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Why it's so much easier to lift a 60lb child than a 60lb bag of soil | You can lift the child by their arms, while you'd lift the bag of soil by it's sides - and to do this, you need to hold it tighter.A child would make some effort to help you. They will hold themselves upright and grab onto your shoulders, for example. The weight is distributed differently, then. A bag of soil will like... |
Why are hand written signatures still commonly used and important? | A signature, hand written or digital, is just an acknowledgement that you were presented with a document to review and approve. If it ever came up in a court case like a lawsuit, any actual analysis of your signature would probably be a last ditch effort by either side to prove their point. There's other evidence that'... |
Why does light go in one continuous direction? Why can't it stop, go left, right, or backwards? | In modern physics you can describe light analogously as a wave of electromagnetic field or a massless particle , both moving - in vacuum - at a fixed and unavoidable constant speed 'c' a.k.a. speed of light. Why? This is rooted in what really mass is, and to what happens when a particle is massless.Let's stick to the f... |
Dumbass question about water... | > if there's **hydrogen** and oxygen on Earth There is? ~~I thought~~ I know that there is very little hydrogen in the atmosphere.It would take way more energy than would be worthwhile. |
Why are smartphones $500-700+ while laptops with the same or better specs are considerably less? | A lot of people are saying it's expensive to make things smaller, but nobody is really explaining why. It's not just that you have to do more R & D, you also have to manufacture everything to much tighter tolerances. Engineers know that when the plans for something say it should be 1mm thick, every single unit won't co... |
What happens when I press my gas pedal? | For years, there was a cable attached to the top of the throttle pedal that connected directly to a throttle valve on your engine to control airflow. Fuel was delivered for many years via carburetor and also for many years via fuel injectors , but that's not important. What's important to understand is that fuel mixes ... |
Why do I have horrendous farts after a night of drinking? | > Also, loose stool. Just thought I'd throw that in there I got nothing to add.You may be sensitive to wheat or have some sort of yeast overgrowth. Are you on antibiotics or any other medication? |
Why are you able to stop physical pain by forgetting about it? | Your body is able to produce chemicals to numb mild pains. You can forget about pain from paper cuts, bruises, etc. but it isn't strong enough to mitigate major issues like a gun shot. |
why is everything funnier when you are really tired? | Dopamine explanation makes a lot of sense. Additionally, most humor depends on surprise . When you're tired, your brain is likewise tired, and easier to 'catch off guard'. |
How do systems where nobody trusts anybody else (like mafia, gangs, extremist groups, even to some extent the spy agencies) actually work? | Imagine a criminal activity the gang needs to do as a stone. A hard rock stone. You get money if you push it. But you can't do it alone. You need others to push the stone and to get the money. And you need to push it as well as the others. If you won't, you won't get money. Or will die. |
Why every time I look at my bathroom mirror I think I look pretty good but every time I take a picture I think that I look horrible? | I've always wondered this, the argument regarding the flipped angle doesn't convince me too much. Nor does the lighting argument. I've had professional photography taken of me once and encountered the same situation. I've considered if perhaps this has to do a bit with body dysmorphia, even in the slightest degree. If ... |
How are some people charged for breaking US laws when they haven't even stepped a foot in the US to begin with. | The answers below are pretty good, but they don't really explain extradition. Extradition is a process by which a person in one country can be arrested and sent, against their will, to another country to stand trial or serve a sentence there. Provided the other country can demonstrate the equivalent of probable cause t... |
Why do Jehovah's witnesses not believe/approve of blood transfusions? | They believe your soul is found in your blood. I was approached by some Jehova's Witnesses a few years ago and I asked them. I'm a blood donor so it was relevant for the conversation. From their own website: [Respect for blood] |
What exactly is the Dow, and when should I start really worrying about it dropping? | The Dow, Dow Jones Industrial Average, is a price-weighted benchmark index designed to track the health of the stock market. It's an index that tracks 30 companies. Historically speaking it's always been used as the sort of complete picture of how the market is doing. Which doesn't make too much sense because it only t... |
