query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
Why do we enjoy the feeling of being scared? | It gives you an adrenaline rush. Adrenaline can be VERY addictive. That's why adrenaline junkies are sometimes willing to put their life in danger just to get that rush. |
How much do Finance, Economics, and Accountacy majors know about each other's fields? | One can argue that accounting records economic transactions to build financial statements that are then used in finance to establish the worth of a business which drives further economic transactions . As a result of the relationships between the fields, many undergraduate and graduate business programs encourage inter... |
Why is the night sky different colors in different parts of the world? | Light pollution will be part of the issue, but it usually causes a glow. The difference of color seen in the sky is usually due to the dust in the atmosphere. In farming areas the sunset will appear different than the sunrise. This is due to the fact that working the land turns up a good deal of dust into the atmospher... |
Why are male beauty pageants significantly less famous than women's such as Miss Universe? | Across the human species, men are more visual in their attraction to mates than women are. Staring at a bunch of female hotties is something that appeals more strongly to a bunch of males than the other way aroundThe cultural norm has been that women attract mates with their appearance, and men attract mates with they ... |
Why do burps sometimes get stuck in our throats? | Haha it's nothing too serious. If you've got chest pains, or finding it hard to breathe sometimes It might be due to achalasia cardia. Just go to your local pharmacy and tell them your symptoms. I can't remember the name of the pill, but when I do remember, I'll tell you.Your Esophagus has 4 constrictions Maybe these c... |
How is ear wax created? And what is the purpose of it? | It's secreted from glands inside your ear. It's purpose is to trap and push out foreign dust and whatever else gets into your ear canal |
How do they grow seedless oranges and such without a seed? | For oranges, by not pollinating the flowers. The plant is otherwise normal. This isn't always true though, different seedless fruits are seedless for different reasons. Seedless watermelons are hybrids of two other watermelon species that, when combined, cannot produce functional seeds. These plants must be rehybridize... |
What does Adobe Air do on my mobile phone? | I'm a developer who uses AIR, its a runtime to run certain apps in, like Java is. These days, we don't need users to install the AIR app separately, we can package the runtime in with our apps, but some older apps might still need the separate app that you have. |
What is that watery stuff on top of the sour cream when I open the jar? | Sour cream is related to cheese . The protein infused water that sometimes separates out from the solids is called whey. The solids are called the curd. As an aside; Little Miss Muffet was essentially eating cottage cheese. |
The difference between SSRI and SNRI | SNRIs act upon, and increase, the levels of two neurotransmitters in the brain known to play an important part in mood: serotonin, and norepinephrine. These can be contrasted with the more widely-used selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors which act upon serotonin alone. Norepinephrine along with epinephrine, norepine... |
How much does internet mobile data actually cost a phone company?/Why is it so expensive compared to home internet plans? | It costs barely anything, on the order of fractions of a cent per MB. It costs so much because people will pay that much for it because having internet literally anywhere is really convenient. You're also covering operational costs , startup costs , and R & D required to make it all happen and get better every year.At ... |
Why is Carbon Tetrachloride (CCl4) not flammable? Does it have something to do with its geometry? | Fire is rapid oxidation. Burning gasoline takes things like C8H18 and turns it to 8 + 9 * with the help of plenty of our friend oxygen. When you get into the chemistry of it though, oxidization is not just adding oxygen to a molecule, it's actually pulling electrons away from whatever gets oxidized. The reason this hap... |
Why my medicine costs 14k for every dose. How is it even possible for a chemical to cost that much? | You aren't paying for the actual chemical, you are paying for all the research that led to the creation of that medicine. It may take a company millions or billions of dollars to find, test, and build manufacturing to develop a new drug, and then it may cost nearly nothing to manufacture each dose. |
Why is the locomotion of a camel so much different than that of a horse? | They move in a similar way to a giraffe, the gait comes from having relatively long legs compared to the length of the body of the camel. By moving both left legs then both right they reduce the chance of the back legs hitting the front legs, avoiding tripping. A horse doesn't have this problem as they have a longer bo... |
Why did the cost of US college tuition skyrocket? | Universities realized that people were always getting approved for their federal student loans, so they kept raising tuition knowing that the students will be able to pay their crazy prices.Supply vs Demand. Education is trumpeted as the only way to make a decent living. This coupled with the near limitless access to f... |
