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How do Helium Neon lasers work? | You have two mirrors: One is very very reflective and the other is like a two way mirror . So we going to bounce some light between the two mirrors so that the light can reach a high enough intensity to escape through the output coupler. Now the problem with using random light is all the different wavelengths trip over... |
Am I the only one who occasionally gets that weird jiggle after I finish peeing? Seriously, what's that all about? | your not. the urine is a warm liquid that is leaving the body, thus leaving you colder. the body compensates by heating up. by quivering, shivering, and other jiggles', "Jiggle? You mean like a cold chill or something like that? If so you're not alone. |
Why does every site I go on need to mention that they use cookies now? | The parliament of the EU thought cookies were big scary things and made it law that websites have to say they use them. There's big fines if you don't.The simplest answer is that cookies store information about you, then transmit that information to someone else. There are different kinds of cookies, but they all work ... |
Why does your heart feel like it's skipping a beat or fluttering when you have a "crush"? | when you see someone you fancy you brain releases all sorts of chemicals but we will focus on the one you are asking about: epinephrine aka adrenaline. this chemical causes the heart to increase it's rate this is because your body is gonna need more blood flow. this is also what gets released during the fight or flight... |
If camels and rabbits are an eco-problem in australia, why they don't they eat it to extinction? | Have you ever heard the term "Fucking like rabbits"? They breed like crazy. They're also small, fast and like to hide. It's much easier said than done. |
Why do our fingers have hangnails, but not our toes? | The source I found lists the following as causes of hangnails: nail biting, trauma, dryness, cutting the cuticle. The article itself states that we use our hands for various tasks as well as exposure to elements which can cause the dryness and trauma listed above. The cutting and nail biting I suppose falls under a mor... |
The difference between Thai curries (Red, Yellow, Green, Penang, Massaman, and Jungle) | Jungle curry doesn't feature coconut milk, the others do. Masaman curry isn't made with pork and has peanuts, and is often milder than the others. Green curry gets its color from cilantro. Thai curries typically include fish sauce as part of the "base". Source: I make these recipes regularly |
How come ads on YouTube are essentially unfettered and great quality but a 240P video buffers? | The same ad may be played before thousands of different youtube videos, and so millions of people might be watching it at any one time. They can move those ads close to you and put them on a fat pipe right outside your door. You might be the only person watching the actual video, and so it is cold and far away, and so ... |
When fired directly into the air, wouldnt a bullet fall at 9.8m/s^2? | MythBusters did a segment on this some years ago. Here's a summary: > In the case of a bullet fired at a precisely vertical angle , the bullet would tumble, lose its spin, and fall at a much slower speed due to terminal velocity and is therefore rendered less than lethal on impact. However, if a bullet is fired upward ... |
Empty buildings must cost the owner a lot. | For Americans, it may be a stratagy to reduce taxes that the owener is paying from income generated by other properties. A taxpayer pays taxes based on how the income was earned such as income, capital gains, prizes and winnings, gifts, etc. One of the subcategories of income is passive income/losses where the taxpayer... |
How do viruses know to attack their hosts when they aren't even alive? | I'll chip in with some specifics. Think of a virus as a bleb of cell membrane with a bunch of surface proteins and a genome inside. Some of these surface proteins are binding and fusion proteins that are what latch on to host cells. HIV, for example, has surface proteins that specifically bind to the CCR5 receptor on h... |
How does the whole Basketball and American Football seasons work? In terms of how many teams in league, the whole playoff thing, all of it! | **NFL** This will be an order of hierarchy thing. 1. One League2. Two Conferences 3. Four Divisions4. Four teams per division. A total of 32 teams. 16 in each conference = 4 teams x 4 divisions. In comparison to other tournaments. SuperBowl = Final Conference Championship = Semifinal Divisional Playoffs = Quarter Final... |
Why do skin tags bleed so much when you remove them? | Skin tags are benign tumours and so have their own blood supply. So, in a sense your body "knows" to deliver more blood to them. It does this by creating a greater network of vessels, some of which are larger than typical capillaries you would find in the outer layers of skin. So when removed, they typically bleed more... |
the random link address when you open a picture in new tab in facebook such as _URL_0_ | Content like static images are frequently stored on what's called a CDN, or Content Delivery Network. CDNs generally have lots of servers all around the world that share the same content, so when your browser tries to load the images it'll do so from the nearest CDN location. For example if you're in Australia, loading... |
