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How did Victorian novels and literature deal with teenage issues when it was a conservative society? | Well drugs weren't really an issue back then. Alcohol and marijuana and tobacco were more or less accepted. It is only in the 20th century when those things became taboo. As for sex and rebellion, have you read Shakespeare? He and other playwrights covered those themes extensively especially in tales such as Romeo and ... |
What were we actually hearing during the classic dial-up sound? | The modem is communicating over the analogue telephone line, normally used to transmit spoken language. Computers only speak binary though. What you are hearing is actually pure binary in the form of an analogue square wave, where each "up" is a 1 and each "down" is a 0 . Since modems use standardized "phrases" to iden... |
Why does adding numbers and symbols to a password make it more secure | It increases the "depth" required for a brute-force attack. If you knew, for example, that a password were all lower-case letters, you would have to try only 26 characters for each position. For an 8-character password, there are 26^8 possible passwords to try. If you use upper and lower cases, it goes to 52^8, and if ... |
Why does olive oil have 100+ calories per serving and olive oil cooking spray have 0? | For the same reason that a Tic-Tac which is 100% sugar can be sold as sugar free Rounding The FDA says that you can round the values so if your product has less than 0.5 grams per serving you can report it as having 0 grams. My cooking spray says to use a 1/4 second spray, if the entire spray is only a quarter of a gra... |
Why aren’t all bullets pointy like a needle tip? | My understanding: A needle-like tip would cause the round to go straight through the target. The blunt tip slows the bullet as it strikes and causes the round to "mushroom" causing greater damage and providing more "stopping power". Certain military rifle rounds are much more pointy than, say, a handgun round - this al... |
How is it legal to "bet against" the housing market like they did in "The Big Short"? | Let's step away from the Credit Default Swaps part for a second. On the stock market, you can "short" stocks, which is like betting a stock will go down. To do this, you promise a stockholder that you will borrow stock from them and you'll give it back after a period of time. During the time you borrow it, you sell it,... |
Why do candles suddenly have a completely different smell when blown out? | The smoke, gases and fumes that appear when you blow the candle out have been being burned by the candle for fuel so you don't smell them. |
Why is it harder for an American to (believably) imitate a British accent than it is for a British person to imitate a an "American accent" | Source please. I suspect you're thinking that Brits can imitate an "American accent" better because you are not very familiar with it versus you are very familiar with a "British accent." You're naturally going to be more perceptive of mistakes in your own dialect than another ones.I am not sure this is the case. For e... |
What would need to happen for us to be able to create fully immersive virtual environments using only our brains? | We would need to learn the exact sequence and amount of stimulation required in the exact location of the brains to trigger specific subjective experiences, and how to "read" the responses people make from their neural signals so they can interact with the stimulation in real time. And we would need to be reasonably ce... |
Why are black, brown, blonde, and red/orange the only really natural hair colors? As apposed to people being born with blue or green hair for example. | Probably the same reason there are so few bright-blue deer - it would get you eaten by a wolf or a bear. All natural hair colors are fairly effective camouflageThe body only produces two kinds of pigment to color hair: Eumelanin and pheomelanin . The more Eumelanin ya have, the darker your hair, more pheomelanin = redd... |
What makes DMT the "most" illegal drug? | unfortunately drug culture through prohibition and the crowd it attracts accrues the most dumb myths and languageIf it is a schedule 1 narcotic then it is no more illegal than other schedule 1 narcotics. The idea that DMT is the most illegal is one of those repeated myths that you see around because it is a powerful dr... |
How do cough syrups work? | "Cough syrup" is a generic name for a wide variety of medications, all designed to reduce coughing. They have one or more active ingredients, especially: -One of a number of cough suppressants that reduce how often you cough - One of a number of expectorants that thin the mucus do that when you do cough, you get more o... |
Why are man-made elements a thing? And why aren't there more | What determines an element is just how many protons are in the nucleus of an atom. Hydrogen has one proton, Helium has two, Iron has twenty-six, Uranium has ninety-two, et cetera. Theoretically, there are an infinite number of elements because there are an infinite number of whole numbers. The problem is that as you co... |
Why people don't independently set up there own internet service and are forced to use an "ISP". | Think of the Internet like a system of roads. Say you want to build your own road from your house, instead of using existing roads. Ok, you can do that if you buy a house with enough land around it, but where does that road go? You could build a road to your friend's house if they want to do the same thing as you, but ... |