If I have 1000 dollars in a stock and the stock goes to zero, what happens to my money? | Stock represents your share in ownership of a company. When you buy stock, the company gets the money. If the value drops to 0 then that means the company is being appraised by the market as worthless. They may have your money somewhere or they may have spent it. You own a tiny sliver of the company though, and if the ... |
How does anti dandruff shampoo work? And are the branded ones actually better than the other ones? | Long term dandruff sufferer here! Dandruff is caused by a [yeast infection] eating your sebum . By doing so they irritate your skin, giving you dandruff. So proper anti-dandruff shampoo contains anti-fungals. Most anti-dandruff shampoos contain zinc. For some people this is effective, but generally doesn't work for any... |
Why are most of the foods that taste good bad for you? | You're just viewing it from your perspective. To me, junk food is good but I'd rather eat properly prepared broccoli. Try accustoming yourself to different foods and healthier foods and you'll see that junk food does not always have the better taste. |
Spotlight quote: "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse them." | It takes a village to raise a child is a common proverb which means that a child isn't just raised by their family, they're raised by the joint efforts of their community - their family, neighbours, school, friends, etc. "It takes a village to abuse them" means that in the case of child abuse, not only the actual perpe... |
Why do fashion/clothing models always look pissed off? | If you notice, many catalog models are smiling and happy - they're trying to get you to buy something. The Victoria's Secret models also smile during their show. But high fashion models are often told not to smile because either it is distracting from the clothes or doesn't meet the "theme" I believe the blank looks on... |
What motivated individuals in the North to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War? | Many were drafted, some believed in the union. A great book on this is "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" by Eric Foner the very basic gist is that despite what some modern people assume, Northerners and their soldiers were generally not abolitionists, they were often racist to varying degrees and weren't particularly f... |
Why are the movement of people in spacemovies so slow, if there is no resistance? (Example: When they climb up stairs) | Have you ever been working in a tight space, with a low ceiling, crouched down, and then, without thinking, you stood up and banged your head? If you're not careful, that happens *every time* in space. Imagine pushing off from one end of a tube with about the same amount of force as, on earth, you'd use to get up on yo... |
How exactly do people avoid taxes using shell companies? | Let's say you own a pretty profitable business in the US but you're tired of paying taxes. First, you make a shell company where there are lax regulations and low taxes. Then you transfer the assets that your US company has to the shell company, in name at least. You continue to use those assets in the US to make money... |
Why can some people eat lots of food, do no exercise but remain thin whilst others struggle to lose weight by eating less and working out? | This is a big question. The general answer is that each person has a weight that his body considers as 'ideal'. They will eat, or not eat, enough food to maintain that weight. How that weight gets set is, at the moment, unknown. A thin person will eat enough to maintain their size. They might go and pig out at a party,... |
Apple's "Wave", Whats is this technology? | Don't fall for that please Microwaving any electronic device will basically fry the circuits and maybe even explode the battery. I preemptively curse the trolls who will inevitably down-vote this. |
what was on the other side of the planet when it was 1 super continent.... | When the planet was a super continent I could imagine the rest was just ocean with a few islands here and there.> The single global ocean which surrounded Pangaea is accordingly named Panthalassa. - _URL_0_ |
How do url shorteners work? | You tell the shortening service a URL, it stores that URL in its database and generates a short code. When somebody tries to go to _URL_0_ it looks up the full URL from its database and redirects the browser. Depending on the service the short URL might be temporary unless the person who requested it pays to keep it up... |
Why are genetic disorders like trisomy 21 much more common than say, trisomy 19? | Most trisomies and other severe genetic defects are incompatible with life. The embryo never even reaches the fetus stage. It dies and is expelled in many cases even without the mother knowing she is pregnant. The reason Down syndrome is more common than many others is because Down syndrome embryos can still develop in... |
How can someone have negative karma for every comment yet still have a positive karma score? | Reddit employs algorithms that try to prevent vote brigading and mass downvoting. For example if you clicked on a user's page and started downvoting every comment, reddit will probably ignore those downvotes when calculating the user's total karma. In this case, the thread was linked from /r/bestof, which caused a mass... |