How can cereal companies afford to print such colorful boxes when ink is so expensive? | They charge you for it in the price of their cereal. Somewhere along the way an analyst figured out that having the colorful box increased sales enough to justify the cost, or that the colorful box made people willing to pay more for the product than the extra cost of the ink/packaging. |
Why vegetables and fruits seem to go bad faster than they used to years ago? | Just a guess, but going for it because of a similar discovery when I started a garden. So first time garden. First harvest of some leaves of lettuce. Cleaned them, dried them well, and then totally lost them in the fridge for about a month. When I found them, they were still good and crunchy. So I figure a few things a... |
How people get amazing pictures of the night sky, but when I try I only get blackness. | #1 A camera that can take a long exposure #2 A tripod, as shaking hands are VERY noticeable on long exposures #3 Patience and knowledge - you need to do some research and know things, like how to polar-align if you're using EQ tracking to prevent star trails, this can be very difficult on cheap mounts. Unfortunately to... |
why do large banks get to "make a deal" with the federal government instead of just being fined, sanctioned or prosecuted. | The number one reason is the US justice system is always a bargaining table. Prosecutors take cases to trial only when a bargain can't be reached . It's exceedingly hard to prove legal wrongdoing under the charges frequently brought against banks, so a trial is a huge risk that the punishment would be nothing. Also a g... |
Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Is the process of evaporation different then? How does the water stay in a gas form in clouds? | There are two separate mistakes you 've made. The first is the temperature at which evaporation occurs. Water boils at 100 degrees C, yes. This is the temperature where *every* molecule in your water sample becomes gas. But evaporation takes place at much lower temperatures. At any temperature above 0 degrees C, a port... |
Why do you need a prescription for an asthma inhaler? | There's a few things that go into deciding which drugs are offered for sale OTC. First up is abuse potential - if people can get high on it, it'll generally get regulated. After that is safety - is it easy to overdose? Does it have ugly side effects? Does it have any scary drug interactions? The final detail, which is ... |
How do people come up with, and make, camouflage patterns? | Similar to how they make tye dye shirts. bunching up parts of it and stuff. or just randomly sewing on pieces of scrap cloth. The trick isn't randomness persay but rather a general consistency of color ratio. The onlooker fools themselves for the most part. |
Why do microwave ovens expel air? | it's cooling the "microwave emitting plate thingys" they eat a lot of power and subsequently generate a lot of heat like a computer motherboard. |
why does Coke at McDonalds taste so much better than Coke at other restaurants, and better than the bottle/can. | What WtheCore said, plus drinks at restaurants are produced by mixing a syrup with carbonated water. Differences in the water used, errors in how much syrup is being used/maintenance and cleaning on the machine can all impact the end resultDifferent container, different eating environment, ice vs. none, [the placebo ef... |
Megathread on United Kingdom, Pound, European Union, brexit and the vote results | [Very helpful link explaining what's happening] Sorry mods if this is against the rules, please remove it if it is |
why do all cameras/phones save photos to a folder named "DCIM"? | It's a convention. Short of Digital Camera Images. The convention allows for a device to place files in a place that makes sense on media - e.g. you media may have lots of folders, but its going to use this one to place new images. It's not much more than a convention like "documents" or "desktop" There's a [specificat... |
Why does russia get so heavily sanctioned when they supported the rebels but nothing has happened to turkey when they are supporting a group of mass murderers and barbarians that are a much bigger threat? | Turkey is a Nato country with strategic position between Europe and Middle East. Because it is an ally, it is dealt with silk gloves. Kind of like authoritan Saudi Arabia is an important ally for the US in the Middle East, and US doesn't really raise up the humanitarian crimes of Saudi Arabia.How is Turkey directly sup... |
What causes the sensation that your hearing is muffled and your vision is blurred when you're dizzy or about to pass out? | Sounds like low blood pressure. If that happens often it may be worth talking to a doctor about. If your blood pressure is low and you suddenly stand up it may take your heart a moment to get all that blood uphill to your brain. During that period your brain basically goes into self preservation mode. It draws blood aw... |
While in China, spammers were able to send spammy text messages to my phone somehow, simply by me being there. How did they do this? | When a cellphone connections to any cell network various things need to happen so that the cellphone works. The spammers have hooked into that process, legally or illegally. That's how they know you're there and how they can send an SMS to your phone even though you've never called anyone in that country. |
Why there isn't improved safety around subway trains | How many accidents are occurring today that would be prevented by your proposed 'improved safety'? How much would those improvements cost? Who would pay for the improvements? |