Why are black, brown, and blonde the only hair colours? Obviously slight variations exist, but wheres the navy-blue, green, purple, and yellow? | Bright colors are used for a few reasons in nature. 1) as a warning - animal is poisonous or venomous 2) to attract a mate - people speak so not really necessary for us 3) camoflage - green can be a color for camoflage except only in certain evironments. People used to be nomadic and settled down in many different kind... |
Why Does Salt in particular hurt THAT bad inside an open wound. | [/r/askscience answered this a few years ago]. The short version is that salt dissolves in your juices making a liquid with a high concentration of sodium. Part of how nerves communicate is by manipulating the sodium content in between the nerve cells - so you're basically chemically stimulating nerve cells that are al... |
Why do people go to 'For-profit' schools instead of community colleges despite the fact that they're insanely expensive and don't offer good career prospects? | They get sucked in by the marketing. Commercials on TV. And they will dump a shit-ton of loan money on you just by signing your name. You won't even realize how much debt you're in until you graduate and you realize that you have to pay back $140000.as the first poster said, the chain for-profit colleges use really hig... |
What does it mean to die of "natural causes?" | It's mostly a distinction used in the legal profession. Technically being eaten by a lion is a very natural way to die, but we wouldn't call that natural causes. A cause of death can be accidental, murder, disease, or natural causes. Accidental is you fall off a bridge. Murder is somebody pushed you. Disease would be s... |
Why is AIDS usually connected with homosexuality? | it is much easier for men to give people HIV through the bodily injection of semen than it is for women to give HIV. HIV can easily go from man to man or man to woman, but not so easily from woman to man or woman to woman. M to M to M to M to M, and you see why it has such a devastating effect on the gay male community... |
Why are most other resolutions named by their width (1080p, 720p) but 4K resolution is named after its height (3840, instead of 2160)? | I think the width and height are backwards in the title, but I know what you mean. I think it's a marketing ploy. 1080p and 720p are technical terms related to screen resolution and refresh rate . A TV manufacturer thinks they sell more by advertising as "4K" instead of "2160p/i" because "4K" sounds better to the consu... |
Why do you think you look one way when looking in a mirror (good) and then worse when looking at pictires/front facing camera (bad)? | The others have mentioned the reverted image, and to an extent that is correct. However, when you begin to look at cameras, the focal length of the camera can affect what you look like, by exaggerating some of your features etc. Here is a pretty cool [example]', "it's because 1. Main reason: you're seeing yourself in 3... |
How does a food company determine what a serving size is? | They're required to put the nutrition on their labels, but after that it's fair game. They typically want to put a nice number on there for calories but will disguise by dividing it and calling it a "serving size". People will see "100 calories" and like that part, even if there are 10 servings and the whole thing is a... |
Why is more fiber suggested as a cure for both constipation and diarrhea? | For diarrhea, the fiber will bulk up your stool because it is non-digestible. The little fibers will bond together like paper or plywood and solidify the excrement. For constipation, it's sort of the same deal. The fiber is non digestible and comprises a good part of the stool. This time it helps though because it's mo... |
why do we use hot water over cold to wash stuff | Yes, hot water penetrates and generally cleans better. Get a couple dishes dirty and caked-on with funk, and put one in cold water to soak and one in hot. The hot water will loosen up the funk faster. |
In what circumstances could inflation be seen as a good thing? | Inflation is good for people who have borrowed money; for example, let's say I own a business and I bought a bunch of inventory for $100,000, with money I borrowed at 4% annually. So, at the end of the year, I've sold $500,000 of my inventory, but my total debt I owned is $104,000. Now, I'm in year two, and due to infl... |
Why Canadians are eating cucumbers from Mexico while they grow cucumber in greenhouses? | Because it is cheaper to cultivate, grow and harvest and ship cucumbers from Mexico to Canada than it is to do the same in a greenhouse in Canada. |
Why are some over the counter medications in bottles while others are in plastic sheets in a box? | They're called [blister packs.] There are a few benefits to them. Pills on one are less exposed to the environment, so they keep better- for some drugs, it makes a big difference. It's easy to label them, even if someone tears of a section with just one pill, to carry around. And, if someone is suicidal and trying to o... |
