tag you will find a LC circuit tuned to the same frequency as transmitter. It allows tag to get an energy from nearby field created by transmitter."
]
} | [] | [
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ty_Bo4WOPQ"
] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonant_inductive_coupling"
]
] | |
4l86s9 | why do grasshoppers jump when they can fly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l86s9/eli5_why_do_grasshoppers_jump_when_they_can_fly/ | {
"a_id": [
"d3l4ulj",
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"score": [
7,
6
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"text": [
"It takes less energy, and they jump faster than they can fly over short distances. Also, they present as larger easier-to-track targets when in flight, making them easier pickings for predators.",
" > How come you don't fly everywhere?\n\n > It's exhausting. Why don't you run everywhere? It's faster.\n\n-- Bee Movie"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
94futf | when multiple conversations are happening around you, how is it possible to tune into the only one you want to listen to and basically block out the other ones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94futf/eli5_when_multiple_conversations_are_happening/ | {
"a_id": [
"e3kq6vt"
],
"score": [
14
],
"text": [
"It's called the cocktail party effect. Essentially our brains are pretty darn impressive where it subconsciously filters stimulus that it doesn't deem relevant. \n\nThere are funny examples/experimemts of this visually is when someone will approach a random person on the street and ask for directions off of a map. The person asking for directions will get separated behind a crowd and a completely different person will come out and get the rest of the directions. The person giving the directions never notices because they were focused on the map. \n\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect"
]
] | ||
b7i4av | what is a weir and what is it for? how is it different from a dam? why/how does it work? | Asking for my wife who is not an English native. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b7i4av/eli5_what_is_a_weir_and_what_is_it_for_how_is_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"ejrx1tj"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"A weir is a wall in the water, and is for controlling the water level of the river behind it. A Dam is for power generation or to redirect water to other places.\n\n[Here is a video](_URL_0_) from Practical Engineering, explaining them in more detail."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkR79oDAgOg"
]
] | |
2e0i3n | why do birds poop on my car, and seem to miss everything else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2e0i3n/eli5_why_do_birds_poop_on_my_car_and_seem_to_miss/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjuv2vv",
"cjuv331",
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],
"score": [
9,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Selective recognition. You don't really notice other places birds pollute because you don't care about them/don't look explicitely for it.",
"When a bird does poop on your car you will remember it more than the times they do not. There is plenty of open space and birds will and mostly likely do poop elsewhere you never see it nor does it affect you like when it is done to your personal property.",
"Observational Bias:\nConfirmation bias\n\nHuman observations are biased toward confirming the observer's conscious and unconscious expectations and view of the world; we \"see what we expect to see\".[4] In psychology, this is called confirmation bias.[4] Since the object of scientific research is the discovery of new phenomena, this bias can and has caused new discoveries to be overlooked. One example is the discovery of x-rays. It can also result in erroneous scientific support for widely held cultural myths, for example the scientific racism that supported ideas of racial superiority in the early 20th century. Correct scientific technique emphasizes careful recording of observations, separating experimental observations from the conclusions drawn from them, and techniques such as blind or double blind experiments, to minimize observational bias."
]
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[],
[],
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2w9v7k | what do the mars one colonists plan on doing upon arrival? | They always say "for the betterment of humanity" and all that, but will they be doing research? If so, what kind? What do they hope to learn?