Why do we not really remember much before we turn 5 or 6 years old? | We do remember plenty. We just don't remember it *as events*. You don't, for example, forget how to walk or the language you're raised with.The ELI5 answer: Because our brains are still developing. |
The difference between nerves and neurons. | Neurons are the cells that can receive and transmit action potential, they can work by chemical or electrical stimulation and are mostly located in your central nervous system so brain hemisphere, brain stem, spinal chord and cerebellum . Your neurons transmit information thought their axon and basically a nerve is a b... |
The difference between a programming script and "normal" programming? | There are two types of programming languages, compiled and interpreted. In the first case you the programmer write your code, and then you invoke a compilation step that covers these vaguely English looking statements into machine code that the computer operating system can run directly. For example, on Windows you mig... |
Why is there a certain smell to really cold freezers? | The refrigerant is odorless . You're most likely smelling something resulting from the accumulation of moisture, the food, packaging, etc. |
Is the Rastafari religion a sect of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church ? | Ethiopian Orthodoxy is a branch of Christianity. Rastafarianism is a whole separate religion with little remaining connection, if any, to Ethiopia. |
How does a vending machine know how much money you put into it? | i looked this up a while ago, and _URL_0_ might not be the most reliable source, but i think they just have very specific equipment. a machine and computer reads the dollar bills and is programmed to "look" for certain marks on different bills to distinguish them. for coins, it has another system that can tell what mat... |
Why do bullets have curved tops rather than sharp, pointy tops? | Bullets with sharp points are meant for maximum speed. The power of a bullet comes from momentum, which is a product of weight and speed. A high powered rifle round doesn't weigh much, but goes *really* fast. A blunt bullet is designed for closer range. The blunt tip will have *less* ability to cut through the target, ... |
Horoscopes, and how they're written. | Total BS. They're vague enough that they can apply to totally different types of people, but they're specific enough that when people read them, they think "WOW THAT\'S ABOUT ME!"', "They don't try to make it up - and I'm not arguing for the scientific validity here, but according to their own system, here is how horos... |
When mixing liquids of different temperatures, what will the resulting temperature be? | You're right - it does end up at the exact average. Things get more complicated if there's liquids with different heat capacities involved, such as saline and plain water. Phase changes would also complicate matters - if you went from ice to liquid, for example. There's a tutorial [here]. |
Why is Windows Vista so hated? | Vista's system requirements were much higher than XP's, and it dropped compatibility for a lot of software including drivers. For some people this meant that Vista ran slowly and either didn't support their hardware/software or crashed trying. There were a lot of other changes made from XP to Vista, both in the interfa... |
Why does pain around the finger tips / finger nails seem to hurt so much? | Your body doesn't have an even distribution of sensory nerves. Areas like your fingertips or lips have a lot. This allows you to feel temperature, and texture much better with those areas.Fingertips are used to feel our surroundings so they have a ton of nerve endings really close to the surface, as a result even small... |
How come it takes some people a couple minutes to fall asleep, while it takes others much longer? | it can be a number of things, but it's mainly sleeping pattern. someone who has spent all day in bed, just been in a well light area for a long time recently, been active recently, or eaten certain things will have a harder time falling asleep than someone who has done the opposite of those things |
What is Open Source? | The literal entomology of the word is derived from the words "source code," which is code that is written before it is run through a program which compiles it, making it into a language the computer understands, but it is virtually impossible to edit the code without the source code. Open source is used to describe a p... |
What is the significance of the fly in Breaking Bad? | On one level its about the possibility of contamination. How did the fly get in, what are the impacts of bugs on the cook? On another level its about the Walt losing control. Things that are spiralling out of control and he is desperate to reassert authority and be in control of his life againIn the cold of open of the... |
Why do we hiccup? Why does holding your breath stop them? | When you have something gross on your hand, like a bug or some rotton food, you flick your hand to get it off. The sudden motion removes the foreign object. The same goes for your diaphragm. A hiccup is your diaphragm moving suddenly to relieve an irritation. The sudden movement moves the lungs and forces air through y... |