What is this controversy about red coffee cups right now? | Every year, Starbucks change their coffee cups in the time around Christmas to some kind of seasonal design. It's always basically red, but it varies from year to year. This year, the cups are simply red - well, two reds, fading from one red to another down the length of the cup. There are no patterns like they have ha... |
How do Geckos stick? | How does stuff hold together? I mean, stuff is just lots of molecules. The molecules are atoms held together by strong bonds, but what stops, say, a piece of wood from just falling into a pile of sqiggly cellulose? The answer is weaker forces between molecules. These are known as Van der Waals forces, after a Dutch sci... |
With all the political arguments happening on reddit, I don't know what it means when someone is "left" or "right". | Left and right signify what side issues you land on. Left is associated with being more liberal and right is associated with being more conservative. In our current political climate, this means Left is Democratic and Right is Republican, though there is a bit more nuance when you talk about individual issuesThe term c... |
Please, E=MC². ELI5 | E=MC² is the same thing as E = M x C² E: Energy M: Mass C: The speed of light To me, the amazing thing is that C² is a constant, a fixed number, it never changes! That means that Energy is nothing more than Mass multiplied by a constant. Ex: Imagine the equation M=Hx60 where M is Minute and H is Hour. That means that ... |
what is the difference between a motel, hotel, and a hostel? | Motel-"Motor Hotel". Cheap, usually low quality lodgings, intended for road travelers. Motels usually don't have a real interior, and are arranged like apartments, with rooms accessible from the exterior. Hostel-Cheap communal lodgings. Usually arranged more like a dorm, with shared bathrooms and assigned roommates. Ma... |
Why is St Patrick's day so popular in countries other than Ireland? | It was celebrated in America originally because of a large amount of people with irish decent that took pride in their heritageEssentially because Ireland has a huge diaspora, due to high historical emigration rates. Even today Ireland has a net negative immigration rate: in 2014 there were 15 immigrants per 1000 peopl... |
Why do hospitals insist on wheeling you out in a wheelchair when you are discharged? | To reduce the chances of anything happening to you while you're still their problem. Though this doesn't seem to happen that much in the UK - when I had my gall bladder out a couple of years back I walked out about 6 hours later. |
Is time travel technically possible? | we are all traveling through time right now! but really, time travel in the sci fi sense, probably not. maybe some conceptual stuff involving worm holes and other unproven physics, but otherwise, the only form of time travel we have is the fact that if I get on a space ship and do a few laps at near speed of light, I w... |
Why does washing or soaking sore feet help them feel better? | Because being in water reduces stress on the muscles. Also, if the water is warm it relaxes the tension in the musclesThere are a couple reasons this could happen. Note that it depends on how sore we are talking With just a quick wash, you're likely experiencing most of the relief from what we call the "gate control th... |
How shazam really works ?? | A sound signal can be represented as the addition of several simpler signals. The simplest is a sine wave. Any sound is a combination of several sine waves of different frequency with various intensity. You can see the breakdown of these frequencies in things like spectrum analyzers. Shazam trains their database by mea... |
why are food labels required to state that there is no known difference between rBGH and non-rBGH products, but the same is not true for GMO vs. non-GMO foods? | These are not mandatory labels, they are voluntary. The activists are pushing for mandatory labels for ingredients derived from GM crops. Ironically the same ruling which struck down mandatory rGBH labeling will be used on any law requiring labeling forgm crops |
Why isn't there really low levels of oxygen in densely populated cities due to a lack of trees? | The atmosphere is made of gases. They mix, really easily. Plus most of the world's oxygen isn't made by trees, it's made in the oceans by plankton.the amount of carbon dioxide a human produces is less than what a tree produces in Oxygen. I think there was a study that found that if a mature tree and human were locked i... |
What's the difference between Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge? | Edge is a totally new browser, being written from scratch. It is not "IE12" as some people like to refer to. Given that it is 100% new, it is faster, lighter weight, has better support for newer web standards, more secure, and doesn't have any baggage from 20+ years of legacy Internet Explorer code. Being that it is al... |
How does cooking spray have zero calories? | All calories can be rounded to the nearest 5 calories. I believe anything under 5 can be rounded to 0 . But it's definitely an artefact of rounding, likely only possible because a spray of cooking oil contains such a small amount of liquid. Drink 1L of the stuff though, and it certainly wouldn't be calorie free!! EDIT:... |
How does a cell actually die? | Docter here, bare with me as I express my love of the human body with a long reply. There are two ways a cell can die, apoptosis and necrosis. Apoptosis is cell mediates death. This happens when the mitochondria receives a signal ether from itself or another cell telling it to release Cytochrome C. This enzyme goes aro... |