EDIT: Looks like people don't deem this mission to be very serious; come to think of it, neither do I. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w9v7k/eli5_what_do_the_mars_one_colonists_plan_on_doing/ | {
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"text": [
"When they (don't) make it to Mars, they'll be building greenhouses, but that's about all they'll be doing officially. The Mars One team specifically states that the team are not researchers.\n\nThe goal of the project is basically to learn what we need to do in the future to accommodate human life on Mars, ie: figure out what kills them first.",
"Assuming the project ever actually makes it to a Mars landing you mean?\n\nThey'll basically just try not to die for as long as possible. There are three basic requirements for life to be sustained semi-indefinitely. Air, Water and Food. They'll basically work around the clock to not run out of these things.\n\nMars also doesn't really have an atmosphere to speak of ( < 1% density of earths) so there is little protection from the Sun's radiation. This means they'll need to be indoors in artificial light most of the time.\n\nIn effect, the only difference between building a base on mars and building an international space station will be the lack of proximity for resupply. If you want more information on how individual systems (such as chemical Oxygen generators) work, the wiki articles for the ISS have some great information.\n\nEventually they could look to build a greenhouse to supply Air and Food, plus reclaim water stored in the polar icecaps, but this would probably not be practical within the scope of the first mission. They'd need to bring a lot of fertilizer for this to work anyway. Martian soil would not be conducive to life.",
"Nothing. Mars One is not a viable endeavor and it's not particularly well thought out.",
"Dying, mostly. A group of MIT students analyzed the Mars One design for a habitat, and found that people would start dying in a month or so.\n\nBut you don't have to lose any sleep over it. The professional consensus is that Mars One is nothing more than an advertising scam, and they are in no danger of so much as launching a gerbil in a model rocket.\n\nThe entire organization consists of precisely *three* people.\n\nElon Musk's Grand Plans are not too far behind in terms of \"any chance in hell.\" He absolutely could launch a gerbil into low Earth orbit. But send people to Mars? Not so much.\n"
]
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[],
[],
[],
[]
] | |
455ugg | does blowing your nose/coughing up phlegm help fight a disease? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/455ugg/eli5_does_blowing_your_nosecoughing_up_phlegm/ | {
"a_id": [
"czvergh",
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6,
3
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"text": [
"Phlegm / snot are the byproducts of your white blood cells attacking a foreign invader - whether that be bacteria, virus, disease. Usually my doctor will ask the color and consistency of both to determine if I need a booster or not. Coughing/sneezing them out typically won't help in the long run - the invaders have already been swept up in the ICE raid that is your immune system - the paddy wagon is your mucus.",
"Is it better to hack it up or swallow it?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] | ||
4jtot7 | how does a steering wheel/column work? for instance, i press a button while turning the steering wheel...are there wires connecting the wheel to the dash, and are they also twisting and turning at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jtot7/eli5_how_does_a_steering_wheelcolumn_work_for/ | {
"a_id": [
"d39hwd5"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Cars have a part called a \"clockspring\" in the steering wheel. It's that that is responsible for keeping an electrical connection between the steering wheel and the steering column/dash.\n\nThe buttons on the wheel are *not* individually wired to the dash as you seem to think. However, they're all wired to the clockspring.\n\nThe clockspring is a circular device that basically consists of a flat ribbon cable loosely wound around a centre hub that's mounted onto the end of the steering column. The ribbon cable has enough slack in it so that it can be 'wound' to full lock left or right by movement of the wheel. The wheel buttons are wired to terminals on the clockspring, which in turn are picked up in the ribbon cable, and the other end of it is wired to the steering column/dash.\n\nThis allows the wheel to turn through the full range of motion without any wires being twisted or damaged."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
19948u | why with all of the advances in science and technology, there aren't ways to re-build teeth from cavities or any other damage. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19948u/eli5_why_with_all_of_the_advances_in_science_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8lwdc1"
],
"score": [
5
],
"text": [
"There are. They're called fillings."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
3nnegi | can water that is at the very bottom bottom of the ocean ever work its way up to the top? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nnegi/eli5can_water_that_is_at_the_very_bottom_bottom/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvpm3y2"
],
"score": [
15
],
"text": [