What actually happens when a video game locks up? | Every game is made up of a ton of processes, things that are running in the background making sure that the game is behaving the way it's meant to. Normally, when processes are no longer needed they are ended. Sometimes though, processes may be ended incorrectly or not ended at all, this means that it continues to run ... |
So, Cell division (talking Mitosis here) specifically in unborn babies | Cell division occurs on a scale orders of magnitude larger than atomic bonds. We don't pass on atomic carbon, or atomic anything to babies; almost everything that is passed around in the human body is molecule level. I'm not exactly sure on how babies receive matter from their parents beyond the umbilical cord, but I w... |
Why is it that people often report feeling safer when sleeping under a sheet or blanket? | As a Florida native the first explanation that comes to mind is protection from disease carrying tropical insects. It's far tougher to get bitten when you are covered by a sheet. |
When talking about climate change, why is a 2° C increase in temperature a big deal? | 2^o C doesn't seem like a big deal unless you think about it worldwide. That means that over the entire planet, the average temperature raised 2^o Without climate change, there would be an average temperature and so some areas would get warmer and some get colder. The same thing would happen in this case, but that woul... |
what would happen to your body if it were suddenly released deep in the Mariana trench. | It would go through crushing, and then it would go through drowning. And since it's pitch dark, I'd guess there would be a fair bit of confusion, too. |
Is there such a thing as "naturally soft water" or must we process water to make it "soft". | Licensed water operator here. Hexadecimal, eideid,enteruserid,kouh and jupiter all have it right. I've work at a plant that treated surface water and well water. Surface water is soft and especially during a snow melt it becomes very soft", 'Hardness is just mineral content, which varies from place to place. Water from... |
Why are we bolder when tired? | When tired, we will often accept something as good enough that would not be acceptable when we are fully functional. It's a case of 'that will do, just let me rest already!' So it is about impared or altered judgement, the way some things seem right or okay when you are drunk but not when sober.A small amount of tiredn... |
What computer program are old toys coded with (if any)? | A lot of the toys you describe use basic logic boards, there is no software. I think even the Furby has no software, it's just a more complex set of hardware logic that responds randomly to user input. |
Why has genetically modified food such a bad reputation? | People who don't know much about the topic, talking about things they know nothing about. See: creationist critiques of evolution. Pretty much the same thing, except its harder to grasp. |
Why a TV with a 40" screen plugs into the wall with no ground, while a monitor with a 24" screen uses a ground prong? | How come on my Apple 60w Mac charger, the block doesn't have the ground prong?Yet on the extension cord, it includes the ground prong?", 'I assume the 40" TV uses a external brick power supply. The TV Chassis only gets low voltage DC so grounding is not needed to protect the consumer. You can't feel this if you get sho... |
Why do airlines lose luggage so often? | They don't - claims that they do are generated by the noisy few, or by internal competitors to make them look bad. |
When a slightly overweight person loses weight how does their skin get tighter? | If you are losing less than 30lbs your skin is like an elastic band and will just snap back. Shortly after it will just rest like that. If you are losing more, it won't and may never recover. Former obese persons will always have scars showing they were obese. Source: Former fatty |
Why is it that bigger than life creatures, such as Godzilla, seem to move in such a slow fashion? | We seem to have gotten onto quite a biological derail here. If the question is about _movie_ monsters and large creatures, they are filmed at speeds faster then the normal 24 frames per second, such as 60 or 120 fps, and this footage is played back at 24 frames per second. This slows the movement down and creates an il... |
why haven't any private organizations reached the moon? | Since no country has been back.. do you kinda wonder if the moon already has people who don't want our visits?? |
Why do we hear all these stories of criminals getting their offshore bank accounts siezed? Why don't they literally bury millions of dollars of cash in the ground for a "rainy day" | Because what use is it to make millions breaking the law, risking your freedom and safety, if you can't spend it? It is hard to work in cash. It is bulky, easily stolen, and raises suspicion when used for large purchases. It is much easier to use a bank, and a bank outside the US avoids gov't scrutiny. Also note that o... |