How can speakers make dozens of different frequencies (sounds) at the same time? | All the waves from each sound combine into one wave. Obviously air cannot be two different pressures at a given point and time, right? So a single speaker can in theory reproduce any possible sound or combination of sounds. |
Why doesn't the smell of excrement or urine get on your clothes, but the smell of curry does | Question: does the smell of curry permeate the clothing, or does it permeate the body and scent the sweat? I had always assumed the latter. I don't find the smell offensive either way, but I had always planned, in case of a plane crash in the Andes where I am stranded for weeks with no food except corpses of fellow tra... |
Why does a ball bounce higher when it has more air in it? | When a ball bounces, it deforms. With a ball that deforms more, more energy goes into the deformation, and more goes into "wasted energy" . With a ball that has higher pressure it deforms less, less wasted energy, and due to the conservation of energy, it will return more energy and bounce higher. TD;DR: a higher press... |
Why do I often read that scientists only search for planets that are inhabitable by our own human standards? | NASA is joyously cataloging every last extra-solar planet that we can find out of a love of the pure knowledge of what's out there. The media only cares about planets that might be habitable by humans because ordinary people don't care about desolate rocks in space. But take heart - anything that shares even 1 characte... |
How does the math work behind any search engine algorithm? | What set Google apart from the others in the beginning of search engines was the [PageRank] algorithm. From there, everyone else probably adopted something similar. Google is constantly looking for feedback on how to make their searches better. I think you need to start at the question, "how can I get the most people t... |
What is the point of scientists creating new elements if they are all extremely unstable and can only exist as a few atoms for a few fractions of a second? | Solving a really hard problem usually requires one to solve many less hard problems, some of them for the first time. In solving those problems and documenting them you make it easier for future work which may come across those same problems. That's one of the cornerstones of science. In addition there's a hypothetical... |
How does money function and where does it come from? | I can't speak to bitcoin directly, but money evolved into what it is today. Originally, you traded things for other things or services, then gold and silver became the standard because they were precious metals with value because of the demands of people for the metals. Then they found a way to mark the pieces of gold ... |
What are memories, physically? | When you think, neurons in your brain fire off, or individually pass electricity through themselves, and this creates patterns because of the sheer speed and amount this happens. When neurons fire off in a pattern, it's called a synapses and these patterns create \'connections\' which happen at several million times a ... |
Why did slavery in the 1800s only exist in the agricultural economies of the south and not the industrial economies of the north in the US? | Because oddly enough holding slaves was pretty expensive and in the north there were hordes of immigrants that would work themselves almost to death for almost no money at all. Also, tradition.Part of the reason was the explosion of industrialization in the Northeast. Large factories don't need slave labor to prosper, ... |
Why does going to sleep get rid of most 'simple' ailments (headache, sickness etc) | Aside from the part where sleeping is when our bodies really hunker down and focus on healing/resting, most of these ailments are simply healed over a small period of time. "Time travelling" 8 hours into the future just gets the time over with. Your headache is only going to last a few hours, and sleeping gets those fe... |
Why do people only require the car support beams in order to restore it? I mean how is that cost efficient? | Well firstly when talking about cars and such the "super structure" isn't super, its usually just called the chassis. And secondly yes that *can be* all you need for older cars, think of it this way, for every car made, there could be dozens or hundreds of spare parts made for each part. What cant be bought *may* be ab... |
Why do electronics run faster under cold temperatures? | Some modern electronics have built-in thermal protection that causes them to slow down to prevent overheating. Those that do not have this feature do not run any faster when cold. They run *more reliably*. When electronics get too hot the insulating layers inside the chips break down, voltages drift, and they start mak... |
Why isn't a virus considered a living organism? | I believe the most commonly cited reasons include the lack of internal metabolism and the lack of an ancestral means of self replication without parasitizing nucleic acid polymerase and cellular ribosomes. It is somewhat of a fuzzy concept that is always evolving though. It could be thought of as analogous to why a com... |
If I don't like the taste of a food and someone else likes the taste of the same food, are we both tasting the same thing? | Sometimes not. Some people are more sensitive to bitter tastes, for instance, and green vegetables like spinach taste more bitter to themIts really complicated, when you get into personal preferences. Lots of people assume our sensory inputs are just taking in 100% new, raw sensory information from the environment all ... |