"Yes, there is a really neat series of currents that span the planet. \n\nIn the winter, the surface water at the north and south pole freezes, leaving behind a very dense, cold brine that does not mix easily with other surface water, as it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and follows a current at the bottom of the ocean head in a general direction towards the equator (taking about 1000 years).\n\nSorry, I forget from memory how it gets pushed upwards at the equator. Memory says deep sea mountain ranges direct the current upwards.\n\n\nFor more info: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_current#Downwelling_of_deep_water_in_polar_regions"
]
] | ||
31dt5i | vevo... and why its all over youtube. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31dt5i/eli5vevo_and_why_its_all_over_youtube/ | {
"a_id": [
"cq0mzkh"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Vevo is on youtube, but not owned by it. Its owned by an alliance of record companies as a platform to distribute their music videos. It was created with the intent of recovering lost revenue from users posting official music videos on their own personal accounts."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
1q487r | why do rocket engines either have a high specific impulse or a high thrust? why can't it (or why is it difficult to) have both? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q487r/eli5why_do_rocket_engines_either_have_a_high/ | {
"a_id": [
"cd91z7w"
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"text": [
"Specific impulse is how much thrust you're getting based on a certain consumption rate of fuel. To increase your specific impulse, you have to lower your consumption rate but keep the same amount of thrust.\n\nBut, your thrust is related to your consumption rate. You generate thrust by throwing mass out the back end of the rocket. Conservation of momentum says that the momentum of the propellant you expel (mass times velocity) is the same as the change of momentum in your rocket. So to get more thrust, you either have to throw out more mass (increase the consumption rate) or throw that mass out faster (increase the exit velocity).\n\nThe exit velocity of your propellant is limited by the engine design and the type of fuel. A certain fuel can only generate so much energy, and you can only tweak engine parameters so much. This cuts your options to increase thrust down to increasing the consumption rate.\n\nSo, if you're trying to increase your specific impulse, you need to decrease your consumption rate while maintaining the same thrust, but to get more thrust you need to increase your consumption rate. That conflict puts an upper limit on your specific impulse. That's why you'll see things showing a particular limit on ISP for a solid rocket and a bipropellant rocket, without any more info of the design taken into account. There's only so much you can do before you max out the potential for that kind of fuel.\n\nOn the flip side, you have stuff like ion thrusters. These have a super high specific impulse because they can achieve super high exit velocities, but they consume propellant very slowly. In the end, that results in a really low thrust. It's very difficult to build one large enough that it could support an increased consumption rate to provide more thrust. You have to maintain particular electromagnetic fields in and around the thruster, and that gets harder and consumes more power the bigger you make the engine."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
1ylkhs | - how come milk doesn't go bad when it's in a chocolate bar? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ylkhs/eli5_how_come_milk_doesnt_go_bad_when_its_in_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cflljds",
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2,
6,
3
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"text": [
"Don't kid yourself... the milk not go bad, but a long overdue chocolate bar; when rancid; really tastes terrible!! :(-yuk!",
"Not enough water is the main reason. Every microbe needs some water to live. This is why drying jerky preserves it, and helps explain why honey doesn't go bad. A chocolate bar is too dry for lactobacillus (the bacterium that sours milk) to reproduce.",
"First, it's not milk in milk chocolate but milk solids, which is less reactive to bacteria. Second, there is a LOT of salt in milk chocolate, which, once you know to taste for it, you can notice immediately. It has a preservative effect (and makes it taste like crap,\n frankly, once you've gotten a taste for other styles of chocolate)."
]
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5ol78e | why are gas stations in new jersey not self serve? | Lived here all my life. Never questioned it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ol78e/eli5_why_are_gas_stations_in_new_jersey_not_self/ | {
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"text": [
"because the law says all stations have to be full serve. \n\nbecause politicians wrote that law and voted to pass it.\n\nbecause...back in ye olde days, the gov didn't trust average consumers to handle such a dangerous material as flammable gasoline.",
"It's the law. I had a cop jump done my throat the first time I tried to fill up in NJ.\n\nThe official explanation is that is helps the gas stations save on insurance.\n\nIn reality, it is a disguised welfare program, using higher gas prices to subsidize unnecessary jobs."