Women who use contraception, stopping their periods for months/years at a time, where does it go? And is it unhealthy? | First, pick your poison. Hormonal contraception, barrier contraception, Intrauterine devices, etc Let's assume you're talking about hormonal options which include pills and shots and such. Generally speaking, all they do is prevent the woman from ovulation by tricking the body into thinking it's in the follicular phase... |
Why do we say umm, uhhh or errr? | We are trying to use our vocal cord to talk, but our brain hasn't formulated the words yet. So only sounds like those come out. |
Itemized taxes. When would somebody do this, why, and how? | Your standard deduction is only about $4000. If you have have more deductions than this, you can itemize them & pay less on your taxes. There's a million different reasons you might have more deductions but if you have more - be it investments, donations, home ownership, children or business losses - you'd want to file... |
If the Sun is ~4.5bn years old how can there be about 1000 generations of stars preceding it when the universe is only ~14bn years old? | As everyone else is saying, somethings wrong with the 1000 you've got there. But I'll also point out that these things aren't all equal anyhow. Big stars die fast, small ones creep on. The oldest stars were goddamn massive. Like whole orders of magnitude bigger, so they burned up really fast. If I remember, and no I do... |
How can Tesla's new truck have a lower drag coefficient than a Bugatti Chiron when the surface area is so much larger? | It's not just the surface area that you have to account for. A large amount of air is actually captured into the Chiron to use to cool the engine. This is what is creating most of the drag, not just the surface area. |
What causes a human to want to pick at their scabs? | I have been doing this for most of my life. A lot of the time it is involuntary and I don't even notice it until I am bleeding. From what I have heard, it is a combination of nervous/anxious habits and possible endorphins being released. I notice it more when I am under a lot of stress at school. Additionally, it can b... |
Why is the map of the world skewed so northern countries appear much bigger and southern countries appear much smaller? | I'm not sure what exactly you mean by northern countries / southern countries but a map is skewed because it's trying to represent a sphere via a flat surface. |
What would be the economical effects if we all went bald? | Hair care product sales would plummet, while hat and hair-growth products would skyrocket. Business would probably just shift their product line, and while some would go out of business and others would take their place, it wouldn't be a huge economical shift. |
Why aren't student loans allowed to be discharged during a bankruptcy? | Student loans are given, no questions asked to kids with no assets or credit history. I'd they could be discharged during bankruptcy, everyone would declare bankrupt at graduation since there would be nothing to lose.\r\rThe current situation might not be ideal but the opposite is too open to abuse.It is not counter-in... |
Why do doctors tell people to use all the antibiotics prescribed even though your body gets stronger the more it fights infections on its own? | If you don't finish the course of antibiotics, the chances are greater that the strain of bacteria you're trying to kill won't completely die. The surviving bacteria will reproduce and have a greater resistance to the antibiotics you were using, meaning treating your illness with the same type of antibiotic will no lon... |
How do physicists generate a stream of neutrons to fire in their experiments? | One of the projects I work on uses a dense plasma focus machine, also known as a z-pinch machine. Trying to keep it ELI5, it uses a huge electric current to create plasma in a tube filled with tritium and deuterium. The way it's designed, the extreme magnetic fields crush the deuterium and tritium together, which cause... |
When I am dreaming at night, is my brain using the same parts as it does when I imagine things when Im awake? | I just read an article recently that proposed the idea that the brain uses implicit memories instead of declarative memory, here's the article if you want to read it: _URL_0_ Also, Sigmund Freud said that dreams are a result of what we repress during our every day lives. Hope this helps. |
Hey ELI5, can you explain the link in the text for me? I'm completely lost. | I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. It really seems to me like it's someone either a) trolling or b) with a language barrier. |
Why is it more satisfying to listen to a song you really like much louder than normal? | Personally, my answer would be because I actually care about the background instruments on songs I like. They're less pronounced, so it's harder to pick up at lower volumes. |
How is pollution possible? | It has to do with the nature of toxins. Many if not most things are toxic if you get too much of them, but nature being what it is, many of the things we think of as toxic are fairly rare. This is good because if they weren't, we'd die. Mercury now. There was always a bit of mercury in the ocean, but it's so small it's... |