When a large corporation buys another large corporation, what does it "get?" Where does the money it spends to acquire that company go? | They get everything that company owns. That includes physical assets, intellectual property, and they assume all of the companies existing contracts, and money owed to it. They also assume its debts. The money goes to the owners, and if publicly traded, the shareholders. This is usually in the form of stock, you start ... |
Why does it become dark immediately when I switch off the light? What happened to the photons of light that were emitted by the light source? | You mean are photons that were emitted just previously still traveling at the instantaneous moment the light turns off? Well, yeah, but they move at the speed of light. In case you don't realize how fast that is, light could circle the earth over 7 times a second. |
Why don't I have cell reception in hospitals? | I do IT in a major hospital. I can answer this. The walls are super strong and/or thick. Having a fire would be a HUGE issue in a building full of oxygen tanks and disabled people. Due to the fire risk the buildings are kind of compartmentalized. In case of a fire, it shouldn't be able to spread very far. The downside ... |
Why do some people (especially children) suffer from malnutrition on a vegan diet? | Certain vitamins, minerals, and I think amino acids are not common or not easily accessible in a plant-based died. I think it's vitamin B-12 that humans cannot synthesize on their own, they depend on the animals that they eat to create it for them. So, vegans either need to take a supplement There are [9 amino acids] t... |
How come my pictures of the moon always look like a smudgy, little ping pong ball? | You could be having any of several problems. 1) adjusting the focus to infinity is a bad move. Most lenses actually go slightly past infinity so you may need t back off a bit to get proper focus 2) the moon is bright. You can't shoot it like other night time objects. And you DEFINITELY can't use any auto settings. Your... |
Why do muscles start shaking when i try to keep them still/at a precise location? | Because your nerves and muscles aren't 100% accurate, making your movement undershoot or overshoot the location you want your body part to be. To compensate your nervous system keeps adjusting the amount of strength your muscles need to contract by to. ie undershooting - > increasing contraction - > overshooting- > dec... |
How do services like 1and1 possess the capability to sell domain names? Who owns them before they are bought? | No one owns it before you buy it. When the West was being settled, and the government offered "free land," you still had to pay to have the deed recorded at the county level. Registering a domain is exactly the same concept. No one owns it before you do, but it costs money to acknowledge your newfound ownership. Also, ... |
What was the "Dot com bubble?" | Back around 2000, the internet was exploding. The World Wide Web had gotten popular with the masses, and companies were springing up right and left to try to cash in on the trend. If you had someone who could do minimal programming and an idea, you had a good chance of getting millions of dollars in venture funding if ... |
Why are most shows on TV police procedural dramas? | It's a cycle. A show gets popular for whatever reason, the stations put 25 copies on the air and hope they get popular too. Then another show gets popular, and 25 copies of **it** go on the air, and 18 of the first set of copies are cancelled. Real World became popular, and now we have reality TV. Law n Order became po... |
Why is it so hard to rebuild your credit? | For the same reasons you are less likely to trust a criminal, even if they aren't currently in jail. Past actions are a decent indicator of future actions. If you failed to fulfill your past financial obligations in the past, a lender sees that as a sign that you are more likely to fail at paying them back on time. |
How does hit detection work in first-person shooters? | [check out this video by Gameranx that talk about bullet physics in games] the player basicly have a lazer pinting straight ahead, if a enemy is touching the lazer when the player press the trigger, the enemy will get hit. some realistic games have a delay from the player pulling the trigger to the enemy getting hit to... |
Why does everything sound high pitched in loud places? | This is a complex question that has a variety of factors involved. For one, sound travels faster in higher temperature environments than colder places. and this could also just be perceptual Which is the likely candidate. Pitch is not exact for most people, it's psychological . non-musical pitch, like the difference fr... |
Why do my ears pop when my flight is ascending? Isn't the aircraft's cabin pressurized? | It is pressurized, but not to the same air pressure as the airport. It's usually pressurized to the equivalent to being just over a mile in altitude although it can vary depending on the aircraft.As stated already the cabin is pressurized to 5,000-8,000 feet. But when the cabin door is open the cabin pressure has to be... |