Why can't fake blood in movies look more real? | It actually can, but it doesn't look as good. People have become used to seeing what they expect blood to look like in movies, and a more realistic version actually looks less real than than the real thing.It depends on what the directors are going for, it can be anywhere from Tarantino stylized blood to gritty realism... |
Why do people use 4 small tv screens hooked together instead of one big screen on computers? | Two reasons 1) Because each screen can display something different. Kind of cool/useful if you need to have multiple streams of information active at the same time. 2) They don't make screens that big for computers. But if you hook up a group of them you can have a bigger screen.You can manage different tasks on each s... |
How can an AC current be superimposed on a DC current on the same physical line? | If you have 50 VDC to begin with, and then make it oscillate between say 43 V and 57 V, that is 10 VAC superimposed on 50 VDC. The reason the numbers don't seem to add up is that AC currents aren't measured peak to peak , but is measured in something called RMS . The peak to peak voltage is the RMS voltage times the sq... |
Why do people tend to feel cold when they are depressed? | I've never heard this. Do you have any source that this is even a thing? My guess is that malnourishment and/or inactivity causes poor circulation and general lethargy, which might feel like depression. |
Why do patents and copyrights expire? Who/what decides when they do? Is it fair to the inventor/creator and is there a way around it? | The idea for patents is this: We, the society protect your invention from copying. In exchange, you make your invention public. So after the patent expires, everything can try to build it or improve it.You can also try to keep it secret, but then people who find out about your invention can build it without restriction... |
Why the Big XII is falling apart | Someone can probably provide a better answer as I tend to focus more on the Big East, but I can give you a general idea. Key factor in all of this - money. In general, the Big XII has two television deals - one with Fox Sports that is shared evenly amongst all of the schools, and one with ABC that tends to gravitate mo... |
I'm standing on the world's most sensitive scales, and I'm eating an exactly 1 lb burger. What happens to the scale reading after each bite? | Nothing, because you are already holding the burger. Eating doesn't make weight go away or change or anything. |
How would the Church of Scientology be able to sue HBO on any grounds in the first place? | They can sue all they want, come up with any reason they want, get it into courts and in front of a judge and cause HBO to have to respond to anything they say. They don't have to be right or valid, but if they get sued HBO still has to respond in some legal way.Many times, suing someone isn't about winning in court. I... |
other than snakes, why do almost all land vertebrates have 4 limbs? | evolution is essentially survival of the fittest not "fit" as in fitness and health so much as it is "fit" as in adapted to the environment they live in. at some point, some creature crawled out of the water and was able to survive on land. over time and generations it had mutations in its offspring that made different... |
What will happen to the ISS once it's mission ends in 2020 (or 2024 maybe)? Will it just stay up there and continue orbiting? | The ISS is in a fairly low orbit at which there are still very small quantities of Earth's atmosphere. This wouldn't normally be an issue except that the ISS is massive, and has massive solar panels which act like a sail, creating measurable drag, slowing it down and causing it to spiral back towards Earth. As a result... |
Why does feces and urine smell so bad? | So we instinctively avoid it, as it can harm us', "Because it's rotting, partly digested waste . and if it smelt good we'd probably re-eat it. It's actually a good thing that it smells bad.We are asking the question wrong. The question is "Why do they have a smell?" and not "Why do they have a bad smell?" All smells ar... |
What is the weird noise I hear inside my head when I "flex" my ears? | You're hearing a relatively low-pitched rumbling sound? You're hearing the muscle fibers vibrate in the [tensor tympani muscle]. Plenty of people can do this voluntarily. |
What was the point of nuclear torpedoes? | I believe they were made to counter nuclear armed ships and submarines. Standard torpedoes weren't reliable enough for preventing a potential nuclear attack, they needed to make sure they could wipe out the target with a single shot. |
Why do people claim milk is unhealthy when we are all taught that it is healthy? | An interesting series of studies on low-fat vs. full-fat dairy. A 46% less occurrence of diabetes in full-fat dairy consumers. Of course, correlation is not causation, but 46%?!!? GeezI believe what you're referring to is the "adult humans are not meant to drink milk" idea. After a quick Google [search], this appears t... |