]
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[],
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1m93mb | why is atlanta in the middle of georgia instead of on the coast like all the other major eastern us cities? | Or at least have a quick outlet to the ocean by major river/bay like Philly/Baltimore/DC. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m93mb/eli5why_is_atlanta_in_the_middle_of_georgia/ | {
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"text": [
"The short answer is the railroad. The long answer is too long.",
"I'd also be interested to read an answer to this question. Maybe you should cross-post it to /r/askhistorians",
"Atlanta started as the location of a rail hub. Gradually a town was built around the railroad and other businesses connected track to the area. The city grew rapidly with the rebuilding of the South after the Civil War. ",
"A question similar to this: Why does Atlanta have such awful traffic? I've only been through it three or four times and it was absolutely horrible."
]
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[],
[],
[],
[]
] | |
432pic | why do cars in europe have stickers on them to identify their nationality? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/432pic/eli5why_do_cars_in_europe_have_stickers_on_them/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"European countries are relatively small and drivers have always frequently crossed from country to country. Moreover, in those days European licence plates all looked confusingly similar, so Europe needed to find an easy way to identify each vehicle’s country of registration. They came up with the idea of making it mandatory to put a white oval-shaped sticker with black country initials on the back of all vehicle\n\n",
"Those stickers were required in 20 century, because drivers have frequently crossed borders. Then, they came up with a standard plates for the EU which now includes country code on the plate, under the flag of Europe. Now those stickers are not required, and most new cars don't have them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] | ||
6rwyfz | why are palm trees so tall? | I understand (I think) that their height allows them to sway in high winds, as there would be during a hurricane. And I also get that their leaf shape is designed with the same purpose in mind. But why grow to be sooooo tall, and do taller palms have a better chance of surviving a hurricane than smaller, younger ones? If not, why not just stay short? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rwyfz/eli5_why_are_palm_trees_so_tall/ | {
"a_id": [
"dl8cxaq"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"There are lots of short palms around as well, height isn't universal. Plants in general grow high because they want to be in sunlight as much as possible, if you're higher than all other plants around you, you will never be in the shade."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | |
fr3cxz | . i am near sighted and wear contact lenses. i also just finished half life alyx in vr. i tried playing without my contacts, but it was as blurry as ever. why? since the screens are so close to my eyes. | And also, could my vision potentially be fixed within the headset if I could somehow input my prescription and adjust the focus? Could it also work for far sited people? Thus allowing people who wear glasses to play in VR? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fr3cxz/eli5_i_am_near_sighted_and_wear_contact_lenses_i/ | {
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"text": [
"The lenses make everything appear like it is about 2 meters from your eyes, this is actually the cause of the visual distortions most of us get when we first play vr - two parts of our brain are interpreting the distance differently.\n\nIt's also why if you hold things close to your face in vr they become blurry, even if nearsighted.\n\nI am far-sighted, and it's amazing to see things a meter away in full detail again without glasses (I don't do contacts) .",
"How images appear in VR trick your eyes into perceiving depth. You’re technically looking at two screens extremely close to your eyes, but you’ll notice if you do the same with your phone, the same effect will not occur. VR is extremely good at tricking your brain, and use a lot of advanced tech to make it work.\nPretty cool stuff.",
"Other folks have provided good answers here. That said, you can guy prescription lenses for your headset that snap over the built-in lenses. They are less than $100USD and very worth it. They come from Europe, so delivery takes 2-3 weeks. They just snap in place for installation. Easy to remove if needed if you have more than one user for your headset.",
"as someone who fought with VR for months with and without my glasses, just get the prescription lens inserts, being able to see in vr without cramming my glasses inside the headset is a godsend and worth every penny i paid for the lenses.",