How are movies that were not shot in high definition re-released as Blu-Ray? | Films are shot on analog FILM media. Film is 10x better quality than bluray cause its supposed to be watched on a 100ft screen, not your average 50inch screenHigh definition is a modern bullshit marketing term. Film movies are actually wayyy fucking higher than "HD" which is only 1080 vertical pixels. Your 1080p TV is ... |
Why is it that in object names such as lazy Susan and Mary Janes the names are capitalized but not in sloppy joe or cup of joe? Did joe just get effed? | It's actually unknown. The word "joe" for "coffee" first appeared in the 1930s, spelled with a lower-case "j", but how it arrived in the English language and what it originally meant is completely unknown. There is a Scots English word "jo", sometimes spelled "joe", which means "sweetheart" and has nothing to do with t... |
Why are there so many different types of buttons (clothing)? | Well it comes down to personal preference and style like almost anything in the clothing industry does. Wouldn't it be more efficient for all shirts and pants to be the same? It would standardize and save money for everyone. But then you would lack a competing economy necessary in a capitalist society. Another function... |
What's the deal with salmon? Surely they don't **always** spawn in the same river where they were born. | I can only answer the 2nd question. They don't give up. They try to swim up the rapids until they die of exhaustion or get eaten by bears or other predators. But the first option is not common since they evolved over thousands of years to ace those rapids with ease. Those who don't, well, natural selection takes care o... |
What is computer science? | Computer science is the study of how computers work on a software level. You might learn a little about computer hardware, but a full curriculum for computer science will teach you the basics of programming, how to efficiently store data when programming, how to efficiently search through data. You will learn how progr... |
What accounts for people having their own distinct voice? | It's the same way people have their own distinct faces. Visually, we see different sizes, displacements, and ratios of things like eyes, noses, mouths, cheekbones creating a seemingly endless amount of permutations possible for an individual face, . Aurally, we hear pitch , loudness , which are pretty simple, people ha... |
Why is it that light-colored objects like white t-shirts become clear when they're wet, but things like hair become darker? | the fibers in a shirt absorb water. when the fibers absorb the water they expand and allow more light through. the exact opposite happens with hair like fibers. they absorb the water and stick to each other. therefore they let less light though. the color also plays a role. light colors will absorb less light than dark... |
Where do all these surveys saying "__% of Americans approve/disapprove ____" get their info from? | You don't need particularly large sample sizes to get relatively good results. So if you go to [_URL_2_] and just click on the first [poll available], you'll see a line that looks like this: CBS News/New York Times Poll. Sept. 19-23, 2013. N=1,014 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3. So that tells you who conducted ... |
Why is the Canadian dollar suffering so much right now? | It has absolutely nothing to do with Trudeau being in office, and everything to do with the Harper government throwing all of Canada's eggs into one basket , and that basket falling apart . |
How did so many people die of the flu in 1900’s? | Vaccinations have done wonders at lessening the effects of flu symptoms and also help by making it harder for those who are more vulnerable are less likely to get it and die. Moreover the flu in the early 1900s actually came back in the 2000s "swine flu" and it actually caused a few hundred thousand deaths despite all ... |
How do they make those super tall piles of dirt at construction sites? | Dump trucks to dump the stuff, bull dozers are used to push it into a pile. If the base gets too big they use a back hoe and scoop up piles that that they place on top/u/difedicus is spot on, there are some other explanations too Before anything is built an engineer estimates how much material is needed and the contrac... |
What is 4chan, and particularly /b/? | 4chan is an imageboard. Imagine Reddit with pictures for subjects instead of actual subjects. Don't just ask about it, head on over and check it out for yourself. You'll get a much better understanding of how it works. Here's the very work-safe literature board; _URL_0_ You're not going to get a virus, no one is going ... |
Why does Reddit hate the Koch brothers? | Not sure if trolling. If not they own the second largest privately owned company in the United States and contribute lots of money to right-wing politicians. They are philosophically on the opposite end of the spectrum as the majority of Redditors. |
Why does running your credit report often lower your credit score? | In the UK, [it doesn't]. > Credit-application footprints can affect your credit score, but other search footprints, such as those created by ID checks or quotations, cannot. I don't know if the same applies in other countries. But if running a credit report *does* affect your score, it would be because people who check... |