Why would someone want to clean their gun all the time? And how is seeing a father cleaning his gun supposed to be fearful? | Someone should want to clean their gun all the time because not cleaning it will lead to [malfunction]. Well, you wouldn't need to clean it all the time, but after each time it is fired, and any time it has gathered/come into contact with dirt/dust, mud, or anything else that can cause buildup |
How was that Buddhist Monk able to self immolate without showing/feeling pain? | They probably did feel pain. The point is that he's so fed up with what's going on that he's willing to set himself on fire to bring attention to his cause. |
Why perfume adverts never describe the smell itself but instead tell a short, other-worldly story? | Because people don't care about what a product does or how well it works, they care about how it *makes them feel*. At least, that's what the marketing is all about. |
What does 'return' in JavaScript really do? | Fundamentally it *hands a value* back to *whatever code called the function*. In your case it sounds like all your calls are coming from code that immediately prints the value it gets handed and so it works out the same for now. But there's tons of other things the code calling your function could do instead of that. I... |
What is the ecological impact of producing and disposing of batteries for electric cars vs the ecological impact of current gasoline/diesel engines? | Too soon to know, however, lead acid batteries are almost all recycled because it's a lot cheaper and environmentally cleaner to recycle them than dig up new lead to make batteries. Electric car batteries are made of more valuable minerals, so I'd project the same would happen to them._URL_2_ You also need to consider ... |
how do people physically lose weight, I know fat is burned off and what not but scientifically how are those cells destroyed? | Fat cells are not destroyed, they simply shrink. They can expand like balloons to store fat. You lose all of your body fat via respiration. Specifically the CO2 you breath out. CO2 is the waste product generated when your body burns energy. It's a couple of steps from stored fat to body energy , which is why it's tough... |
Why is it so hard for smartphone manufacturers to release devices running pure Android? | If you look at the hardware of most smart phones these days, they're all pretty much the same. The hardware specs of a top tier LG, Samsung, iPhone, HTC etc are similar with only minor differences. The only differences are the color and the materials used to make the screen and back, and maybe the location of the butto... |
The UK home owning system | Freehold means you own the house and you own the land it's on. Leasehold means you own the house, but you're leasing the land it's on. The leases tend to be valid for very long times. You'd usually have a lease of 100+ years. If there is less than that left on the lease it will lower the value of the property because a... |
Is there any scientific basis behind acupuncture? | I know many people get confused between dry needling and acupuncture - to be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the difference myself. I'm also rather Western Medicine oriented, so I haven't been for acupuncture, but I had dry needling done at the physiotherapist when I had some really bad back spasms a little while ago.... |
Why can hospitals refuse to give lifesaving treatments? | It's not that the hospitals are refusing to do treatment, it's that the insurance is refusing to pay for the procedure. If insurance feels that the treatment will be ineffective, they would rather not pay for it. |
What is Facebook's rationale for having my friend's comments on strangers pages show up on my feed? | Facebook makes money through targeted advertisements. If they have more information about you, your ad space is worth more. Facebook tracks how long each post is present on your screen, from which they can roughly estimate how long you look at a post. By showing a friend of a friend's post they can establish your close... |
How do those circus cannons, that launch the performer into a safety net a good distance away, work? | They use a spring, compressed air, or some other mechanism to launch the performer. They don't use gunpowder. That would probably be fatal, as you might expect. There's not much more to it than that, really. |
... the difference between a .doc file and a .docx file (or .xls/.xlsx, etc.) | They're also XML-based, hence the X, which is a bit easier for programs to read and edit. Unfortunately in typical Microsoft style they made it hard for other programs like LibreOffice to use, so it wasn't as much of an improvement as we hoped, but it's still better than the old formats. I think if you rename the files... |
If we start sending garbage to space at some point would our orbital path change as the earth gets lighter? | The Earth weighs appx. 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms, a few tons of trash wouldn't make a difference enough to change the orbital path of an asteroid, let alone a whole planet. |