Why do video game graphics and movie CGI look so different, when they're pretty similar in their creation? | Video game graphics have to be rendered in real time at somewhere between 30 and 60 frames a second for the game to be playable where as the CGI for movies can take weeks to render out. There's also a style difference, where movies are trying to appear as real as possible while game CG is trying to be consistent. |
Why don't the makers of microwaves remove the popcorn button since every bag of microwavable popcorn instructs the user not to press that button? | Those extra buttons on your microwave aren't really for people to use them, they are to make the microwave appear to be of a higher value and quality to the customer. Because are you going to buy the microwave with the popcorn button or the one that appears to be inferior because it doesn't have this cool button called... |
Does getting sick with the flu once provide the same effect as the flu shot for that year? | Kind of. You'll get immunity to that *particular* strain, but the flu shot typically contains vaccines against a few different strains. As such, you could still catch one of the other common strains that are going around, which the vaccine would have protected you against. Not all strains that go around are protected a... |
Unemployment Rate for Teens and Young Adults in the US and what is being done to Improve it. | I can't comment on Obama's/Romney's specific plans, since I'm in Australia and I wasn't watching your news coverage *that* closely. However, the unemployment rate isn't really something the President has much control over. Of course, this doesn't stop them from talking about it , but there's no direct connection. Gover... |
Why is it so difficult to think with a cold or stuffy nose? | Because multi tasking. Medulla Oblongata is responsible for regulating a passive breathing. Try holding your breath and go think about any thing. Stuffy nose is an obstacle in this process. |
In general, what is stopping the internet from being much faster than it is? | So the speed of the Internet is still limited to the speed of light- if someone in Seoul wants to download information from a computer in New York, it will still take 36 ms to get there . However, we 've figured out how to cram more information in the same amount of space. We can transmit the symbols with higher freque... |
What is happening with the hole in the ozone layer it used to be a huge deal but now i dont hear anything about it | It's been recovering. News sources prefer more sensationalist stuff. It's a lot easier to get viewers when they say it's growing than it's shrinking, so they've largely stopped talking about it since it started recovering. |
How can gas station/mini-marts (in the US) reject large bills? | "legal for all debts" means *debts*. If they haven't agreed to the sale and you haven't received the goods, there's no debt yetFrom the [US Treasury on Legal Tender]: > > This statute means that all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. The... |
what causes that "old" metallic-like smell in antique typewriters/cameras/sewing machines? | It's actually a kind of body odor. When you touch the metal, it catalyzes the decomposition of oils on your skin and makes smaller, more volatile compounds that make up the "metal smell." |
Biologically, why does a man often reach orgasm long before a woman? | Male orgasm is required for reproduction. Female orgasm is not. Makes for more efficient reproductionThe female orgasm does serve a purpose in reproduction; the pelvic muscles contract/tighten and this helps pull the semen in further, increasing chances for fertilization. |
Why do we have weird train of thoughts(shower thoughts) when we're in the shower? | You might just be having some confirmation bias. You remember having weird thoughts in the shower more than you do somewhere else. It also has to do with the shower drowning other sounds, and if you wash your face and close your eyes you lose visual stimulation. So when you don't have your two primary stimuli your brai... |
How do the school/college history textbooks in USA capture the WMD-triggered war on Iraq? | This is America. Most of our textbooks were written in 1989.Yeah i dont think it hasn't been long enough for that stuff to get into history books just yet for the most part.High school senior here, my history textbook last year ended with a picture of Bush during his "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003. In the pages ... |
How can a medicine cause suicidal thoughts or actions? Is it possible you could engineer compounds to invoke certain kinds of thoughts? | A depressed person might feel suicidal, but lack the motivation to go through with any sort of plan. It's not necessarily that anti-depressants "cause" the suicidal thoughts, but they can give a suicidal person the energy to kill themself if the circumstances that cause them to contemplate suicide aren't remedied.Neuro... |
How come humans are the only species with acne on our faces? | Many animals have acne -- you usually don't see it though because the animals are covered in hair. People with beards have acne too, even though you can't see it. |