How is the value of a new floating currency determined? | every morning in the market square they will auction off one forex. however many goats the winning bid is gets translated to their weight in salt and the salt is then sold on the open market. the value of the salt then becomes the price of one forex for the day. this process is repeated at 4:37 every morning. |
Why is every known tax higher in California yet the state is having a financial crisis and provides very little to no extra service to their citizens? | It's because of several propositions that changed the way the financials worked for the gov't There's a very heavy emphasis on education spending, so a lot of the revenue goes into the K-12, UC, and Cal-State and other state education systems. . And another 9-10% on state jails/prisons . And almost another third of the... |
What does the doctrine of estoppel means? Can you give an easy example? | "Estoppel" is just a fancied up word for stopped, as in "You can't do that." In the law, it refers specifically to where out-of-court conduct makes it unfair to allow a certain in-court argument. Examples: **Promissory Estoppel:** Normally, a promise isn't enforceable, unless it's a contract . But under certain conditi... |
Jet wing tips. Why are some flat, some have vertical section that goes up and some have a section that goes up and down | A Wingtip device or winglet's can increase performance, fuel efficiency and or safety by reducing vortex's and increasing lift on the wings tip and smoothing the air flow. This wasn't copy and paste but here is one [source] of info anyway. |
What makes an ACL injury more severe than an MCL injury? | The ACL attaches the bottom of the femur to the top of the tibia and is accompanied by the PCL. The MCLs are on either side of the femur attaching it to the tibia. The ACL moves the femur back on the tibia when you stand up straight. This is called screw home position. It allows you to stand without using much of your ... |
Why do we have fancy unhackable standardized lotto machines but when it comes to voting we're still in the 1980s? | The major difference is the voting system cannot provide the voter with proof of their vote. That would make it possible to buy votes. A rich, bad actor, could offer $X for each person's proof they voted a certain way. With this limitation, many technically feasible solutions for accurate and safer voting systems are o... |
How does a zipping program such as winrar, 7-zip etc. works? | Let me give you a super simple compression algorithm: number followed by a character. I want to compress AAABBCDDDD. This compresses to 3A2B1C4D. I went from 10 characters to 8, which is not particularly impressive, especially because you have to have the "rules" for the compression at the beginning of a compressed fil... |
How did the first computer coding get "written" if there wasn't a "language" to write it in beforehand? | Computers cannot understand programming languages directly. They have to be "compiled" or "interpreted" into the native language of the computer. This "native language" is simply an arrangement of 1 and 0 bits that tell the computer what to do. For humans, reading a long string of 1's and 0's is tedious and error prone... |
How can you ever be sure that two things that reproduce asexually are in the same species? | You can genetically sequence them and if their genomes match up then you can say they're the same species. You can also use a series of tests, such as growing them in different environments and using chemical markers that react differently to different byproducts, to determine how they react under different conditions.... |
Why do I get tears in my eyes after I yawn? | We use a lot of muscles in our face while yawning. This causes tension on the eye lids. And this opens the lacrimal glands. |
Why does groaning and making noise seem to help when you are in pain? | Many animals moan in pain when hurt. The apparent benefit is warning other members of the pack and attracting aid from them. A prime example is babies and young children who make lots of noise when in pain and thereby attract attention from their caregivers. If there are actual physical benefits, I 'd guess that part o... |
Are human babies the only ones that whine and cry? Is there any other example of a baby whining to get attention from it's mother? | Tons of animals do. But human babies are unusual among mammals: we're born *much* less mature than typical babies of other species. |
Why do good memories have a more "magical" feel to them when you talk/think about them as opposed to when you were creating those memories? | It's simply a psychological tendency of humans to remember things generally better, happier and nicer than they were, in a way we romanticize our past. It has been speculated that in order for us to have a more positive outlook and go on in life, our brains have the tendency to ignore and forget the things in our life ... |
How does the autofocus system on a digital camera know when something is in focus? | Most or all DSLRs use computer analysis. The camera scans the image and looks for hard edges that contrast when something is in focus. When it can see, for example, black pixels next to white pixels, it knows that it must be in focus, because if it was blurry, there wouldn't be a clear separation between black and whit... |
Curving grades/Grading on a curve. | Basically, the standard grading system is not always adequately equipped to show how competence in a class is distributed. For example, lets say 1/3 of your class knows the topic REALLY REALLY well, 1/3 knows it well enough to say that they understand it, and the last 1/3 just does not get it. You design want to design... |