How does alcohol in hand sanitizer kill bacterial cells but not our own cells? | It absolutely does kill your own cells. If you drank hand sanitizer you would die. It can blind you if you get it in your eyes. Your skin keeps it away from the rest of your cells because that is its job, but it absolutely does kill your cellsIt *does* burn away your own cells. But the outer layer of your skin is alrea... |
Why do we feel inclined to sing when music is present? | I think the answer would depend very much on the person. Different people sing for different reasons, and you can also sing for different reasons in various contexts. For example, you said you sang "when driving in the car, for example, or doing the housework". Housework is usually mundane, and driving sometimes can be... |
Why do commercials sometimes only appear for a split second before being replaced by another one? | You mean on TV, right? The times I've experienced this was because my TV service provider aired their own commercials instead of those the channel had been paid for/those the channel had made. There was a little delay, so some commercials were only shown for a split second. |
What is a Single Payer Healthcare System? | It is where the is literally one payer for all healthcare bills -- the government. Instead of having dozens of different insurance providers that doctors and hospitals have to deal with, there is a single point of contact for submitting all claims. Sort of like if the government's Medicare for seniors was extended to e... |
Why can we tell if a bill (currency) is fake or not/ | Money is like a cake. You have slices of it, and it's delicious. But what's it made out of? Well, there's a tricky question. Eat the cake and find out? You can try. Hell, let's say you do it. You somehow know every single ingredient in the cake. More still, you somehow know the exact measurments. But if you put that al... |
How do people perfectly colour previously black and white photos ? | It's basically painting a transparent picture on top of the black-and-white, and the B/W image provides much of the shading.In the days before photoshop, you had actual transparent inks with limited tints to choose from, and that's why old hand-colorized photos often look more cartoony. Now, you can pick from a vast ra... |
The concept of judicial standing in the United States | In order to be party to a legal process you have to have a reason to be involved. You can't just assert a right to participate. So for example if you want to sue the NSA for listening to your cell phone you have to prove to a court that the NSA actually listened to your cell phone first. If the NSA refuses to admit tha... |
Why does bottled water have nutritional information and ingredients and alcohol containers do not? | The FDA regulates bottled water but not alcohol.Alcohol is not considered food like soda, icetea and other non-alcohols are, it's in a category by itself, and thus under the scrutiny of different regulations that does not require nutritional information.Molson 67 actually has nutritional info labels now |
the origin of firm handshakes | Handshakes came about in the same way that salutes in the military evolved. A thousand years ago people had no means of quick communication, so they were vulnerable to being robbed or attacked on the roads. They couldn't exactly call the police, after all. A hand wave and then a handshake was a polite way to take your ... |
How Argentinian currency devalued 15% overnight and the upcoming emerging markets financial crisis. | A currency, or a Promissary Note, or "Bill" is essentially a promise by a government to pay you. Currency is a much easier way to make a transaction than bartering. But the currency must have a value. It can be backed by gold , which is why many countries keep gold bricks under lock and key. Or currency can be backed b... |
How did Valve get the DotA trademark even though Defense of the Ancients is a mod for Blizzard's Warcraft 3? | The DotA trademark was owned by the people who created the mod, not Blizard. Valve paid the DotA team to come work with them & bought the rights to the name. Blizzard has no more rights to DotA than Microsoft has rights to Warcraft. |
Why are stars in the sky white in appearance, but our sun appears as yellow? | Ive read this before a while back, the sun is white but because of the atmosphere it appears yellow. Theres more science to it but i cant bothered to google it when you could do it! |
How do I wake up in the morning 3 pounds lighter than I was the night before? | 2 ways: 1) You lose water vapor in your breath as you breathe out during sleep. 2) you body still needs energy when you sleep, it produces this energy by burning sugar, the byproducts of sugar metabolism is CO2 and water. You then breath the CO2. All that Carbon you breath out adds up over the night.See this video: _UR... |
How come when i cook an egg over a campfire it explodes unless i poke a hole in it but hardboiled eggs dont. | Direct heat from a campfire is going to heat the inside of the egg much quicker than boiling water . When you hardboil an egg the air inside it slowly expands and escapes through the shell as the egg heats. When you heat an egg over a fire, that air expands quicker than it can escape the shell, so without a hole to act... |
The three seashells, as referenced in the 1993 motion picture Demolition Man. | it's a mcguffin. it's not explained, it's not speculated. it's just a thing that moves the plot forward. it gave the character something to complain about so he could show that you get a ticket for verbal offenses. |