Why "John Smith" is considered a common/default name? | John is a very common first name in history, in the US it was the most common given name up to 1924. Smith is also a very common surname historically due to the number of blacksmiths and other smiths needed for wars, who were also less likely to be killed as they were not fighting. |
Why does India have so many people? | The poorer part of India is against birth control, breeds until they have enough men to sustain the family, because once you're old you're supported by your children, and other cultural reasons that promote large families. |
If water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, both flammable elements, why is water not flammable? | Fire involves, generally speaking, more complex chemical bonds with higher amounts of energy in their bonds, releasing their bonds, and re-combining with each other to form bonds with lower amounts of energy. The better examples of the complex chemical bonds are gasoline, oil, wood, peat, etc; they release the chemical... |
Why are Criminals given multiple life sentences? | Because one is charged and judged for each crime - not all together. Best example: Someone in jail murders. Now he will have a new court case + judgement', "Multiple life sentences are give to ensure that the criminals remains in jail. In some areas, a life sentence is actually 20 years long. So, receiving two life sen... |
Why deploy all 10 Iridium-3 Satellites in the same location? | The satellites presumably have a small amount of fuel on board. It doesn't take much fuel to tweak your orbit a bit to get the satellites all following the same orbit but spaced out around the orbit. Just dumping a satellite out into space is a great way to quickly lose the satellite. The real world isn't as clean as K... |
Why do alcohol swabs sting cuts but Poly/Neosporin does not? | Alcohol doesn't sting. All over your skin there are these cells that respond to temperatures. They create the sensation of burning, stinging, etc. These cells have a threshold, where they become active if they are in contact with something above a certain temperature. What alcohol does is it very briefly confuses those... |
ELI 5: Why does salt make everything taste good. | A professional chef once told me that salt opens up your taste buds , meaning other flavors get absorbed by the tongue easier, making foods taste strongerSalt, Fat, and Sugar are rare in the natural world. So our bodies have evolved to enjoy them when we come across them so we do not pass up on our bodies needs. |
How do people who are naturally tone deaf cope with languages like Mandarin Chinese where intonation determines specific meaning? | _URL_0_"Tone deaf people seem to be disabled only when it comes to music as they can fully interpret the prosody or intonation of human speech."Tone deaf can be beaten by training, letting anyine learn to sing or play. It was a TIL recently. Im "tonedeaf". I can't tell an E flat from E sharp if you play them out of now... |
How can an apartment advertise a "starting at" rent amount and then not honor that price because the "market rate changed"? | It all has to do with the contract that you sign when you sign your lease. Most allow for them to change the rent based on market rate periodically. Normally it is once a yearMost people rent apartments on their days off, and for most that is on the weekends. That is why market rates are higher then, and during the war... |
Why do we lose our appetite when we see something gross? | Caveat: I'm not an evolutionary biologist. I imagine that those who developed that nausea/aversion when presented with something gross like rot, pus, fecal material, etc were less likely to be exposed to dangerous bacteria and more likely to survive. Basically poop is dangerous and feeling grossed out about it is proba... |
How did spiders develop their web weaving abilities, and what are the examples of earlier stages of this feat? | A more primitive behavior can be seen in ground-dwelling spiders like tarantulas that live in burrows use silk to line the walls of the burrow instead of making elaborate webs.I JUST went through a voyage of discovery on this exact question! We're like brain buddies! Basically, the first spiders were venomous burrowing... |
How does the Plan B pill work? | The plan B pill is a very high dose of a hormone similar to progesterone. When you take it, it prevents any eggs from being released, just like for daily birth control pills. Pregnancy causes a large increase in progesterone, and this increase in progesterone stops the menstrual cycle in one spot, meaning no eggs are r... |
If someone was in space, travelling at such a high speed that a noticeable amount of time dilation affected them, what would determine their age legally? | Our laws arent equipped to handle this so it would simply go by his legal birthdate regardless of any dilation he experienced. |
Why while cell phones continue to get slimmer, house phones are still bulky? | Because cell phones are portable, they are small and compact by design. House phones are bound to a nearby outlet anyway, so size doesn't matter", 'It's expensive to make technology small. So while it's perfectly possible to make a house phone that's the same size and shape as a smartphone, if it was in the stores at $... |
Why do I sometimes need to take a dump after having a cigarette? | Nicotine acts as a stomach irritant, so it's common to feel like you have to shit after a smoke |