Why does having a fan turned on in the room when I sleep prevent me from feeling too warm, even though it is not in my direction? | The air current is still blowing around in the room, even if it isn't blowing directly towards you. It causes a nice circulation throughout the room, making it just a little bit cooler and a nice environment to sleep in.I do the same thing too OP. |
Why do so many viruses have similar symptoms? | The symptoms of a cold are your body's own immune response to a viral infection in your nasal passages, not anything the virus itself is doing. Most viruses that infect your nasal passages will elicit a similar response, just because that's how your immune system responds to viral infections there. |
What does "Taking over a city" from a military standpoint entail today and historically? | How about trying it out as a thought exercise? If you have groups of kids having a nerf war in a house with some uninvolved adults, how do you define when one group has control of a room? Is the room on the side of the house the other team can't get to? Is the room full of your people and none of theirs? Is the room ov... |
Why do digital prints need to be cropped? | Well, what aspect ratio are you printing at? Most all smartphones and consumer cameras shoot in 4x3, while most prosumer/pro cameras , shoot in 3x2. What's screwy is many photo prints and many frames are 8x10, which is because pre-digital wedding photographers used Medium Format, which is 4x5. |
How does the Post Office know which piece of mail to forward? Does someone read every piece? | A computer reads every address, checks to see if there's a forwarding order and diverts if out to slap a forwarding label on it if necessary. The USPS has some of the fastest and most competent OCR on the world, including cursive writing. Each mail scanner/sorter does 50,000+ letters per hour, including the lookups and... |
What algorithms can a quantum computer run more efficiently than a regular computer | There was a [recent discussion here on ELI5 talking about quantum computers] in general you may be interested in that basically asked how qubits were different. It's almost, but not quite, the same question. Qubits are faster for many problems where you have a starting state, a set of rules for how you can change, and ... |
How does RAM on computers work | RAM is so named because it is just as fast to access one chip as another. As such, as far as I'm aware at least, no OS will prioritize any specific memory locations- an application asks for a block of memory, and the OS reserves whatever it stumbles across that is free first. |
Why most of the magic tricks are still well kept secret? (Specially considering the internet and all the media channels) | It's a professional thing, among magicians. If too many people know how a trick is done, they'll be less likely to go see magicians perform, and that means less income. So it's in their best interest to keep it secret. |
How a Rubik's cube can be solved using a set pattern each and every time. | They aren't. What professional solvers have are set patterns to 'fix' particular parts of the cube, and then they fix the cube piece by piece. |
Why do people upload torrents and what benefit do they get from it? | Same reason you lend a friend money, interest free. Putting it bluntly, to be a nice guy. Or as a frat boys would put it, because you're a bro.Just a reminder, most video game torrent uploaders remind you to purchase the game to support the developer if you enjoy it. That means they are not heartless bastards, they jus... |
Why do jet skis shoot a stream of water straight up when they go forward? | I've seen the safety answer here, but also found something that mentioned that Yamaha originally created their models for use in oceans as well, and having the plume would allow others to keep track of your location while you're between waves. |
How do creators of programming languages make money? | Most of the widely-used programming languages were created by people who were paid a full-time salary by their employers to solve important problems. Creating a new language was something they did as part of their job. This includes: * Professors of computer science - their job is to teach and to research, so creating ... |
Is midnight always the middle of the night aka. the time where it is the darkest? | No, it isn't. The exact time when it is darkest varies by time of year and your location within a time zone, and is usually not midnight. |
Why bills like SOPA and ACTA keep coming back when they seem to get beat by a large margin every time they're voted upon. | All of the other answers make sense-- but don't forget about **voter fatigue** . If Jimbo Wales were to black out Wikipedia again, fewer people would care and more people would just get annoyed.Because the huge corporations want to see them passed, so they changed a few things and submit it again. Or they submit two th... |