Why do you have to fast before getting certain blood tests? | it depends on the blood tests, however, its typically to get rid of all the fats and sugars that are suspended in your blood following a meal. If you fast, then your body will process those fats and sugars from your blood. Whats left over are the risiduals which are produced by your body . By fasting they can get a som... |
Why is our breathing involuntary until we start to think about it, then it becomes voluntary? | Evolutionarily, there were advantages for us to be able to control our breathing . I can't think of any beneficial reason to stop your heart from beating, which almost immediately impairs our brain, which is our biggest evolutionary advantage.Your breathing is only "sort of" voluntary. Basically, your body is constantl... |
Common law and civil law. | Assuming that you're asking about the difference between the two - common law does not have a 'masterlist' of specific rules, but instead refers to how previous similar cases have been judged in order to judge new cases. Civil law, on the other hand, does have a 'masterlist' to refer to outlining the proceedures for ea... |
why does taking a hot shower make any burns you have look 1000x worse? | When your skin is hot, the underlying blood vessels expand to allow more heat to be shed as it is carried by the blood. This also makes the skin appear more red than usual. Burned skin results in a thinner layer of skin until it can fully heal, so it appears even more red than other areas. If the burns have left scar t... |
When did Americans get stereotyped as "lazy"? | I think it's more of a insult than anything. I don't think Americans are lazy at all since we are over worked. If a company is somewhat good they will give 10 holiday days off. |
The optical illusion of the Sonos brand | It's simple [moiré effect], it happens with cameras/tv all the time. Basically, the lines are so fine that they dont fill a full pixel, this leads to the display not being able to make identical representations when scrolling. |
Why do we only smell smells when we inhale? | I'm by no means an expert in biology, but I did work in odour analysis for a number of years. When you inhale. You bring outside air in over the olfactory receptor cells in your nose. When you exhale, the airflows over a slightly different pathway, plus some of the odorous molecules are absorbed by your body If you inh... |
Why do our favorite Songs get annoying at some point? | I think it's similar to watching the same movie over and over again. You know exactly what will happen next and your brain starts to crave new information. |
Why are there a heart-shaped holes on the doors of outside toilets in movies? | I've mostly seen hearts, stars, crescent moons and green clovers so me thinks it for ventilation. |
What's the difference between GDP and GNP? | If a South Korean Factory makes and sells a $10 widget that is +10 GDP for SK. Now. If the factory spends $8 and makes $2 profit, which is sent back to the American owners, then that's +8 GNP for South Korea and +2 GNP for the USA. |
Are there any animals (identified as animals) that can both see and feed upon single celled organisms? | It depends upon what you think of as a single cell. An egg is a single cell, algae can be single celled though living in colonies, fungi like yeast are again single cells. |
how come you can hear the sea in a sea shell? | You are actually hearing the blood flow through your ears producing natural vibrations.I never really understood why people said this because that shit doesn't even sound like the sea. |
Why do Americans generally not learn any second languages? | The same reason 90% of American citizens do not carry, have never carried and will never carry passports. In other words, 90% of American citizens will never leave America except maybe to go to Canada. Or the Bahamas on vacation. Why? Put simply, because America is so goddamn big and has more than enough of *everything... |
How does a small child know intuitively that, for instance, a chihuahua and an Irish wolfhound are both dogs when they look so different? | A small child would absolutely *not* instinctively know that. A small child that knows what a dog is in general will recognise similar dogs as a dog but might not recognise a chihuahua, or a yorkie, or anything radically different as a dog. A small child might also recognise anything even *remotely* dog-like as a dog. ... |
Domain Name System (DNS) | Every computer on the internet has a number, an IP address. Those computers are responsible for things like showing you a website. But it would be difficult to remember numbers for each site you want to see. So we made DNS, which takes names like _URL_0_ and figures out the right number for youAre you old enough to hav... |
How/Why would water boil in space due to pressure, despite space being deadly freezing cold? | Not a perfect metaphor but I'll take a shot. Imagine a ball pit. On earth, gravity keeps all the balls in unless something pushes them out. In zero gravity, the balls would be free to float away without anything touching them. Water, and liquids in general, are similar. In this situation, Pressure from the air, our atm... |
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