If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? What exists in the space that the universe is expanding into? | The super short answer is we don’t know. All we know is that the universe is getting less dense, and there is more empty space between celestial objects. Its also not doing so radially , but more just sort of in all directions. We know this through observation and measurement so we are sure its happening, we just haven... |
For electronics that require double-A batteries, why do they typically require them to be reversed? | Currents flow in one direction. In flashlights, batteries are stacked behind each other so that the current goes in a straight line. In other cases where batteries are parallel, the line must connect from the top of one battery to the bottom of another. For that to happen *efficiently* and without complication, the bat... |
Why is Google so keen on pushing its Google+ service on users, despite the backlash? | Google's entire money making strategy is to target advertising towards users. The better they know their users, the better they are able to target relevant ads to them. I'm not bashing them for this, as it's beneficial to consumers as well . Anyway, they have a lot of different ways of collecting data about you, from w... |
why is the Blackberry messaging system "safer" than others / how is it encrypted? | They are one of the only messaging systems that use full end to end asymetric encryption. Each handset have the only copy of a built in private decryption key. The coresponding encryption key is made public. The sender encrypts the message before it is sent to blackberry and it can only be decrypted by the receiver. |
Information is tranferred through a wire changing the voltage, but isn't voltage a property of the power source? What's happening in the conductor? | Between the power source and the measurement location are one or more *transistors.* These act like switches -- either allowing the "high" voltage to pass through, or blocking it so that the voltage on the far side is low. |
Why are "cuss" words considered so bad? | Because they usually have sexual connotations. And sex is considered tabooBecause of social rules. Theyre not bad in general, nor are they considered bad in general. Theyre considered bad by certain groups, for lack of a better word for a collective of people. Same goes for sex. Theres no taboo in general, its a taboo ... |
Why do bodies of water and the edges of heights have a "pull" to them? | The pull you feel have nothing to do with gravity, it's purely psychological. The phenomena is named "the call of the void". It's kind of your brain running the \'what if\' and we get that uneasy feeling of \'I could so easy do X\' where X is something you normally wouldn't wanna do and that would cause irreversible co... |
How does reading in poor light damage your eyes? | It doesn't. You can get a headache from the tension of having to focus in poor light but there is no damage.Someone please use some sciency words so i can show my mum It doesn't cause eyes damage more then it puts strain on your eyes. When you're in a room with dim lighting your eyes will try to adjust. The reason of t... |
Why do websites allow you to "skip" ads at all? | Because if they forced you to watch a whole ad every time, you wouldn't come back. The advertiser knows that the person that they want to reach is someone who is interested in their product, and they would watch the ad. So they are happy to pay something even if the viewer skips the ad. |
The many-worlds theory/multiple universe theory | Imagine a bubble. Inside this bubble is our entire universe. For the sake of argument, imagine that you can't pierce or go outside this bubble. Now, there is some event that happens , and the bubble splits. In one bubble, the coin flipped as heads, in the other the coin landed on tails. Other than that though, both bub... |
what to know about adopting a stray dog? | I assume by "stray" you actually mean a dog found wandering the street. First, know that you really don't know much about the dog. If you're going to take him or her into your house, you should be aware that they might have some health issues that you're not aware of. It's a *very* good idea that you get them to a vet ... |
why do horses have to be put down if they break a leg? | A broken leg for a horse is very dangerous to the horses health. They rarely lay down due to their weight and to keep a horse immobile for a period long enough is also bad for its health. This will explain it better _URL_0_', "Horsies have bodies built to always be able to stand or move around. They're not meant to lay... |
What exactly do music conductors do? | They don't just stand around waving a wand. They are the producer/director of the concert music BEFORE it is performed in concert. They tell the individual musicians and sections/groups of musicians how to play the music . In concert, the conductors are there for a reminder for the performers, and also so people know w... |
Why do Americans say "math" and "sports" while people from the UK and Australia say "maths" and "sport"? | I know that people from UK say maths because it's an abbreviation for mathematics. That's all I got, hope it helps. |
why China outlawing ivory trade decreased the price even though outlawing drugs has not done the same. | Ivory is the sort of thing people like if they can get it but they don't like so much that if it's not avalible that people are going to go crazy finding ways to find it. If you told someone with a serious opioid addiction that the only way they could ever get more was to cook and eat their own mom you 'd get some peop... |