How can Vegas take Super Bowl prop bets on things people can directly influence? | Most prop bets are not legal to be wagered on in Las Vegas casinos. They legally cannot accept a bet on anything that isn't restricted to things that take place on the playing field and can be verified in the box score. SO they cannot and do not take bets on things such as the length of the national anthem or first son... |
How do bedbugs know you’re asleep and then come out to bite you? | They don't. They know that you are in the bed through movement, scent, and the CO2 you breathe out. They do not wait till you are asleep to come feed if they are hungry and you are there. |
How can Germany afford to give everyone in the world the right to study for free at their universities? | Short answer: Taxes [This website shows tax rates in the Western world]. Germany has a 39.9% tax rate for singles, compared to the USA's 22.7% tax rate; if you look at other situations, the German tax rate remains higher. The German government takes some of that extra tax revenue and uses it to subsidize the cost of tu... |
Where do birds go when it's raining? | I got caught in a thunderstorm in a nature preserve recently, and as I was walking back I saw a group of nine or so deer standing in the open field as it poured down rain really heavily, not giving a fuck. I expect it's the same for other wildlife? |
When the Supreme Court rules on gay marriage, what will happen to the lower court rulings, and the states, if the Supreme Court decides that states can constitutionally ban gay marriages? | Let's assume that they say states have the right, then each state would get to decide to keep it or not. The states that have gay marriage would have to pass a law to stop it. The states without it already wouldn't really be affected unless they wanted gay marriage. |
Why do gums bleed during plaque removal? | I told my dental hygienist I feel like my mouth has been molested everytime she's done with it. Those metal tools going under your gums cause trauma to the tissue. And it hurts |
Why do some people shake their legs when sitting down? What are the benefits? | Interestingly, there was a study I recall from many years ago that compared people's BMI and whether they had this kind of nervous impulse to move or not, and found thinner people were twitchier , or something close to that. |
Why only one person gets knocked out with a head-to-head headbutt. | I'm going to assume you mean an aggressive headbutt, as you would see in a fight, where one person deliberately throws their head into another's. I think the key is that you try to slam your forehead into a softer part of your opponent, eg their nose. If you get this wrong though and end up banging foreheads, I don't t... |
What does it mean to 'upscale' a resolution? | It means to convert an image to a resolution greater than it was recorded at. That means if take a 1080p image with about 2 million pixels, and upscale it to 4K, which is about 8 million pixels, it is going to look blocky and grainy compared to an image that was 4K to begin with. Since there isn't a lot of 4K content o... |
what's all this craze around coconut oil, and is it really that good for you? | I used to work in a sex store so I was asked about coconut oil a lot. Yes, you can use it for lube. Yes, like anything oil based it will break down the latex in a condom and make tiny holes in said condom. Not the best idea of you're trying to be safe.If you ever get lice, a shampoo with coconut oil gets rid of them. H... |
Left-handed probability - a math problem. | I'm gay, I'm left handed and I have two clubbed thumbs . The probability of having all three of those traits is one in 100,000. So that's fun.My parents had 3 children, and all 3 of us are left handed! This does not run in our family. |
Why do police touch the back of a car they are pulling over? | in the situation that the suspect pulled over for police just to flee when the officer got out of the car. it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that that was the car that fled the police by the fingerprints on the back of the car. no misremembering of plates, no misidentifying of suspects. police dash cams don'... |
When you are nervous why your leg starts bouncing uncontrollably. | If you keep your heels on the ground, your knee will not bounce. It feels involuntary, but the act of keeping your heel off the ground is voluntary, so you're voluntary starting an involuntary reaction. To get a little more into it, if your leg is bouncing while sitting, it is often because you are posed in a position ... |
How is a nucleus stable? | If we consider the electromagnetic force alone, you're right - the protons should force the nucleus apart. However, protons and neutrons are also governed by the strong nuclear force. As the name implies, it's very strong at short distances, enough to overcome the repulsive effect of electromagnetic force if you have e... |
When a movie is set in a different decade, how does a director gather the cars from that time period for all the scenes? | Most movies have a transportation coordinator. It's their job to coordinate, per the script and input from the director, all the cars/vehicles that will appear on screen. A good transpo coordinator will have a variety of contacts when it comes to period cars, whether it be private owners, car companies or both. |