How and why does taking your pen drive off your computer without "safely removing" it cause harm to the pen drive? | You're waiting with your dad at the bus stop. The bus pulls up, opens its doors and lets kids on. Now, it takes a while before all of the kids get on the bus and the doors close. It also takes a while for the kids to sit down so the bus can safely move. When you copy a file and it finishes copying, that's like the kid ... |
The difference between analog and digital | Everything in the world is analog. For computers, we created a digital signal. It isn't truly digital, it is still an analog signal, we just design the electronics to interpret everything to have only 2 states: 1 or 0. This allows us to turn switches on and off and manipulate information in a relatively easy manner. It... |
why are guitars so expensive? | It's all in the materials. Some wood is very expensive and some woodworking techniques take a long time to master. That is where the costs come from. The sound they produce is really just a matter of the design and density of the wood. Pine is going to sound very different than oak. I would also say this applies to all... |
Why are some movies not rated? | MPAA is a private non governmental entity that rates movies based on their content. Their ratings are nonbinding, but pretty much all movie theaters observe them to appease public desire for decency, and to avoid govt censorship. Most movies that are released in theaters will get rated. They might avoid it if a rating ... |
How do TV and radio ratings work? | They sample a portion of general audiences mostly. They may use surveys or viewer/listener diaries. Sometimes they use electronic trackers. For TV, it is the Neilsen box . For radio, it is a device called a People Meter, which a listener carries with them and it registers sub-audible codes transmitted by the station. |
Why do so many people need glasses? | Our eyesight is generally good enough to survive in the wild, but the demands of modern life make better eyesight desirable. Reading and driving cars is so new as to be unaffected by evolutionOur eyes are evolved to look at things at a fair distance and not a 2 or 3 feet. We also use our eyes constantly for 4-5 hours f... |
When you get a short, sharp, shooting pain, what causes it? | By no means is this meant to be medical advice, but I often get the sharp headaches that are of a very short duration. I've been told they are [ice pick heachaches]. Everything I've read though says you should probably not just decide this is what it is for yourself though, and make sure to get checked out by a doctor.... |
What is the difference between DNA sequencing and Genome sequencing? | A genome is comprised of the complete genetic material within an organism. In a human, that includes all of our DNA, both coding and noncoding. When you sequence the genome of an organism, you sequence ALL of the genetic information, and can compare organisms to each other with this genomic map that you have comprised.... |
What causes muscle cramps? | There can be a few causes of muscle cramps. Muscles rely quite heavily on salts like sodium and potassium; when you're working out and sweating heavily these salt levels can get disturbed and result in cramp. Muscles have a mechanism where they can generate the energy they need without adequate oxygen. The flipside of ... |
In theory what are the major risks associated with harnessing nuclear fusion power? | Hydrogen fusion occurs naturally only in the cores of stars. If we want to create fusion power plant, we just have to recreate those conditions. The cores of stars are really really hot and really really pressurized. This in itself is not such a hard problem, with enough engineering we can probably get around it. The r... |
How to understand wattage and impedance measurements in amplifiers and speakers when setting up an audio/speaker system | I'm no expert, but I sold A/V equipment for quite some time, so I'll take a crack at this for you: We'll start with how a speaker works. There's a cone that vibrates to make sound. This cone is controlled by a wrapped up piece of copper called a voice-coil. The voice-coil can have a positive or negative charge, dependi... |
Why does cold water from the sink feel warm if my hands are freezing cold from snow? | It's all because you are incapable of feeling temperature. You can only feel a change in temperature. Heat always flows from warmer things to colder things. If something feels hot, it's because you are getting heat from it. If something feels cold, its because you are loosing heat to it. If the skin of your hands is co... |
Why is gigabit internet useful? Most hard dives can’t write information that fast so why would Someone need Internet that monumentally fast? | Gifatbit = 125 megabytes per second, which quite a few hard drives, and nearly any solid state drive, could sustain for a sequential write. And this assumes a single device is completely the entire 1000 megabit per second link. That being said, a gigabit connection far exceeds what most residential users will need outs... |