Why doesn't the NES zapper for Duck hunt work on new TVs? | When you pulled the trigger, the screen flashes black with a white square around the object. A photodiode on the zapper detects what colour the aimed screen is, and if its white you get a hit. That's all I know, as for why it doesn't work now I have no idea. Probably because the form of photodiode doesnt pick up the li... |
Why are some people able to open their eyes in the ocean without any discomfort, while other people's eyes can be very irritated by the salt water? | Bitch grade or non bitch grade, Poseidon decides.I find it hard to believe that people can open their eyes in the ocean without discomfort. I've swam all over the world, and it always stings. That said, cold water is a lot harder to deal with than warmer water. And some water has more minerals that irritate than others... |
How can a file that is 0 bytes can be stored when technically it shouldn't exist because it contains no data? | Think of it as a filing cabinet. You open the drawer and you pull out a folder. The folder has nothing at all in it. It is a file with no data. If someone were to ask you how big the file is you would say it had no data. Even though it has no data, there's still a folder there and it still takes up space in the filing ... |
Why do heights feel taller when looking from the top down than from the ground up? | It's a lot more than just the height differences. It's your sense of danger kicking in coupled with your enhanced ability to actually perceive height because there's more to compare it to. When you're on the ground, you are not in danger. When you are leaning over a precipice looking down, you are. Your brain instantly... |
Neural networks and data analysis, particularly in the context of biology (i.e., "omics" analysis using computer algorithms, etc.). | The reason why there are programs called "neural networks" is because they employ something discovered with the brain, which is that when a group of neurons fire at the same time, they "link" together. That new "link" is a new recognized pattern So lets look at genomics you have a giant trove of data, take for example ... |
why is a north facing yard/home a good thing (at least in the southern hemisphere)? | No idea. But in the northern hemisphere, I would like a west facing home. I spend a lot of time in my back yard. The sun in my face would help wake me up in the mornings and, I'd like some shade in the afternoons and early evenings. |
Why does everything crackle when I open the freezer? | It's likely a combination of two factors: ice cracking and plastic bags. The ice will crack if there's a sudden change in temperature . Plastic bags are also filled with cold air. When they warm up the air inside them will expand which can cause a plastic crinkling sound or cause ice on the plastic bag to crack. |
Hydro power generation, why is there only one big turbine at the bottom of the hill and not multiple? The water should regain its kinetic energy? | Most of the energy comes from the drop in height, from the top of the lake to the level of the turbine. That generates immense pressure. Once the water comes out of the turbine, that pressure is spent. The remaining energy is smallSome hydroelectric plants have multiple turbines. The [Three Gorges Dam] in China has 34 ... |
Why did speakers make noise when phones nearby sent texts | It was caused by interference with the signals the phone was sending, and the electronics of the speaker. It doesn't happen as frequently now, because we've refined the technology used in both, so speakers are less susceptible, and phones don't send as much power out, and thus you get less interference. |
Why can a nearsighted person see clearly in Oculus VR with glasses on, but not without? The lenses are an inch away, well within 'vision range'. | The optics in the equipment will be set for viewing with a relaxed "normal" eye, ie one that would be focused on distant objects. So you would need our normal spectacles or contacts to get to that focus point.The key word here is 'astigmatism'. Behind your pupil you have a soft, squishy lens connected to muscles that s... |
Why are other countries getting ready for nuclear war? Yet, being in California, we aren't doing drills or building bomb shelters? Seems as if everything is being shrugged off. | North Korea have been showing off muscles since the 50s. There is nothing terribly new and exiting there. There is very little to suggest that they can successfully deliver a nuclear bomb to North America. South Korea have been at war with North Korea for generations now. It is not just a war in name as the ceasefire i... |
How do people die from choking on their own vomit, is there a reason the feeling of choking doesn't wake them up? | When people choke on their own vomit, it's generally because they're so drugged up that they can't wake up or even move. Normally people, even really sick ones, are going to wake up and save themselves.It mostly happen if the individual have high amount of alcohol or narcotics in the body that suppress reflexes and rel... |
Why do online videos un-buffer when you rewind them? | YouTube started doing this a while ago, many people would pre-load minutes/hours of content without ever watching it, which is wasting YouTube's bandwidth. So, they now only stream video in segments, like 5-sec each. As for why the already played content isn't cached on your browser, these sites simply didn't allow tha... |
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