How do mathematical proofs work? | There are different ways we can talk about proving things, but to keep it simple, these days math is rigorously based on [set theory]. In set theory you start with with some assumptions and then very rigorously and carefully define and prove incremental steps. So you start by defining what numbers are. Then you define ... |
How Norton Antivirus is still a best-selling product, despite constant negative attention from the tech community? | Man, I've been seeing more and more threads and comments about how bad Norton is. I've used Norton for years, as a home user across WinXP, Win7, to Win8, and really NEVER had a problem with it. I've used their Internet Security package for a few years now and never get any of the problems in background usage, crashes, ... |
What jobs will disappear if America taxes the rich more? | I don't think any specific jobs have been associated with it. Pretty much anything private sector, though, obviously. Whether you agree with those arguments or not is another story, but I don't believe any specific field is targeted by it. |
How will NASA get landers off planets with thick atmosphere like Venus? | The issue isn't atmosphere as much as gravity. Venus has reasonably close to the same gravity as earth, where the moon has about 1/6 of earth gravity. Theoretically, the density of Venus's atmosphere may open up alternative ascent methods like balloons to get altitude, then switch to rockets once the lander is most of ... |
Why have we not evolved past pain in childbirth? | Many animals have easy birthing. The reason childbirth is such a pain for humans is that our heads are huge. The passage through the female human pelvis is barely enough to fit a baby's head. In fact, human babies deliver before they're well developed because if they had time to mature, their heads would be way too lar... |
[NSFW?] ELI5 how fetishes develop | Apologies in advance as this is not in ELI5 form, but as a neuroscience student I think there is some genuine biological under pinning to foot fetishes in humans. look at this picture of the brain:_URL_0_ Those areas correlate every part of your body and is where your brain make sense of all the touch/vibration/mechani... |
What's happening when a food "shoots right through you"? | That phrase is generally used for diarrhea, which can have many causes, including food poisoning and compounds that cause the digestive system to work faster than normal - often to 'flush out the system'. There are various mechanisms, checks, and balances the digestive system performs to check on its contents, and whet... |
The single-payer healthcare system supported by Bernie Sanders | Just thought I'd tell you Frontline made a video on this called Sick Around the World, I'm sure it's online somewhere. They go to doctors and citizens in Japan, Taiwan, UK, Germany, and somewhere else I forget to see the benefits and negatives of each system first hand. Highly recommend it if you're really interested a... |
What is the purpose of having academically gifted children attend university at an early age? | It's a difficult situation with pros and cons both ways: You want to advance gifted children because they are capable of dealing with advanced material and most schools aren't equipped to provide that material to their age group. Without challenging material their learning is held back and they can become bored and dis... |
If dogs have a heightened sense if smell, why are they so attracted to things that smell bad? Shouldn't the smell be even worse to the dog? | Things don't objectively smell bad. You just think they smell bad. Dogs have different tastes than you. |
How do you board a plane. Seriously. | All good advice here, but a quick suggestion: Bring an *empty* water bottle. Once you're through security, fill it from the nearest water fountain, then bring it on the plane. They can be pretty bad at bringing water to your seat reliably, and airplanes tend to have dry low-pressure air. You will not regret having a la... |
What's the difference between underwater pressure and space pressure, and why haven't we explored the ocean as much as space? | Space has no pressure, so the maximum pressure difference is going to be 1 atmosphere . Underwater you get an extra atmosphere of pressure when you go down as little as 10m, so exploring deep involves a LOT of pressure. Edit: quick google for a pressure calculator suggests 100 atmospheres by the time you get down 1km, ... |
How does a house electrical ground work? Are we just constantly pumping voltage through the earth? | Somewhere near your house there's a transformer that converts the high voltage running along the street to the 240 VAC used in your house. There's a center tap that's halfway between the two, that is, 120 VAC from each power line. That center tap is connected to a grounding rod or equivalent buried in the earth at the ... |
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