Where does the word "girder" in "I am Bender. Please insert girder" come from? | A girder is a metal support beam. He is asking for someone to hand him something to bend. As he is programmed to bend things, like girdersA girder is a [steel beam]. Bender was built to bend steel beams in a factory. You'll notice he has his arms out ready for work, bending steel "please insert girder "Bender is a robo... |
How are they turning astronaut urine into drinking water? | Distillation, they boil the urine, the water evaporates into vapor and that vapor is captured and recondensed to water. Then the water is filtered through membranes to remove any remaining impurities. _URL_0_ |
Why is Jewish and Muslim more of an identity than Christian or Catholic. | It probably just seems that way in Europe and North America where Christianity is so ubiquitous. In places like the Middle East and Asia, where Christians are a minority, they constitute a very distinct identityThat statement is only true in some parts of the world. In countries with a Christian majority, being a Chris... |
Why do launched missiles often fail? | Try making something weighing several tons travel thousands of miles at hundreds of miles an hour and attempt to make sure it doesn't stray anymore than a dozen feet from its target. If you have little experience in physics, programming, and rocketry it's not going to be easy. Hell a large part of much of modern missil... |
Why is standardized testing still the norm when a lot of studies say that it is negative for the learning system? | First, its hard to drop a system that appears to be doing its job just fine. We've built our educational systems around it and its not that simple to just make it go away. Universities like it because it lets them evaluate candidates much more smoothly. What will replace it? Secondly, politics.At some point you have to... |
Why is listening to a song in my head not as satisfying as actually listening to it? | Humans have great potential not perfect. Mind mimics some sounds, not all. Can recall melodies maybe not harmonies not all at once. Actual recordings clearer, more precise. Can better produce fuller, more intricate, complex sounds. Pleasing to the ear, like a complex dish. Memory of food not as satisfying as eating, is... |
If there is life after death, why do we value our lives here on earth? | Because it's permanent. Whether there is life after death or not, whether it's better or worse, one thing we all know for sure, we can never ever come back to living this life this way. When it's over it's over. And that's something that makes us want to get the most out of it. |
What does it mean when they say the Oakland Dept is now "civilian run" | Typically when a PD is "Civilian Run," it is administered by someone outside of the department. In Oaklands case, because they currently have no Chief, the department is being run by the City Manager, Mayor, City Council, or an appointee thereof. |
Why aren't we changing the routine of human lives for the better? | I think we are! It's just a very long term process. Not that long ago, most people were peasants. You go out into the field, toil with backbreaking work all day, and hope you don't get catch plague. Not a very good life. Time passed, and industrialization happened. People had become more productive. A portion of the po... |
Why are the terms for Mom and Dad so similar across all languages? | Those syllables are the easiest for babies to sayIt's believed that the "m" sound is associated with "mom" because it's like an imitation of breastfeeding. Roman Jakobson's idea. With "dad", no idea. Interestingly, in Estonian, it's also "ema", dad can be "taat" . And Russian is also "mama" and "papa". So we can see un... |
how do choreographers write out choreography? | There have been multiple choreographic notations throughout history. One of the most famous is Labanotation, but in my experience, choreographers use anything from stick figures, to shorthand, to coded words for movements. Movements stay in people's bodies for a long time, even after years of not doing it. So they repe... |
Will the economy ever recover to the point where it was 20-30 years ago when our parents would work 40 hours a week and be able to buy a house and support a family? | Being able to afford a home on a single income doesn't really have anything to do with a strong economy. Our economy today is much better than 20-30 years ago. The reason it takes two incomes now is two fold. 1) Increased demand for housing. With two working incomes and very low interest rates, it's easier for the aver... |
When someone dies, why do the headlines say "dead" instead of "has died"? | Headlines use active voice instead of passive voice to convey the message, mostly because it has greater economy of words. You can get the message across in fewer words, and that's important for a headline.Takes up less space, allows for bigger print, and is more abrasive. If the headline read "Muhammad Ali has died" y... |
Can the language you learn growing up affect the way you think and problem solve? | This is known as the [Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis]. It was pursued for a while, then fell extremely out of fashion. But now it's back and many linguists admit it is at least *partially* true, and there are a *few* linguists, such as [Lera Boroditsky], who strongly argue for it today. About 50 years ago, people started creat... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.