"**EDIT: I actually flipped my terms!** Apparently, I've been confusing focus (accommodation) and convergence (vergence) for years! It is *focus* that remains constant while your *convergence* changes with depth in VR. I will be changing the answer to reflect this! Shoutout to u/ShelfordPrefect for pressuring me to do more research and helped me finally realize my mistake! (FYI, the technical term for this concept is the 'vergance-accommodation conflict' if anyone wants to learn more!)\n\nOkay, actual VR creator here. I did my thesis on stereoscopic media, so I can give an in-depth answer to this. The key ideas we need to know here are *focus* and *convergence*. Focus is the adjustment of the iris and other muscles in/near the eye to allow your brain to perceive detail at a certain depth; convergence is where your eyes are pointed toward in physical space. In real life, where your eyes focus and where they converge are the same - we use our eye muscles to see detail at the actual physical distance of the object from us. But in VR, this is different: the screens in the headset are always at a fixed (let's say 1\") distance from our eyes, regardless of where in the screen we focus. So if an object in VR is a virtual distance of 15 feet away, our eyes will \"focus\" at the physical distance of the screen (1 inch) but converge on the virtual distance of the object (15 feet).\n\nSo we know that in VR, focus and convergence are separate values for our brain. But why does this mean we don't have perfect vision in VR? Near/farsightedness is caused by problems aiming light at the retina. Light enters through the pupil and aims for the retina, which is basically a small dot at the back of the eyeball. In a 'normal' eye, the lens/iris and the angles of the eyes (convergence) work together to focus the light onto the retina, giving you perfect focus and detail. But if the eyeball is too long or short, the light does not hit the retina at the right distance, and the resulting vision is out of focus. This means that if an object is focused at a distance that is beyond your normal vision, you will lose detail and visual clarity.\n\nSo how does this relate to VR? As we discussed, focus and convergence are separated in VR. This means that even though the screen may be one inch away (and in focus/detail for the nearsighted) the convergence of the eyes might be set for a different distance. If your eyes are converged on an object/distance beyond your visual acuity, it will appear out of focus, *regardless of your eyes' focus on the headset screens*. So no matter how close or far the VR screens are from you, if you can't see detail at a distance in reality, you can't see it in virtual reality either!\n\nSo how do we fix this? As others mentioned, there are prescription lenses you can buy for headsets. These function like normal glasses or contacts to redirect/focus the light entering your eye so it hits your retina accurately. These can be expensive, though, so many headsets are designed to be worn with glasses. If you can wear contacts, that's my preferred way to play! :)",
"I'm just here to echo what everyone is saying about getting prescription lenses for your headset. It makes a world of difference and the price is pretty affordable.",
"Focal point of the image. The display is in front of your face, but the rock/image you're looking at out in the distance, your brain still perceives it as 20 ft away. Your eyes cant focus on far away objects (thus u need to wear glasses).\n\n_URL_0_",
"I have the Oculus Rift. I was able to find a 3D printed lens holder, ordered a set of glasses cheap online, and put it together myself. all in all cost me around $40 if I remember correctly. \n\nHere are the instructions for the CV1 Oculus Rift. Im sure you could find another guide if you have a different VR kit.\n\nGo here and download the 3D file:\n\n[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\nHave it printed. There are online groups who print items for folks.\n\nOrder this pair of glasses:\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)\n\nTake the lenses from the glasses, pop them into the 3D printed adapter and your CV1 has built in prescription glasses for around 15 Dollars/Euros + shipping."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://youtu.be/NCBEYaC876A"
],
[
"http://www.zennioptical.com/550021-metal-alloy-full-rim-frame-with-spring-hinges.html",
"https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1602460"
]
] | |
pvijq | when i hear my own voice, why do i sound differently than i think i do, and not like it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pvijq/eli5_when_i_hear_my_own_voice_why_do_i_sound/ | {
"a_id": [
"c3skac4",
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"score": [
6,
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"text": [
"Sound resonates through the bones and to the ear, the jawbone is really good at doing this. ",
"[This might help](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o16nu/eli5_why_your_voice_sounds_different_to_you_when/"
]
] |
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